# Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 9 - Section III

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III. John Theophilus Desaguliers, F.R.S.
Jean Theophile Desaguliers was brought under the British rule at the age of two years (or perhaps sooner), so that he might be denied his claim to associate with the other admired refugees, as being by education and habits an Englishman. But he cannot be separated from that good genuine refugee, his father, Jean Desaguliers, Pasteur of Aitré in 1681. It was said as to an ancient Presbyterian minister named Erskine, whose celebrity was eclipsed by the fame and writings of his offspring, “Do you ask what works he has given to the world? — look at his sons.” The younger Desaguliers owed the essentials of his knowledge and attainments to his faithful and scholarly father.
An old French Bible is extant in which both father and and son entered domestic events and names, from which it appears that the father, Jean Desaguliers, was born about the 6th August 1644. He was received into the ministry by the Synod of Marcennes, the 18th October 1674, and (as quoted above from Haag) his pastoral charge was Aitré He was married at the Church of La Rochelle to Marguerite Thomas La Chapelle, and their elder child Marguerite was born on the 1st (and died on the 7th) January 1678.
The pasteur was serving his flock in troublous times. It was illegal for a Protestant minister to preach on controversial subjects, even to his own congregation. A government that could affect to tolerate Protestants while it forbade them to protest, was not to be relied on to enforce its prohibition accurately, or even plausibly. On a quiet Sabbath-day, Pasteur Desaguliers said in his sermon, “I exhort you to persevere courageously in your faith.” At once the emissaries of the government exclaimed, “That is a controversial statement, and actionable in law.” The preacher was taken before the magistrates. Their decision was considered a kind one in those days. The accused was dismissed from the bar, on condition that he withdrew from the office of the ministry.
His younger child, and only son, Jean Theophile, was born at La Rochelle on the 12th of March The pasteur, on his enforced resignation, was permitted ​to emigrate to Guernsey. If the tradition be true that the infant boy was brought away from France concealed in a barrel, the reason must have been that the authorities had decided to detain him with a view to his being educated as a Roman Catholic. In the Rev. William Douglas’s Album there is the following autograph:—
Quiconque Espere au Dieu Vivant Jamais Ne Perira. Pour la continuation de vostre amitié j’ay escrit cecy Le 20/30 April 1688. DESAGULIERS.
In the same Album this memorandum occurs:—
“Jevous supplie très-humblemcnt d’avoir la bonté de s’informer de Madem$^{lle.}$ Desaguliers, aupres de Mons$^{r.}$ Troussaye, Marchant à Londres.
Lembrasieres, de ma part.”
In 1692 the family removed to England, and in that year the father was ordained by the Bishop of London (Dr Henry Compton), receiving from him both deacon’s and priest’s orders on the same day, the 28th November. He was then offered and accepted the pastorate of the Swallow Street French Church. This he resigned, and founded an academy in London. His object probably included a plan for educating his son publicly, and yet under his own eye.
Of young Desaguliers the English Cyclopaedia says, “His early education he owed to the instructions of his father, who appears to have been a very respectable scholar and sound divine.” When his school education was completed, he acted as his father’s assistant in the academy, which, on the reverend exile’s lamented death, was discontinued. This is the statement of the Biographia Britannica. But John Theophilus Desaguliers can have discharged the duties of an usher for only a very short time. The family Bible says that the father died on the 6th February 1699, aged fifty-four years and six months. And even if we suppose that, according to the new style, the year was 1700, the son had not then completed his seventeenth year. We now call the young man by his surname, Desaguliers. He matriculated as a student of Christ Church in the University of Oxford, where he took the degree of B.A. His chosen profession was the ministry of the Church of England, and he received deacon’s orders from Bishop Compton on June 14th, 1710.
There was an ingenious German residing and lecturing in Oxford during and before Desaguliers’ university career, of whom the young graduate writes:— “Dr. John Keill was the first who publicly taught natural philosophy by experiment in a mathematical manner. He laid down very simple propositions, which he proved by experiments, and from those he deduced others more compound, which he still confirmed by experiments; till he had instructed his auditors in the laws of motion, principles of hydrostatics and optics, and some of the chief propositions of Sir Isaac Newton concerning light and colours. He began these discourses in Oxford about the year 1704 or 1705, and introduced the love of the Newtonian philosophy.”
Dr. Keill consented to accompany the expatriated Protestants of the Palatinate to their emigration field in New England, and went with them as their treasurer in 1710. Desaguliers removed to Hart Hall (one of the numerous colleges of Oxford), and took Dr Keill’s place. He adopted his predecessor’s method, adding mechanics to the course — “which ever since that time I have endeavoured to improve, by the addition of new propositions and experiments, and by altering and changing my machines, as I found things might be made more intelligible to such of my auditors as were not acquainted with mathematics, or more satisfactory to such as were.” These lectures were triumphantly successful.
On the 3d of May 1712 he took the degree of M.A. His fame as a lecturer evoked very pressing invitations from London, which he was the more willing to accept, having on the 14th October 1712 in the Church of Shadwell, been united in marriage to Joanna, daughter of William Pudsey, Esq. He removed to the metropolis in 1713, having his residence and lecture-room in Channel Row, Westminster. On the 29th July 1714 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Sir Isaac Newton admired his style of performing experiments, and the Royal Society appointed him their demonstrator with a fixed salary. Newton’s theory on light ​and colours was disputed by Monsieur Marriotte who had unsuccessfully attempted the confirmatory experiments. Desaguliers repeated those experiments with perfect success in 1714 and in 1728, “after which,” says Priestley, “no person who chose to give his name to the public, or whose name is worth recording, made any more opposition to it.”
A rather amusing anecdote is told regarding a publication suggested by the troubles of housekeeping. In 1716 he published a pamphlet entitled, “Fires Improved; being a new method of building chimneys so as to prevent their smoking.” It was a translation from the French. Edmund Curll, as publisher and part-proprietor, puffed it off with gross exaggerations, in order to increase the sale. This offended Desaguliers, who published a letter in Sir Richard Steel’s periodical, called “The Town Talk,” informing the public that whenever the writer’s name hereafter “was or should be printed along with that egregious flatterer Mr CurlPs, either in an advertisement, or in the title page of a book (except that of Fires Improved), he entirely disowned it.”
The Hanoverian Royal Family shewed a laudable interest in science. The Countess Cowper in her Diary, under the date 11th February 1716 (n.s.), says, “Sir Isaac Newton and Dr Clarke came this afternoon to explain Sir Isaac’s System of Philosophy to the Princess [of Wales].” And in 1717 King George I. requested Desaguliers to give his course of lectures at Hampton Court; His Majesty and the royal family were among the auditors, his course being a popular one addressed to the general public, including the fair sex. The lecturer was made LL.B. and LL.D. of Oxford on the same day, 16th March 1718.
It should be noted that Dr Desaguliers was a clergyman of the Church of England. The Earl of Carnarvon (a generous friend to Dr Keill) took Desaguliers under his patronage, made him his chaplain, and presented him to the living of Stanmore Parva or Whitchurch. In 1717 he preached before the king a sermon on Luke xiii. 5, which would have been rewarded with the gift of the Rectory of Much- Munden in Hertfordshire, if a friend of the Earl of Sunderland had not produced a prior claim. He obtained in that year a benefice in Norfolk (worth £70 per annum), which he exchanged in 1727 for the Rectory of Little Warley, Essex, of which Sir John Tyrrell, Bart., was the patron. In the reign of George II. he was made chaplain to Frederick Prince of Wales, and in 1738 chaplain to Bowles’ Dragoons. His one sermon standing alone, among so many scientific lectures and literary performances, might seem to divest him of his clerical character; but he was always recognised as a clergyman. On one occasion, when he was dining in illustrious company, an officer swore in conversation, and after each oath he asked Dr Desaguliers pardon. After bearing this gross misconduct patiently for some time, the Doctor silenced the offender by saying to him, “Sir, you have been attempting to render me ridiculous by your pointed apologies. All I shall say to you is, if God Almighty does not hear you, I will never tell him.”
In his family register, written in the French language within the boards of his Bible, he continued his father’s pious tone and devout spirit. We obtain from it the names, birthdays, and baptisms of his children. His eldest son and namesake was born 7th March 1715, and died 19th August 1716. But the second son, born 18th August 1718, was also named John Theophilus, and grew up to manhood. John Isaac was born 17th October 1719, and was presented for baptism by Sir Isaac Newton, the Marquis of Carnarvon, and Cassandra Cornwallis. Thomas was born 5th January 1721 (n.s.). Three daughters, Joanna, Sarah-Jane, and Elizabeth, died in childhood; the sponsors of the second daughter were Lord Malpas, the Duchess of Richmond, and the Countess of Dalkeith. The widowed mother of Dr. Desaguliers died on March 14th, 1722, aged eighty-two. The entry as to Thomas is a good specimen of a Huguenot registration: — “Aujourd’hui le 5 de Janvier est né mon quatrième fills Thomas au grand peril de la vie de sa mère qui par la misericorde de Dieu a enfin accouché heureusement. Cet enfant a eu pour parrains Thomas Parker Comte de Macclesfield et grand chancelier d’Angleterre, et Archibald Campbell Comte d’Ilay, et pour marraine Theodosia Comtesse de Clifton, fi lie de my Lord Clarendon, depuis decédée. Dieu donne cet enfant sa grace et benediction.” All his children were baptized at St. Margaret’s, Westminster.
On the 25th June 1720, a patent was granted to John Theophilus Desaguliers, Daniel Niblett, and William Vreem, of an invention for making the steam and vapour of boiling liquors useful for many purposes. In 1721 he was consulted by ​the Town Council of Edinburgh on the plan of Water-Works for their city, and received a fee. The Board of Overseers on 22d May 1722, “approve of what is done as to the compliment given to Doctor Desaguliers.” A letter from Dr. Desaguliers, preserved in the British Museum, is printed in the Biographia Britannica.
To Dr. Scheutzer, from Channel Row, January 15, 17289. “Sir, I intended myself the honour to have waited upon the President [of the Royal Society], to have spoken to him concerning what I told you at Slaughter’s Coffee House; but last Thursday’s work was too much for me in my condition, and caused a relapse, which has confined me to my chamber ever since. I was just free from pain after a long fit of the gout; and standing almost two hours upon my feet that day whilst they were still weak, together with the effect of the cold, gave me a return of pain as well as lameness that very evening. I must beg of you to be my advocate to Sir Hans, to desire him (if there be nothing contrary to form in it), to be so good as to settle my last year’s salary [i.e., to pay it] in the next council, which used to be done generally at the meeting of the Society after the vacation, though now the death of the treasurer hindered it. This would be of great service to me at present, because I am entirely out of money, and have pressing occasions lor it. What else I told you by word of mouth you will also mention when proper, in doing which you will much oblige, &c,
“J. T. Desaguliers.”
Besides being F.R.S., Dr. Desaguliers was a member of several foreign academies, and Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris.
Paul Dawson, one of his pupils, took the unwarrantable liberty of publishing in 1719 a quarto volume, called, “Desaguliers’ System of Experimental Philosophy.” The Doctor did not take the trouble of disclaiming the authorship till after the lapse of fifteen years, when he himself produced two quarto volumes, entitled, “A Course of Experimental Philosophy.” In the preface (dated 1734) he thus speaks of his successful career:— " About the year 1713 I came to settle at London, where I have with great pleasure seen the Newtonian Philosophy so generally received among persons of all ranks and professions, and even the ladies, by the help of experiments. Though several ingenious men have since that time, with great success, taught (and do still teach) experimental philosophy in my (or rather Dr. Keill’s) manner, I have had as many courses as I could possibly attend to, the present course which I am now engaged in being the one hundred and twenty-first, since I began at Hart Hall in Oxford in the year 1710. The satisfaction we enjoy by being, in any way, instrumental to the improvement of others is so great, that I can’t help boasting, that — of eleven or twelve persons who perform experimental courses at this time in England and other parts of the world — I have had the honour of having eight of them for my scholars, whose further discoveries become an advantage to myself.”
I may here allude to a handsome pamphlet, illustrated in a superior manner, and printed on large quarto paper, entitled, “The Newtonian System of the world the best model of Government, an Allegorical Poem — to which is added Cambria’s Complaint against the intercalary day in the Leap Year, by J.T. Desaguliers, LL.D., Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of Chandos, and F.R.S.; Illustrated with engravings; Westminster, 1728.” The versification, employed instead of prose with a view to entice young or indolent readers, is on Dryden’s model, and (if I remember correctly), this is the first line:
In ancient times, ere bribery did begin.
On the 15th April 1738, he performed some experiments before Frederick, Prince of Wales, at Cliefden House. He also gave his course of Lectures before George II. and the royal family. When Channel Row was ordered to be taken down, to make way for the new bridge at Westminster, he removed to lodgings over the Great Piazza in Covent Garden, where he continued to lecture until his death. He was repeatedly consulted by the government upon the design of Westminster Bridge, of the construction of which his assistant, Charles Labelye, was overseer. At the request of Parliament, he erected a ventilator in a room over the House of Commons.
We get a peep into the lecture-room by reading a letter to a Berlin correspondent from the Baron de Bielfeld, the Prussian Ambassador, dated London, March 6, 1741:—
“I withdraw myself twice-a-week from my labours in order to attend the celebrated Dr. Desaguliers, chaplain to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, in a course of experimental philosophy; and I have engaged almost all the foreign ministers here to be of the party. The Doctor’s ​apartment has more the appearance of a hall of congress than of the auditory of a professor; and as we pay him generously, he, in return, spares no pains to entertain us, and to discover to us all the hidden springs of nature. Physics (properly so called), mechanics, hydraulics, hydrostatics, optics, astronomy, are all included in his course. You have, I believe, in your valuable library, that work of the Doctor’s which is called A Course of Experimental Philosophy; it forms the basis of his lectures. Among the great number of his machines, there are none that excites my admiration so much as his famous Planetarium. I had before seen, in the libraries at Leyden, and Berlin, and elsewhere, several spheres made to exhibit to the eye the motions of the heavenly bodies; I have likewise examined that which they call the Orrery, after Lord Orrery, its inventor. But all these machines, though ingenious, have one considerable defect. For, by placing the sun in the centre, and giving it the size of an orange, it is necessary, in order to preserve a due proportion between it and the planets, and to determine the just distances, and such a sphere should be at least an English mile in diameter. Dr. Desaguliers, perceiving this inconvenience, ruminated for a long time in order to find out some method of perfecting this machine, and at last contrived his Planetarium. He was very efficaciously assisted in this business by Mr. Graham, the most able and the most celebrated watchmaker that ever existed. When the whole machine is complete, you see the sun immovable in the centre, and the earth and moon, and the planets with their satellites, which turn round the sun on their axes. He then begins by turning a winch, and immediately the whole heaven is in its natural motion, each body describing its proper orbit, whether circular or elliptic. The first lecture is given by daylight, that the auditors may clearly observe all the different bodies and their movements. In the next lecture, he places in the centre a small crystal globe, which contains a lamp, and represents the sun. He then shuts the windows, and putting his Planetarium again in motion, he shows in this lecture what parts of the earth, moon, and planets are illuminated by the sun at every instant. In these two lectures (you will observe) the exact distances must be abstractedly considered, for it is not possible to represent them distinctly in a machine of four feet diameter. But in the succeeding lectures, the Doctor analyses his machine, and presents to his auditors the sun still in the centre, but with only one planet and its satellites at a time. By this method, the distances become more discernible; and in this manner he explains with admirable facility the whole solar system. All these matters are exhibited with so much perspicuity, that I would engage to teach astronomy, by the help of the Planetarium, to any lady who has the least curiosity and attention, in a month’s time. But such a machine is not to be had by every one; for that of Dr. Desaguliers has cost him more than one thousand pounds sterling.
The academy of Bourdeaux, at the request of Monsieur Harpez de la Force, offered a medal of the value of three hundred livres (£12) for the best essay on electricity. In 1742, Dr Desaguliers’ “Dissertation on Electricity” won the medal. Priestley, in his “History and Present State of Electricity,” remarks —
“To Dr Desaguliers we are indebted for some technical terms which have been extremely useful to all electricians to this day, and which will probably remain in use as long as the subject is studied. He first applied the term conductor to that body to which the excited tube conveys its electricity — which term has since been extended to all bodies that are capable of receiving that virtue. And he calls those bodies, in which electricity may be excited by heating or rubbing, electrics per se.”
It was in 1738 that Desaguliers made his first electrical experiments before the Royal Society, which he said he could have done at an earlier date; “but he was unwilling to interfere with the late Mr Stephen Grey, who had wholly turned his thoughts to electricity, but was of a temper to give it entirely over, if he imagined that anything was done in opposition to him.” Desaguliers was also the author of numerous papers in the Philosophical Transactions from the year 1716 to 1742, on prismatic colours, on the atmosphere, on the barometer, on magnetism, on electricity, on statics, on perpetual motion. He also published translations from foreign authors, such as Ozanam, &c.
The Doctor continued to lecture with great reputation till his sixtieth year, the year of his death (1744). He spared no expense in procuring illustrations for his lectures. Like many sedentary men, he had an unnatural appetite for food. So that hfs mind may have given way during his last months; and he may also have been embarrassed in his pecuniary affairs. But Cawthorn’s rhapsody in his “Vanity of Human Enjoyments” must be a tremendous exaggeration:—
“ ————— permit the weeping muse to tell How poor, neglected Desaguliers fell; How he, who taught two gracious kings to view All Boyle ennobled, and all Bacon knew, Died in a cell, without a friend to save, Without a guinea, and without a grave.”
The Gentleman’s Magazine says, “Died, 29th February 1744, Dr. Desaguliers, a gentleman universally known and esteemed.” His eldest son, Rev. John Theophilus, published the translation of Gravesande’s Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, which he had left ready for the press; he was a beneficed clergyman in Suffolk, and survived only till 1751. The second, John Isaac, died in infancy. And the third, Thomas, was Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Artillery from 1762 to 1771; he became a Major-General in the army, 25th May 1772, and Lieutenant-General on the 29th August 1777; he was also an Equerry to King George III; he died in March 1780, aged fifty-nine. This gallant officer’s wife was Mary, daughter of Job Blackwood, Fsq., of Charlton, Kent, and on the mother’s side a grand-daughter of Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Their second daughter, Anne Desaguliers (born 1748, died 1801), was married to Robert Shuttleworth, Esq.; and from her the French Bible (printed in 1669), with the entries by the Pasteur and by his son, Dr. Desaguliers, has descended to the family of Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe Hall. To the handsome volumes of the Chetham Society on that family, my readers have been indebted for the extracts from the fly-leaves of the Bible. The second son of Robert and Anne was Robert Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe (born 1784, died 1816). His heiress, Janet, was married in 1842 to J. P. Kay, Esq., afterwards Sir James Phillips Kay Shuttleworth, Baronet (so created 22d December 1849), who died in 1877, in his seventy-third year. [The elder daughter of Major-General Desaguliers was Mary Catherine, Lady Cotterel (died 27th July 1814); her first husband, to whom she was married on 6th September 1765, was Thomas Cartwright, Esq., of Aynhoe (born 1736, died 1772), whose family have produced many Members of Parliament for Northamptonshire, namely (exclusive of her husband’s ancestors) her only son Ralph William Cartwright, M.P., and her great-grandson Fairfax William Cartwright, M.P. Her eldest grandson was Sir Thomas Cartwright, G.C.H., father of William Cornwallis Cartwright of Aynhoe, and of Thomas Robert Brook Leslie-Melville Cartwright of Melvilie House, Fife.]
* ↑ Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes.
* ↑ This godfather was the eldest son of his patron, who, on the 30th April 1719, had been created Duke of Chandos and Marquis of Carnarvon.
* ↑ About this time there is evidence of his fame having become European. In a letter to the Earl of Macclesfield, dated Paris, 1st September 1729, Maupertuis says that he sends presentation copies of a new pamphlet ad clarissimos viros D$^s$ de Moivre et Desaguliers. — Correspondence of Scientific Men.)/</; [edited by Rigaud], Oxford, 1841.
* ↑ “Biographia Britannica” (Kippis’ edition), Art. Desaguliers.