Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/367

 employed. It has also been suggested that Savery may have been indebted to Papin's experiment showing how water might be raised by a vacuum produced by the condensation of steam. Papin issued an account of his experiment in the ‘Acta Eruditorum,’ published at Amsterdam in 1690. None appeared in England until many years afterwards, and it is unlikely that Savery saw the ‘Acta.’ Papin merely made a suggestion, whereas Savery produced a practicable machine.

In 1702 Savery became a captain in the engineers, and in 1705, through the patronage of Prince George of Denmark, he was appointed to the office of treasurer of the hospital for sick and hurt seamen. In the following year he patented (No. 379) a double hand bellows sufficient to melt any metal in an ordinary wood or coal fire, thus obviating the necessity of assay furnaces. There is an entry in the home office warrant-book, preserved in the Public Record Office, under date 5 March 1707, of an application by Savery for a patent for ‘A new sort of mill to perform all sorts of mill-work on vessells floating on the water … to render great advantage to the woollen manufacturers and many other useful works to be performed by mills,’ but no patent seems to have been granted for the invention. In 1714, through Prince George, he obtained the post of surveyor to the waterworks at Hampton Court. He died in May 1715, while resident in the parish of St. Margaret, Westminster. His will, dated 15 May, was proved by his widow in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury on 19 May, and is printed in the ‘Engineer,’ 30 May 1890, p. 442. He bequeathed all his property to his wife, but she seems never to have administered the will, and his affairs long remained unsettled. As late as 1796 letters of administration, with the will annexed, were granted to Thomas Ladds, the executor of Charles Cæsar, one of Savery's creditors. Savery translated Coehoorn's ‘New Method of Fortification,’ London, 1705, fol.



SAVILE, BOURCHIER WREY (1817–1888), author, second son of Albany Savile, M.P., of Okehampton, who died in 1831, by Eleanora Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Bourchier Wrey, bart., was born on 11 March 1817. He was admitted to Westminster School on 23 Jan. 1828, and was elected a king's scholar there in 1831. He became a pensioner of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in 1835, and graduated B.A. in 1839 and M.A. in 1842. He was successively curate of Christ Church, Hales Owen, Worcestershire, in 1840, of Okehampton, Devonshire, in 1841, and of Newport, Devonshire, in 1848; chaplain to Earl Fortescue from 1844; rector of West Buckland, Devonshire, in 1852; then curate of Tawstock, Devonshire, in 1855, of Tattingstone, Suffolk, in 1860, of Dawlish, Devonshire, in 1867, of Combeinteignhead, Devonshire, in 1870, and of Launcells, Cornwall, in 1871. From 1872 to his death he was rector of Dunchideock with Shillingford St. George, Devonshire. He died at Shillingford rectory on 14 April 1888, and was buried on 19 April. He married, in April 1842, Mary Elizabeth, daughter of James Whyte of Pilton House, Devonshire, and had issue four sons, including Bourchier Beresford, paymaster of the navy; Henry, commander in the navy; and five daughters.

Savile was a contributor to the ‘Transactions of the Victoria Institute’ and to the ‘Journal of Sacred Literature,’ and the author of upwards of forty volumes. His works, chiefly theological and in tone evangelical, display much learning. His volume on ‘Anglo-Israelism and the Great Pyramid’ (1880) exposes the fallacies of the belief in the Jewish origin of the English people.

Among his other publications were: 1. ‘The Apostasy: a Commentary on 2 Thessalonians, Chapter ii.,’ 1853. 2. ‘The First and Second Advent, with reference to the Jew, the Gentile, and the Church of God,’ 1858. 3. ‘Lyra Sacra: being a Collection of Hymns Ancient and Modern, Odes, and Fragments of Sacred Poetry,’ 1861; 3rd edit. 1865. 4. ‘Bishop Colenso's Objections to the Veracity of the Pentateuch: an Examination,’ 1863. 5. ‘The Introduction of Christianity into Britain: an Argument on the Evidences in favour of St. Paul having visited the Extreme Boundary of the West,’ 1861. 6. ‘Egypt's Testimony to Sacred History,’ 1866. 7. ‘The Truth of the Bible: Evidence from the Mosaic and other Records of Creation,’ 1871. 8. ‘Apparitions: a Narrative of Facts,’ 1874; 2nd edit. 1880. 9. ‘The Primitive and Catholic Faith in relation to the Church of England,’ 1875. 10. ‘Turkey; or the Judgment of God upon Apostate