earlier work. While he was master of the workmen (1180–2), the choir of the abbey church was rebuilt, and the subjects of the paintings on its walls were arranged by him. At the same time he built one story of the great bell-tower at the west end of the church. He completed this when abbot, and added two flanking towers. He also had the chapels of St. Katharine and St. Faith new roofed with lead, and greatly embellished the whole church within and without. On 1 Dec. 1198 Innocent III gave him leave to make arrangements for its re-dedication (Innocent III, Ep. 1. i. No. 458); but the ceremony did not take place in Samson's lifetime. He improved the monastic buildings, and Matthew Paris (Chron. Maj. ii. 533) says he made an aqueduct for the monastery. In 1184 or 1185 he founded a hospital or almshouse at Babwell, outside the north gate of the town (Tanner, Notit. Monast. Suffolk, x. 6). He also provided the school with an endowment which freed ‘poor scholars’ from the payment of rent and fees (Jocelin, p. 296; (Regist. Nigr. f. 222 b). He ‘had ruled his abbey successfully for thirty years, freed it from manifold debts, enriched it with most ample privileges, liberties, possessions, and buildings, and set its church services on a new and most seemly footing,’ when he died there on 30 Dec. 1211 (Ann. S. Edm. pp. 19, 20). He was buried in the chapter-house (James, p. 181).
[Except where otherwise stated, all the material for this article is in the Chronicle of Jocelin de Brakelond, edited by Mr. J. Gage Rokewode for the Camden Society, and by Mr. T. Arnold for the master of the rolls (Memorials of St. Edmund's, vol. i.). The Annales S. Edmundi are printed in the second volume, the Chronica Buriensis in the third volume, of Mr. Arnold's Memorials, and the Annales are also in Dr. Liebermann's Ungedruckte Anglo-norman-nische Geschichtsquellen. The references given above to Jocelin and the Annales are to the Rolls edition. Part of Samson's Kalendar is printed in Gage's History of Thingoe Hundred, Introd. pp. xii–xvii. Dr. Montague James's work on the Abbey of St. Edmund at Bury is No. xxviii. of the octavo publications of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society (1895). To English readers Samson's name has become familiar chiefly through Carlyle's Past and Present, which, however, is rhetoric, not history. A careful monograph on Samson von Tottington, by Hofrath Phillips, is in the Sitzungsberichte (philosophisch-historische Classe) of the Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften at Vienna, vol. xlviii. (1865). See also Rokewode's notes to his edition of Jocelin, Mr. Arnold's preface to his Memorials, vol. i., and ‘Abbot and Town’ in J. R. Green's Stray Studies; Rokewode's references to the Registrum Nigrum Vestiarii (MS. Mm. iv. 19, Cambridge University Library) have been kindly verified and corrected for this article by Miss Bateson.]
SAMUDA, JOSEPH D'AGUILAR (1813–1885), engineer and shipbuilder, second son of Abraham Samuda, a broker and an East and West India merchant, of 10 South Street, Finsbury, London, by Joy, daughter of H. D'Aguilar of Enfield Chase, Middlesex, was born in London on 21 May 1813. He studied as an engineer under his brother Jacob, with whom he entered into partnership in 1832. Between 1832 and 1842 the operations of the firm of Samuda Brothers were principally confined to the building of marine engines. From 1842 to 1848 they were partly engaged in laying down railway lines on the atmospheric principle at Dalkey, Ireland, at Croydon, and in Paris; but the difficulties in the working ultimately led to the abandonment of this method of locomotion. In 1843 the firm commenced a shipbuilding business. One of the first vessels built was the Gipsy Queen, but during the trial trip on 12 Nov. 1844 Jacob Samuda was killed by the giving way of an expansion joint of the engine (Gent. Mag. March 1845, p. 321). From 1843 onwards the firm was uninterruptedly engaged in the construction of iron steamships for both the war and merchant navies, the passenger and mail services of England and other countries, besides royal yachts and river boats. Among ships built for the British navy were the Thunderer, the first armour-cased iron vessel; the Prince Albert, the first ironclad cupola ship; and the mortar float No. 1, the first iron mortar vessel ever constructed. Under Samuda's personal control they at a later period built the Riachuelo and the Aquidaban, two ironclads, for the Brazilian government, and also three channel steamers, the Albert Victor, the Louise Dagmar, and the Mary Beatrice, for the service between Folkestone and Boulogne. Samuda introduced into his yard on the Isle of Dogs all the efficient time- and labour-saving machines of the day. Among these was a hydraulic armour-plate bending machine, capable of exerting a working pressure of seventy hundredweight per square inch, or a total pressure of 4,000 tons.
In 1860, in co-operation with Sir Edward Reed and others, he established the Institution of Naval Architects, of which he was elected the original treasurer and a member of council. He subsequently became one of its vice-presidents. His contributions to its ‘Transactions’ were numerous, and there were few discussions at its meetings in
