Commissioners thought proper to take all the Machines, hitherto made, out of our hands, to lock them up at Greenwich,[1]
- ↑ The injury to the three Machines, and the gross misconduct of those who compromised their duty by not enquiring into it, though they had been claimed as public property, are passed by, but the omission could not fail to be supplied by his Majesty's recollection; for at those few times when he accompanied parties of the Royal Family to Greenwich, he must have seen these first Timekeepers in their deranged state; and the fact of their having been removed in a jolting carriage, instead of being carried by a chairman's horse, and on the water, which the Astronomer Royal could not evade, though he might suppress that of having employed a blacksmith as his assistant, would leave a hiatus which the King, who understood the subject, would not be at a loss to fill up. When he was first shown these "curious progressive specimens of genius," it must have been both novel and contemptible to hear the occupant of Flamstead Hill trying to parry the questions that would occur—to make the worse appear the better reason, and to mystify the Inventor's illustrious Patron, if he could.
cent., is reckoned for ten years; and that of the other for two; no such good luck can be deduced, for the money thus lost, amounts, with a few pounds extra, to the sum just named. Mr. Kendal informs the Commissioners (11th April, 1766) that he has set aside his private business for two years, to be better enabled to complete his engagements with them: but there is nowhere any trace of a comparison in this important particular, between the case of the contractor and that of John Harrison—who had impliedly coyenanted with the Legislature, that if he conformed to certain conditions, as they were uniyersally understood, he should receiye the premium stipulated by the contract. To which end, he certainly set aside his private business, not for two years only, but for an indefinite period, which was extended through his life, after he had given up his mind to the absorbing question of the Longitude: which being premised, it is but fair to enquire what his earnings might have been (certainly with more comfort to such a quiet man as he was) if instead of pursuing the ignis fatuus into which the enmity and meanness of opponents possessing a power without appeal (except to Parliament) had converted the solution of this problem, he had taken up and prosecuted with his habitual industry the trade of constructing clocks for mathematical purposes. The superior reputation, and the consequent high price of his works, both here and on the continent, justify us in allowing him forty-four years, communibus annis, £600 of the currency then; but to be on the safe side, we will say £500. His Son is stated to have
