CHAK i. \VATKI; sri'i'LY OF LONDON IN KAIMA TIMKS. c; 



influence upon the Corporation of London in obtaining 



the riMjiiisitr powers from Parliament to enable them 

 to bring the springs of Chadwell and Amwell to the 

 thirsty population of the metropolis; but unhappily 

 they had as yet no Drake to supply the requisite capital 

 and energy. In March, 1608, one Captain Edmond 

 Tnlthurst petitioned the Court of Aldermen for per- 

 mission to enter upon the work ; l but it turned out that 

 the probable cost was far beyond the petitioner's means, 

 without the pecuniary help of the corporation, and that 

 being withheld, the project fell to the ground. After 

 this, one Edward Wright is said to have actually begun 

 the works; 2 but they were suddenly suspended, and the 

 citi/eiis of London were as far from their supply of 

 pure water as ever. At this juncture, when all help 

 seemed to fail, and when men were asking each other 

 " who is to do this great work, and how is it to be done ?" 

 citizen Hugh Myddelton, impatient of further delay, 

 came forward and boldly said, " If no one else will under- 

 take this work, I will do so, and execute it at my own 

 cost." Yet Hugh Myddelton was 110 engineer, not even 

 an architect or a builder, but only a goldsmith ; pos- 

 sessing, however, an amount of energy of character and 

 enterprising public spiritedness, in which the Londoners 

 of iliose days seem to have been generally wanting. 



1 ' Records of the City of London,' 

 6th James I. 



-^Art. '('anal,' in Addenda to Hut- 

 ton's ' Mathematical and PhUoBOphical 



author of a celebrated treatise on Navi- 

 gation, entitled 'Certain Krrors in 

 Navigation Detected and Corrected/ 

 originally published in 1509, and re- 



Dictionary.' Mr. Wright was the printed, with additions, in 1657. 



