Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/366

 the cathedral priory of Bath, and gave some gifts to the convent, which celebrated his obit as at Wells (Bath Chartularies, pt. ii. No. 808). In 1205 he was at Rome, and was engaged in obtaining the bishopric of Winchester for Peter des Roches. He died at Civita Vecchia (Senes la Vieille, said also to be Siena) on 8 Aug. He was buried in his cathedral at Bath, his epitaph, which seems to have been placed on his tomb there, being: Notus eras mundo per mundum semper eundo, Et necis ista dies est tibi prima quies. (, p. 163; comp., De Præsulibus, p. 370). Savaric left many debts, but his credit was good, for in a gloss in the ‘Decretals of Gregory IX’ (vol. iii. tit. xi. c. 1) a man is described as praying that he might be included in the legion of Savaric's creditors (, p. 122). The name Barlowinwac, which Richardson (De Præsulibus, u.s.) says that he bore, is simply a misreading of some passage (see iii. 233), where the name Savaric was followed by that of Baldwin Wac or Wake (Gent. Mag. u.s.). A pastoral staff with a splendid crozier head and a pontifical ring, which were found in the burial-ground of Wells Cathedral between 1799 and 1812, have been ascribed to Savaric by popular tradition, which is in this case obviously erroneous (Archæologia, vol. li. pt. i. p. 106, with coloured plate; see also for engravings, Chapters in Wells History, u.s., and Wells Cathedral).

 SAVERY, THOMAS (1650?–1715), engineer, son of Richard Savery and grandson of Christopher Savery of Totnes, Devonshire, was born about 1650 at Shilstone, near Modbury, in the same county. Thomas became a military engineer, and by 1696 had attained the rank of trench-master. He occupied his spare time in mechanical experiments, and in 1696 he invented a machine for polishing plate glass and a contrivance for rowing ships in a calm by means of two paddle-wheels, one at each side of the vessel, worked by a capstan placed between. The second invention was patented on 10 Jan. 1696 (No. 347). William III thought highly of it, but, although Savery demonstrated its practicability by fitting it to a small yacht, official jealousy prevented its adoption in the navy. He was obliged to content himself by publishing an account of his invention in a work entitled ‘Navigation Improved’ (London, 1698; reprinted by the commissioners of patents in 1858, and by Mr. R. B. Prosser in 1880). The treatise contained a vehement protest against the treatment accorded him in official circles.

Savery, whose youth was spent near a mining district, had often turned his attention to the difficulty experienced in keeping the mines free from water. To remedy this he at length invented a machine for raising water, which, though not a steam engine in the modern sense of the word, embodied the first practical application of the force of steam for mechanical purposes. On 25 July 1698 he obtained a patent (No. 356) for fourteen years, which was extended by an act of parliament passed on 25 April 1699 for a further period of twenty-one years, so that the patent did not expire until 1733. The letters patent contain no description of the machine, but this deficiency was supplied by the inventor in a book which he published in 1702, entitled ‘The Miner's Friend,’ which has been reprinted several times (see, Steam Engine and its Inventors, pp. 56 et seq.). Savery was not so successful as he had anticipated, but he afterwards became associated with [q. v.], and Savery's patent appears to have been regarded as sufficiently wide to cover all Newcomen's improvements, great though they were.

Desaguliers has accused Savery of deriving his plans from the Marquis of Worcester's ‘Century’ [see ]; but though he may have been indebted to that author for the idea of employing steam as the motive power, yet the ‘Century’ contains no plans or precise details of the methods to be