Music for the Royal Fireworks
On 14 October 1712 John Theophilus Desaguliers married Joanna Pudsey, daughter of William and Anne Pudsey of Kidlington, near Oxford. For most of their married life the couple lived at Channel Row, Westminster where Desaguliers gave the majority of his lectures. When forced to leave due to work on Westminster Bridge they separated and John Theophilus took lodgings at the Bedford Coffee House in Covent Garden and carried on his lectures there. The Desaguliers had four sons and three daughters, for most of whom they acquired aristocratic godparents, but only two children survived beyond infancy: John Theophilus jnr (1718–1751) graduated from Oxford, became a clergyman, and died childless, while Thomas (1721–1780) had a distinguished military career in the Royal Artillery, rising to the rank of General. He became chief firemaster at the Arsenal, Woolwich, and seems to have been the first to be employed by the English army to apply scientific principles to the production of cannon and the powers of gunnery, for which he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. It was Thomas Desaguliers who in part designed and supervised the fireworks for the first performance of Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks in Green Park. He later became an equerry to King George III.