[6] He claimed that on the next day he had assisted with the planning of the artillery placement[8] and then personally fired two cannons, dislodging Stuart men from the church at Tranent.
[11] Given his inflated claims in other matters and lack of corroboration, however, the court discounted his testimony and exonerated Cope,[4][12] although the general never again held high position.
Although those claims were vigorously disputed by rival instrument makers,[17] Jack and Adams seem to have been vindicated by some practical and authoritative test in early 1752 and made a sizeable profit on the design.
[18] None of the devices are known to still exist[19] but, on the basis of surviving records, Millburn considers it likely that representatives of the Admiralty or Board of Ordnance praised the patent telescope's high level of magnification—the most essential attribute for long-range fire—despite the accuracy of other complaints about its faults.
[1] The advertisement for his probate auction stated that he had been "assistant engineer in the late expedition against Guadaloupe",[3] a French colony captured by British forces under Maj. Gen.
[1] His work on a geometrical proof of the existence of God, however, was generally held in low repute and considered by MacFarlane to be "one of the most absurd" attempts to apply mathematical reasoning to theological questions.
[24] Writing under the pen name Antitheos, George Simpson offered that Jack's arguments "may afford grounds for curious speculation respecting that bias toward absurdity which is too frequently found to beset the human mind".