The desire of this convenience, and of a more abundant supply, led in 1581, the 23d of Queen Elizabeth, to a grant by the Lord Mayor and Commonalty, of a lease for 500 years, to a Dutchman named Peter Morice, who undertook, by machinery constructed under the first arch of London Bridge, to force water above its level, into a reservoir that should distribute it into the upper parts of the adjoining houses. This was the origin of the London Bridge Water * Stowe ; Survey of London.

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Works, which for centuries afterwards furnished the chief supply of the city. The Dutchman succeeded so well with his first wheel for it was nothing else than a water

wheel, driven by the tide and acting upon a series of forcing pumps that two years afterwards, a similar lease of 500 years was granted to him for the second arch.

In the Philosophical Transactions, for the year 1731, Mr. Beighton, an engineer, gives a detailed description of the London Bridge Water Works, which, though increased in extent and number of wheels, preserved the original design of Morice. There were then three water wheels, each operating upon 16 pumps. The wheels and machinery were fixed in a strong frame of oak, that rose and fell with the tide, which, whether ebbing or flowing, imparted motion to the wheels. The whole yield of all the pumps was 1954 hogsheads per hour.* The lease and management of these works, continued in Morice's family till 1701, when, finding the profits diminished by the competition of the New River Company the r