MORLAND, Sir Samuel, a skilful mechanist, was the son of a clergyman, and was born at Sulliamstead-Bannister in Berkshire about 1625. He was educated at Winchester school and at the university of Cambridge. Several years afterwards he became assistant to Thurloe, the secretary of Cromwell. His exertions in behalf of the fund for the persecuted Piedmontese first brought him before the notice of the public. He acted as commissioner extraordinary for the distribution of the collected money; and published in 1658 the History of the Evangelical Churches of Piedmont. In 1659 he is said to have discovered and betrayed a plot formed by Cromwell, Thurloe, and Sir Charles Willis, for alluring Prince Charles over to England, and overthrowing the royalist cause by one blow. His services in behalf of the King were rewarded after the Restoration by several honours and dignities. He was created a knight and a baronet, was appointed master of mechanics to his Majesty, and a gentleman of the royal privy chamber, and received a pension of £400. About this time he seems to have become thoroughly engrossed with his mechanical studies. His invention of the speaking-trumpet was divulged to the world in 1671, in a treatise entitled A Description of the Tuba Stentorophonica. Two years afterwards he published an account of an arithmetical machine which he had invented in 1666. He also improved the fire-engine, capstan, and especially the pump and the water-engine. The cost of these inventions and improvements ruined his fortune, previously diminished by misfortune and imprudence. Blindness was added to his calamities; and he spent the last three years of his life subsisting almost entirely on the benevolence of Archbishop Tenison, and giving vent to his
Mormon. serious reflections in a work entitled The Urim of Con-
science. He died about 1696. An unpublished autobi-
ography of Sir Samuel Morland is in the library at Lambeth
Palace.