John Theophilus Desaguliers: A Natural Philosopher, Engineer and Freemason in Newtonian England 9781472599551, 9781441182227, 9781441127785

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List of Illustrations

  1 John Theophilus Desaguliers. Engraving by Etienne Jehandier Desrochers, Paris c.1735.   2 The Protestant ‘Grand Temple’ of La Rochelle where Jean-Théophile Desaguliers was baptized in 1683.   3 Desaguliers’s renowned Planetarium for the demonstration of the movement of heavenly bodies, and an Advertisement for the Lectures at which it was first shown.   4 The Ferguson Astronomical Clock, once owned by Desaguliers.   5 Crane Court, north of Fleet Street, home of the Royal Society from 1710 until 1780.   6 Willem Jakob ’sGravesande.   7 Martin Folkes.   8 Part of a letter to Cromwell Mortimer, Secretary of the Royal Society, from Desaguliers.   9 The Frontispiece to James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Freemasons (1723). 10 Charles Lennox, Second Duke of Richmond and Duke of Aubigny. 11 The Steam Engine at the Griff mine in Warwickshire in about 1717. 12 The Chandos Mausoleum at St Lawrence Church, Little Stanmore. 13 A typical plate from A Course of Experimental Philosophy, Vol. I (1734): Engraving by van der Gucht illustrating a number of experiments demonstrated by Desaguliers during his lectures and described in his book. 14 An unattributed engraving from A Course of Experimental Philosophy, Vol. I (1734) illustrating Desaguliers’s interest in the strength of the human body. 15 The Water Mill at Barr Pool near Nuneaton in Warwickshire. 16 Playbill for the 1731 Performance of Sophonisba with Desaguliers’s children in the cast.

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17 John Theophilus Desaguliers: Engraving by J. Tookey from portrait by Hans Hysing c.1725. 18 John Theophilus Desaguliers: Engraving by R. Scaddon from portrait by Thomas Frye c.1743. Mezzotint. 19 John Theophilus Desaguliers (?). Detail from oil painting once attributed to Jonathan Richardson. Date unknown. 20 Maps showing the location of Channel Row, Westminster.

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For Celia, Tom, Ellen and Megan

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Foreword and Acknowledgements

It was over twenty years ago that I first encountered John Theophilus Desaguliers. As a decidedly mature student I had enrolled on a course at Loughborough University leading to a BA degree in English and had been introduced to the delights of the eighteenth century and its literature by Professor Bill Overton. Perhaps due to my original background as a scientist I became interested in the literary response to Isaac Newton, and so came across Desaguliers’s poem The Newtonian System. The verse related government and theories of the cosmos, but there were also unexpected astronomical explanations and diagrams. I decided to find out more about the poet. Slowly a picture emerged of a man of Huguenot origin who was an ordained minister of the church, an important advocate of Newtonian experimental philosophy who lectured both publicly and for the Royal Society, and a freemason influential in the formation of the Grand Lodge. Although a name rarely remembered today except in masonic circles, John Theophilus Desaguliers had played a significant role in London society in the early decades of the eighteenth century. There was some limited biographical material, but I became convinced that there was a fuller and more detailed story here that deserved to be told. I amassed a considerable quantity of material about Desaguliers, much of it previously unrecorded, and it was Bill Overton who suggested that I should consolidate this into a doctoral thesis. I am truly grateful for his encouragement and meticulous supervision, and also to Elaine Hobby, Head of the Department of English and Drama at Loughborough University, for all her support. The years during which I have been working on Desaguliers have seen remarkable changes in the ways in which biographical research can be carried out. The need to visit libraries and record offices has been gradually reduced, but fortunately in no way eliminated, by the growth of the internet and the amount of information which can be accessed by sitting at home in front of a computer. Research into eighteenth-century society has been transformed in particular by the availability of two fully searchable databases: ECCO (Eighteenth-Century Collections Online), and the Burney Collection of seventeenth and eighteenth

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century newspapers. Nonetheless, it is always a pleasure to study original documents and read tangible texts and I have been helped in this in many places. Wonderful though the new British Library is, I count myself fortunate to have also used its resources when they were still in the British Museum. Other great libraries which I have used include the Bodleian Library in Oxford, Cambridge University Library, Loughborough University Library, the Guildhall Library in the City of London, the Royal Society Library in London, the Library of Congress in Washington DC, the Huntington Library in California and the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. One unexpected aspect of researching Desaguliers was the introduction to the world of freemasonry. Since discovering that my subject was such an important figure in the history of the Grand Lodge of England, I have had help from masonic libraries both in England and in the United States; Diane Clements and Martin Cherry of the Freemasons’ Hall Library and Museum in London deserve special mention here. I have had stimulating discussion with Andrew Pink of University College London; he not only maintains an active emailing list for all those interested in the history of freemasonry, but also initiated our joint website giving access to the letters written to Desaguliers by the Duke of Chandos. Historian Christopher Powell is researching Desaguliers’s contributions to freemasonry and I am particularly grateful to him for many interesting talks and valuable suggestions, and also for looking over the draft of my chapter on the subject with an expert eye. I thank both Allan Beaver and Trevor Stewart for letting me have access to their papers relevant to masonic aspects of my research, and Hugh O’Neill for drawing my attention to material in the Goodwood archive. Particular mention should be made here of two scholars who have studied aspects of Desaguliers’s career in recent years, and whose published work has been of great value in my research and writing. Margaret Jacob’s several books on the impact of Newtonian thought on the cultural scene of the early eighteenth century, including freemasonry, are particularly relevant to the world in which Desaguliers lived. Larry Stewart’s studies on educational and technological advances, which were dependent on the increasing interest in experimental philosophy, led him to many references to Desaguliers’s involvement in these fields. I found much useful and interesting material in his book The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (1992). Several other scholars have helped me in different ways. Michael Honeybone is the acknowledged expert on the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society and he not only discussed Desaguliers’s connections there and provided material from the Library, but also read all my material from

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an historian’s point of view. Art historian Elizabeth Einberg has talked over various aspects of Desaguliers’s story and given me the benefit of her expertise on Hogarth. She also examined the painting that may be a Jonathan Richardson portrait of Desaguliers, and I must thank Stephen Johnston of the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford for making this possible. Lord Shuttleworth kindly searched his library at Leck Hall for the missing Desaguliers family bible, unfortunately without success. David Bertie, Curatorial Officer of the Aberdeenshire Museums Service, made available the Ferguson Astronomical Clock for examination. Staff at the States Archive Service and Priaulx Library in Guernsey searched, and provided, some records concerning Desaguliers’s father. I was also helped in researching the French family background at the Archives Municipales de La Rochelle and the Archives Départmentales de la Charente Maritime. Many friends and colleagues have now heard of Desaguliers, and their interest has always helped and supported me along the way. However, my greatest debt of gratitude in writing this account is undoubtedly owed to my husband, John Carpenter. He has shared my enthusiasm for John Theophilus Desaguliers for many years now, and has unfailingly encouraged and aided all my researches. We have been together on many journeys to follow up sometimes very obscure references. John has also been my mentor in all the technical aspects of working with a computer, from looking up information to the presentation of the finished result. I can truly say that without his generous help and support I rather doubt whether this book would ever have seen the light of day. Audrey Carpenter Loughborough May 2011

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Notes on the Text

The following abbreviations are used for publications and institutions to which frequent reference is made: AQC: Ars Quatuor Coronatorum BJHS: British Journal for the History of Science BL: British Library CEP I and CEP II: John Theophilus Desaguliers: A Course of Experimental Philosophy, Volume I and Volume II JBC: Journal Book Copy of the Royal Society OED: Oxford English Dictionary ODNB: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography PT: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society RS: Royal Society The online version of ODNB has been used to check many biographical details but is not referred to individually in each instance. It can be assumed, when a name is followed by the dates in parenthesis of a person who was British or had British connections, that the article in ODNB has been consulted. Spelling and punctuation within quotations are, as far a possible, as in the original source. Except within quotations, all eighteenth-century dates have been converted to New Style (NS).

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1.  John Theophilus Desaguliers. Engraving by Etienne Jehandier Desrochers, Paris c.1735. (Wellcome Library, London)

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Introduction: New Ideas in a Changing Society

During the first half of the eighteenth century there was increasing realization that ‘Nature could be weighed and measured – and mastered. The mechanical philosophy fostered belief that man was permitted, indeed dutybound, to apply himself to Nature for the glory of God and the relief of man’s estate’.1 The ideas that had been put forward in Isaac Newton’s Principia and Opticks2 were central to the new understanding of the universe but they were not easy to comprehend, especially by those without specialized mathematical knowledge. There was a hunger to be a part of the new philosophy, but it often needed explanation and one man who was pivotal in the popularization and exploitation of Newtonian thinking in London and beyond was a Huguenot, John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744). As well as being an important figure in the promotion of natural philosophy by experimental means, Desaguliers was highly influential in the development of freemasonry in the first part of the eighteenth century and his name is probably better known today in this connection. This was a time when men came together with more freedom than ever before to socialize and to discuss topics of mutual interest. The coffee houses became centres where those of different backgrounds could meet, and clubs and societies flourished. Desaguliers was by nature a convivial man with a gift for oratory combined with technical ability, and he fitted well into this environment. Those who attended his courses of experimental philosophy were entertained but also received sound scientific education. When Isaac Newton appointed Desaguliers to be curator of the Royal Society the Fellows soon came to appreciate his expertise and his demonstrations that enlivened their meetings. The Royal Society was expensive and exclusive, but other associations, including the freemasons, were somewhat more accessible. Freemasonry in England had, until 1717, consisted of individual lodges with little conformity in their activities. Then, when four London lodges came together to establish the Grand Lodge, but still maintained their separate identities, the objectives and ritual of the entire movement became better defined. Desaguliers was a leading figure in the reinvigorated fraternity and was to a large extent responsible for the growth

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and influence that Grand Lodge experienced in its early years. It is not known with any certainty when Desaguliers first became a freemason, but his introduction to natural philosophy undoubtedly came in his time at Oxford, when the innovative teaching of the Newtonian, John Keill, inspired him and set him to follow his mentor’s path as an experimental lecturer. Newton’s mathematical philosophy, and his life and beliefs, have, ever since his lifetime, been the subject of a great deal of study and speculation. Indeed, Frank Manuel’s comment, ‘Whatever the shortcomings of contemporary scholarship on Newton, it does not suffer from bibliographical insufficiency’, seems as pertinent today as when it was written in 1974.3 But to Desaguliers and his contemporaries Newton’s ideas were novel, important and exciting, and much discussed. Newton’s influence on thinking men of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century began when Edmund Halley (1656–1742) persuaded and helped him to publish the Principia, under the auspices of the Royal Society. Newton’s arguments were not easy to follow but, despite high-church opposition to his philosophy, which it was feared would undermine the traditional values of the Christian religion, the significance of his mathematical way into the understanding of man’s surroundings was soon recognized. Based on practical observations and mathematical analysis, Newton reconsidered time, space and motion; mooted the concept of finite atoms; considered the nature of light; and defined his concept of gravity or mutual attraction between bodies, which could act through a void. His studies of mechanics and fluid behaviour enabled him to extend his calculations to predict phenomena such as the tides and the movements of heavenly bodies. Newton’s brilliance was widely recognized and, until his death in 1727, he continued to update his ideas. Not surprisingly he also engendered opposition, especially on the continent of Europe. The influential Académie des Sciences in Paris led the French support for the earlier ideas of Descartes, although Voltaire, who had taken refuge in England in 1726, became a convinced and influential Newtonian and leader of the French Enlightenment.4 In the predominantly non-conformist and liberally minded Netherlands, new ideas were more readily accepted and actively developed, especially after the exposure of the Dutch scholar, Willem Jakob Storm ’sGravesande, to the Royal Society and Desaguliers’s lectures in London in 1715. On the other hand, the German philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz, became involved in bitter dispute with Newton not only on account of the well-known priority argument concerning the invention of the differential calculus, but also because Leibniz supported Cartesian values.5 Until the latter part of the seventeenth century, the ideas of René Descartes (1596–1650) had provided the most widely accepted explanations of the laws

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of nature and the motion of heavenly bodies. Early in his career Newton had read Descartes and learned of his theories of matter and motion, but he then set out to develop his own system based on experimental observation and mathematical analysis. Newton proposed that bodies moved according to fixed rules that applied not only on a small scale but also in the cosmos, and that the attractive force of gravity could act through a void or vacuum. Many Cartesians were not convinced. They continued to favour the idea of a corporeal universe or plenum in which the concept of a vacuum was impossible and in which individual and infinitely divisible bodies were separated only by their surfaces. Descartes assumed the entire universe to be filled with matter which, due to some initial motion, had settled down into a system of vortices that carry the heavenly bodies unceasingly on their paths. The Cartesian God had created a perfect clockwork mechanism that functioned deterministically without further intervention. Newton also was concerned with questions of divine activity in the universe. It is now acknowledged that his intense studies of the bible occupied him at least as much as his mathematical and mechanical work and his interest in alchemy. He maintained that space and all matter were associated with the innate presence of an intelligent and omnipotent God. More open discussion of and interest in theology led in the eighteenth century to the belief that science had religious utility; however, the God inferred from Nature was not always the God of Christian orthodoxies. There was certainly already some reaction on the part of dissenters against the established church with its authoritarian clergy and strict ritual, but new ideas caused thinking men to reconsider fundamental matters of divinity. Latitudinarianism, or the advocacy of wider freedom of thought, action and conduct in religious matters, became widespread. Some Christians became unitarian, and, although acknowledging Christ’s existence, denied the concept that He was the son of God, and also that of the Holy Ghost. Newton diplomatically kept his beliefs secret during his lifetime, but it is now known that he espoused a branch of such antitrinitarianism known as Arianism, following the teachings of the fourth-century heretic priest, Arius. Others, more radically, considered the way in which natural philosophy now seemed to explain the world around them and rejected conventional revealed religion such as Christianity and embraced deism. Deists were convinced that the workings of the universe were so complex that there must be an all-powerful being responsible for creating and maintaining it, and they believed that men were endowed with a rational nature that allowed them to lead a moral life, but they did not believe in intervention by divine force. There was also more extreme discussion of whether there was indeed any god-like power. Atheism (which denied the existence of

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any all-powerful being) and materialism (which decreed that nothing exists but matter and its movements) were generally eschewed. The nature of an omniscient God was, however, always subject to debate. Newton explained gravity by acknowledging a divine intelligence which, like himself, was well skilled in mechanics and geometry, and he considered that ‘this most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being’. Notwithstanding the controversy that surrounded debate on Newtonian ideas and their religious implications, there were many Anglican clergymen, often those with scientific interests, who apparently found no difficulty, at least publically, in carrying out their conventional ministry and also supporting the new philosophy: Desaguliers and his erstwhile collaborator, the Reverend Stephen Hales, were two such clerics. Newtonianism can now be defined as a philosophical approach based on Newton’s ideas. It encompasses his system of physics and emphasizes the role of laws and predictable order in the universe, with the use of experiment and observation in the discovery of truth. Together with natural theology, or the belief that knowledge of God can be acquired by human reason without divine intervention, Newtonianism grew in popularity throughout the eighteenth century. As it became better understood the ideas appeared to fit new experimental findings and could even be suggested to aid some commercial enterprise. Widespread acceptance of Newtonianism may have declined during the nineteenth century, and been superseded by the achievements of Einstein in the twentieth century, but nonetheless Newton remains a seminal figure in the history of scientific thought. Desaguliers’s introduction to Newtonianism came at an exciting time when new ideas were being eagerly discussed and increasingly accepted but were still the cause of controversy, especially in England, on theological grounds. His major contribution, in part under the patronage of Newton himself, was to help overcome widespread difficulty on the part of members of the public in understanding the new scientific concepts so that their implications could be better considered. Desaguliers realized that interest in experimental philosophy could also lead to technological innovation, especially by men who saw the potential for businesses based on developments from new discoveries. From the capital the enthusiasm for the new science spread further afield and progressive ideas, which could be said to represent the prelude to the industrial revolution, were disseminated. The mixing of freemasons, members of the aristocracy, Fellows of the Royal Society, and the general public, meant that the latest scientific discoveries were but one of many topics widely discussed in a range of settings. In masonic

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lodges, and at meetings of the Royal Society, it was forbidden to discuss matters of religion and politics, but both of these were, understandably, subjects of interest of which Desaguliers would have been well aware. Since the accession of Queen Anne, parliament was more powerful than ever before and, though there was still some limited Jacobite support for the Stuart claim to the throne of England, the Whig majority supported the Protestant Hanoverian succession. Desaguliers was not overtly political, but he valued his connection with the royal family and supported the establishment. At the time towards the end of his life when he was associated with Frederick, Prince of Wales, Desaguliers would have been aware of the Patriot Opposition to Walpole’s government which counted the heir to the throne as an important supporter. The initiation of Frederick as a freemason in 1737 may well have been politically motivated, but whether Desaguliers condoned this when he conducted the ceremony is uncertain. The early days of the Hanoverian era were nonetheless a time of relative peace and prosperity in England, although many were shaken for a time by the widespread financial crisis caused by the crash of the South Sea Company in 1720. Desaguliers’s influential patron, the first Duke of Chandos, lost heavily through his investments at this time, as did the masonic writer, James Anderson. Desaguliers himself, having no capital to invest, seems to have been unaffected. Despite – or perhaps because of – his varied activities he was invariably short of money. Desaguliers’s significance as a noteworthy character in both scientific and masonic circles has been recorded in several articles and papers, and the broad outline of his life is well documented. One of the fullest early biographies, albeit not without inaccuracies and with no mention of freemasonry, is an entry in the second edition of Biographia Britannica, published in 1793.6 John Nichols, in the last volume of his Literary Anecdotes, gives a somewhat similar biographical account together with a good reproduction of an engraving of Desaguliers.7 Several masonic publications on Desaguliers naturally emphasize his contributions to freemasonry, but also contain general biographical material.8 A French biography written in 1937 is useful but has, especially in the light of recent findings, been found to contain substantial misconceptions;9 a reliable article written by Margaret Rowbottom in 1968 is, deservedly, often quoted.10 Desaguliers’s French origins are recognized by the Dictionnaire de Biographie Française11 and there are summaries of Desaguliers’s life in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography. There has, however, been no full biography of Desaguliers and many uncertainties and omissions in the story of his life became apparent. Material has now come to light which corrects certain inaccuracies and adds much to the

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overall picture. For example, Desaguliers’s early life, which began at a time of severe persecution of his Protestant family in La Rochelle, has often been misrepresented. Reference to original records in France has clarified his family background and the role that his father undoubtedly took in his development. Desaguliers was also helped by a previously unrecognized patron, John Wilkins, before and during his time at Oxford. As Wilkins was a mine owner, he is likely to have sown the seeds of Desaguliers’s engineering interests. One of the most rewarding aspects of investigating Desaguliers’s life as fully as possible has been the identification of the diverse people from all walks of life with whom he interacted. As well as the royal family, he knew many members of the aristocracy, and introduced some to freemasonry and others to the Royal Society. He met members of the circle of his important patron, the first Duke of Chandos: these included the composers Handel and Pepusch, and artists and craftsmen who worked on the great house of Cannons, as well as business associates of the Duke. The auditors at his lectures included influential scientists and dignitaries, both British and foreign, but less well-known gentlemen, and ladies too, attended his courses. Some wrote impressions of the experience and these and other personal accounts have amplified the picture of Desaguliers’s character and his place in eighteenth-century life. They occasionally tell of his interests beyond the fields of science and freemasonry, such as when his children acted in a play for which he wrote some material in verse. Desaguliers was known to have written and published an allegorical poem, The Newtonian System, the Best Model of Government, but this was clearly not his only venture into verse. It also transpires that he travelled more widely within Britain, and occasionally abroad, than had been realized. Some journeys were at the behest of the Duke of Chandos; others were for masonic or scientific reasons, or often combined both, and at times involved transporting the fragile apparatus necessary for his demonstrations. A broader picture thus begins to emerge of the activities and character of a man who, plagued though he was by chronic gout, had remarkable energy and determination. Desaguliers read widely in English, French and Latin; his own writings were largely, but not exclusively, scientific, and he produced some useful translations of technical works. At his death he must have left a collection of books, manuscripts and scientific apparatus but unfortunately little of this material appears to have survived. The already diverse published accounts have now been amplified and amended by using relevant archival material, by reference to Desaguliers’s published works and those of his associates, and by tracing contemporary and later accounts that mention him in whatever context. The present account of the life of John Theophilus Desaguliers begins with a

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chronological account of his early years but, after he settled in London in 1712, his activities were so diverse that the story has to be continued with a thematic approach, although inevitably there are aspects which overlap. Desaguliers’s career as an exponent of Newtonian experimental philosophy soon developed once he became established in the capital and his influence spread, even to continental Europe and the American Colonies. His reputation reached royal circles and he gained ecclesiastical preferment. Sir Isaac Newton used Desaguliers’s expertise as a demonstrator at the Royal Society, and the Huguenot’s involvement with the Society carried on to the end of his life. There were acknowledged connections between the Royal Society and freemasonry, and Desaguliers was closely involved with both. His influence on the transformation of the masonic movement from a medley of ill-defined lodges to the organized, fast-growing and influential Grand Lodge of the mid-eighteenth century cannot be underestimated. Desaguliers’s technological and scientific knowledge, augmented in part by specialized works that he translated, was put to practical effect in engineering projects on, for example, steam engines, ventilation and water supply. The patronage of the Duke of Chandos engaged Desaguliers primarily in a range of projects and queries, but also led to frequent visits to the great house of Cannons and to his ministry of the nearby church. Desaguliers’s scientific expertise and legacy are evidenced by the descriptions of physical principles which constitute his two-volume Course of Experimental Philosophy and by his work on electricity. The influential Course, based on his lectures and containing details of the experiments and the many devices (including a famous planetarium) that he used in his demonstrations, became an oft-quoted standard work for many years. And as well as the science, the books contain autobiographical anecdotes which give invaluable glimpses into Desaguliers’s exploits and acquaintances. Consideration of the more social side of Desaguliers’s life focuses on the poetry he wrote, and his willingness to engage in dramatic entertainment, along with various personal anecdotes. These present a picture of a congenial man which at times contrasts with that of the serious scientist or freemason. Central to all of Desaguliers’s activities for many years, until demolished to make way for the new Westminster Bridge with whose design he had been involved, was his house in Channel Row, Westminster. This was not only a family home but served also as a venue for lectures and as lodgings for an assortment of visitors and technical assistants. Of the seven children born to Desaguliers and his wife only two sons survived to adulthood. The younger of these, Thomas Desaguliers, became a renowned officer in the Royal Artillery and equerry to King George III, and his father, ever the social climber, would have been proud of him. It is interesting to consider the motivations that drove Desaguliers to lead

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such a full and energetic life. His father had suffered impoverishment and disappointment due to religious persecution, but gave his young son an invaluable early education. Desaguliers may have felt the desire in some way to vindicate the disillusionment of his father, and this led him to make his name known in London society. It is perhaps surprising that although he displayed the selfmotivation and entrepreneurial spirit so often characteristic of the Huguenots, he never became closely associated with their communities. Instead he used his gifts as a natural orator and a purveyor of technical expertise to become incorporated into the general life of eighteenth-century London, and indeed to rise to a position of some significance. In some fields his influence and legacy survive even today, and the name of John Theophilus Desaguliers probably still deserves to be more widely known.

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Early Life: From Forebears in La Rochelle to Education at Oxford

The city of La Rochelle, on the Atlantic coast of France, boasts the motto ‘La Rochelle, belle et rebelle’ and has had a turbulent history. Originally the Roman settlement of Rupella and later an important port of the Knights Templar, the community has always looked more to the ocean than the flat inland plains of the ancient province of Aulnis. Three defensive towers, the earliest built in the fourteenth century, still dominate the port but today the harbour shelters not only the traditional fishing fleet, but also the largest small boat marina on the coast. The arcaded streets and impressive town hall of the old town date from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries, when La Rochelle was essentially an independent maritime commune. Now these narrow and historic streets contrast with the ever-growing industrial and residential developments on the outskirts of the thriving city. But in 1683, when Jean-Théophile Desaguliers was born in La Rochelle, life there was hard for Protestants, and he left his birthplace as a baby never to return. His parents would undoubtedly have spoken to him later on about their home town and he would have learned the reasons for their exile and experienced with them some of the hardships they and other Huguenots suffered because of their Protestant faith. As an adult, John Theophilus Desaguliers as he was later known, became wholly assimilated into English society, but it is important to consider his forebears and to appreciate their problems and in particular the frustration suffered by his father whose career was shattered by religious intolerance. At the Reformation, La Rochelle, largely due to its independence and accessibility by sea, became an early and important centre of Calvinism. Ongoing conflict between the Protestants and the French Catholic regime was inevitable and led to the first siege of La Rochelle and the notorious nationwide St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572. In the following year some relaxation of restrictions meant that Protestants of La Rochelle were granted freedom of worship in several places of safety in the town and they were able to carry out

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their everyday business in a normal way. This respite was, however, relatively short-lived. In 1627, Cardinal Richelieu, in the name of King Louis XIII, subjected the town to a second and more cruel siege lasting for thirteen months, during which a seawall was built across the harbour to cut off access to the open sea. The citizens, under the leadership of their Protestant mayor, Jean Guiton, put up an heroic struggle, but they were finally starved into submission. Many thousands had died and it is alleged that those who survived were too weak to bury the dead. La Rochelle was severely damaged and had lost not only its independence, but also much of the overseas trade upon which it had depended. The Protestants continued to worship, but they were now under the scrutiny of the Catholics and subject to many restrictions. Organized persecution began in 1660 and Protestants were gradually prevented from holding any public office and carrying out certain professions. Their rights to vote were waived and attempts to persuade them to convert to Catholicism included bribes such as tax concessions. Several non-Catholic clergymen were arrested, the number of permitted places of Protestant worship was cut, and attempts were made to have all children baptized as Catholics. The Protestant Temple of La Rochelle was destroyed at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 when all rights were removed from French Protestants and Huguenot refugees fled the country in great numbers.1 Today, in a suburb of La Rochelle there is a small residential street named ‘rue Desaguliers’, and in 1983 a special local masonic postmark celebrated the tercentenary of the birth of Jean-Théophile Desaguliers. But in general there seems to be little public recognition in the present-day city of a family who survived in the Protestant faith until forced, with so many others, to escape from France around the time of the Revocation. Local archives in La Rochelle do, however, have some references to the Desaguliers family. Some original registers of Protestant churches survive, as does a record of the family, handwritten by a Monsieur Jourdan in the mid-nineteenth century. This document contains a wealth of information, although the original script, some of it crosswritten, is hard to decipher. It acknowledges the distinguished career of Jean-Théophile Desaguliers and apparently traces the family’s history for that reason. Jourdan also published a history of La Rochelle2 and recorded that a merchant and ‘bourgeois’ of the town, Jacques des Aguilliers, became a member of the Protestant faith at the time of his marriage in 1603. During his lifetime the surname was variously spelled, for example as des Guillières, des Aguillier or Desaiguilliers, but later the form Desaguliers was most commonly used. At least seven children were born to the wife of Jacques Desaguliers and several survived to adulthood, which, given the general mortality due to starvation

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during the siege of La Rochelle, suggests that the family was not without some influence and had fared better than many. Indeed the eldest son, born in 1606, had as godfather the celebrated mayor, Jean Guiton.3 Another son, also named Jacques and born in 1610, was taxed in 1644 as proprietor of ‘the house where hangs the sign of three merchants’; this property, in the arcaded rue Chef-deVille, was an important and old-established hotel in La Rochelle. In 1650 he became a ‘releveur marchand des anciens droits de sel à Luçon’;4 the salt trade had in the past been important in La Rochelle, so this may have been merely an honour, or it may have been an office which carried with it some real responsibility. It appears that the younger Jacques Desaguliers, albeit a Protestant, was well established in the community. His only recorded child, a son named Jean, was born in April 1644.5 Jean Desaguliers did not follow the family tradition and become a merchant or hotel keeper. Whether he was taught in La Rochelle, or possibly was sent further afield to a Protestant Academy such as the famous school at Saumur, he received the classical and theological education that qualified him to become a Protestant clergyman. He was received into the ministry at the Synod of Marennes on 18 October 1674,6 and soon became the pastor in the village of Aytré, a few kilometres outside La Rochelle. In 1676 he was among a list of ministers who had signed ‘la Confession de Foi au Synode Nationale’.7 According to a burial register, ‘Jean Desagulliers, ministre d’Aytré’, attended the funeral in La Rochelle in January 1678 of his uncle, ‘Henry Desagulliers, marchand de cette ville’.8 The registers of births, marriages and deaths at the Protestant Church of Aytré were first signed by Jean Desaguliers, as Minister, in February 1675. It appears to have been a busy and active congregation but the persecution of Protestants, and especially of their clergy, increased relentlessly. Late in 1682 Jean Desaguliers was forced to flee the country never to return to his native France. One Sunday he had unadvisedly preached a vigorous sermon exhorting his congregation to be steadfast in their faith.9 Among that congregation was a stranger, a Catholic spy, who reported the sermon to the authorities as a controversial and illegal statement. The magistrates gave an ultimatum: Desaguliers could leave the country immediately, and indeed would be given leave to do so, but if he remained he must never preach again and would be likely to be subject to imprisonment. Desaguliers knew that M. de Laizement, a Minister of La Rochelle and friend of the family, was at that very time in prison for his beliefs. Other clergy in similar circumstances had remained, and had suffered persecution, imprisonment and torture; indeed, had this event occurred just three years later when the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes removed all remaining rights from Protestants, he would have had

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no option and could not have avoided imprisonment. It must have been an agonizing decision for Jean Desaguliers to make, but he agreed to leave and was hurriedly granted the necessary papers.10 He had to leave behind his wife, who had recently found that she was pregnant; even if she had been prepared to face a perilous journey to an unknown destination, it is unlikely that the authorities would have sanctioned her departure also. Jean Desaguliers had married Marguerite Thomas de la Chapelle in La Rochelle in 1677, and their first baby died the following year within a week of her birth. Now, at last, they were again hoping for a child. So Marguerite moved to the care of family and friends in La Rochelle to await her confinement while her husband escaped. His last entry in the church registers at Aytré was written on 24 August 1682. There is then a gap in the entries until they commence again on 18 October 1682, signed by Pierre Duprat, who had been the incumbent there before Desaguliers took over in 1675. The congregation appears to have been without a minister for some weeks after the ill-advised sermon was preached, and soon the church was finally closed. Before long Jean Desaguliers reached London. He would undoubtedly have left La Rochelle by boat as a journey by land across France would have been dangerous, and, indeed, the sea was the natural way for a Rochelais to travel. It was the first time he had left his native land, but once in England he would have met other Huguenot refugees who were leaving France in ever-increasing numbers. Many were skilled tradesmen and craftsmen who soon prospered in their adopted country, despite having left all they possessed behind in France. There was considerable sympathy in England towards the refugees. King Charles II recognized their plight and authorized free letters of denization (or naturalization), and charities were set up to help them. When the Catholic King James II was on the English throne, for three years from 1685, he was naturally less sympathetic, but public opinion still favoured the refugees and the Royal Bounty fund continued to give them support. Once in London, Jean Desaguliers met Henry Compton (1632–1713), the Bishop of London.11 Compton had developed a particular interest in the welfare of those ministers who had been forced from their livings in France; they had no trade to turn to and could not all be employed serving the local Huguenot communities. On 8 November 1682, which cannot have been long after his arrival, Jean Desaguliers was ordained both deacon and priest by Bishop Compton in the lower chapel at Fulham Palace.12 Fulham was the country residence of the Bishops of London, pleasantly and conveniently situated on the Thames and with gardens planted by Compton himself with the horticultural specimens he had had collected from around the world. In this setting Jean Desaguliers became a

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member of the Anglican faith. Not all in his situation did this; the ministers who served the exiled Huguenot congregations in London and other British cities remained members only of the RPR (the French Protestant church or ‘la religion prétendue réformée’).13 For some reason Desaguliers swiftly decided against this. He had been educated in classical languages, but it is unlikely that he could speak English and, however determined he may have been to integrate, he could not easily have served an English parish. Compton’s solution was to send several such displaced ministers to the Channel Islands which were French-speaking but predominantly Anglican. Thus it was not long before Jean Desaguliers again made a journey by sea and arrived in Guernsey, which was then, as now, under the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the diocese of Winchester: the Bishop at the time was George Morley (1598–1684). On 22 December 1682 Morley sent a document, a ‘Mandat’ in Latin, to Peter Bonamy, his Vice-Dean of the Island of Guernsey.14 This stated that he had decided ‘to grant to Jean Desaguliers and Moïse Faudrié, Clerks in Holy Orders, distinguished in the orders of the priesthood, authority and licence to serve the cures of two of the parish churches within the aforesaid island’. Faudrié was undoubtedly another Huguenot refugee. Among other formalities, oaths were to be administered to the two priests whereby they would acknowledge the King’s supreme authority and power in ecclesiastical and temporal matters and reject and refute all manner of foreign power. The authority to perform this was granted by the bishop to Bonamy for ‘because of the remoteness of the place, and the intervening sea, safe access to us (or at any rate easy access without great expense) is not available’. Morley asked for an immediate report that the matter had been dealt with, together with the names of the churches designated to the two priests. It seems, however, that the English bishops overestimated the demand for clergy in the small island. In the years immediately after the restoration of Charles II, when Anglicanism was introduced to the Channel Islands, there had been a need for French-speaking ministers, but there was a limit to the number required. The records of the Ecclesiastical Court of Guernsey indicate that Faudrié became rector of Castel, but not until 1689, six years after he had taken the oath; other Huguenot ministers waited equally long periods for a living and unfortunately Jean Desaguliers never received one. The records of the ten parishes of Guernsey confirm that his name appears in no roll of ministers. At that time Guernsey, with a population of a little over 10,000, was not a prosperous community and it is hard to imagine how Desaguliers occupied himself for the nine years that he waited in vain. Meanwhile, back in La Rochelle, Marguerite Desaguliers had given birth to a son on 12 March 1683. Five days later the baby was baptized in the Protestant

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2.  The Protestant ‘Grand Temple’ of La Rochelle where Jean-Théophile Desaguliers was baptized in 1683. It was destroyed by fire in 1687. (Archives municipales de la Rochelle)

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Temple by Monsieur Detendebaratz and given the name Jean-Théophile. His father, Jean Desaguliers, ‘minister of the said religion’, was noted as being absent, but another minister, Pierre Duprat (who, as already mentioned, had close associations with Aytré) and the wife of yet another, Marie Françoise de Mazières, acted as sponsors. Marguerite Desaguliers understandably had support from fellow members of her exiled husband’s church.15 Some time later, probably when the baby was a few months old, mother and son sailed to join the father in Guernsey. The oft-quoted story that the baby was concealed on board ship in a barrel may be apocryphal, but it is certainly true that at this time Protestant children were ordered to be left in France and brought up in the Catholic faith, so his departure would have been secretive. The young Jean-Théophile Desaguliers thus spent his early years close to the sea in rural Guernsey. The family would have been unable to take any goods or money from France and Jean Desaguliers may have supported them by teaching (there was a school in each parish), but is also likely to have been dependent on funds from charities supporting Huguenot refugees. It is said that in 1688 (that is, while in Guernsey) Jean Desaguliers wrote an inscription in the album of a Reverend William Douglas, whom he counted as a friend: ‘Quiconque espère au Dieu vivant jamais ne périra’.16 The same book apparently also contained a memorandum referring to a Mademoiselle Desaguliers in London, but unfortunately neither the Reverend Douglas, nor his album, can now be traced. There is also the likelihood that Jean Desaguliers was the ‘Pasteur de Réfuge’ who wrote, in Latin and French, poems that are signed ‘Desaguliers, M.’, and a note signed ‘J. D. M.’, and which approve the English translation in 1691 of an erudite ecclesiastical book about the reformed churches of France.17 Jean-Théophile Desaguliers was taught by his father, and at a young age he would have learned Latin and Greek. Although the language spoken in Guernsey in the seventeenth century was predominantly French, he undoubtedly had some early instruction in English as later he spoke, read and wrote it, apparently as a native. Whether Jean Desaguliers felt his son showed such promise that he needed broader horizons than could be offered in Guernsey, or whether he could no longer make a sufficient living there and became disillusioned at the long wait for a parish to serve, can only be surmised, but in 1692 the family moved to London. What a contrast this must have seemed to nine-year-old Jean-Théophile, and indeed to his parents. The rapidly growing city would have seemed crowded, noisy, dirty and confusing after the small and peaceful island. Once in London, Jean Desaguliers became lecteur in the Huguenot church in Swallow Street, close to Piccadilly. This was a less auspicious role than that of minister; he was possibly excluded from that post as he was now formally an

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Anglican, but being francophone he would have been a useful member of the congregation. There would have been but small financial reward, however, and in 1695 the entry ‘Desaiguilliers, age 50’ appeared in a list of some 65 French pasteurs who were in need of assistance from the Royal Bounty Fund.18 The sum received is not recorded but it may have proved sufficient to encourage Jean Desaguliers to move to Islington. In the late seventeenth century this was a village situated on high ground some three miles to the north of London, and with plentiful fresh water from natural springs it was considered a very healthy place. Several boarding schools were established there for children to be educated away from the hazards of the city and in about 1695 Jean Desaguliers established a French School in Islington. No records can be traced of its definite location, but it would probably have taken only a handful of pupils and may well have been conducted in the house where the family lived. How Jean came to start this school is unclear; his personal financial situation was unlikely to have permitted him to lease a property so it could be that he was initially sponsored by some Huguenot families who did not want their children to lose their native tongue. However, it was in Islington that Jean-Théophile spent his early teens. It is interesting that the astronomer Edmund Halley (1656–1742) set up telescopes at his home in nearby Highbury in 1682 ‘which set the hamlet wondering’.19 Halley lived there until 1696 so it is just possible that Jean-Théophile met him and had an early experience of serious astronomy. Later in his life he came to know Halley well. The French School may have given the young Huguenot his first experience of teaching, for which he was later to show himself to have a particular aptitude. It can be assumed that the school was a success, for it survived the death of Jean Desaguliers, on 6 February 1699 at the age of 55. The loss of his father and mentor must have been a hard blow for his son who was now nearly 16 years old and had been close to him almost all his life. The burial is recorded in the registers of the Anglican Church of St Mary, Islington: ‘Desagulèare Jn, buried 8 of Feb 1698 [NS 1699]’. There would undoubtedly have been the possibility of a burial in one of the Huguenot cemeteries in London but, despite the brief association with the Swallow Street congregation, the Desaguliers family now adhered to the Church of England. It seems certain that they continued their connection with the school for several years, for in 1712 there is a reference to ‘Mr Desaguliers at ye Reverend Mr Du Bois Master of ye French School in Islington near London’.20 Then in 1713 the school was given as an address where details of lectures given in London by Desaguliers could be obtained.21 Possibly Jean’s widow, Marguerite Desaguliers, had carried on at the school, or there may have been other family members in London of whom nothing is known, but

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who were involved. Later in her life the mother of Jean-Théophile lived with him and his family until her death in 1722 and burial at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. Some of the details of the life of Jean-Théophile, or John Theophilus, Desaguliers are given, partly in his own hand, on a contemporary questionnaire discovered in 1925 in the Rawlinson manuscript collections of the Bodleian Library in Oxford.22 From this it is clear that he did not stay long in Islington after his father’s death. How or why he came to attend a school in Warwickshire, in the West Midlands, is a mystery, but he was educated from 1699 until 1705, as he himself put it, ‘under Wm. Saunders A.M. at his school of Sutton Cofield’. William Sanders (or Saunders) was the master at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School in Sutton Coldfield.23 The school had been founded by the bishop in 1527 for the free education in grammar and rhetoric of local boys, most of whom would have lived at home. In 1699 Sanders was the only teacher; he had been appointed in 1687 and ran the school in an old building which is said to have fallen down not long after he was forced to retire in 1724. As well as instructing his pupils he had the not inconsiderable responsibility of managing various properties owned by the school. These provided an income of some £50 per annum and contributed to Sanders’s own stipend as well as providing funds for supplies and maintenance of the schoolroom. Where Desaguliers lived, and whether he paid a fee or was educated in return for some service such as teaching the younger boys, is unclear. For the first time in his life he would not have heard French spoken, and it is likely that his time at Sutton Coldfield consolidated Desaguliers’s command of English. Also, he seems to have had one of his earliest experiences of scientific experimentation while at the school. In 1718 he published a paper in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society about ‘the very great and speedy Vegetation of Turnips’.24 At the time of publication this was of topical interest, due to the recent introduction of turnips as fodder for farm animals, but the experiment concerned turnip seed that had been sown in 1702 by a gardener in Sutton Coldfield. The grains of seed had been meticulously weighed, presumably by Desaguliers himself, as had a large turnip harvested just six weeks later. Careful calculations determined that there had been an elevenfold increase in weight every minute since planting. In another instance the increase was even greater: fifteen times a minute, according to Desaguliers, and ‘the Gardener neglected to thin his Turnips in due Time else probably their Growth had been more considerable’.25 This was a remarkable result, but perhaps more remarkable is the fact that the young experimenter had kept all his figures carefully during sixteen quite eventful years.

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There is an unsubstantiated reference that states that, around the time he was at Sutton Coldfield, Desaguliers became the ‘sous-precepteur’, or private tutor, to the son of a Member of Parliament.26 This probably alludes to the connection between Desaguliers and John Wilkins, a wealthy coal mine proprietor whose home was at Ravenstone in Leicestershire27 and who can be considered as Desaguliers’s first known patron. Wilkins was Sheriff of Leicestershire and was three times returned to Parliament as a Tory, in 1698, 1702 and 1705. In 1709 he was appointed to the board of trustees of Bishop Vesey’s School, and he also left property in Sutton Coldfield on his death in 1725. It is possible that Wilkins’s only son, Francis Willoughby Wilkins, was also a pupil at Bishop Vesey’s under William Sanders, and that Desaguliers met and helped him there, but this is only speculation. Quite certainly, though, in June 1705 Francis Wilkins, aged 16, entered Christ Church, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner, for he is listed in the college entry register. Desaguliers also entered Christ Church as a servitor, in the same year. It is likely that he was encouraged by John Wilkins, so that he could be at Oxford at the same time as his son. The connection between the two men is confirmed by a letter dated May 1710, which mentions that Desaguliers ‘lives with Mr Wilkins, a Gentleman of Leicestershire of 3000 per annum’.28 It appears that at some time, perhaps in vacations, Desaguliers had lived at Ravenstone with the Wilkins family, and that he was helped by them financially. His relationship with John Wilkins clearly influenced his developing career and interest in practical engineering. Desaguliers would have been well aware of Wilkins’s operations as proprietor of at least six successful coal mines. One of the major problems in mining at this time was the removal of floodwater from pits which had to be made ever deeper to reach the coal seams. There was great interest in the possible use of the new Savary and Newcomen steam engines to raise the water and Wilkins used a static steam engine at his mine at Swannington in Leicestershire sometime before 1720. It is not certain whether Desaguliers assisted with this, but he did have a close involvement with the engine set up around this time at a nearby mine at Griff in Warwickshire and later he developed considerable expertise in the field of steam engines. Unfortunately Desaguliers’s connection with the Wilkins family appears to have ended abruptly when Francis Wilkins died in 1711 at the early age of 20.29 Desaguliers left Mr Sanders’s school in Sutton Coldfield in 1705 and on 22 September he entered Christ Church, Oxford, as a servitor; he matriculated on 28 October 1705.30 At 22 he was relatively old to be an entrant at a time when most young men matriculated between 14 and 17 years of age. Servitors were appointed by the Dean, but were not full members of the college; in

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return for performing menial tasks around the college and domestic duties of a not very onerous nature they received a free education.31 They had to wait on the chaplains and students, including the commoners, and so dined at different times from the rest of the college. Desaguliers may well have served Francis Wilkins and been sponsored by his father, as some security would have been required to ensure that any bills, or battels, he incurred would be met. The servitors were socially isolated and their subordinate position was emphasized in part by the distinctive blue livery cloaks they wore, with a round bonnet instead of the usual student’s square cap. However, despite his lowly status in the college, Desaguliers would have followed the usual curriculum leading to the BA degree which he duly received in 1709. Among the books he studied in 1705–6 were two Latin texts read by many of his contemporaries: the Ethics of Eustachius, a moral work which contained some elements of physical science and was first published about 1644, and Hugo Grotius’s De Veritate Religionis Christianae, a defence of Christianity which first appeared in 1633. Less frequently mentioned in the ‘Collections’ of students’ reading matter, but listed for Desaguliers, were the works of Horatius (Horace), Bartholini’s Physica and Henry Hammond’s Catechism, written in 1644 by an Anglican theologian with strong connections with Oxford.32 The general syllabus for all BA students involved grammar and rhetoric, Aristotle’s ethics and politics, logic, moral philosophy, geometry and Greek, as well as theology. Oxford life was not normally very strenuous and students’ social activities frequently intruded into their studies. This was perhaps not the case, though, with the servitors, with their domestic duties to perform and limited financial resources. Oxford University was at that time only open to members of the Church of England, so it is interesting to reflect that, had Desaguliers’s father not decided that the family embrace the Anglican faith, his son would not have been permitted there and his life would have been very different. The classical and theological education, largely taught in Latin, fitted many of the students for a career in the Church and Desaguliers initially took this path. On 10 June 1710 he was ordained deacon of the Church of England by Bishop Henry Compton at Fulham Palace.33 It must have been a poignant moment for the young man, and indeed for his mother, who still lived in London and so may well have been present, as the same bishop had ordained his late father in the same place when he had arrived as a refugee from persecution in La Rochelle, back in 1682. The full text of the letter mentioned earlier as confirmation of the connection between Desaguliers and John Wilkins was sent, just prior to this ordination, to a Reverend Dr Williams by another clergyman, J. Pelling; it reads:

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May 30th 1710 Dear Brother I have been much troubled with the cholic for these 2 days, and cannot, taking physic to morrow as I have done this day, conveniently wait on His Lordship at St Pauls. I desire you could excuse me to him upon this occasion to give me leave to recommend to you the Bearer Mr Desaguliers who is B.A. of Ch Church a very ingenious man, & a good scholar. He lives with Mr Wilkins, a gentleman of Leicestershire of 3000 per annum, has a yearly allowance from him, for the promise of first Living He can either give or procure for him. I know this is not a regular Title, but perhaps for the reasons aforementioned I may be [word illegible] of His Lordship, as I’m well assured it could have been by the Bishop of Oxford, had He ordained as he promised to do. Be so kind as to do the Gentleman what service you can & you will very much oblige Dear Sr Your affectionate Bro: and Humble Servt J Pelling34

It is not easy to understand the precise meaning of this, but it appears to be a request for Desaguliers to be offered a living in the gift of the Bishop of London, rather than in the diocese of Oxford where he had originally intended to be ordained. He had perhaps already made the decision to move back to London. In the event no living was forthcoming and Desaguliers had to wait some six years for an ecclesiastical appointment when in 1716 he became chaplain to the future Duke of Chandos. But, probably unknown to the Bishop, Desaguliers had developed other interests besides the Church. In Oxford he had been attending lectures given by John Keill (1671–1721). These were on natural philosophy, and, in particular, emphasized new concepts of the physical world and the nature of matter introduced by Isaac Newton and set out in his Principia. The Principia had been published, in Latin, in 1687 but its important implications were not easily understood and many found the mathematics involved incomprehensible. Newton’s Opticks, which first appeared in 1704, was written in English and was less mathematical, but the new findings on the behaviour of light also benefited from practical explanation. Desaguliers became fascinated by Keill’s lectures and in particular by the way he used practical demonstrations to explain new ideas; he never forgot the debt he owed to Keill for introducing him to an experimental approach to natural philosophy. John Keill had studied in Edinburgh under David Gregory (1659–1708), the distinguished mathematician and friend of Newton. When Gregory moved to Oxford in 1691 and became Savilian Professor of Astronomy the following year, Keill accompanied him and entered Balliol College as a senior commoner,

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graduating in 1694.35 Encouraged by Gregory and by Sir Thomas Millington (1628–1704), the Professor of Natural Philosophy, Keill soon began lecturing himself, first at Balliol, then at Christ Church, and later at Hart Hall,36 where he was appointed lecturer in experimental philosophy. The Oxford Intelligencer for 1707 listed the times at which different professors gave their classes, and summarized the content of the courses.37 ‘Mr Keil of Christ Church’ lectured on Saturdays at eight in the morning and his ‘College or Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy’ was divided into three parts: mechanics and the laws of nature, the behaviour of fluids, and opticks. In all there were fifteen lectures and it was emphasized that they were given with a great variety of experiments. Although the summary is in English, the lectures were delivered in Latin. Keill described Newtonian mechanical philosophy, and began innovatively to develop ways of demonstrating some of the complicated concepts by experiment. He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1700, and remained an active member to the end of his life. In 1701 he published Introductio ad veram physicam which was an account of his philosophical lectures read in the University of Oxford. Despite his Scottish origins John Keill was a high Anglican and in this work he deplored the atheistic tendencies of Cartesian natural philosophy, and emphasized the Christian approach to Newtonian physics. The Latin edition ran to at least five editions, being published up to 1741. It was translated into English in 1720 and this popular version also ran to five editions. In the preface Keill acknowledged many philosophers who had gone before, but especially ‘Sir Isaac Newton, whose prodigious genius has laid open more and abstruser Mysteries of Nature, than men could ever have hoped for’. In 1709 Keill unexpectedly left Oxford; it has been suggested that he was so disappointed at not receiving the Savilian Chair on the death of Gregory the previous year that he looked elsewhere for occupation. Whatever the reason, he took up a government position as treasurer to the fund for Palatinate refugees. He even accompanied a group of these Protestant exiles from the Rhineland, probably those who had been temporarily housed in England under the auspices of Queen Anne, across the Atlantic to New England. It was a surprising change of occupation for an academic mathematician and natural philosopher, but this post was followed by an appointment as Royal Decipherer which did perhaps call more for his mathematical skills. However, by 1712 John Keill had returned to Oxford where he was appointed to the coveted Savilian Professorship in Astronomy which he was to hold until his death in 1721. Keill’s published work on astronomy (Introductio ad veram astronomicam) corresponded to his earlier one on natural philosophy and appeared in 1718. A combined edition of the

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physical and astronomical works appeared in 1725, edited by the Dutchman, Willem Jakob ’sGravesande. Towards the end of his life John Keill actively supported Sir Isaac Newton in the long-standing dispute with Leibniz over who had first discovered the differential calculus. The influence that John Keill had upon the career of John Theophilus Desaguliers cannot be overestimated. The young Huguenot obviously found the lectures inspiring, and his imagination was gripped by the Newtonian’s exposition of the physical world and in particular by the demonstrations devised to clarify the concepts. His association with John Wilkins would already have alerted him to the increasing need for a practical approach to problems associated with mining, and now he saw how specially designed instruments and experiments could be used in teaching. To work in such a way appealed to him more than the prospect of life in the Church, though throughout his life he would remain an Anglican minister and carry out occasional clerical duties. His acquaintance with Keill meant that Desaguliers came into contact with other exponents of Newtonian ideas, such as David Gregory and Edmund Halley, and at some point he met Isaac Newton himself. It was possibly through John Keill that Desaguliers first met his important patron, James Brydges, the future Duke of Chandos. Brydges had been active in the Royal Society when Keill received his fellowship, and it was to him and his wife that Keill dedicated his important books. Almost certainly Desaguliers had for a time assisted at Keill’s demonstrations in Oxford, for, when Keill left abruptly in 1709, the younger man soon took over his classes. Desaguliers was appointed lecturer in experimental philosophy at Hart Hall the following year. It was also in 1710 that Hart Hall had a new principal, Dr Richard Newton (1676–1753); no relation to Sir Isaac Newton, he was an educational innovator whose ideas were sometimes controversial, and he insisted on high standards of discipline in his students. Hart Hall did not follow such a strict classical and theological curriculum as Christ Church, or indeed Balliol, and was more receptive to new ideas. Newton attempted to get the institution incorporated as a full college of the University, with himself as principal. Four proposed first senior fellows or tutors, and eight first junior fellows or assistants were named; Desaguliers was to have been one of the latter, but in the event none of the appointments was made as Newton’s plan did not succeed.38 However, Desaguliers received the degree of MA from Hart Hall in May 1712, which suggests that he had followed some further courses there in subjects such as geometry, astronomy, metaphysics, Greek and ancient history, as well as lecturing himself in experimental philosophy. An undated and unnamed notebook in the Bodleian Library in Oxford is attributed to

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Desaguliers; it is handwritten, with 160 pages of detailed notes, and some illustrations, on ‘Mechanicks, Hydrostaticks and Pneumaticks’.39 It is interesting as it certainly consists of notes from lectures of the type Keill and Desaguliers were giving, but the handwriting is not obviously that of Desaguliers, and it could indeed have been written by any industrious student. Hart Hall may not have been as prestigious as Christ Church, but it was more liberal and for the first time Desaguliers would have experienced some degree of independence. At this time also he broadened his horizons by undertaking the translation of some technical books originally written in French. It is likely that he also found time for some social life and met his future wife during his latter years in Oxford. Joanna Pudsey came from Kidlington, just to the north of the city. Desaguliers left Oxford to settle in London in 1712, but as his reputation grew the University honoured him with a doctorate in Civil Laws (DCL) in 1719. After this he was commonly referred to as ‘Doctor Desaguliers’ and usually put the letters LL.D. after his name, although he had no legal qualifications. In 1726 Cambridge University recognized his contribution to scientific teaching by incorporating his degree, or, in effect, giving him an honorary doctorate.40 Desaguliers is known to have given lectures in Cambridge around this time. Once in London, Desaguliers used the reputation and expertise he had gained in Oxford to establish his career as a public lecturer in experimental philosophy and as a demonstrator at the Royal Society. He married in 1712 and quite soon moved from the City to establish himself and his family in the house in Channel Row in Westminster which became known for many years as the venue for his lectures and other activities.

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Lecturing in London and Beyond, Royal Recognition and Ecclesiastical Preferment

Although John Theophilus Desaguliers probably became the most well-known and successful lecturer and demonstrator of his time, he was not the first to give public lectures on experimental philosophy in England. In Oxford he had, of course, gleaned many ideas from Gregory and Keill, and although the lectures there were not open to the general public, they could be attended by any interested member of the University. In Cambridge, also, a course in experimental philosophy had been started in 1707 at Trinity College, with lectures in hydrostatics and pneumatics given jointly by Roger Cotes (1682–1716), the gifted young Newtonian mathematician, and William Whiston (1667–1752). Although of relatively short duration, for Cotes died young and Whiston was banished from Cambridge on account of his unorthodox Christian beliefs, these lectures have been credited with the establishment of the important tradition of science teaching with the aid of experiments within the University of Cambridge.1 It was, however, not only members of the two great universities who were interested in the new ideas. There was thirst for knowledge in the capital too. Desaguliers arrived in London from Oxford towards the end of the reign of Queen Anne, when there had for some years been a degree of political stability following the turmoils of the seventeenth century. Parliament had acquired greater significance since the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 and then the removal of the Catholic King James II from the throne in 1688. The populace as a whole felt empowered to take more interest in the affairs of the nation, for there was now the possibility of open discussion of matters political and religious without immediate fear of repercussion. Men, and very occasionally women, came together to debate all manner of topics, be they commercial, political, literary or philosophical. The results of this were seen in the development of environments such as clubs, societies, salons and coffee houses in which discussion could take place freely and ideas could be exchanged.2 Interaction developed between people who previously would have

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been confined within their limited private circles and so social status created by wealth and inherited rank began to be marginally less important. Gentlemen of the aristocracy and the gentry would mix with those of the social middle class, from doctors and lawyers to successful tradespeople. The so-called ‘public sphere’ was a world of bourgeois discourse and debate but it by no means represented the population at large, very many of whom were, of course, excluded by illiteracy, gender, colour or poverty. Meanwhile, the printed word became an increasingly significant means of dissemination of ideas. A relatively free press grew rapidly from the end of the seventeenth century as both newspapers and periodicals became purveyors of news and gossip and also the medium for expression of varied and controversial public opinion.3 Newspapers also provided a new avenue for advertising all manner of services. Many clubs and societies had a wide social membership, but others retained their exclusivity by means of high fees or limited entrance requirements. Some groups were confined to specific interests, such as literature, mathematics or music, while others had strictly philanthropic aims, but the majority were purely for social intercourse and discussion. Freemasonry, with whose renaissance Desaguliers was closely involved, is but one illustration of an organization that flourished from the early eighteenth century and that advocated political and religious tolerance. The Royal Society, which counted Desaguliers among its Fellows, is an interesting example of an association whose membership was limited by financial constraint and whose specific aim was scientific discussion, but that would nonetheless hear papers of interest from men who were of too humble origin for formal fellowship. By the late seventeenth century the coffee houses had become a convenient and widely accepted part of urban social life, frequented by men of differing rank.4 Many were well-established as serious centres for the dissemination of news and for practical learning. Although not always as socially egalitarian as sometimes suggested, coffee houses offered a hospitable welcome in a neutral space, free from the distractions and debauchery of taverns. The common rule that, upon entering, customers were expected to take the next available seat and converse amicably with their neighbours, broadened intercourse with strangers. Because, for the price of a single cup of coffee, a man could sit for hours engaged in discussion, the coffee houses were sometimes called ‘penny universities’, but there was also criticism that the learning would be debased by a varied and indiscriminate clientele. Perhaps it was for this reason that some coffee houses developed a reputation for special interests, or attracted a specialized clientele, such as merchants, insurance brokers, actors, poets, or those interested in natural philosophy or the new science.

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The creation of ‘public science’ was a social phenomenon that started in the coffee houses and discussion of natural philosophy can claim to be an early example of universalizing discourse.5 This interest in scientific ideas led to the establishment of lecture courses, to industrial and technological projects, and to the cultivation by entrepreneurs of socially influential patrons. Desaguliers’s career provides examples of all these activities for he was not only a natural teacher, but he also devised practical applications from new ideas. He brought to London recently acquired expertise in Newtonianism at a time when men were eager to know something of the new science and to apply it to commercial ends, as well as seeking explanations for things observed in the world around them that, up until then, had been taken for granted. That there could be explanations for natural phenomena that transcended the conventional beliefs of the Church was perhaps controversial, but such ideas had been rumoured by reports of the work of Isaac Newton, even though few would have read, let alone understood, the Principia. In the capital there was a market for instruction in a way that would make the new ideas comprehensible to those of more limited education, and especially to the non-mathematical.6 Not everyone could belong to the prestigious Royal Society, but many could afford a small fee to become better informed. They needed, however, demonstrations and experiments to aid their understanding. As early as 1704 the mathematician James Hodgson (c.1672–1755) was collaborating with a talented scientific instrument maker, Francis Hauksbee (c.1660–1713) and advertising ‘a public course of experiments for the improvement of natural philosophy’ in the London newspapers.7 Hodgson had been the able young assistant to the Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed (1646–1719); he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1703 and later became a master at the Royal Mathematical School. Hodgson was an enthusiastic teacher who realized the need for scientific apparatus to amplify public lectures, but also found that this meant that a realistic fee had to be asked of the auditors. The early lectures to a large extent involved experiments with Robert Boyle’s vacuum pump, but also included some optical demonstrations based on Newton’s recent work on light. There would have been an element of entertainment as well as instruction and the lectures obviously proved popular, with two courses per year being offered in public houses. Hodgson and Hauksbee probably also used the Marine Coffee House in the City. Although chiefly remembered for its connection with shipping interests and auction sales of a wide range of commodities, the Marine was also, in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a popular venue for philosophical and mathematical discussions, often led by John Harris (c.1666–1719). Harris at the time was

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compiling the first volume of his Lexicon Technicum, a scientific encyclopaedia for which he was inviting public subscriptions, probably from his audience as well as elsewhere.8 Francis Hauksbee also lectured in his own premises, at Wine Office Court and then at Hind Court, which were small alleyways to the north of Fleet Street. He was a draper’s son, born about 1660 in Colchester, Essex, but who later settled in London. As a young man he may have worked for the pioneer of experimental natural philosophy, Robert Boyle (1627–91).9 This is unsubstantiated, but somewhere Hauksbee learned to become an accomplished scientific instrument maker and he set up a successful retail business specializing in barometers and air pumps (the latter often of a type originally developed by Boyle). It was this expertise which Isaac Newton recognized when in 1703 he asked Hauksbee to become curator of experiments at the Royal Society. Hauksbee served well as an energetic and innovative demonstrator until he died unexpectedly in 1713 and needed to be replaced. Newton must have been aware of the reputation that Desaguliers, recently arrived in the capital, was building up for he invited the Huguenot to fill the post, and thus began a long association with the Royal Society. Exactly when, or indeed why, Desaguliers moved to London is not certain, but when he married there in October 1712 he still said he was ‘of Harthall Oxon’. He is likely, however, to have been travelling between Oxford and London and meeting some of the men of the Royal Society and those who associated in the coffee houses well before then. He had certainly been in London in 1710 in search of ecclesiastical preferment, and also possibly visited his mother on occasion and maintained an interest in the French School in Islington. Maybe he could not resist the excitement and opportunities of the capital, which with a population now of over 500,000 was the largest city in Europe. Or perhaps he still felt that his humble background curtailed his chances in Oxford. Whatever the reason Desaguliers must have left Hart Hall fairly soon after obtaining his Master’s degree and decided to offer his expertise in Newtonian experimental philosophy in London. Undoubtedly in need of money, he began his career as an independent lecturer by putting an advertisement in the Evening Post on 30 December 1712: At Mr Brown’s Bookseller, at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple Bar is to be perform’d, a Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, consisting of 4 Parts, viz. Mechanicks, Hydrostaticks, Pneumaticks, Opticks. By J. T. Desaguliers, of Hart-Hall in Oxford, A.M. Those who desire to be present are to give one Guinea at the Time of Subscription, and one Guinea more on the Third Night after the

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Course is begun. Enquire of Mr. Rob. Lloyd, in Bedford street near Hand-Alley, Gray’s-Inn; of Mr. Morgan Jones, at the Excise-Office in the Old-Jury, Mr. Geo. Payne in the Leather-Office in St Martins-Lane; or at Mr Brown’s aforesaid, where a Catalogue of the Experiments may be had. N.B. This Course begins the 7th Day of Jan.1712–13, at 6 in the Evening.

The advertisement was repeated, with slight variation in wording, in two more newspapers issued on the day the course was to begin, which suggests that it may not initially have attracted great interest.10 Potential auditors had had very little time to decide whether to attend, it was not clear for how many weeks the course would run, and the foreign-sounding name ‘Desaguliers’ would have been unfamiliar to many Londoners. Before long, however, the short and stocky Huguenot’s enthusiasm and charisma and his natural ability as a teacher, together with the quality of his scientific demonstrations, became renowned. Desaguliers’s courses became very popular, and the catalogues indicated that they consisted of between 15 and 22 weekly, or twice weekly, sessions. The cost of participating in a course was such that only relatively well-off gentlemen could afford to attend and, as these persons often left London during the summer, the courses usually ceased during the warmer months. That Desaguliers knew Francis Hauksbee and his work is indicated by the fact that soon after the instrument maker died in 1713, Desaguliers advertised that his next course of lectures was to be held ‘at Mrs Hauksbee’s at the Upper-end of Hind Court in Fleet Street’. Whether by using this address he was helping the widow to carry on her late husband’s business, or whether he had previously used items of Hauksbee’s apparatus and this saved the inconvenience of transporting them to another venue, can only be speculated. This time more notice was given for the lectures; advertisements appeared in the press in early May for a course that would begin on ‘Thursday the 14th May at 6 in the Evening’. The terms were the same as before and it was stated that: Subscriptions are taken in by Mr George Payne at the Leather Office in St Martin’s Lane, Mr Jonah Bowyer, Bookseller, at the Rose in Ludgate Street, Mr Jonas Brown, Bookseller, at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple Bar, Mr Desagulier’s at the French School in Islington, and at Mrs Hawksbee’s, at the Upper end of Hind-court in Fleet-street, where the Course is given.11

George Payne was almost certainly the man with whom Desaguliers became closely involved following the formation of the masonic Grand Lodge in 1717, so this, and the previous advertisement indicate that they were acquainted

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well before that. The names of those accepting subscriptions also show that Desaguliers was still on good terms with Mr Brown who had hosted his first course, and interestingly one of the addresses given where catalogues could be obtained was ‘Mr Desagulier’s at the French School in Islington’. This suggests that the school started by Jean Desaguliers back in 1695 was still in the family, though it is unlikely that John Theophilus Desaguliers had continued to be involved throughout the time when he was at Sutton Coldfield or Oxford. Now he was living near Holborn in the City of London. Maybe ‘Mr’ is a misprint for ‘Mrs’ and his mother was still running the school, or perhaps another member of the refugee family from La Rochelle, and who has not been identified, was involved. It would be interesting to know, however, if any auditors from Islington made the journey to the city of London to hear the lectures. A catalogue detailed the comprehensive content of the 21 promised lectures:12 the large number of experiments offered indicates the amount of apparatus Desaguliers must have assembled and, indeed, the entertainment as well as instruction that would have resulted from his physical demonstrations. The next few years marked a busy time for Desaguliers as he became established in London, and his activities diversified. In March 1714 he was still advertising lectures ‘at the widow Hawksbee’s’, but by the autumn of 1715 he had moved house and had begun conducting his lectures at his new home in Westminster. On 8 October the Daily Courant advertised that: On Monday the 10th Instant, at 6 in the Evening, will begin a Course of Experimental Philosophy; by J T Desaguliers, MA, FRS, at his house in Channel-Row, Westminster. In this course are rationally demonstrated the principles of Mechanics, Hydrostaticks, Pneumaticks and Opticks; and proved by more than 300 Experiments. The Terms are Two Guineas and a Half, one Guinea paid at the time of Subscription, and the rest when the Course begins. N.B. Ten Tables of Figures engraven on Copper Plates, are given Gratis to every Subscriber.

The lectures in Experimental Philosophy continued for many years, and were kept up-to-date and added to by courses in Astronomy. Catalogues could be obtained at the house in Channel Row, and, from 1722, also from John Senex, publisher and bookseller (and a fellow freemason), and from Edward Scarlet, spectacle maker (later ‘optician to His Royal Highness’ and ‘to His Majesty’), who was at the Archimedes and Globe near St Anne’s Church in Soho. Both these men, and others, collected subscriptions for the lectures. Two or three courses were advertised each year. As a bonus, subscribers to the course that began on Monday 21 October 1723, at six in the evening, would:

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have an Opportunity to see Mercury pass over the Disk of the Sun like a Spot, on the 29th Instant, if the Weather be fair, there being a Convenient Room and Apparatus prepared for that Purpose.13

After a while advertisements tended to became shorter, suggesting that Desaguliers’s reputation was such that his courses needed less detailed description, but in 1724 he felt under attack and obliged to add a note to several advertisements: to give Notice that he continues to take Young Gentlemen into his House to be educated, that he has Courses of Experimental Philosophy all Winter and Spring; that his Apparatus is not worse than other Peoples or his Machines and Experiments fewer. He is obliged to take Notice of these Things because the contrary has been industriously reported.14

Desaguliers was always sensitive to rumours that might detract from his reputation, and he probably had his suspicions as to who had been attacking him. One possibility could have been William Whiston who, now with Francis Hauksbee the younger (nephew of the late instrument maker), was still advertising comprehensive Courses of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, at Hauksbee’s premises in Crane Court.15 Their advertisements did claim ‘the whole to be perform’d with a very large and curious Sett of Instruments, inferior to none that have ever been used in the like Courses’, but, although obviously in competition with Desaguliers, nothing confirms that it was they who were trying to damage him. Thomas Watts and Benjamin Worster of the Little Tower Street Academy regularly advertised schooling for boys, with lodging, and the tuition included Experimental Philosophy.16 The school was apparently successful, however, and they were unlikely to have tried to undermine Desaguliers’s ventures, and would not have been threatened by the fact that he took pupils, some even from Westminster School, into his home and gave them extra tuition in scientific subjects. The source of the rumours will probably never be known, and indeed the problem seems soon to have faded away. Desaguliers clearly took pride in the success of his lectures and in ‘being in any way instrumental to the Improvement of others’. In the preface to the first edition of his Course of Experimental Philosophy, which appeared in 1734, he recounted with some self-satisfaction how and why his courses had evolved. ‘The Thoughts of being oblig’d to understand Mathematicks [had] frightened a great many from Newtonian Philosophy’, he wrote, and then acknowledged how John Keill had developed experiments to demonstrate ‘some of the chief

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Propositions of Sir Isaac Newton’. Desaguliers himself had, first in Oxford and then in London, endeavoured to improve the courses and had ‘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’. Desaguliers compared Keill’s Oxford lectures with those of the elder Hauksbee, which had been given in London at about the same time. He declared that, ‘Tho’ perhaps perform’d more dextrously and with a finer Apparatus’, Hauksbee’s was a ‘Course of Experiments’ while Keill’s was a ‘Course of Experimental Philosophy’. The latter, he felt, proved a series of propositions which laid a foundation for ‘true Philosophy’, while Hauksbee only showed and explained curious electrical, hydrostatical and pneumatic phenomena. Nonetheless Desaguliers owed a debt to Hauksbee as well as to Keill as he had undoubtedly gained invaluable expertise in experimentation from his contact with Hauksbee in the days when he was establishing himself as a London lecturer. Unlike Keill, Hauksbee was a skilled scientific instrument maker and had done more original work, especially in the field of electricity, than he is often credited with. Desaguliers claimed, at the time of writing (1734), to be giving the 121st course of lectures since he had started in 1710, which equates to an average of five per year: as he says, he had given ‘as many Courses as I could possibly attend’. He admitted that he was boasting when he stated ‘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’, but this claim does highlight the importance of Desaguliers to the dissemination of Newtonian ideas in the early modern period. The lectures and demonstrations would have represented a regular and necessary source of income for Desaguliers, and his house had rooms set aside not only for the talks, but also for the preparation of the experiments. An assistant, at one time the instrument maker William Vream who had also worked for Hauksbee,17 often lodged with the Desaguliers family. Help would certainly have been needed not only in constructing and testing the often complex experimental apparatus, but also in transporting it and setting it up when lectures were given at other venues. An advertisement printed at the end of the booklet containing the poem The Newtonian System, published by Desaguliers in 1728, not only indicates the way the lectures had diversified up to that date, but also that lodging was offered to assiduous students: Courses of Experimental Philosophy and Courses of Experimental Astronomy, publick or private, in Latin, French, or English, are perform’d at any time of the year, and likewise all Parts of pure or mix’d Mathematicks taught, by the Author, at

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his house in Channel-Row, Westminster; where Gentlemen, who have a Mind to apply close to these Studies, may be boarded.18

Desaguliers’s expertise as a lecturer and demonstrator brought him renown in many quarters and it was early in his career that his reputation reached royal circles, and would also help him gain his first appointment as a minister of the church. In 1717 he was asked to lecture before King George I and the Prince and Princess of Wales. It was reported that: His Majesty and the Royal Family continue in perfect health, at Hampton Court, where among others, the ingenious Mr Desaguliers, FRS has the Honour to divert them with several curious Performances upon the Globes, and other Philosophical Experiments; for which Purpose he has a Lodging allow’d him in one of the Pavillions of the Garden.19

It was indeed an honour for Desaguliers to lodge at Hampton Court and present his experiments to the royal family. He would almost certainly have travelled by river from Westminster, accompanied by an assistant, and carrying with him all the necessary apparatus. Desaguliers would have lectured in French, as he did not speak German and His Majesty knew little English, and undoubtedly the presentations were well illustrated by demonstrations. Both King George I, who died in 1727, and his successor King George II and his consort, Queen Caroline, who was known to have a genuine interest in scientific matters, are listed as subscribers to Desaguliers’s Course of Experimental Philosophy. In 1717 Desaguliers made things easier for his auditors by having privately printed an 80-page octavo booklet entitled Physico-Mechanical Lectures.20 This was sold, but was not freely available as it was essentially a set of notes to obviate the need for the participants to write their own during the lectures, and was introduced thus: The following papers being only Minutes of my Lectures for the Use of such Gentlemen as have been my Auditors, were printed at their Desire; to save the trouble of Writing them over for every Person. Therefore I beg all such Readers, as have not seen my Course of Experiments, to pardon my want of Method and short Hints; and desire them not to expect a full Account of all the Experiments made in the Course, and mention’d in the catalogues: For I have only taken notice of so many as to prove every proposition; that this little Book may serve as a Memorandum. When I have more leisure, I shall publish the Lectures in full, in a large Volume, with above 60 copper Plates.

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Outlines of 22 lectures followed, together with other miscellaneous experiments ‘sometimes made in the course, and sometimes not, or on the last Day or after the Twenty Two above written Lectures are ended, especially when the Auditors desire it’. A direct translation for French auditors was also published under the title Leçons physico-méchaniques. Also, a bilingual syllabus of Desaguliers’s course survives from 1723; this is a 13-page pamphlet with the subjects of the lectures listed in parallel columns in the two languages. The cost of the course was two-and-a-half guineas in English, or three guineas in French. The promised larger volume based on the lecture notes did indeed appear, eventually, in two volumes, as Desaguliers’s A Course of Experimental Philosophy. The first volume, whose preface is quoted above, was published in 1734 and at the end of the index of the first volume, and before the extensive engraved plates, Desaguliers added an advertisement, which showed some business acumen, for his ongoing lectures: The Course of Experimental Philosophy, of which this First Volume contains Half, is perform’d by the Author at his House in Channel Row, Westminster on such Days, and at such Hours, as shall be agreed upon by the Majority of the Auditors. N.B. Every Auditor is to pay Three Guineas, when the Number is not less than twelve Persons; but any Three or Four, nay any One person, may have a Course to themselves by paying the Price of Twelve. A short but full Course of Astronomy, will also be perform’d by Means of the PLANETARIUM, to any Number of Persons, not less than Ten, at a Guinea each; or to any less Number who are willing to pay 10 Guineas, upon their giving a Day’s Notice.

Desaguliers became very perturbed when, in 1719, a publication appeared in London, under his name, entitled A System of Experimental Philosophy.21 This was an account of the lectures, considerably longer and better illustrated than his 1717 book, edited by Paul Dawson and effusively dedicated by him to Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729). Dawson was a young man whom Steele had supported, including paying the fee for him to attend Desaguliers’s lectures. Dawson arranged to have the lecture notes that Desaguliers supplied to his auditors published; he also included some of John Keill’s notes, and also ten engravings that Desaguliers had specially prepared. Perhaps Dawson hoped thus to ingratiate himself with his patron, but instead he incurred the wrath of the lecturer. Immediately Desaguliers became aware of the book, which he called ‘ill put together, sadly transcrib’d and worse corrected’, he approached the booksellers. He found that two-thirds of the imprint had already been

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sold by Messrs Mears, Creake and Sackfield, but they paid him ten guineas ‘to pacifie me’. They also promised to insert into all the remaining copies a preface that Desaguliers would write, together with a substantial errata. The preface follows the Dawson dedication in some copies of the book entitled A System of Experimental Philosophy, but precedes it in another version called Lectures in Experimental Philosophy. The wording of Desaguliers’s ‘Preface or Advertisement to the Reader’ is the same in each case, and explains at length how he had, with difficulty, acquired the notes from John Keill’s Oxford lectures, and that he had had the book printed for the exclusive use of his auditors. Desaguliers assured readers that he had now listed the many errors that appeared in the Dawson edition and urged them to correct these before reading the account of the lectures. So incensed was Desaguliers by the Dawson episode, and the way a bookseller had used his name without his consent, that he still alluded to it sixteen years later in his Preface to A Course of Experimental Philosophy. ‘To prevent the Publick being impos’d upon’, he cautioned that unscrupulous booksellers might try to pass off leftover copies of the spurious publication in place of his new book. Angry as he was with Paul Dawson, Desaguliers apparently remained on reasonable terms with Sir Richard Steele. Steele, in addition to his renown as a playwright, essayist, theatre manager and editor of the Spectator, was something of a showman. As well as promoting musical and dramatic entertainments, he saw the potential in cashing in on the popularity of experimental philosophy. The following advertisement appeared in the Daily Post in late November 1719: At Sir Richard Steele’s Great Room in Villiers-street, York Buildings on Tuesday the 1st of December will begin two Courses of Experimental Philosophy (the same Lecture of each Course being perform’d the same Day) the one at 12 Noon in French by Dr Desaguliers and Mr Watts, the other at 6 in the Evening in English by Mr Worster and Mr Watts, and at both Courses the Experiments will be made with the curious Apparatus belonging to Mr Worster and Mr Watts from Little Tower Street, with several new machines contriv’d by Dr Desaguliers.

It is interesting that Desaguliers was prepared to participate in Steele’s courses; the audience at the Great Room, which must have been part of Steele’s renowned ‘Censorium’,22 would certainly have been much larger and less intimate than that he was used to at Channel Row, but also, unusually, he was to collaborate with other lecturers. ‘Mr Watts’ was Thomas Watts (d. 1742), the mathematician who in 1715 had set up a school in Abchurch Lane in the City of London for the instruction of young gentlemen who wished to learn mathematics and

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accountancy and become qualified for a career in trade and business. This popular departure from schools offering a classical, but less practical, education led to the establishment in about 1720 of the Little Tower Street Academy.23 The ‘Mr Worster’ of Steele’s advertisement was Benjamin Worster, a Cambridge graduate who partnered Watts in his successful venture. He had probably already attended Desaguliers’s lectures, and his speciality at the Academy was natural and experimental philosophy. He published his own course, which the Academy’s advertisement said that both he and Watts taught, in 1722.24 Worster died in 1726, but the Academy flourished as a vocational school, probably into the early nineteenth century. Worster was replaced by James Stirling FRS (1692–1770), and other instructors included William Vream, the instrument maker who also worked with Desaguliers, and the poet, James Thomson (1700–48). Desaguliers was never directly associated with Little Tower Street Academy, but he must have known it and its proprietors well. Richard Steele’s courses of lectures at the Great Rooms in Villiers Street do not appear to have been repeated, but Worster and Watts, as well as teaching in the Academy, gave courses of public lectures in experimental philosophy at venues in the City. James Stirling taught similarly at the Bedford Coffee House, between 1725 and 1735, and he too published the syllabus of his lectures.25 There was an enormous interest in such matters and it was fashionable, indeed almost de rigueur, for gentlemen to have some notion of the new ideas about things scientific. Several hundred people must have attended Desaguliers’s courses during the 30 years or so that he was lecturing. Only a few can be identified, but some examples demonstrate the variety of his auditors. There was the politician, John Perceval FRS, first Earl of Egmont (1683–1748) who recorded in his journal that on Monday 14 September 1730 ‘I begun at Dr Desaguliere’s lecture of experimental philosophy’.26 Egmont was closely involved with the establishment of the American colony of Georgia, which was a project that concerned Desaguliers too, on behalf of a charity set up by the freemasons. Another who attended Desaguliers’s lectures and for a short time offered his own course in experimental philosophy was Benjamin Baddam (c.1693–1740), a printer best remembered as the compiler of the Memoirs of the Royal Society. Meanwhile antiquarian Joseph Ames (1687–1759) formed a lifelong friendship with Peter (later Sir Peter) Thompson (1698–1770), merchant and book collector, when both went to Desaguliers’s lectures in about 1720.27 Much later, the Scottish physician and anatomist William Hunter (1718–1783) was sent to London in 1740 to learn anatomy, and also experimental philosophy from Desaguliers.28 Ladies too were interested in the sciences. As early as 1716 Desaguliers wrote to Lady Mary Cowper,29 whom he had clearly already instructed:

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Madam, Your Ladyship being curious in the Contemplation of Nature, I was unwilling to let slip a beautiful Appearance in the Heavens without inviting you to see it. Now, and for a Week longer only, Venus may be seen […]. In my Observatory we look at her as she passes the Meridian about one a clock in the Afternoon, fewer parts of the Atmosphere intercepting the Light than when she is seen at night or in the Morning near the Horizon. If your Ladyship wou’d do me the Honour to come to my House about 12 a Clock any time within these Eight Days, I should be proud to shew you this Phænomenon, which will not return in less than Eight Years, so as to be visible at this time of the Year. I’ll endeavour also to entertain your Ladyship with some Experiments of Colours at the same time. I have drawn the present Phasis of Venus as it is seen thro’ my Telescope, which I have enclos’d. I was at your Ladyship’s House, and hearing yt you was in the Country I gave you the trouble of this Letter, thinking yt Your Ladyship might have the opportunity of coming to see Venus before you went to Hampton Court.30

Unfortunately it is not possible to know whether Lady Cowper took up Desaguliers’s invitation to Channel Row – he had added a postscript saying he would ‘have things in readiness’ if she sent word ‘the Day before you design to come’. Much later, in June 1738, the poet and scholar Elizabeth Carter (1717–1806), wrote from London to her friend Mrs Underdown, back in her home town of Deal, describing how she met Thomas Wright of Durham31 at Desaguliers’s house. She had been two or three times to Channel Row and thought the house there was: The strangest looking place I ever beheld & appears very much like the abode of a Wizard. The Company that frequents it is equally singular consisting chiefly of a set of queer looking people called Philosophers. It would require a History to tell you all I saw & heard there for every Body contributed something to the general Entertainment. ’Tis well if among all these Conjurors I do not turn witch.32

Then, in November 1740, Elizabeth Carter referred to someone being ‘expelled out of his inchanted castle wch is to be pulled down to make way for a more useful Building so the Conjurors are all turned adrift’, which is undoubtedly a reference to the demolition of Desaguliers’s house to make way for the new Westminster Bridge. This was not the only time that Desaguliers, who invariably wore long black clerical dress when he conducted his experiments, was referred to as a wizard. Although she wrote cynically in her letters to amuse

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her friend, Elizabeth Carter clearly took an intelligent interest in the doings of the ‘Conjurors’, and learned much during her visits to Channel Row. A poem she wrote for the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1738 celebrates the heavens and their all-powerful creator. It ends remembering the men who introduced her to astronomy: Science turns pride, and wit’s a common foe But where good nature to these gifts is joined They claim the praise and wonder of mankind: All view the happy talents with delight That form a Desaguliers and a Wright.

Desaguliers’s auditors came not only from London and other parts of England, but from abroad. Among the foreigners whom Desaguliers inspired and who built on his methods of teaching experimental philosophy were the eminent Dutch Newtonian, Willem Jakob ’sGravesande; the Swedish engineer and lecturer, Martin Triewald; Harvard Professor, Isaac Greenwood; and the French Abbé Nollet. When in London in 1734, Nollet met Desaguliers who was ‘riche d’une longue pratique’ and learned from him the ways of teaching experimental physics; back in Paris he immediately started his own course in his home in the rue du Mouton.33 The courses continued at Channel Row until Desaguliers’s house was demolished and he moved to lodgings above the Bedford Coffee House in Covent Garden. He was able to lecture there, but also used other venues. On 1 November 1740 he announced in the London Evening Post that ‘At the Desire of several Gentlemen of the City’ he would give a course in experimental philosophy at ‘Mr Parrington’s at the Black Lyon and Mortar in Fleet Street’. Not long after this he advertised that he was about: to begin a Course of Experimental Philosophy, at Essex House in Essex Street in the Strand; where besides the usual Experiments in Mechanicks, Hydrostaticks, Opticks and his Course of Astronomy, he will have several new ones on the Nature and Properties of Electricity.34

Essex House was the only remaining part of a mansion that once stood in the Strand, and it had until 1731 housed the Cotton Library (which formed the basis of the British Library), but in 1740 rooms were presumably available for Desaguliers to hire for his lectures. It is interesting that he now offered to show to the public some of his innovative experiments on electricity that had already

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entertained the Fellows of the Royal Society. One of the last of his advertisements, which appeared in the London Evening Post on 7 January 1743, indicated that Desaguliers had all his elaborate equipment set up at the Bedford Coffee House: On Friday 21st instant, at 6 in the Evening, at his Experimental-Room over the Bedford Coffee House, in the Great Piazza, Covent Garden, DR DESAGULIERS begins a Course of Experimental Philosophy and Astronomy, wherein the Principles of Mechanicks, Hydrostaticks, Pneumaticks and Opticks, are explain’d and demonstrated by about 300 Experiments; and the Astronomy is made easy and diverting by Planetariums and several new Machines, whereby the Motions, Magnitudes, Distances of the Heavenly Bodies, and Phœnomena of the Tides, are exactly shewn and explain’d.

On 29 January a short reminder appeared saying that the astronomical part of the course would begin the following Monday, at a cost of one guinea, and ‘at the same rate may be seen the Hydrostatical and Pneumatical; or the Optical part of the Course by itself ’. Whether or not these were his final public lectures, the total number of Courses of Experimental Philosophy that Desaguliers gave before his death in 1744 must have considerably exceeded the 121 he had claimed in 1734, and he had obviously kept them well up to date. A vivid description of Desaguliers’s later lectures was given by Baron Bielfeld, a Prussian diplomat who was in London as secretary of the Legation to the King of Prussia, when he wrote to his friend M. Jordan in Berlin, on 6 March 1741. After complaining of his heavy workload, the baron admitted that: I withdraw myself twice in the week from my labors, to attend the celebrated Dr. Desaguliers, chaplain to HRH. the Prince of Wales, in a cours of experimental philosophy; and I have engaged almost all the foreign ministers here, to be of the party. The doctors apartment has more the appearance of a hall of congres, than the auditory of a professor; and as we pay him generously, he in return spares for nothing to treat us handsomly, and to discover to us all the hidden springs of natur. Physics, properly so called, mechanics, hydraulics, hydrostatics, optics, astronomy, are all included in his cours. You have, I believe, in your valuable library the doctors treatis, which is called A cours of experimental philosophy […] This work forms the basis of his lectures; but as he makes all his demonstrations by the aid of an infinit quantity of machines, he seems to unfold all natur before our eyes, and to follow her in all her operations. I confess to you, that I find an inexpressible pleasure in attending his lectures, and that I never leave them without the highest

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satisfaction. Among the great number of his machines, there is none that excites my admiration so much as his famous planetarium.35

The baron praised, and described in detail, Desaguliers’s novel planetarium. Although Bielfeld had seen other demonstrations of the movement of celestial bodies, he recognized that Desaguliers had, after long consideration, overcome a problem from which they all suffered (the difficulty of making the sun appear to scale with the rest of the solar system). Desaguliers ‘was very efficaciously assisted in this business by Mr [George] Graham, the most able and celebrated watch-maker that ever existed’.36 Bielfeld described how the planetarium was used first of all by day, and then in a second lecture in the dark, and then all was explained so that the working of the solar system was made clear: All these matters are made so palpable that I would engage to teach astronomy, by the help of a planetarium, to any lady who has the least curiosity and attention in a months time. But such a machine is not to be had by every one; for that of the doctor has cost him more than a thousand pounds sterling.

Although somewhat given to hyperbole, Bielfeld clearly found Desaguliers’s lectures enthralling. He also described a discussion about the problem of friction that took place between Desaguliers and Graham and the auditors, and which resulted in Graham making a machine which significantly reduced the retardation it caused. Much can be gleaned from the baron’s account. By 1741 Desaguliers was living and lecturing above the Bedford Coffee House in Covent Garden. He had moved all his apparatus there and had a spacious apartment and was living in comfortable conditions. His reputation was such that he attracted a distinguished audience and was able to charge high fees for attendance at his lectures, but he still put considerable effort into his teaching and gave great pleasure and satisfaction. The renowned horologist and instrument maker George Graham (c.1673–1751) was present at least at some of the lectures, assisting with the ‘machines’, and especially the famous planetarium which Bielfeld claimed had cost the enormous sum of one thousand pounds. Certainly much of Desaguliers’s limited resources was spent on apparatus for his demonstrations, but perhaps the baron was exaggerating somewhat in this case. He did, however, express his admiration for the quality and accuracy of English scientific instruments, suggesting that they surpassed the French. The baron mentioned in his letter other aspects of life in London, including the discussions he observed

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3.  Desaguliers’s renowned Planetarium for the demonstration of the movement of heavenly bodies, and an Advertisement for the Lectures at which it was first shown. Planetarium Image: Plate 31 from CEP I. (BL Gale Databases) Advertisement: Daily Post, 9 December 1732. (BL Burney Collection) (© The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.)

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at Slaughter’s Coffee House ‘that is the rendezvous of all the wits, and the greatest part of the men of letters, in the town’, but his enthusiastic interest in Desaguliers’s experimental philosophy was undeniable. Desaguliers did not confine his activities to London. That he lectured in Cambridge in about 1725 was recorded by John Taylor (1703–72), a flamboyant itinerant oculist who much later published an account of his extensive travels throughout Europe.37 Taylor wrote that his short Treatise on the Eye had so impressed Desaguliers when in Cambridge giving lectures, that ‘this great and good man, this most excellent mathematician’ encouraged him to travel and disseminate his specialized medical knowledge. Taylor started his journeys in 1727 and claimed that his ‘most early protector’ had corresponded with him ‘even to his latter days’. An advertisement for his travel book recalled the meeting in Cambridge when Desaguliers had allegedly encouraged him to travel ‘for the Benefit of Mankind’. It is very possible that Desaguliers lectured on other occasions in Cambridge, as well as on visits he is known to have made back to Oxford. On 9 May 1724 it was reported that ‘Dr Desaguliers, and other members of the Royal Society are gone to Bath to make their Observations there on the Great Eclipse, which will happen next Monday’.38 On 11 May 1724 there was indeed a total eclipse of the sun that was best visible in the West of England with complete darkness occurring at 6.40 pm: Many Thousands of Spectators were gazing to see this Sight. Dr. Desaguliers, from 5 this Afternoon to the Time of the most Eclipse, read a Lecture on this Occasion, and had a good Audience, the Gentlemen, between 30 and 40, giving him 3 Guineas each to hear him, and he gave those ingenious and learned Gentlemen great Satisfaction for their Money. This Night, at the Queen’s-head, Dr Desaguliers is to receive into the Society of accepted Free-Masons, several fresh Members, among them are the Lord Cobham, Lord Harvey, Mr. Nash, and Mr. Mee with many others.39

Desaguliers’s reputation must by then have been considerable for him to command such a large sum from his auditors. Fortunately they were satisfied with his astronomical explanations and, as was his wont, Desaguliers used the opportunity to carry out masonic duties also. It has been suggested that the lecture on the eclipse not only started a tradition of scientific lecturing in Bath, but also initiated the practice of itinerant lecturing in general.40 According to the widely read Gloucester Journal Desaguliers was again in Bath in 1729 and 1730:

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Bath, Septem. 3 [1730]. This Day Dr. Desaguliers came here in order to have Courses of Experimental Philosophy during the Season. He has brought down besides the common Apparatus usual in his Courses of Experiments, several new Machines for the Entertainment of his Subscribers. He will have his Lectures at Mr. Harrisons Room, where he was last Year, at the same Price of three Guineas, one Guinea at Subscribing, and the other two the first Day of the Course. Subscriptions are taken in by Mr. Leake, Bookseller in Bath.

He appears to have been aiming his lectures at the town’s well-to-do visitors and it must have been worth the effort and expense of transporting all his equipment on the long and uncomfortable journey from London, and, undoubtedly, bringing an assistant with him. There were other visits too: Desaguliers is known to have attended masonic lodges in the West Country during the 1730s and these were probably at times when he was also lecturing. On one occasion in Bath, Mrs Amanda Smith, the governess to Prince William, was one of his auditors, and she rescued some fish that were to be subjected to the air pump and threw them back into the river. Desaguliers recorded this incident in lighthearted verse.41 While in Bath, Desaguliers found time to extend his interests. He visited the entrepreneur Ralph Allen (1693–1764) of Prior Park and admired his engineering projects and later described them in his Course of Experimental Philosophy.42 He also recorded that he ‘made some Experiments at Bath with Dr Oliver upon the specifick Gravities of the Waters’.43 Dr William Oliver (1695–1764), a friend of Ralph Allen perhaps best remembered for inventing the Bath Oliver biscuit, was a prominent physician in the town from about 1725 and, like Desaguliers, he suffered from gout. Possibly Desaguliers consulted Dr Oliver professionally during one of his visits and they then discovered a mutual interest in the physical properties of the spa waters. When Desaguliers went to lecture in Bath in 1737 he took with him his clockwork machine to demonstrate the tides, as well as his new planetarium. One person who saw the tide machine in Bath with great approval was the Portuguese physician, Jacob de Castro Sarmento (1692–1762). A Jewish refugee, he had lived in England since 1721 and was a convinced Newtonian. In the dedication to his book on tides, he refers to his good friend Dr Desaguliers who, 90 miles from London, had delighted a large group of distinguished people and explained complex phenomena to them with his mechanical devices.44 In 1738 Desaguliers again travelled to Bath, this time not to lecture, but as part of the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales. There were to be celebrations to mark the King’s birthday. The journey was not without incident, as the following report indicated:

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Last Thursday Morning the noted Highwayman who rides the Grey Gelding robb’d seven Coaches between Newbury and Marlborough, going to Bath; there were several of the Prince of Wales’s Domesticks; Dr Desaguliers was in one of the Coaches whose Footman being on Horseback, discharg’d two Blunderbusses at the Robber who likewise fir’d two Pistols at him. It’s said the Highwayman is since dead of his Wounds.45

The newspaper omitted to mention the fate of Desaguliers’s brave footman. Later long descriptions were given in the press, first of the elaborate festivities in Bath when the Prince took the waters and attended a masonic meeting in his honour at the Bear Tavern, and then of his journey to Bristol along roads which had hurriedly been made passable for the occasion, and his subsequent reception in that city. The royal party was lavishly entertained and after a ball there was, thanks to Desaguliers, ‘a very handsome firework in the square’, with three waves of gunfire, rockets and fire-wheels followed by fountains of fire, with the sun and stars and other fireworks exploding from mines: This Fire-work was, at the Desire of the Mayor and Corporation [of Bristol], undertaken by Dr Desaguliers, who having but very short Notice and but four Days to prepare it in, was very unwilling to undertake it; but as the Citizens were desirous of such a Thing to entertain their Royal Highnesses with, the Doctor was prevail’d upon to give them what the Time would afford. The Signal that was given at each Part of the Fire-work was from the Doctor, at a Window adjacent to the Prince.46

Interestingly this report was followed twelve days later by an advertisement in the same newspaper in which Desaguliers’s assistant made sure he received some credit for his part in the performance: The Person employ’d by Dr Desaguliers to make the Fire-works for the Entertainment of their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales, at Bristol, on the 10th of this Month, was DAVID BARCLAY, Brass Turner, at the Golden Spectacles at Charing Cross, the same Person who made the elegant Fire-works at Bulstrode, on the 27th of July last for celebrating the Birth-Day of his Grace the Duke of Portland’s Son, which Fire-works was carefully describ’d in the London Evening Post, he having learn’d that and several other Philosophical Experiments of the said Doctor, with whom he liv’d, and assisted him in making a very considerable Fire-work in Old Palace-Yard, in Honour of the Prince of Orange’s Marriage.47

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This announcement makes it clear that Desaguliers was something of a pyrotechnic expert in addition to all his other skills. The display at Bulstrode, in Buckinghamshire, with which Desaguliers must have been involved, was very elaborate, as undoubtedly was that for the royal wedding in 1734. The first record of Desaguliers’s responsibility for a firework display was at the celebration in Edgware of the accession of George II in 1727 when ‘all the Inhabitants of the Town rode out with Trumpets and Musick […], the Reverend Doctor Desaguliers at their Head, who play’d off a very handsome firework at Night, to conclude the Rejoicings’.48 Much later, in 1740, there was an evening of lavish entertainment at Cliveden, for the Prince and Princess of Wales; the main attraction, in a theatre in the garden ‘composed of Vegetables and decorated with Festoons of Flowers’, was the first performance of James Thomson’s masque, Alfred, which included the new patriotic song Rule Britannia. Then ‘the whole concluded with Fire-Works made by Dr Desaguliers, which were equal in their kind to the rest of the Performance’.49 Desaguliers clearly had a reputation for producing complex firework displays that were appreciated in the highest circles. Another time when Desaguliers was called upon to divert the Prince of Wales was in 1737, when the Court was in mourning following the death of Queen Caroline. Lady Anne Irwin was a lady-in-waiting to Princess Augusta, and recorded the occasion in a letter from Kew to her father, the Earl of Carlisle, dated 19 December: The Prince lives retired, seeing no company, so that his whole time is passed with his servants, which makes us of both sexes that are upon duty in constant attendance. We have a new amusement here, which is both very entertaining and instructive. Dr Desagulier has a large room fitted up at the top of the house, where he has all his mathematical and mechanical instruments at one end, and a Planetarian at the other, which is an instrument he has invented that is much superior to the Orrery, and shows the motions of the heavenly bodies in a plainer and better manner. The Doctor reads lectures every Day which the Prince attends diligently. I have gained some credit by the little knowledge I have in astronomy, but without being vain or saying much for myself, I may venture to say I know more of that science than all the Ladies here. This is no commendation, for ignorance in all parts of learning is, both in men and women who belong to the Court, as universal as affectation.50

Desaguliers may not have had a very erudite audience, if Lady Anne’s assessment of her fellow courtiers is accurate, but Prince Frederick had more intelligence

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and scientific awareness than he has often been credited with. He was, it is openly acknowledged, estranged from his mother, and Frederick had found an interesting way to alleviate the boredom of the mourning period by inviting Desaguliers to stay at Kew Palace and set up all his equipment there. It was a compliment to Desaguliers to be called upon at such a time, but he may well have felt the loss of the Queen more keenly than some others present, as she had in the past shown genuine interest in his work. The only records of Desaguliers travelling abroad to give lectures are of two visits he made to Holland in 1729 and 1731.51 There were close links between the Royal Society and Dutch scientists. Desaguliers was in regular correspondence with two of his former auditors who were Fellows of the Royal Society and had become eminent natural philosophers in their native land, Willem ’sGravesande and Petrus von Musschenbroek. It is likely that it was at their suggestion that he travelled first to Zeeland, and then on the later visit to Rotterdam, the Hague and Amsterdam. There were many English and Scottish businessmen and students in the Netherlands, as well as Huguenots who had settled there, and it was a country with an established scientific reputation where freedom of thought was strongly upheld. Desaguliers’s lectures on Newtonian principles would have been well received. The Archives of Middelburg, where he lectured in 1729, have not survived, but a second-hand account by a man whose father had attended the lectures suggests they were a great success and that Desaguliers engendered an appetite for natural philosophy by residing for a while in the town. Fortunately more is known of Desaguliers’s second Dutch visit in 1731. In the spring of that year an advertisement appeared at a booksellers in Rotterdam which offered Desaguliers’s ‘Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy’ and summarized its content. It stated (in Dutch) that: The presenter will come over from England at the end of April or beginning of May 1731 bringing all his apparatus in order to do the experiments in the most understandable way and as long as at least 64 persons want to enrol, he will attend twice a day doing one course in English and one in French. The auditors will be split into two groups to hear the lessons in the language most convenient to them: this will be for a sum of 3 guineas, one to be paid on enrolling and the other two at the first lecture. Enrolment will be by Mr Loftus, minister to the English Community, and by Abraham Eden, merchant of Rotterdam, either of whom will receive the first guinea with the promise (in the unexpected event that Mr Desaguliers is prevented from coming over) that it will be refunded.

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In the event, Desaguliers did not arrive until August 1731, but he then also gave 15 lectures in astronomy ‘by which in a very short time, with the use of his apparatus, participants would learn more than they could by studying for a whole year with books’. The astronomy lectures also cost 3 guineas, but for anyone taking the philosophy classes as well the total cost was 5 guineas. The natural philosophy lectures took place in rooms above the Rotterdam Bourse from 7.30 in the morning until 9 a.m. in French, then at 10 a.m. in English and at 4 p.m. in the afternoon in Latin, ‘for gentlemen, ladies and anyone else interested, on all working days except Saturdays’. This schedule must have represented very hard work not only for Desaguliers, but also for the assistant responsible for setting up and performing the experiments, and clearing up afterwards. However, the lectures were said to have aroused great interest and laid down the basis for scientific interest in the city of Rotterdam. From Rotterdam Desaguliers moved to the Hague. Here, in late September 1731, he was welcomed by the English Ambassador, the fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773). Both Chesterfield and his secretary, Charles Holzendorf, were fellow freemasons and the Earl’s chaplain, Mr Chevinix, offered to furnish potential auditors for Desaguliers’s lectures on experimental philosophy with a summary of the course (with its 300 experiments) and conditions of entry. It was in the Earl’s house that Desaguliers officiated at the initiation of Francis, Duke of Lorraine, as a freemason. The arrival of the young Duke of Lorraine had been eagerly anticipated, and Holzendorf wrote to George Tilson, the secretary of state at the Foreign Office, that he was: an excellent, sober character, generally applauded by everybody here [… and] the Pattern of a compleat young Prince and Gentleman. He has met here with Dr Desaguillieres, to whose publick lectures he goes without any constraint and hears them very attentively. He professes himself a great admirer and friend of the English Nation and is learning the English tongue with such an application that he carries an English Grammar in his pocket.52

The Amsterdamse Courant for 4 October 1731 contained a report which confirms the Duke’s interest in Desaguliers’s lectures and translates as: The Hague 2nd October. The learned and renowned Dr Desaguliers is now presenting a complete course of lectures on Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy which has been attended not only by persons of the first rank, but which has also been honoured on several occasions by the presence of the Duke of Lorraine.

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The same newspaper later gave the only evidence that has been found for Desaguliers’s lectures in Amsterdam. First it advertised that: Dr Desaguliers will present on the 15th day of October, in Amsterdam, with about 300 experiments, his Course of Philosophy. Enrolment may be made at Wetstein and Smith, François Changuion, Isaak Tirion, booksellers, and Jan Adrien Victor, broker, where also the catalogue of the experiments may be had.

Again things did not go exactly as planned, for the 27 October edition carried the report that: Dr Desaguliers announces that his lectures in Experimental Philosophy will actually take place from Thursday First November, in the afternoon at 3 o’clock in Latin and in the evening at 6 o’clock in the French language, and will continue daily at the same hours, and if too many people enrol for the first lesson we will choose extra hours. Inscription can be made at the booksellers mentioned in the earlier Courant, and also from Dr Desaguliers himself at the house of Monsieur Maisonneuve on the Princegraft near to the Red Hart Brewery, which is also where the lessons are held. The above-mentioned catalogue of experiments can be translated into Dutch and French if required.

It can be assumed that these lectures took place as planned. Unfortunately we do not know whether Desaguliers met any of his Huguenot cousins who had settled in Holland while he was on his lecture tour. Jacques de Maisonneuve, with whom he lodged in Amsterdam, was a spice merchant and almost certainly a Huguenot. Interestingly, one of the booksellers who was promoting his lectures, Isaak Tirion, was responsible for publishing the Dutch editions of Desaguliers’s Course of Experimental Philosophy from 1737. Desaguliers’s expertise in demonstrating experimental philosophy had earlier proved to be instrumental in advancing his ecclesiastical career. It was during his stay at Hampton Court in 1717 when he lectured before the royal family that, in his capacity as a cleric, he was invited by the King to preach a sermon in the chapel at the Palace. This was a great honour, especially as he was a deacon and not yet fully ordained as an Anglican priest. The sermon, delivered on 29 September 1717, was later ‘publish’d by His Majesty’s Special Command’, so we know that the chosen text was Luke 13, verse 5: ‘I tell you, Nay, but except ye repent, ye shall likewise perish’.53 It was neither short nor cheerful; it ran to some 20 printed pages and probably its form and content were fairly standard at the time. The King’s household was told, for example,

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that ‘sudden death is the greatest misfortune that can befall sinful men on earth’, that ‘it is not sufficient to make a Confession of our sins with our Lips unless the Heart is affected at the same time’ and that ‘the scourge of God, which is for the Perdition of the Impenitent, is for the Tryal of the Innocent’. Theologically there was nothing very new, and it ended with a rousing cry for everyone with ‘all Speed and Sincerity’ to reform their lives. George I commanded that Desaguliers be rewarded with an ecclesiastical appointment. The Bishop of Ely, William Fleetwood, ordained him priest at his London residence, Ely Palace near Holborn, on 8 December 171754 and the following day he was presented with the living of Bridgham in Norfolk.55 This was in the gift of William Cowper, Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain, whom Desaguliers already knew as a freemason. The stipend as rector of the church in the tiny and remote Norfolk village was £70 per annum and it is unlikely that Desaguliers made the arduous journey to attend his formal induction there on 21 December 1717. As frequently was the arrangement, he would have appointed a poorly paid curate, or paid the rector of a nearby village, to carry out the parish duties and rarely, if ever, would have visited Norfolk. Desaguliers was rector at Bridgham until May 1727, when this living was exchanged for that of another small village church, St Peter’s, Little Warley, near Brentwood in Essex. Again he is unlikely to have carried out any parish duties personally, for, although his new church was significantly more accessible from London than Bridgham, he had also, since 1719, been rector of St Lawrence, Little Stanmore, which was in the gift of his patron the Duke of Chandos. Although here Desaguliers did conduct occasional services, he needed to appoint a curate for he was often away, or too busy, to attend to the needs of the parish. There are not many instances of Desaguliers being active in a clerical role, but he does appear on a list of ‘Reverend Clergy’ who had promised to preach during Lent 1723 in the Collegiate Church of St Katherine near to the Tower of London, in aid of a charity school.56 And a story occasionally related, and still appearing as late as 1772, alluded to Desaguliers’s clerical status: Anecdote of the great Dr Desaguliers. The Doctor being invited to make one of an illustrious company, one of whom, an officer present, being unhappily addicted to swearing in his discourse, at the period of every oath would continually ask the Doctor’s pardon; the Doctor bore this levity with great patience; at length he was necessitated to silence the swearer with this fine rebuke: ‘Sir, you have taken some pains to render me ridiculous (if possible) by your pointed apologies; now, Sir, I am to tell you, “If God Almighty does not hear you (I assure you) I will never tell him.” ’57

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Desaguliers’s ecclesiastical career provides a typical example of the practices of pluralism and non-residence, where incumbents held more than one living simultaneously, gained financially, rarely visited their parishes and passed on their duties to other clergymen.58 Later in his life Desaguliers held the prestigious, but unpaid, post of a chaplain-in-ordinary to Frederick, Prince of Wales. The date of this appointment had sometimes been thought to be as early as 1728. The list of warrants given by the Prince to ‘Tradesmen and others without salaries’ clearly indicates, however, that it was formalized at Kew on 10 December 1737.59 To be a chaplain to the Prince was not an exclusive honour: Frederick appointed several each year, and Desaguliers was one of nine named in 1737 alone. The nomination is likely to have been recognition that, at Kew towards the end of 1737, Desaguliers both initiated the Prince of Wales into freemasonry and entertained his household with his experiments. The date of his appointment agrees with the fact that on the title pages of his later published works Desaguliers styles himself as ‘Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of Chandos’, up to those which appeared in 1737, but that he is then named as ‘Chaplain to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’, for example in his Dissertation Concerning Electricity and his translation of Vaucanson’s An Account of the Mechanism of an Automaton, both published in 1742. It was in 1738 that Desaguliers was part of the Prince’s household during the royal visit to Bath. A report that same year that ‘The Rev Dr Desaguliers is made Chaplain to Brigadier-General Bowles’s Regiment of Dragoons in Ireland’60 suggests that another ecclesiastical appointment was given which was unlikely to have involved him in actual work, but which this time may have offered some financial reward. He had no military connections, nor contacts in Ireland, so it is likely he was recommended for this vacancy by someone, possibly even the Prince of Wales, who was aware that he would welcome the extra income. For, despite his reputation, Desaguliers never accrued any wealth. The income from his lectures, given the fees he charged and the frequency of his courses, might appear to have been substantial, but so were the expenses of his premises and his assistants, and the cost of new apparatus made for the demonstrations. When Desaguliers died in 1744 there were several men who continued his tradition of giving courses in Newtonian experimental philosophy. Notable among this new generation of lecturers were Benjamin Martin, Erasmus King, Stephen Demainbray and James Ferguson. Benjamin Martin (c.1705–62) was a provincial lecturer and prolific writer who travelled the country and attempted to emulate Desaguliers’s methods: he published his own Course of Lectures in Natural and Experimental Philosophy in 1743. He only began lecturing in

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London in 1756, when he also set up as an optician and instrument maker in the capital. Erasmus King (d.1760), by contrast, gave lectures on various topics in London from the mid-1730s. His background is unknown, but after his death he was referred to as having been ‘coachman to Dr Desaguliers’.61 While this is probably not strictly correct, it is likely that he had assisted with Desaguliers’s courses and demonstrations and learned much from him. An amusing letter sent on 4 October 1744 to Philip Yorke, first Earl of Hardwicke, by the antiquarian and Fellow of the Royal Society, Daniel Wray (1701–83), indicates this: I have spent the last ten days at Kingston and Richmond, both which places [sic] King, formerly Whacum to Desaguliers, was instructing the Newtonian System. I assisted at each lecture in quality of FRS and was much edified by the Attention of the Fine and the Pretty; it was particularly agreeable at Richmond to be introduced among so many Misses, studying the doctrine of Light in a Dark Room.62

Whacum was the assistant to the magician Sidrophel in Samuel Butler’s Hudibras; the scene ‘Hudibras beats Sidrophel and his man Whacum’ was depicted in the 1725 series of engraved illustrations by William Hogarth. Daniel Wray was thus implying that Desaguliers was something of a wizard, and that Erasmus King at times acted as his assistant. Not for the first time Desaguliers was likened to a magician when he was carrying out his philosophical demonstrations. There was certainly a close relationship between Erasmus King and Desaguliers; King was a freemason and was present at the occasional lodge at Kew when Desaguliers initiated Frederick, Prince of Wales.63 In 1739 King was deputed to accompany Desaguliers’s younger son, Thomas, on a voyage to Russia and also to test the sea-gauge designed by Stephen Hales and made by Desaguliers.64 King was present at a meeting of the Royal Society as Desaguliers’s guest in 1741 but was never elected a Fellow, possibly because of his undistinguished background. He publicized his lectures in the Daily Advertiser and used popular venues such as coffee houses. In 1740 he ‘read lectures and exhibited experiments on Natural Philosophy’ at Lambeth Wells, a recreational area south of the Thames; admission cost sixpence so these lectures were much more accessible to the general public than most of those offered in Westminster and the City of London. Erasmus King also had an ‘Experimental Room’ where the apparatus used in his demonstrations on experimental philosophy could be viewed.65 In 1747 King advertised that he was giving a course of lectures on Astronomy and Geography at his house in Dukes-Court at which he would exhibit:

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A Set of Machines that not only shew all the beautiful Phænomena depending on the Motions, Magnitudes and Distances of the Heavenly Bodies […] but also demonstrate the Laws by which they are produced. […] As a particular Description of these curious Master-pieces of Mechanism would fill a Volume I shall only acquaint the Publick at present that they were executed under the direction of the late Dr DESSAGULIERS, in order to supply the Defects and Correct the Errors of all other Instruments Invented for this Purpose.66

It thus seems likely that King acquired some of Desaguliers’s equipment after his death; he certainly had a notable collection of apparatus which was eventually sold in 1758. An interesting notice that appeared in the press in 1754 indicates that two of Desaguliers’s more valuable items had at some time been purchased by the Duke of Marlborough, and that King had the expertise to work on them: We hear that Mr King is employed at Blenheim by his Grace the Duke of Marlborough, to repair those two valuable Astronomical Instruments, called Planetariums, which were purchased at a great Expense of the late ingenious Dr Desaguliers, which when completed will be placed in the Sunderland Library there.67

Erasmus King later diversified into anatomy, chemistry and military architecture. In 1747 and 1748 he was giving talks on fortification and military strategy and these were illustrated by a working, three-dimensional model showing sieges and campaigns. He claimed that ‘There is no other Model of this Kind in England; that made some Years since by Dr Desaguliers was sold to the Prince of Basel’.68 This is the only reference that has been found to Desaguliers having made such a model, but he had translated a work on fortification so he had some knowledge of the subject. When King died in 1760, he was remembered as being ‘well-known amongst the learned’ and having: The politest method in conveying his sentiments on natural and experimental philosophy on which subjects he was most amiable and instructive and excelled by no man. He was originally a scholar of the great Dr Desaguliers, from whom he received his first rudiments of knowledge.69

Stephen Demainbray (1710–82) was another who owed to Desaguliers his introduction to experimental philosophy. Of Huguenot parentage, he lodged with Desaguliers while a pupil at Westminster School, and learned much about mathematics and Newtonian science from him.70 Possibly at the instigation of

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his mentor, Demainbray became a freemason; in 1730 his name appeared in the list of members of the French Lodge that met at the Swan Tavern in Long Acre. Demainbray studied at Leiden and then moved to Paris and to Edinburgh before travelling south in 1749 and lecturing in several English cities, as well as in Dublin and again in France. In Newcastle the local press carried an advertisement for a course of 46 lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy that Demainbray offered, claiming that his ‘Knowledge and extensive Apparatus are allowed to be little inferior, if not equal, to those of his Master the late Doctor Desaguliers’ and that ‘his curious Collection of Mathematical Instruments [was] deemed the most considerable in any private Hands in Europe’.71 From 1755 Demainbray lived in London where he gave public courses of lectures with varying success, but he also attracted royal patronage. Much of his apparatus, some of which was undoubtedly based on Desaguliers’s models, formed part of the renowned scientific instrument collection of King George III, which is now housed at the Science Museum in London.72 It is unlikely that James Ferguson (1710–76) met Desaguliers as he only arrived in London from his native Scotland in 1743, a few months before the lecturer’s death.73 Although he originally made a living as a miniaturist, Ferguson also had an aptitude for scientific instrument making and had already devised, and lectured on, a new design of orrery. He demonstrated another celestial machine to the Royal Society and soon was advertising lectures on Newtonian natural philosophy and astronomy. These took place at his London home and around the country, and the published syllabuses show a marked similarity to the pattern of Desaguliers’s courses.74 Ferguson purchased material from the estate of the publisher and map-maker, John Senex, and for a time followed in his tradition of globe-making. Ferguson was also interested in clocks, and a small astronomical drum clock survives in Banff Museum, Aberdeenshire, the underside of which bears an intriguing engraved brass plaque.75 The inscription, clearly not all made by the same hand, lists in turn: John T. Desaguliers: LLD Lecturer on Nat et Exp Phil: London: MDCCXXIX Benjamin Franklin: LLD: FRS:1757 James Ferguson, FRS, 1766 Kenneth McCulloch, 1774

The original clock, signed ‘N[icolas] VALLIN’, dates from about 1595, but it carries a later geared mechanism attached to a small terrestrial globe of the type made by Ferguson and Benjamin Martin; this has drawn on it the route of Captain Cook’s second voyage around the world (1772–75). It is impossible to be

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4.  The Ferguson Astronomical Clock, once owned by Desaguliers. (Collections of Aberdeenshire Museums Service; Photo: John Carpenter)

certain of the history of the clock, but it can be assumed that by 1729 it belonged to Desaguliers; he may well have had it adapted it for astronomical demonstrations, possibly by the clockmaker George Graham. Benjamin Franklin may have met Desaguliers when, as a young man, he was in London from 1724 to 1726, but later the American certainly knew of and admired the Huguenot’s work. Franklin was in London again from 1757 to 1762, and from 1764 to 1775;

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presumably he purchased the clock in 1757 from someone who had owned it after Desaguliers’s death. Franklin certainly met James Ferguson and discussed horology with him during his third stay in London. The Banff clock must have been given or sold by Benjamin Franklin to Ferguson at this time. Ferguson died a wealthy man in 1776, but two years earlier the clock had passed to the fourth name on the plaque, Kenneth McCulloch. Little is known of McCulloch, an instrument maker who was compass-maker to the Duke of Clarence,76 but it was presumably he who had fitted the present globe, which must date from after 1775. As, sadly, no other artefact that belonged to Desaguliers appears to have survived, it is pleasing that this clock, which he must have handled and used, has been saved as part of a collection of Ferguson memorabilia. The London auctioneers Christie and Ansell advertised, at a sale in 1775, two orreries, three feet in diameter and ‘made under the inspection of Dr Desaguliers’: one demonstrated the sun’s motion and the other the revolution of the planets. Then, in 1796, a sale advertisement promoted a ‘Grand Orrery by Desaguliers’ within a collection which had been owned by Benjamin Wilson FRS (1721–88).77 Unfortunately none of the purchasers of these instruments is recorded. Like the clock, they may well have played a part in some of the many demonstrations for which Desaguliers was renowned and which helped the promotion of Newtonian ideas in the early part of the eighteenth century. Maybe some of Desaguliers’s apparatus was kept for a time by the Royal Society where much of it had been used, but again, this cannot be established. Many papers, however, survive to give a picture of his association with the Society and the work he did for them.

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The Royal Society was almost 50 years old when Desaguliers first became associated with it. From its foundation shortly after the restoration of Charles II to the monarchy, the aim of the Society was to hold weekly meetings at which gentlemen could discuss the new philosophies and enjoy demonstrations of a scientific nature.1 At the first formal meeting, on 28 November 1660, a group of twelve men with an interest in natural philosophy met at Gresham College in the City of London to promote ‘Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning’. The twelve included Sir Christopher Wren, who gave a lecture before the meeting; the experimental philosopher Robert Boyle; Scottish politician Sir Robert Moray; theologian John Wilkins; and William, Viscount Brouncker, who became the Society’s first President. The presence of Moray, Wilkins and Wren in the group has led to speculation that there may have been connections with freemasonry in the foundation, for all were members of masonic lodges, and the frontispiece which appeared in 1667, exclusively in the large-paper copies of the first edition of Sprat’s History of the Royal Society, contains imagery which can be construed as masonic.2 The group’s political tolerance – men who had been Royalists and Cromwellians were both represented – and rules such as the prohibition of discussion of religious and political topics, presaged the constitutions of the masonic Grand Lodge in the next century but this may only be coincidental and a natural reflection of post-Civil War appeasement. Moray was, however, a close associate of King Charles II who, encouraged by the Scotsman, granted the Society its Royal Charter in 1662. Fellows were nominally elected and had to pay a substantial entry fee plus ongoing dues, so from its inception the Society was restricted to the relatively wealthy. By the late seventeenth century the Royal Society had lost much of its initial vigour. Membership had declined and the finances were in disarray, Council and weekly meetings were poorly attended, and the latter frequently lacked any serious scientific substance. Publication of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society became sporadic. Then in 1703 Isaac Newton was appointed President and he revitalized the Society. From the following

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5.  Crane Court, north of Fleet Street, was the home of the Royal Society from 1710 until 1780 and a location very familiar to Desaguliers. (Wellcome Library, London)

year he regularly presided at Council meetings; he personally chaired most of the weekly meetings and participated in discussions until some twenty years later old age forced him to be less active.3 The Fellows met in rooms at Gresham College in the City of London until in 1710 new premises of their own were obtained, at Newton’s instigation, in Crane Court, just off Fleet Street.4 Newton had been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1672, and his Principia had been published due to the encouragement of Edmund Halley FRS and presented to the Society in 1687. Newton had rarely attended Society meetings, however, even after he settled in London in 1696 as Master of the Mint, largely because he had serious disagreements with the curator, Robert Hooke (1635–1703). But once in charge Newton’s strategy was immediately to define a ‘Scheme for establishing the Royal Society’. This proposed that: Natural Philosophy consists in discovering the frame and operations of Nature, and reducing them, as far as may be, to general Rules or Laws, establishing these rules by observations and experiments, and thence deducing the causes and effects of things.

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So the need was to demonstrate these observations and experiments before the Fellows of the Society, and then to base discussion upon the results. There could still be talk of topics of general interest – as before, extreme meteorological conditions or malformed foetuses, for example, were always popular – but serious scientific progress would have priority and give real substance to the meetings. To this end Newton proposed that the Society should pay for at least one demonstrator who would attend all meetings and conduct experiments in various branches of science. He introduced Francis Hauksbee who began with a series of experiments using an air pump of the type invented by Robert Boyle, and went on to other topics all of which were regularly described in the Philosophical Transactions. Hauksbee filled this post with enthusiasm, although the financial rewards were not generous. He not only published accounts of his work in the Society’s Transactions, but also in a popular book which was translated into several languages.5 Hauksbee performed experiments on capillary action, which particularly interested Newton, and on topics as varied as surface tension, the propagation of sound, magnetic attraction, the refraction of light, the freezing of water, and specific gravities. Also, he is credited with early and groundbreaking experiments on static electricity; in 1706 he demonstrated a novel glass globe friction machine which glowed and crackled and attracted small threads. Hauksbee had been elected FRS in 1705 and he was paid varying sums of money depending on how much effort he had been deemed to have put into his work. Newton’s attempts to engage demonstrators in other fields such as anatomy and dissection, or botany, had proved less fruitful, but Francis Hauksbee was a success and the meetings became more serious and better attended. When Hauksbee died unexpectedly in 1713 a replacement was urgently needed. There was a younger Francis Hauksbee (1688–1763), nephew of Newton’s curator, who did work very similar to that of his uncle and who, usually in collaboration with William Whiston, also offered public courses in experimental philosophy in London. Some years later the younger Hauksbee became clerk to the Royal Society and carried out occasional demonstrations at meetings, but in 1713 he was not thought experienced enough to succeed his uncle. Perhaps the name of John Theophilus Desaguliers had been mentioned by John Keill or Edmund Halley; perhaps Hauksbee himself had mentioned the cleric and scientist recently arrived in London from Oxford; perhaps Newton had had good reports of the public lectures the young Huguenot was giving and which were helping his radical new ideas become more widely known. In any event, Newton approached Desaguliers who then began demonstrating regularly before the Royal Society at its Thursday evening meetings at Crane Court. The Journal

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Book Copy of the Royal Society provides a record of these meetings and is an invaluable source of information about Desaguliers’s activities.6 The first mention of the new demonstrator was on 8 February 1714 when ‘It was ordered that Mr Aguiliers be desired to wait upon the President to take his directions as to the structure of that Instrument [a thermometer for measuring great heats] and the Experiments to be made with this new thermometer before the Society’. Then on 18 March ‘Mr DesAguilliers shewed several experimts’. These attempted to measure the temperatures of various materials such as molten lead and tin which were too hot for the common thermometer by a new method using the rising of ‘Linseed Oyle’ in a bolthead. A week later Desaguliers read a paper giving an account of the results, together with a rough calibration of the thermometer. This pattern was continued in the weeks that followed: an experiment performed one week would be presented as a paper at the following meeting. At the same time, a fresh experiment would also be shown. There was, as usual, frequent misspelling of ‘Desaguliers’ but as the new demonstrator became better known, so did his name. The ongoing range of his experiments serves to illustrate his versatility. During his first few months he showed the Society the effect on birds of breathing air that had been passed over various heated metals, phosphorescence induced by solid phosphorus in a ‘condensing engine’, the behaviour of bodies in a vortex, the rebounding of steel balls to demonstrate the ‘Congress of Bodies and the Laws of Motion’, a new sort of barometer, the effect of rubbing silver with quicksilver, the appearance of a cat’s eye under water due to refraction, and the appearance of blood globules in a capillary tube. Then, on 24 June 1714: Notice was given to the Gentlemen present that Mr Des Aguilliers had prepared an apparatus to try several of the Experiments mentioned in the Treatise of Opticks tomorrow morning at Eleven O’clock that if any Members were desirous to be present they should come to the Society at that time.

Sir Isaac Newton’s Opticks had first appeared some ten years earlier, but he decided the gentlemen of the Royal Society could still benefit from a practical demonstration of his theories of light and he requested Desaguliers to set this up. That the experiments were a success is suggested by the fact that at the meeting on 8 July ‘The President proposed Mr John Theophilus DesAgulliers for a Candidate [for Fellowship] which was referred to the next Council’. At the same meeting Desaguliers contributed to a lively discussion on the fragmentation of bullets into small particles when shot at an opposing body, and gave

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an account of the way these particles had penetrated the clothing of, and caused slight injury to, a gentleman of his acquaintance who had been clad in a coat of several thicknesses of Irish frieze. He also delivered a paper on ‘Light and Colours mentioned in the President’s Treatise of Opticks’, describing, as was customary, the experiments which had been performed earlier. On 22 July Desaguliers’s work on the optical experiments was ordered to be published in the Philosophical Transactions. His papers recounted how some gentlemen of the English College at Liège, and M. Mariotte in France, had not succeeded in repeating Newton’s experiments and had reported this in Acta Eruditorum.7 Newton then ‘desired Mr Desaguliers to try the Experiment’ which he did with success before several Gentlemen of the Royal Society and others of the Royal Academy of Sciences and he ‘still shews it to those who desire to see it’. Desaguliers described in great detail the technicalities of how ‘this and other concomitant Experiments were tried and succeeded’. His expertise was already proving very valuable to Newton. The Royal Society should have adjourned for the summer recess on 22 July 1714 but the following week an extraordinary meeting was held in honour of Prince Alexander de Menzicoff of the Romano-Russian Empire, who was visiting London. The Prince, who was undoubtedly entertained with some experiments, was elected a Fellow. At the same time four others, including ‘Mr Desaguilliers’, were balloted for and election was promised. Desaguliers must have been delighted at the honour he was afforded, but also very glad of the summer break. His debut at the Royal Society had involved him in a prodigious amount of work, preparing experiments on a wide variety of topics and then writing and presenting papers on them all. How much he was initially paid for his labour and materials – including the birds, one of which (it had breathed air passed over hot brass) ‘recovered but remained sickish’ while another (subjected instead to air passed over hot iron) was killed in a few seconds – is not recorded, but in July 1714 ‘a bushel of coals for an experiment by order of Mr Desaguiller’ cost the Society 11d.8 The prestige and reputation Desaguliers gained were invaluable, as were the contacts he made. When the Society resumed its meetings on 8 October 1714 he was elected a Fellow. He continued, almost to the end of his life, to be their chief demonstrator, or ‘curator’, and as such was excused payment of his dues and received, in arrears, a variable annual fee. The Journal Book records that on 9 December 1714, Desaguliers performed experiments on magnetism, or ‘the behaviour of needles touched with loadstone’, in collaboration with Dr Brook Taylor (1685–1731), a Newtonian mathematician and experimental philosopher who was Secretary to the Royal

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6. Willem Jakob ’sGravesande. The eminent Dutch Newtonian was introduced to Natural Philosophy on a visit to London in 1715 and became a regular correspondent of Desaguliers and others of the Royal Society. (© Royal Society, London)

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Society from 1714 to 1718. And on that same evening in December Desaguliers ‘produced a Sheep’s Eye and shewed wherein that light was intercepted by the retina’. He continued to be busy throughout the following year; there were several more experiments concerning Newton’s optics, with special reference to refrangibilty and reflexibility (refraction and reflection) of light, as well as continuing studies of magnetism. These were interspersed with experiments on the laws of motion, gravity, hydrostatics and centrifugal force. This was perhaps more familiar ground for Desaguliers, as these were topics from his public lectures and he would have had some of the necessary apparatus ready at home. His faithful instrument maker William Vream made tools that Desaguliers showed the Society, such as a device which would give a strong polarity to a wire drawn through it, and a ‘Bitt shaped like a Bullett […] for Boreing Brass’. On 24 March 1715 ‘Mr Desaguliers shewed several experiments to Entertain some foreign Gentlemen’. Among these were the chaplain to the Dutch Embassy and ‘Mr Gravesand’. The latter was undoubtedly Willem Jakob ’sGravesande, in London to represent the Dutch government at the accession of King George I. Originally a lawyer, he attended Desaguliers’s lectures and also meetings of the Royal Society, to which he was admitted that June. He developed a deep interest in Newtonian natural philosophy and on his return to the Netherlands abandoned the law and became professor of mathematics, astronomy and philosophy at Leiden University; he is today remembered as a distinguished scientist.9 In London ’sGravesande became friendly both with Desaguliers and John Keill (’sGravesande and Keill promoted each other’s publications) and in 1720 he published an important work in Latin on Newtonian ideas that, not without problems with the booksellers, Desaguliers translated. At the Royal Society it was not only his experiments that kept Desaguliers busy. When a letter in French was received from the Abbé de Hautefeuille, it was Desaguliers who was desired to translate it, which he duly promised to do by the next meeting. The next month he was asked to look over and give an account of a manuscript by Cotton Mather (1663–1728), the scientifically inclined puritan clergyman from New England who was the first native-born American to be elected FRS. The work was initially entitled The Christian Virtuoso, and based on a book by Robert Boyle with the same title; it was published in 1721 as The Christian Philosopher and contains essays on astronomy, physics and biology to demonstrate ‘that Philosophy is no Enemy, but a mighty and wondrous Incentive, to Religion’. This was a sentiment that would have appealed to many Newtonians. In July 1715, Desaguliers translated and brought to the Society ‘an account of a Meteor seen […] by Several French Gentlemen’, but was then instructed to find out more about it. In the meantime

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there had been demonstrations on the dissolution of various salts (in assorted solvents, including Thames water), the complexity of a fly’s eye, more optics, the breaking of ropes used by a horse for pulling weight, and so on. At the final meeting before the 1715 summer recess Desaguliers presented to the Society his translation of Nicolas Gauger’s book, Fires Improved. The subject of this work – chimneys and the heating and ventilation of buildings – was one that began to interest Desaguliers around this time, and which he used to practical effect. At the Royal Society that autumn he ‘shewed a Modell of his new sort of Grate for Coal Fires and of the cover to keep Chimneys from smoaking’ and offered to present one for the Meeting Room. This was accepted and he had the thanks of the Society, so it can be supposed that the innovative fireplace was indeed installed at Crane Court. He had other practical suggestions too – a contrivance to make ‘the vibration of a Bell sensible both to the Eye and the Ear’, for example, and an ingenious device (presumably some sort of gear) made by Vream, in brass, for ‘working a Double Air Pump by Turning the Handle always the same way’. Desaguliers continued performing his variety of experiments for the enlightenment of the fellows, and in early 1716 was ordered to provide a barometer for the use of the Society. At the 23 February meeting the Ambassador of Spain, Sicily and Venice was present, for whom ‘Mr Desaguliers repeated several of the principal experiments that have of late come before the Society’; all of these were reported to have ‘succeeded as usual’. In April that same year (1716), Desaguliers asked leave for Mr Stephen Gray to be present at the weekly meeting. Gray (c.1666–1736), the son of a Canterbury dyer, had strong interests in natural history, astronomy and electricity. He was largely self-taught, and in the 1690s and early 1700s worked with John Flamsteed, the Astronomer Royal, at Greenwich. Gray communicated with the Royal Society from about 1695 to 1705 on a variety of topics ranging from a horometer, whereby time was measured by the passage of water through sand, to observations of sunspots. However, probably due to his close friendship with Flamsteed, and the ongoing and well-documented feud between the Astronomer Royal and Isaac Newton (this concerned Flamsteed’s project to catalogue the stars), and also because of his modest background, Gray was not admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society for many years. In about 1715, he moved to London and lodged with Desaguliers at his house in Westminster.10 Gray lived at Channel Row for about four years and the two men on occasion worked together on some electrical experiments and also observed the heavens together. Then, nominated by the Prince of Wales, Gray became a pensioner at the Charterhouse where he used his rooms to carry out further electrical investigations. It was not until 1729, two years after Newton’s

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death, that Gray began once again to communicate with the Royal Society. He sent a long paper (the first of several) on his electrical experiments which was published in the Philosophical Transactions. The Society eventually recognized the value of his work and he became the first recipient of their Copley Medal, receiving the honour in both 1731 and 1732. A citation read: ‘For his new Electrical Experiments: as an encouragement to him for the readiness he has always shown in obliging the Society with his discoveries and improvements in this part of Natural Knowledge’.11 Finally, in January 1733, Gray was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society. He continued his work on electricity until his death in 1736 and in his later years was often the guest of the Rev. Granville Wheler FRS (1701–70), at his home near Faversham, where the two co-operated in several experiments. Nowadays Gray is recognized for his important contribution to early electrical studies and for first demonstrating conduction through a thread.12 It is likely that Desaguliers’s interest in electricity was stimulated by Gray, but he did not pursue his own electrical studies further during Gray’s lifetime as he did not wish to be seen to compete with him. In 1742 Desaguliers published his own acclaimed Dissertation Concerning Electricity. In it he fully acknowledged the work of Hauksbee and also that Stephen Gray had made ‘several new and surprizing electrical Experiments’ and that some experiments made since the death of Gray had been done by Wheler. Gray’s introduction to the Royal Society in 1716 was apparently at Desaguliers’s initiative during the time his friend was lodging with him, but also when Gray was not popular with Newton. This would seem to indicate that by then Desaguliers felt increasing confidence in his own standing among the Fellows. Not only did he continue to entertain them with his experiments, but for the months of April and May 1716, in the absence of both the secretaries, Desaguliers also took the Minutes of the Society’s meetings. In July there was a discussion of ‘optick glasses’ at which Desaguliers explained how he himself, although short-sighted, could see very well in a telescope without the use of an eyeglass. Once again he promised to ‘give a further account thereof ’, and duly did so at the next meeting. Among Desaguliers’s diverse activities recorded in the Journal Books of the Royal Society were several astronomical observations. These included the eclipse of Aldebaran viewed with Stephen Gray at 5 a.m. on 29 January 1718, and an account of how on Michaelmas Day 1717, at Hampton Court, Desaguliers had observed the Aurora Borealis. He had been at Hampton Court that autumn to lecture at the request of the King. One experiment he performed before George I and the Princess of Wales in September 1717 demonstrated that in an evacuated cylinder a guinea and a piece of paper or a feather would fall

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at exactly the same velocity.13 The reason was the lack of resistance due to air, and, to counter possible critics who suggested the cylinder was too short, an especially large apparatus was devised. His Majesty pulled the lever to activate the experiment, which worked perfectly. When Desaguliers reported the results of his demonstration to the Royal Society he was requested to repeat it before them on 5 December 1717, when a special experiment was to be performed in accordance with the will of Sir Godfrey Copley (c.1653–1709).14 It was also repeated for some of the Fellows at Desaguliers’s home in Channel Row; on

7.  Martin Folkes. He was an active Fellow of the Royal Society who served on the Council and was Newton’s Vice-President from 1723. He succeeded Sir Hans Sloane as President in 1741. Folkes was also an enthusiastic freemason, associated with the Bedford Head Lodge in Covent Garden and the Maid’s Head Tavern Lodge in Norwich. He served as Deputy Grand Master of Grand Lodge under the Duke of Richmond. (Wellcome Library, London)

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this occasion, Martin Folkes (1690–1754), a member of the Council (and later Vice-president and President) and also a freemason, verified the results. Folkes was also called upon on 27 April 1719, when Desaguliers continued his experiments and calculations on air resistance on falling bodies by timing the descent of assorted lead, glass and pasteboard balls from the upper gallery of St Paul’s Cathedral on to the tiled pavement below (which, fortunately, was protected by boards). A special chronometer was made by the master clockmaker, George Graham, to time the descents to within a quarter of a second. When further experiments were carried out on 27 July using as well, for their lightness, carefully contrived balloons made of hogs’ bladders, Folkes again recorded the times, as did the President (Sir Isaac Newton), Edmund Halley (secretary of the Society), James Jurin (future secretary) and George Graham himself.15 In the third edition of his Principia, published in 1726, Newton described this experiment in detail and acknowledged that it was carried out by Dr Desaguliers. By the eighteenth century clocks and watches kept excellent time but they still had to be set and regulated using the sun as the standard. This meant that greater precision in sundials and accurate positioning of the meridian were needed to keep up with the advances in mechanical horology. When Desaguliers visited Paris in 1735 he was impressed by a portable horizontal dial developed for this purpose by the leading French horologist, Julien Le Roy: the following February he read a paper about it to the Royal Society.16 This was the first English translation of the mémoires about the design and use of the dial that Le Roy had presented to the French Société des Arts, but Desaguliers also added his own section on ‘the Construction of a Style to have the Hour of 12 upon a Horizontal Plane’. He had some knowledge of the subject having translated a comprehensive book on dialing some years earlier, and he clearly hoped for practical applications by some of the Fellows when he concluded: As these sorts of Meridians are very easy to make and but of little expense they may be made use of by those who have several County Houses but one Dial. With such a Dial People may easily erect a Style and draw Meridians for their Friends, few of the Dials which are painted on Walls being exact.

Other topics upon which Desaguliers enlightened the Fellows of the Royal Society ranged from descriptions of steam engines, which included the one he had erected to raise water at ‘Lord Carnarvon’s Seat at Cannons’, to the ever-popular reports of curious phenomena, such as a ‘tree’ found in the belly of a codfish. This provoked lively discussion about people who swallowed foreign objects and Desaguliers mentioned a ‘fool’ he knew of who had eaten

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penknives. At another meeting he was thanked for bringing a worm vomited by a cat, but most of his contributions were seriously scientific. The use of M. François Villette’s special concave mirror (or ‘burning glass’) to produce very high temperatures by focussing sunlight onto objects such as pieces of Roman tile, coins, metals and ‘an anonymous fish’s tooth’ was reported and the times for melting or other change in each sample were recorded. These experiments were made in collaboration with the author of the Lexicon Technicum, the Rev. Dr John Harris.17 Desaguliers was called upon to demonstrate the veracity of Newton’s philosophy in various fields, in particular when Sir Isaac was challenged by foreign scientists. He presented papers in late 1724 and early 1725, conducted experiments, and wrote four articles in the Philosophical Transactions, concerning the Figure of the Earth.18 The shape of ‘our terraqueous habitation’ was the cause of ongoing controversy between British and French philosophers. It was generally accepted that the earth was spherical: Newton, basing his arguments on pendulum swings and centrifugal forces of rotation, considered the sphere to be oblate, or flattened at the poles. The Frenchman, Jacques Cassini (1677– 1756), who had studied topographical measurements in his own country, together with others in France, were of the contrary opinion that the earth was prolate, or elongated at the poles. After Desaguliers had published his first two papers arguing for the oblate earth, he was made aware of a mémoire presented in 1720 to the French Academy of Sciences by d’Ortous de Mairan (1678–1771) which presented further arguments supporting Cassini. Desaguliers translated this, and his third paper answers Mairan at length. Quite recently, this long paper has been analysed in detail, and the assumptions and calculations of both scientists are criticized as being oversimplified.19 It is conceded that Mairan’s theories were largely invalidated as he had made the assumption that the earth was elongated at the poles before doing his calculations, but much of Desaguliers’s mathematics also does not bear close scrutiny in modern terms. Both men were attempting to make detailed analyses of the effects of gravitation and centrifugal forces on rotating bodies, but it was not until the late nineteenth century that mathematical theory had developed sufficiently to analyse questions such as these so it is understandable that both failed to give definitive proofs. When written, though, Desaguliers’s pages of argument and calculations apparently impressed the Royal Society (or, at least, those members who actually read them all), but they were not sufficient to convince the French Academy.20 Two intrepid expeditions were organized by the French, one to South America (1735–43) and the other to Lapland (1735–37). The results of the measurements of the meridian arc in these different locations, one near the

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equator and the other near the North pole, eventually forced the conclusion that Newton was correct. Voltaire summed up the situation in verse: ‘In dull distant places you suffered to prove | What Newton knew without having to move!’21 Interestingly, at the Royal Society meeting on 24 April 1740, Desaguliers was granted leave of the Society ‘to borrow out of the Library, Mons. Cassini’s Book on the Figure of the Earth to enable him to answer the objection of the late Author on that Subject’; he was still following up the subject fifteen years after his initial interest in it. Another field in which Desaguliers championed Newton’s ideas was optics. The Italian Giovanni Rizzetti challenged the theory that white light was made up of coloured elements. In December 1722 Desaguliers carried out experiments at the Royal Society meetings to demonstrate that blue light was refracted to a greater degree than red light, as this had been called into question by ‘a gentleman in Italy’. In the Philosophical Transactions he described the precautions necessary for these ‘crucial’ experiments to succeed.22 Rizzetti was still not convinced for in August 1728, a year after Newton’s death, Desaguliers wrote to the new President, Sir Hans Sloane: I have prepar’d a Room and got ready an Apparatus to make those Experiments of Light and Colours which Sir Isaac Newton most plainly prov’d his Theory by and which Signor Rizzetti has call’d in Question. On Saturday next at 8 in the morning I am to make the above mentioned Experiments and some others of my own to shew Rizzetti’s Mistakes, before some Persons of Learning and Figure lately come from Rome; and I am desirous to have some Members of the Society present, to witness what is done. If you have Leisure to honour me with your Company, please to come to my House, because there is no proper place at the Royal Society’s House fit for the Purpose. If you have not Leisure to be here, will you be so good as to send Dr Scheutzer, who will make you a Report of every thing and likewise be a proper witness.23

A letter from Eustachio Manfredi, Professor of Astronomy at Bologna, to Sir Thomas Dereham, a Fellow of the Royal Society resident in Rome, in October of the same year said: I am very glad to hear that the optical experiments made lately at London by Dr Desaguliers have succeeded so well as those formerly made in that City and those made […] here in Bologna in the presence of all the members of our Academy […] by Dr Francesco Algarotti.24

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At last the Italians were convinced that Newton was right. Both Manfredi and Algarotti were also Fellows of the Royal Society. Algarotti (1712–64) became a convinced Newtonian who, in 1737, wrote Newtonianismo per le Dame; an English translation, in two volumes, appeared two years later.25 The subject of the force of moving bodies, and calculation of momentum, occupied several experimental sessions, as Desaguliers struggled to resolve the so-called vis-viva controversy to the satisfaction of Royal Society members. The question of whether the force should be calculated by the product of the mass of a moving object and either its velocity or the square of its velocity was a subject of disagreement between Newton and his German rival, Leibniz.26 Although never as acrimonious as the dispute over who had first put forward the idea of fluxions, or the differential calculus, and which occupied John Keill and other Newtonians (but not Desaguliers) for many years, the vis-viva debate became rather tedious. It eventually died out when it was concluded that it was really a question of definitions, but it delayed publication of Desaguliers’s second volume of the Course of Experimental Philosophy as he wanted to put the definitive answer in his book. One foreign visitor who was impressed with the methods of the Royal Society was Luigi Ferdinando, Count Marsigli of Bologna, a corresponding Fellow for many years who visited London in 1721 and attended several meetings. He reported that ‘all speculation unsupported by observation or experiment is utterly rejected. In England all study and teaching is based on fact’. Marsigli noticed that if anyone wanted to carry out experiments at home they went to ‘Mr Desaguliers, who is a French refugee cleric and a very capable mechanic’. Desaguliers then advised on the instruments they needed; the experiment would be recorded and repeated in the Society’s demonstration room, ‘after which they take everything back home so that no apparatus ever remains there’.27 This suggests that, as well as carrying out his own experiments, Desaguliers would assist other Fellows in devising theirs, and help them to find suitable apparatus. Some of Desaguliers’s many papers and demonstrations had decidedly practical applications, such as his observations on cranes, with recommendations of how to limit the accidents experienced by the operators.28 In this context Desaguliers mentions another acquaintance, Ralph Allen, postmaster of Bath, whom he met on his visits to the town. Allen had developed a novel wagon which ran on rails to transport stone from his quarry, and this, characteristically, interested Desaguliers, as did the cranes Allen used. By contrast, other communications were purely speculative, such as Desaguliers’s commentary, delivered at the meeting on 27 October 1726, on some Notes

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on the Gospel according to St Luke by the Spanish Benedictine monk, Arias Montanus. A passage in this work suggests that telescopes were no new invention, even when it was written in 1573. The alleged reason was that the Devil demonstrated skills in the ‘Optical Art’ when he tempted Christ by showing Him all the Kingdoms of the World and must have used ‘Prospect Glasses’. Desaguliers offered no judgement on the claim, but was thanked by the Society for his paper. At the Royal Society meeting on 13 April 1727 the Rev. Stephen Hales (1677–1761) presented a copy of his new book, Vegetable Staticks, and it was ‘referred to Dr. Desaguliers to give the Society an Abridgement of it’.29 The work, over 400 pages long, describes innovative experiments on the uptake and flow of sap in plants and also, more generally, on the nature and behaviour of air. Desaguliers duly studied Hales’s important work, spoke about it and published a review and summary in two parts.30 This would have saved many of the Fellows the trouble of reading it for themselves, and at subsequent meetings Desaguliers entertained the Society with experiments mentioned by Hales. Hales was the active and, it is said, very strict vicar of Teddington, who had a strong practical interest in natural philosophy.31 As well as his renowned studies on plant and animal physiology he designed a gauge for measuring the depth of the sea and methods for improving ventilation of enclosed spaces. Desaguliers collaborated with him, but later felt aggrieved when Hales omitted to acknowledge his contribution in a book on ventilation. The wide range of subjects that Desaguliers discussed at Society meetings demonstrates his remarkable versatility. He often used the Repository at Crane Court for his various experiments so that Fellows and their visitors could watch these before or after attending the main meeting. The premises were not large and the Repository was already packed with specimens that had been donated; Sir Hans Sloane (1660–1753) was a particularly acquisitive Secretary, and later President, who encouraged the collection of curiosities, animal, vegetable or mineral. As well, there was scientific apparatus, much of which Desaguliers had supplied. The problem of space was highlighted in the Journal Book when, on 7 March 1734, His Serene Highness the Prince of Orange (in London prior to his marriage to the Princess Royal) visited the Royal Society. The President, concerned to prevent too great a crowd in the meeting room that day, ordered that no strangers, except his Highness’s attendants, be admitted. The Prince came first from the Repository where he had been entertained by Desaguliers with explanations of celestial motion using his planetarium, and by various improvements on Dr Halley’s diving bell. After the meeting, at which the Prince was admitted as a Fellow, the Society adjourned to the Library where

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further preparations had been made by Desaguliers for the entertainment of His Highness with a course of experiments on electricity. The planetarium, one of Desaguliers’s most impressive inventions, had first been shown to the Society just two weeks earlier. The novel device to demonstrate the movements of the solar system was often shown to distinguished visitors. Strangers, not always as distinguished as the Prince, could be admitted to meetings: Desaguliers, especially in the latter years of his membership, often introduced a visitor. These included, on several occasions, his son, ‘Mr Desaguliers’: presumably this was his younger son, Thomas, who was of a more scientific bent than John Theophilus junior. Another frequent visitor introduced by Desaguliers was William Schaw (c.1714–57), a Scottish physician, but various others he brought to the Society cannot be identified; possibly some were auditors from his lectures or masonic colleagues. Also, on several occasions, Desaguliers proposed a gentleman for Fellowship. The first of these, as early as April 1715, was ‘My Lord Newborough’. How Desaguliers came to nominate Newborough (George, 2nd Earl Cholmondeley, c.1666– 1733) is unclear for although a graduate of Christ Church, he was a career soldier who had been at Oxford well before Desaguliers’s time there. Others that Desaguliers proposed included his friend Henry Beighton with whom he had worked on steam engines, the astronomer Roger Long, and Daniel Fahrenheit, who demonstrated his thermometer to the Royal Society.32 George Carpenter, 2nd Baron of Killaghy, and Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine, were two masonic Grand Masters proposed to the Society by Desaguliers. Not all those proposed were elected, especially after 1731 when written certificates were introduced to record Fellows’ support. Thomas Wright of Durham, the friend of Elizabeth Carter, was proposed by Desaguliers and two others in 1735, but defeated in the ballot of Fellows despite having read two papers on the Milky Way to the Society; once again, his modest background may have been an issue. Notwithstanding his frequent mention in the Journal Books and all the work he did for them, relations between Desaguliers and the Royal Society were not always easy and he was at times criticized for not carrying out enough experiments. Certainly he did not keep up the pace he had maintained in the early days when he was largely demonstrating at Newton’s behest, nor did he perform as rapidly as had his predecessor, Francis Hauksbee,33 but his work was not confined to demonstrations. In April 1725 he wrote at length to Sir Isaac Newton to send lists of the apparatus he had used in his experiments and apparently also to respond to complaints from the Council that he had not performed at every Thursday meeting. He explained that he had always been present to

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8. Part of a letter to Cromwell Mortimer, Secretary of the Royal Society in which Desaguliers listed services for which he sought payment from the Society in 1735. (Reproduced by kind permission of the Royal Society, London: EL/D2/71)

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take instructions from the President (except when out of town observing the solar eclipse at Bath), but that he did not feel the necessity to demonstrate when there was nothing new to show. However, he added: If repeating Experiments which had been done before, by way of Entertainment, was thought agreeable, I could easily do something every Thursday, having by me a very large Apparatus, which I us’d at my Courses of Philosophy. But I apprehended that unless I had made some new Discovery, or had Models of new and useful Engines to offer, I should only be taking up the Society’s Time […]. Whenever I had made some Experiments not entirely new I had observ’d some Members were displeased.34

Obviously annoyed, Desaguliers asked to have his ‘Directions’ in writing in future, and he pointed out that he had already given detailed descriptions to the Society of many machines he had used in the past and he did not intend to repeat these. As a postscript to the letter he added: I don’t know whether I should call part of my last Year’s Service the Directions which I gave the Smith and Bricklayer for making the contrivance to convey Heat for warming and keeping dry the Repository. But it was done by order.

Presumably Desaguliers had had installed a ventilation device of his own design to make sure the curiosities in the Repository were well cared for and he wanted this noted as he had to justify all his activities in order to be paid. The accounts of the Royal Society show that he was paid £30 for the busy year ending December 1717 (the Council only approved payment in arrears) and then £35 or £40 a year until 1724, when his fee dropped again to £30 per annum.35 After Newton’s death in 1727, when Sloane became President, the Society was even less generous. On 15 January 1729 Desaguliers wrote in some distress to ‘Dr Scheutzer at Sir Hans Sloane’s near Bloomsbury Square’: I intended my self the Honour to have waited upon the President to have spoke 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 confin’d 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 therefore beg of you to be my Advocate to Sir

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Hans, to desire him […] to settle my last Year’s Salary in the next Council […]. This would be of great Service to me at Present because I am entirely out of Money and have pressing Occasion for it.36

According to the Journal Book, on the previous Thursday (9 January) the Ambassador from Tripoli had been present at the Society’s meeting and afterwards all ‘withdrew to the next Room where Dr Desaguliers had prepared several Experiments with the Air Pump for the entertainment of H.E. the Ambassador’. It must have been this that brought on the recurrence of Desaguliers’s chronic gout and prevented his attendance at the 16 January meeting. But he was back the following Thursday when he received thanks for reading a letter received from his Swedish friend Martin Triewald concerning the cohesion of lead balls, and also introduced Henry de Saumarez, from Guernsey, to the meeting. De Saumarez had invented a machine called the Marine Surveyor, ‘contriv’d for the Mensuration of the Way of a Ship at Sea’, which he described to the meeting. Desaguliers had earlier helped with testing the device, though only in the canal in St James’s Park. It is to be hoped that Desaguliers received his much-needed payment. This was not the only time he had to ask for his fee from the Society, or to explain his absence. In October 1733 he wrote to ‘Cromwell Mortimer M.D. Secretary of the Royal Society, to be left with Mr Francis Hauksbee37 at the House of the Royal Society in Crane Court, Fleet Street’ to explain about his travels in Holland, but also to register a complaint: In the Year 1732 I attended the Society till July then I went again to Holland but returned from thence the fifth of November and attended constantly except when sickness prevented me. But I had nothing for the service of that Year, which I believe might be occasion’d by my receiving the 20 ll. for the Year 1731 only in May 1732; so that it might be thought that I was paid for the year 1732, and so it has been forgot since.38

Desaguliers went on to say he could not remember the experiments he had done early in 1732, but five made since November were listed in detail. He continued: ‘If by desiring to know what Expenses I have been at, then they are as follows’, and listed costs for various equipment, totalling £11 0s 6d, and added: I don’t reckon Porterage for carrying the machines to and from the Society. But before I bring anything to the Society, I spend many Days about it at Home to try the Experiments before Hand; and adjust the Machines: so that the Time expended

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and accidental Charge that Way is more than Double the Cost of the Machines, especially because it often happens that the whole Instrument is thrown by, when I find it is not worth the Society’s Notice. I hope you will be so good as to lay these considerations before the Council, and you will much oblige.

Desaguliers did in fact receive £30 on 19 November 1732, but the Society never treated him generously, especially when his expenses are considered, and his salary compared unfavourably with those of Hauksbee, the clerk, who that year received £50, and the secretaries, Dr Mortimer and Mr Machin, who each had £60. Again in 1737 Desaguliers was asked to justify his claim, and wrote on 13 December from Kew, where he was staying to entertain the household of the Prince of Wales, while they were in mourning for Queen Caroline: Having been ill of the Gout for six months last Year, I was not able to attend the Society, and therefore had not an opportunity of performing many Experiments; neither did I set down the few Experiments I made. All I can call to mind is that I made electrical Experiments twice and a third time I shew’d Models of several Improvements in Gunnery […]. I have a notion I made some other Experiments but not being certain I had rather say less than more. If my Health continues, I shall attend very constantly this Winter. Whilst I stay here I shall come to Town every Thursday, and at my Return to my own House, which will be in about a Fortnight’s Time, I’ll make a thorough Search for the Papers that I had. P. S. If the Council please to take in my Tide-Machine as an Experiment which I shew’d at the last Meeting as an Experiment belonging to last Year, it will be kind.39

His health had caused Desaguliers to let the Society down on more than one occasion; on 4 January 1727, obviously concerned, he had written to Sloane: I had prepar’d some Experiments to entertain the Society at ye next meeting after ye Election but having been confin’d to my bed ever since last Thursday night by a Fever, am prevented. If it please God I recover my Health, I shall omit no Opportunity of constantly attending to do myself that honour.40

The Council of the Royal Society may have considered Desaguliers as favoured because he was excused his Fellowship dues, but when they obliged him to recall his experiments in order to claim his fees they were not being helpful. The Journal Book could have given all the details they needed. His pay dwindled to just ten guineas, still in arrears, for 1741 and 1742. In those last

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two years towards the end of his life when he was concentrating on innovative electrical experiments, and also working on the second volume of his Course of Experimental Philosophy, he presented fewer papers. Desaguliers’s last recorded appearance at the Society was little more than a month before his death, when on 12 January 1744 he was thanked for presenting a copy of that book. The significance of Desaguliers’s contribution to the scientific work of the Royal Society can be judged by the fact that between 1714 and 1742 he read numerous papers at Society meetings, often following previous experiments, and also that he wrote almost 60 papers in the Philosophical Transactions on a wide range of topics. An ‘Advertisement’ in one edition of the journal indicates that Desaguliers employed help in preparing his articles. It suggested that, albeit belatedly, Fellows might care to amend an earlier edition: Whereas I published a Paper concerning the Figure of the Earth, in the Philosophical Transactions No 388, and a paragraph that I cancell’d was, by the Mistake of my Amanuensis, printed whilst I was sick: I desire such readers as have the Transaction by them, to cancel from the Words […] to the end of the paragraph. Having from time to time neglected to give this notice, I chose to do it here, tho’ late, rather than wholly to omit it. J. T. Desaguliers.41

It is understandable that Desaguliers needed an amanuensis to copy out his work for many of his articles were long, often illustrated with engravings to show his experiments, and sometimes they involved complicated mathematical explanations. In 1718 there were almost two hundred Fellows of the Royal Society, and a list was compiled which included their declared scholarly interests. About half indicated themselves to be students of Newtonian philosophy while the rest cited natural history or anatomy, antiquities, or no special interest at all. About a quarter were foreign ‘corresponding Fellows’ who sometimes sent reports to the Society, while some British members lived in the country and were only rarely in London. Attendance at the ordinary meetings at which Desaguliers lectured is thought to have been on average between 30 and 40. Some of these gentlemen may not have understood all of his arguments, but his experiments would have engendered lively discussion and consolidated Newtonian ideas. He made sure to include more popular, albeit genuine, topics among his talks, such as the recurrent question of the possibility of perpetual motion and the way tides behave. The tidal question required the special machine he had designed and this impressed the Earl of Egmont, who wrote in his diary for Thursday 16 March 1738:

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After dinner I went to the Royal Society, where Dr Desagulieres explained the cause of the ebbing and flowing of the sea according to the doctrine of attractions, by a very ingenious machine in clockwork.42

It was Desaguliers who was largely instrumental in carrying on the empirical tradition of the Royal Society after the death of Sir Isaac Newton, when the less academic Sir Hans Sloane took over the presidency. Desaguliers ensured that, as well as being discussed theoretically, ideas were whenever possible reinforced by experiment, and he encouraged this important tenet of Newtonianism. But although a Fellow for some 30 years, his role was always somewhat that of a privileged servant. He was excused membership dues but, as well as his role as demonstrator, he had to accept orders from the Council to undertake assorted tasks, such as producing translations of foreign letters and criticisms of books, giving special demonstrations and communicating the results of experiments, whether his own or those of others. For his part, Desaguliers undoubtedly enjoyed the social atmosphere and the company of the distinguished gentlemen, both British and foreign, that he met at the Society. He received the Society’s prestigious Copley Medal three times: in 1724 and 1736, for all the experiments he had performed before the Society in each of those years, and in 1741 for his electrical experiments. It is difficult to assess today whether Desaguliers’s versatility and general usefulness were fully appreciated by the Royal Society, or whether he was to some extent taken for granted. Many of the Fellows, who paid well for exclusive membership, considered that it was their right to be entertained and instructed by lecturers such as Desaguliers.43 Away from Crane Court, some discussions among Fellows of the Royal Society continued over dinner. One precursor of the more formal Royal Society Club was the Sun Club, which was founded in 1743. This met on Tuesdays in St Paul’s Churchyard and later in Holborn, and counted Sir Hans Sloane, James Jurin, Martin Folkes and George Graham amongst its members. John Byrom described some of the meetings, and although not actually mentioned by name, it is very likely that Desaguliers was sometimes present. Also, many Fellows of the Royal Society were freemasons and would have met with Desaguliers at lodge meetings. A comparison of surviving masonic lodge records with the Royal Society lists shows that almost 90 men belonged to both organizations at times in the period from 1723 to 1744 (the year of Desaguliers’s death) and that 13 Grand Masters of Grand Lodge from 1719 to 1741, as well as several senior masonic officers, were also Fellows of the Society.44 In many cases it is not easy to decide whether membership of a masonic lodge came before or after fellowship, but it is not inconceivable that Desaguliers encouraged some fellows

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to become masons, and, as mentioned, he proposed two noblemen who were masons for fellowship (Lord Coleraine and Lord Carpenter of Killaghy). As well as his fellowship of the Royal Society, Desaguliers became a corresponding member of the prestigious French Academy of Sciences; he was nominated by Charles du Fay on 3 December 1735, soon after his only visit to Paris.45 Du Fay served as Directeur of the Academy in 1733 and 1738 and he had been elected a corresponding Fellow of the Royal Society in 1729. Desaguliers had met him in London and again in Paris, and they had common interests which included electricity and steam engines. Another organization with which Desaguliers became associated was the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society.46 Founded in the Lincolnshire town in 1712 by Maurice Johnson (1688–1755) ‘for mutual benevolence […] and improvement in the liberal sciences and in polite learning’, the Society held regular meetings and counted among its early members Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Hans Sloane, Alexander Pope, William Stukeley, John Gay and Samuel Wesley (father of John and Charles Wesley). Topics discussed included important local concerns such as fen drainage, recent scientific discoveries, poetry and antiquarian matters, which were especially popular. It was one of the most respected of several similar local societies that were formed around this time, and it is still active today. In the summer of 1734 Desaguliers wrote a note, surprisingly attached to a detailed description of the observation of a star, which stated that he desired: To be admitted a member of the Gentleman’s Society in Spalding Lincolnshire being informed of the good Design & Nature being informed of that Institution by their Founder and Secretary & being well acquainted with Sr Izaac Newton, Sr Hans Sloane, Major General Hunter, His Grace the Duke of Buccleuch, Roger Gale […] John Grundy [and other] mathematical members thereof, […] Dr Stukeley […] & Dr Jurin.

Desaguliers must have met Maurice Johnson in London who then wrote to his son in Spalding, asking him to inform the officers of the Society that ‘Dr Desaguliers very much approves of o[ur] Institution having read over the Orders and Rules of w[hich] I keep a copy here’. On 18 July 1734 ‘the Revd. learned John Theophilus Desaguliers LLD. FRS was at his own Instance proposed by Mr John Grundy […] to be admitted an honourary Member of this Society’.47 On 1 August Desaguliers was duly elected and his expertise in hydraulic engineering would have been noted. His proposer, John Grundy (c.1696–1748), was a land surveyor and civil engineer who worked on the drainage of fenland around Spalding belonging to the Duke

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of Buccleuch.48 Grundy put forward four propositions ‘which plainly shew the necessity of mathematical and philosophical knowledge in the draining of lands that lie near to the sea’, with plans and special reference to the fens, and to this proposal was attached a letter of approval from Desaguliers, dated 15 April 1734: I have examin’d Mr Grundy’s Paper above written which I take to be not only the best, the only Method for effectually draining over-flow’d lands; and the Experiment he mentions in his fourth Proposition (on the Foundation of his Calculation) is sufficiently exact for Practice, very well agreeing with several Experiments which I have made. I also know him to be of sufficient Capacity and Skill for directing and assisting in making Rivers navigable, and other such Works.49

It is not recorded whether Desaguliers ever travelled as far as Spalding to see the fenland drainage at first hand, or indeed to attend a meeting of the Gentlemen’s Society.50 There were, however, close links between the Royal Society and Spalding and the minutes of the Gentlemen’s Society record that Dr Stukeley on occasion read memoirs from London, including descriptions of Desaguliers’s electrical experiments. A copy of Desaguliers’s Dissertation Concerning Electricity ‘whereby he won the prize of that subject from ye Academy at Bordeaux’ was presented on 23 June 1743 and is still in the library in Spalding. In 1738 Desaguliers was also elected to honorary membership of the Peterborough Gentleman’s Society, which was similar in aims but less prestigious and shorter-lived than the Spalding Society. They too were interested in some of his communications to the Royal Society, but again it seems unlikely that he ever attended a meeting in Peterborough, though he probably donated a book to their library. Desaguliers had little time to spare for associations apart from the Royal Society and, of course, his close involvement with freemasonry.

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Freemasonry: Desaguliers’s Contribution to the Early Years of Grand Lodge

Freemasonry was reinvented in London in 1717 and the role of John Theophilus Desaguliers in the development of the newly established Grand Lodge is considered by many masonic historians to be of major significance. In turn, freemasonry represented for Desaguliers one of the most important aspects of his life, to which he devoted considerable thought and energy. Freemasonry has a long, involved and controversial history about which much has been written, largely by masons themselves.1 Although the emphasis on geometry, and in particular the geometry of architecture, may not relate back directly, as sometimes suggested, to Solomon’s Temple, it is almost certain that there was some connection between medieval builders, or operative masons, and the so-called speculative masons who formed the Grand Lodge. Operative masons were originally working stonemasons belonging to tradesmen’s guilds; these skilled craftsmen joined together in groups, or lodges, for mutual benefit and support, to supervise apprentices, and to keep some of the secrets of their trade from the uninitiated. Undoubtedly certain arcane rituals were developed, some of which helped identify members as they travelled from site to site, and which gave an air of mystery and fellowship to the lodge meetings. Although the guilds were less powerful by the seventeenth century the masons continued to meet, but craftsmen were apparently joined in their lodges by non-operative or speculative members who were not involved in manual work but perhaps had some interest in architecture and a wish for companionship. Elias Ashmole (1617–92), astrologer, antiquary, collector and Fellow of the Royal Society, is often credited with being one of the first of the speculative masons; he recorded in his diary that he joined a lodge in Warrington in 1646 and later attended a masonic meeting in London in 1682. Little is known of English freemasonry at this time, but in Scotland early lodges were particularly well organized and recorded.2 It is interesting that one argument for the theory that the formation of the Royal Society in 1660 was closely associated with

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freemasonry relates to the influence of Sir Robert Moray, a founding Fellow and prominent Scottish freemason. Certainly by the 1670s operative masonic lodges in England were indeed admitting non-masonic gentlemen, probably largely for economic reasons. Historians of Enlightenment thinking, and of politics and society in post-Restoration times, consider that part of the appeal of early speculative freemasonry lay in its claim to be in contact with universal and ancient wisdoms that could be demonstrated by the mathematical and architectural skills manifest in early artisan achievements.3 Another possible connection between the operative masons and the new groups is the likelihood of a didactic element in the meetings and the possibility that the mathematical principles employed in architecture, and thus familiar to the working masons, were applied to discussion of the new ideas of science that were emerging at this time. Supporters of this theory cite the fact that Sir Christopher Wren was a freemason as well as a founder Fellow of the Royal Society, but the extent of his involvement is also debateable.4 Possible connections with other esoteric societies such as the Rosicrucians and the Knights Templar represent too complex and questionable an issue to be discussed here. Most masonic historians would today agree that the questions of how, when, why and where freemasonry originated are still the subject of speculation, but the general consensus is that it descends directly or indirectly from the organization of operative stone masons who built the great cathedrals and castles of the middle ages. From this brief summary of a large and controversial subject, it can be seen that the exact nature of the masonic movement at the beginning of the eighteenth century is unclear, and undoubtedly the activity and membership of different lodges varied widely. A further reason for doubt as to the exclusivity of masonic lodges is the upsurge in clubs and societies of all kinds towards the end of the seventeenth century, mainly in London, but also in provincial towns and cities.5 Many had aims very similar to those of the freemasons: some were groups opposed to the intolerance of state politics and religion who met to discuss social problems amongst friends, some were charitable ‘Box Clubs’ collecting dues in a box from which members could draw in times of need, while others met through a common interest in cultural or scientific matters. Many clubs were short-lived and have left no records. Some met in coffee houses and others were primarily gentlemen’s drinking clubs; several offered membership to a wider range of the social spectrum than might have been expected, permitting gentlemen of the nobility to exchange views even with tradesmen. The groups calling themselves freemasons were not alone amongst these societies in having initiation rituals and enjoying feasts and even public

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processions but there were several active masonic lodges in London which took their names from the taverns in which they met. It is probably fair to say that until quite recently historians underestimated the importance of freemasonry. Once the organization had reinvented itself early in the eighteenth century it became highly influential in the development of ideas and in the social, intellectual and political life of Britain, as well as other parts of the world. From the time that the Grand Lodge in London was established the movement grew rapidly. While many other societies of the eighteenth century died a natural death, freemasonry developed internationally with individual lodges becoming affiliated to new national organizations patterned on the Grand Lodge. But before 1717, there was little communication, or conformity in form of meetings or matters of ritual between masonic lodges. The time was ripe for the formation of the English Grand Lodge and the events now universally accepted as the birth of modern freemasonry. This was the situation when Desaguliers became closely involved with the restructuring of the fraternity; his importance in this regard has been acknowledged in masonic literature around the world. The accounts of Desaguliers’s masonic career vary considerably in quality; some are merely adulatory and reiterate previously published material, but others are well researched and provide useful information on this and other aspects of Desaguliers’s life.6 Exactly when he first became involved in freemasonry remains unclear.7 He must have been a member for some time before 1717 as he played such an important role soon after that year, and he remained an active and prominent freemason until his death in 1744. In 1717 Desaguliers was known to be a member of the lodge that met at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, almost next door to his house in Channel Row. It has been suggested that he joined them as early as 1712, but it would seem that 1715, the year he moved to Westminster, would be a more likely date. He could well have been associated earlier with a lodge in the city of London, such as the one meeting at the Goose and Gridiron in St Paul’s Churchyard. He might even have learned about the masons while at Oxford. Elias Ashmole’s long association with Oxford may signal early activity there to which Desaguliers could have been exposed, but there are no surviving records that could support this idea. The Rummer and Grapes Lodge, now known as No. 4, was an old-established, large and active lodge, sometimes referred to as one of the ‘Lodges of Antiquity’. No detailed minutes of Lodge meetings survive earlier than 1783, but the earliest lodge lists indicate that in 1723 it had 73 members, many of whom were distinguished or titled men. Sometime before 1723, probably due to its large membership, No. 4 Lodge changed its meeting place (and consequently

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its name) from the Rummer and Grapes to the Horn Tavern, Westminster.8 But earlier, in 1717, its members formed an alliance with those of three smaller London lodges and, while the individual lodges retained their autonomy, the Grand Lodge of England was born. The others were those which met at the Goose and Gridiron Alehouse in St Paul’s Churchyard, the Crown Alehouse in Parker’s Lane by Drury Lane, and the Appletree Tavern in Charles Street, Covent Garden. On 24 June 1717, the first Assembly and Feast of the Free and Accepted Masons was held at the Goose and Gridiron Alehouse. Since then, 24 June, which is St John the Baptist’s Day, has always been an important date in the masonic calendar. Anthony Sayer, probably because he had been a mason for more years than most, was elected as the first Grand Master. Sayer was a member of the Appletree Tavern lodge, but little is known of him except that he may have been in the book trade and later was in straitened circumstances and received charitable help from the Grand Lodge.9 He was, however, remembered by the freemasons at his funeral in 1742, which Desaguliers undoubtedly attended as he then lived nearby. It was reported in the London Evening Post on 16 January that: A few days since, died, aged about 70 years, Mr Anthony Sayer who was Grand Master of the most Ancient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons in 1717. His Corpse was followed by a great Number of Gentlemen of that Honourable Society of the best Quality from the Shakespear’s Head Tavern in the Piazza of Covent Garden, and decently interr’d in Covent Garden Church.

Desaguliers would have been present also at that important first feast in 1717, and at the subsequent one when George Payne was elected Grand Master. Desaguliers had probably known Payne, a fellow member of Lodge No. 4, for some time.10 He was an amateur antiquarian who worked for over 40 years as Secretary to the Tax Office and whose address (the Leather Office in St Martin’s Lane) had, early in 1713, been one of the places where subscriptions were taken for Desaguliers’s first London lectures. George Payne’s younger brother, the Rev. Thomas Payne, had been an exact contemporary of Desaguliers at Christ Church, Oxford, and it is possible that it was he who first introduced the two freemasons. The following year, 1719, Desaguliers himself became Grand Master and then George Payne served another term. The movement grew fast, with a noticeable increase in social status of many new brethren. Several Fellows of the Royal Society as well as members of the nobility became freemasons around this time.11 Desaguliers was deeply entrenched in the affairs of the Grand Lodge

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from its earliest days and became an extremely influential and significant member. He has even on occasion been called ‘The Father of Modern Masonry’ and the Oxford English Dictionary (Second Edition 1989), in the entry defining a freemason as ‘A member of the fraternity called more fully, Free and Accepted Masons’, gave sole mention, not wholly justified, to Desaguliers as guiding the formation of the Grand Lodge.12 It was George Payne who, during his second term as Grand Master, first produced some ‘General Regulations’ for use by the lodges and also encouraged the brethren to collect any masonic material they could find relating to old traditions. This in turn led to the publication in 1723 of the highly influential Constitutions of the Free-Masons, containing the History, Charges, Regulations, &c. of that most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity, for the Use of the Lodges. An engraved frontispiece shows the Constitutions being passed from the Duke of Montagu to his successor as Grand Master, the Duke of Wharton. Behind Wharton are Desaguliers, his Deputy Grand Master, in clerical dress, and the Grand Wardens, Joshua Timson and William Hawkins. On the ground between the Dukes is a geometrical representation of Euclid’s 47th Proposition (the theorem of Pythagoras), a reminder that this is proposed in the text as the foundation of all masonry. No author is named on the title page, but towards the end of the book are the names of the officers of Grand Lodge and a list of the Masters and Wardens of twenty numbered lodges existing in 1723. Lodge 17 has, as Master, ‘James Anderson A M. The Author of this Book’: the text of the Constitutions is always attributed to Anderson, but Payne and Desaguliers undoubtedly made contributions. The first and largest section, certainly by Anderson, contains the historical legend of masonry, in which it is asserted that its traditions can be traced back to Adam. Interesting though they are, these claims were questioned and eventually omitted altogether from later editions of the Constitutions. Anderson regretted that at some ‘private lodges’ valuable old manuscripts relating to masonic history had been ‘too hastily burnt by some scrupulous Brothers, that those Papers might not fall into strange Hands’. He did not make it clear, however, whether he had seen these papers and incorporated the contents into his history. The second section of the Constitutions comprises the ‘Charges’, which concern freemasons’ relationships with God and religion, with politics and government, and with their fellow men (whether brother masons or not), and the secrecy and conduct of lodges. There were originally just two degrees of freemasonry, based on the operative lodges. A brother was initiated as ‘Entered Apprentice’ and progressed to ‘Fellow Craft’; by the time the second edition of the Constitutions was published in 1738 the Third Degree of ‘Master Mason’ was becoming well established. George Payne’s

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9.  The Frontispiece to James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Freemasons (1723). The Duke of Montagu is presenting the scroll and compasses to his successor as Grand Master, the Duke of Wharton. Each is accompanied by his Officers. Desaguliers, who became Deputy Grand Master to Wharton, is the figure on the right in clerical dress.

Regulations, adapted for use of ‘Lodges in and about London and Westminster’, make up the third section of the Constitutions, and finally there are some masonic songs and music for use at meetings. An opening Dedication ‘To His Grace the Duke of Montagu’, praising and thanking him as retiring Grand Master as well as acknowledging the author’s work in compiling the histories, is signed by ‘JT Desaguliers, Deputy Grand Master’. He signs similarly at the end, after Philip Duke of Wharton, Grand Master, approving the Constitutions for use of the Lodges ‘on the 17th Day of January 1722/3’. James Anderson (1679–1739) must have been well acquainted with Desaguliers but, apart from freemasonry, he did not share his interests and unlike many of Desaguliers’s circle was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. Anderson was a Scot who studied at Marischal College and was ordained in his native Aberdeen before moving to London to serve his fellow Scottish Presbyterians. In 1710 he established his congregation in Swallow Street as

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it had outgrown its original church; he took over a Huguenot Church whose members had by then dispersed. This was the same church where Jean Desaguliers, father of John Theophilus, had been lecteur in the late seventeenth century. If the younger Desaguliers, or indeed his mother, had kept in contact with the Huguenots of Swallow Street, he may well have met Anderson at this time. The time and place of Anderson’s initiation into freemasonry are not known, but as his father was Master of the Lodge in Aberdeen, he is likely to have been introduced to the craft in his native Scotland.13 He was certainly an active freemason in London and probably involved in the formation of the Grand Lodge in 1717, as he wrote in detail of the early days. He was then a member of Lodge No. 4, together with Desaguliers, and in 1725 they were both in the French Lodge that met at Solomon’s Temple, Hemmings Row (where Anderson and Lord Carmichael were said to be the only brothers not of French origin). Anderson was at times Junior or Senior Grand Warden of Grand Lodge. He developed his interest in masonic history around the time that he lost his wife’s fortune in the South Sea Bubble; it has been suggested, perhaps cynically, that he started to write for financial reasons and thus was available to start work on the freemasons’ Constitutions in around 1721. Although some of his writings are undoubtedly far-fetched, and much of his historical material, together with the complex Royal Genealogies that he also published, were later largely discredited, his achievement was to save much material for posterity. He gave an invaluable account of the early days of the newly constituted Grand Lodge in the much altered and extended second edition of the Constitutions which appeared in 1738. From 1717 until formal minutes were kept from 1723, Anderson’s record is all that survives, and even from 1723 his detailed reports of the activities and officers of Grand Lodge add much to the story of early freemasonry. When he died in late May 1739 Anderson was buried, as a dissenter: In Bunhill Fields in a very remarkable deep grave. His Pall was supported by five Dissenting Teachers and the Rev Dr Desaguliers. It was followed by about a Dozen of Free Masons, who encircled the grave and […] the Brethren in a most solemn and dismal Posture, lifted up their Hands, sigh’d and struck their Aprons three times in Honour of the Deceased.14

This report of an early masonic funeral was copied in provincial English papers as well as the American Boston Evening Post on 15 October 1739, testifying to the importance the wider masonic community attached to Anderson. It must have been some measure of the respect Desaguliers had for Anderson that he, an aging Anglican Minister, joined actively with non-conformists at the funeral.

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By this time, 1739, Desaguliers was coming to the end of a long and active masonic career which had begun well over twenty years earlier. It was in 1719, at the meeting at the Goose and Gridiron, that he was elected to succeed George Payne as third Grand Master of the Grand Lodge. At that time he was not known to have been a Master of an individual lodge, nor to have had any special masonic expertise but he may have been selected because of his association with the Royal Society and his proven ability as a lecturer. Of Desaguliers’s election it was recorded that: Brother Payne having gather’d the Votes, after dinner proclaim’d our Reverend Brother John Theophilus Desaguliers, LL.D., F.R.S., Grand Master of masons, and being duly invested, install’d, congratulated and homaged, he forthwith reviv’d the old regular and peculiar Toast or Healths of the Free Masons. Now several old Brothers, that had neglected the Craft, visited the Lodges; some Noblemen were also made Brothers, and more new Lodges were constituted.15

It is unfortunate that no printed copy of ‘an eloquent oration’ made by Desaguliers after his election has survived, but he is thought to have voiced his concern for the reintroduction of some old traditions and formality to lodge meetings, which other members apparently appreciated. From this time many new lodges were established under the auspices of Grand Lodge, taking the names of the taverns or coffee house in which they met. Some were short-lived, or changed their venue and name, making records difficult to interpret. A list compiled in 1723 is thought to be incomplete, but it already named 52 lodges.16 Grand Lodge was initially only concerned with freemasonry within ten miles of London, but from 1724 lodges across the country, as far afield as Bristol, Norwich, Chester, Carmarthen, and Gosport in Hampshire, became affiliated. The first provincial lodge listed, with which Desaguliers was closely associated, met at the Queen’s Head Tavern in Bath. An engraved list made by freemason John Pine in 1729 gave the insignia of over 80 lodges, and included one in Madrid and another in India. According to the new rules stated in the Constitutions of 1723, only lodges warranted by the Grand Lodge and approved by the Grand Master or his deputy could initiate new members. They then elected as officials a Master, two Wardens, a treasurer and secretary, and sometimes a tyler who guarded the door of the lodge. Individual lodges would meet once or twice a month in a private room of an inn or tavern around a long trestle table with the Master at one end, the Wardens at the other, and members in between taking their places in order of seniority. There would be symbols of freemasonry

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on the table as well as ample wine, punch and ale, tobacco jars and churchwarden pipes. After administrative business and catechetical lectures in which ‘ceremonies, principles, tenets, symbols and emblems of freemasonry’ were expounded upon (often quite briefly), new candidates took the oath of fidelity and secrecy. Once this was over masonic items were removed, discussion could be less formal and the landlord brought in supper, after which the lodge closed. Grand Lodge meetings continued to convene in London, four times a year, with the important annual feast on, or close to, St John the Baptist’s Day. At the feast in 1720, ‘Brother Desaguliers having gather’d the votes, after Dinner, proclaim’d aloud’ that George Payne was again elected to succeed him as Grand Master. Possibly the election was not without controversy, as at this meeting it was agreed that in future, in order to avoid disputes on feast day, it should be decided in advance who was next to be Grand Master. Also, from now on the new Grand Master would himself choose his Deputy and his Grand Wardens, rather than these posts too being decided by vote. The Assembly and Feast in June 1721 was a much more elaborate affair and the new Grand Master was to be John, 2nd Duke of Montagu; from then on, without exception, all British Grand Masters have been members of the aristocracy or the royal family. Anderson gave a colourful account of the day’s proceedings. In the morning the outgoing Grand Master, George Payne, and his officers met the Duke, together with the officers of twelve individual lodges, at the King’s Arms Tavern in St Paul’s Churchyard and approved his election. Several new brothers were initiated, including the future Earl of Chesterfield, and then the party ‘in proper Clothing and in due Form’ marched to Stationers’ Hall where they were met by ‘about 150 true and faithful, all clothed’. By now the congregation had outgrown the space available in a tavern and attracted the attention of the press: There was a Meeting on Saturday last at Stationers Hall of between two and three hundred of the antient Fraternity of Free-Masons, who had a splendid Dinner, and Musick. Several Noblemen and Gentlemen were present at this Meeting, and his Grace the Duke of Montague was unanimously chosen Master for the ensuing Year, and Dr. Beale Sub-Master. The Reverend Dr. Desaguliers made a Speech suitable to the Occasion.17

After grace was said they ‘dined with Joy and Gladness’ and then, with elaborate ceremony and two processions around the hall, the Duke of Montagu and his chosen officers were installed. Desaguliers’s eloquent oration on masons and

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masonry ended proceedings; although at this time he held no special office, he was obviously very much to the fore of the movement. The Duke of Montagu (1690–1749), was a wealthy aristocrat and courtier whose wife was a daughter of the Duke of Marlborough. He is said to have been a personable man with interests in philosophy and medicine and he had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1717; Desaguliers would have met him at Society meetings as well as through freemasonry. Montagu’s year as Grand Master was an active one which saw the preparation for printing of the innovative Constitutions. The number of lodges represented at Grand Lodge meetings more than doubled, as ‘Ingenious Men of all Faculties and Stations being convinced that the Cement of the Lodge was Love and Friendship, earnestly requested to be made Masons, affecting this amicable Fraternity more than other Societies then often disturbed by warm disputes’. Although Montagu’s ‘good Government’ inclined many to have him re-elected for another year, this was not to be. Philip, Duke of Wharton (1698–1731), was a Jacobite sympathizer who had recently been made a freemason and, although not Master of a lodge, he had ambitions to control Grand Lodge, possibly hoping to influence it against the Hanoverian succession. In June 1722 Wharton met secretly with some supporters, who were indeed masons, and they chose him to be the next Grand Master. However, no Deputy Grand Master was chosen and the irregularity of the meeting was noted. Montagu effectively remained in charge until he ‘healed the Breach of Harmony’ by summoning a meeting the following January at which Wharton promised to be ‘True and Faithful’. Wharton was then formally elected Grand Master and chose Desaguliers as his Deputy, and James Anderson as one of his Grand Wardens. Anderson later recorded that Wharton was an assiduous Grand Master regularly visiting Lodges with his Deputy and Wardens, ‘and his Worship was well pleas’d with their kind and respectful Manner of receiving them, as they were with his affable and clever Conversation’. How accurate Anderson was in this assessment it is impossible to judge, but Desaguliers, as Deputy, would have been actively involved and aware that ‘many Noblemen and Gentlemen of the first rank desir’d to be admitted to the Fraternity, besides other Learned Men, Merchants, Clergymen and Tradesmen, who found a Lodge to be a safe and pleasant Relaxation from Intense Study or the Hurry of Business, without Politicks or Party’. Things were not always without friction, however. At this time Desaguliers is likely to have used his tact and judgement in order to exert some influence over the maverick Duke of Wharton and avoid any drift to the Jacobite cause. At the meeting of Grand Lodge in April 1723 Philip Wharton proposed as his successor the Earl of Dalkeith (later to become Duke of Buccleuch) and

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arrangements were made for his installation at the Grand Feast and Assembly on 24 June in Merchant Taylors’ Hall. Tickets were ‘order’d to be Ten Shillings each, impres’d from a curious Copper Plate’ and specially sealed and distributed, and the ‘Committee appointed to keep out Cowans came early’. Cowans are those who are not initiated into freemasonry and great care was taken to keep them away.18 Some four hundred duly clothed masons attended and dined elegantly but the absence of the Grand Master elect, the Earl of Dalkeith, caused some confusion. Reassurances were given that he would soon return from Scotland and the Duke of Wharton duly led the postprandial procession to proclaim him. Anderson then merely records that Dalkeith had already appointed Dr Desaguliers to be his Deputy Grand Master and that it was he who took the chair and called for the meeting to close. However, it is from this time that minutes of Grand Lodge have survived and from these records a much more acrimonious picture emerges.19 At the behest of Dalkeith there had been an election before dinner at which Desaguliers had been voted the new Deputy Grand Master, together with Francis Sorrell and John Senex (publisher of the Constitutions) as Grand Wardens. Wharton, however, publicly disputed the validity of the count and called for a fresh election at which he and his followers opposed Desaguliers, but the Huguenot was again returned, albeit with the narrowest majority of only one vote. It was surprising that Wharton turned against Desaguliers, who had recently served as his own Deputy but it may be that he found him unsympathetic to any Jacobite leanings and too insistent upon correct procedures for his taste. In the event, Wharton angrily strode out of the assembly before it had closed. That, according to the minutes which he himself signed, was why Desaguliers had to take the chair and end proceedings. The Duke of Wharton was certainly a difficult character: he opposed his family’s Whig tendencies and took up the Stuart cause, but was inconsistent in his loyalties and possibly mentally unstable. He is said at one lodge meeting to have caused embarrassment by having the band play only Jacobite tunes and he was no loss to the freemasons, whom he then proceeded to mock. Surprisingly, though, he subsequently constituted a lodge in Madrid in 1728, probably for reasons of expediency and after yet another change of loyalties. After this upsetting meeting Grand Lodge entered a calmer phase. Desaguliers served Grand Master Dalkeith as his Deputy and in 1724 they were replaced by the Duke of Richmond and Martin Folkes, respectively; both were active Fellows of the Royal Society, and the Duke was Master of Lodge No. 4. Manuscripts that have survived in the Goodwood papers of the Duke of Richmond indicate that Desaguliers continued to have close interest in Grand Lodge affairs. On 11 March 1725 he wrote and counselled the Duke not to

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intercede in a dispute between two brethren. One of these was known to be ‘a forward and obstinate Man’, and to air his complaint in the presence of others might prove prejudicial to masonry. Desaguliers promised to explain the matter further when he met the Duke later that Thursday at the Royal Society. Also, in a petition, in French but undated, the Duke, as Grand Master, was asked by eight French-speaking brethren for permission to form a French Lodge in London. They requested to have for their Master ‘notre cher et très vénérable frère, Jean Théophile Desaguliers, Docteur en Droit, et Maçon très Zélé’. A possible venue was suggested as ‘chez notre frère Segalas’: Israel Segalas, one of the signatories, was a distinguished Huguenot gunsmith in London. He and the other brethren were all listed in 1725 as members of the French Lodge. They met at Solomon’s Temple, Hemmings Row, with Desaguliers as their Master, so it can be assumed that their petition was successful. Desaguliers became Deputy Grand Master for the third time in December 1725, under Lord Paisley. Paisley was another FRS of long standing whose scientific achievements, which included work on lodestones, would have impressed his deputy. In the account of Grand Lodge proceedings in Anderson’s 1738 Constitutions it is mentioned that between February and December 1726 the Deputy Grand Master personally visited over 30 of the lodges that were affiliated to Grand Lodge. These visits are likely to have represented a form of inspection and would have been fitted into Desaguliers’s already busy life; they bear witness to the significance he attached to masonic procedure and conformity. After this Desaguliers held no further formal office in Grand Lodge, but he was often mentioned in the minutes and on occasion acted as temporary Grand Master. In 1728 he made the important proposal that twelve Stewards be appointed to have responsibility for the arduous organization of the annual feast, and their health was duly drunk. Then ‘The Stewards likewise propos’d Dr Desaguliers Health for reviving the Office of Stewards (which appeared to be agreeable to the Lodge in general) and the same was drunk accordingly’. Ever a perfectionist, three years later Desaguliers spoke to Grand Lodge on irregularities that had arisen in the wearing of ‘Marks of Distinction’ by its officers. While the Grand Master, his Deputy and Wardens (and those who had formerly held these positions) should wear ‘their Jewels in Gold or Gilt pendant to blue ribbons about their Necks and white Leather Aprons lined with blue Silk’, the Stewards should use red ribbons and silk. Those who are merely Masters and Wardens of individual lodges were to use white and ‘no other Colour whatsoever’. It seems the company agreed to be more careful about the regulations in future. And in 1735 great applause greeted Desaguliers when, acting as Deputy Grand Master, he drew notice to the great

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‘want of Order’ in debates in Grand Lodge. He proposed that to preserve ‘proper Decency and Temper’ only one person should speak at a time, no Brother should attempt to interrupt another who was on his feet addressing the chair and, if two or three should rise together, they should be heard in turn. It was recommended that such seemingly reasonable rules should apply to individual lodges too. The records survive of the lodge constituted in 1724 under Desaguliers’s friend, Martin Folkes FRS, at the Maid’s Head Tavern in Norwich and these quote ‘Rules recommended by our worthy Brother Dr Desaguliers’.20 As well as concerns with colours of apron linings and members’ subscriptions, these state that ‘no ridiculous trick be play’d with any person when he is admitted’, that the Lodge should not change venue without agreement by two-thirds of the brethren, and that ‘Every Master on his Election shall treat ye Brethren with two bottles of wine and ye Wardens with one bottle each’. There is no record that Desaguliers ever attended the lodge in Norwich, nor how widely his By-Laws for lodges were used. Perhaps the most interesting clause in them is the one condemning tricks played at initiation ceremonies. Freemasonry came under attack from the early 1720s, both in printed pamphlets and in the press, and the rites of entry to the brotherhood were frequently lampooned. The processions were also mocked but above all the secrecy surrounding the ritual at meetings was talked of by those who were not freemasons, and indeed by some lapsed brothers. The Duke of Wharton, having left the masons in annoyance, set up a society called the Antient Noble Order of the Gormogons whose sole purpose appears to have been to ridicule freemasonry. It claimed to have been founded by the Emperor of China and that no mason would be admitted until he had ‘renounced his Novel Order and been properly degraded’. The Gormogons were fairly short-lived and probably would hardly be remembered but for William Hogarth’s 1724 print The Mystery of Masonry Brought to Light by the Gormogons. This satirizes a masonic procession led by elaborately dressed grandees followed by a dancing monkey and a bare-bottomed old woman riding an ass while sitting on a ladder held by an aproned cleric. A crowd of followers includes an obvious nobleman and all are mocked by a couple of onlookers. It is likely that the cleric and the figure on the ass were modelled on Desaguliers and Anderson, and the nobleman on Wharton.21 The inscription reads: What Honour! Wisdom! Truth! & Social Love! Sure such an Order has its Birth above. But Mark Free Masons! What a Farce is this?

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How wild their Myst’ry! What a Bum they kiss. Who would not Laugh when such Occasion’s had? Who would not Weep, to think ye World so Mad.

Although disrespectful when using the masons as subjects in his work – for example, Night from The Four Times of Day is open to interpretation as a metaphor for the deterioration of the craft – Hogarth himself became a freemason. He joined the lodge at the Hand and Appletree Tavern in Little Queen Street in 1725 and, together with Desaguliers, belonged in around 1730 to the exclusive lodge that met at the Bear and Harrow Tavern. Hogarth was appointed a Grand Lodge Steward in April 1735. He may have been influenced by his father-in-law, the artist Sir James Thornhill (1676–1734), who was an active freemason who held office in Grand Lodge and was also a Fellow of the Royal Society.22 A short poem published by Henry Carey in 1729 entitled The Moderator between the Free-Masons and the Gormogons perhaps hoped to ease the differences between the two factions by mocking them both: The Masons and the Gormogons Are laughing at one another While all Mankind is laughing at them; Then why do they make such a pother? They bait their Hook for simple Gulls, And Truth with Bam they smother; But when they’ve taken in their Culls Why then, ’tis… Welcome, Brother.

Freemasonry certainly attracted controversy from the early 1720s, and pamphlets appeared, often arguing the case for and against the fraternity in the form of dialogues which perhaps reflected the ‘question and answer’ sessions of the initiation ceremonies. One publication, unfortunately unattributed and undated, but which must have appeared soon after Anderson’s 1723 Constitutions, is The Secret History of the Free-Masons. Often referred to as The Briscoe Pamphlet after its publisher, Sam Briscoe, this purported to give a more accurate history of freemasonry than that of Anderson and appears on the surface to be genuine. Indeed, the writer appears to be a serious freemason who is shocked that certain elements in Anderson’s history conflict with the biblical account. Interestingly, when Anderson’s story of Hiram is challenged, the writer continues: ‘Thus far the holy Penman, but the most ingenious Doctor

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Desaguliers, to make this Hiram […] a Free-Mason, […] has found out the very Letter of Recommendation which King Hiram sent to Solomon’; the writer says the discovery changes the biblical Hiram into a ‘Jack of all Trades’ from goldsmith to sawyer to ‘fine Scarlet-Dyer’, as well as a mason. This, the only reference to Desaguliers in the text, is noteworthy as he was not normally associated with masonic history and the story of Hiram relates to the central character in the emerging Third Degree of Master Mason.23 There is certainly a hint here that Desaguliers may have played an important part in the creation of the Third Degree, a ritual devised with the new ‘speculative’ masons in mind, but his precise contribution to the development of degrees beyond those of Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft is not yet clearly understood. Whatever its motive, The Briscoe Pamphlet was clearly extremely clever and the writer well informed. The most important of the early masonic exposures was, however, that of Samuel Prichard, who described himself as a ‘late Member of a Constituted Lodge’. Masonry Dissected was said to be a ‘Universal and Genuine Description’ of freemasonry and divulged several of the secrets of its ceremonial in the form of dialogue used at the initiation of new candidates for the first three degrees of the craft. Prichard ended by asserting that ‘I was induced to publish this mighty Secret for the publick Good’ and hoping that it would prevent ‘so many credulous Persons being drawn into so pernicious a Society’. But it was the knowledgeable detail given that would undoubtedly have disturbed Desaguliers and other members of Grand Lodge. Masonry Dissected was soon answered by another booklet, The Perjur’d Freemason Detected. Written anonymously, this corrected and attacked Prichard and, in turn, cleverly interrogated him in a dialogue, suggesting that he was hoping for money from the freemasons and was an ignorant and vengeful fellow. However, Prichard was not without his followers and his pamphlet ran to at least nine editions; his second edition in 1730 was soon followed by another sixpenny pamphlet entitled A New Model for Rebuilding Masonry on a stronger Basis than the Former. This acknowledged Prichard and repeated many of his ‘disclosures’ but also supplied a number of ‘Masonic Songs’ which mocked those printed in the genuine Constitutions. Songs to be used at the end of lodge meetings were popular and Desaguliers may well have written some, such as the response to an apparent exposure in the Flying Post in 1723: To all who Masonry despise This Counsel I bestow, Don’t ridicule, if you are wise,

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A Secret you don’t know; Yourselves you banter and not it, You shew your Spleen and not your Wit. […] Then let us laugh, since we’ve impos’d On those who make a Pother And Cry, the Secret is disclo’d By some False-hearted Brother. The mighty Secret gain’d, they boast, From Post-Boy, or from Flying Post.24

It is impossible to say whether Desaguliers did indeed pen these words; he certainly wrote verse of this kind, but so did many others, both for and against freemasonry. A ‘Song on the Free Masons: by Mr Wilks’ sums up the general anti-masonic feeling mildly and quite succinctly; two verses read: We make for five Guineas, the Price is but small, And then Lords and Dukes, you your Brothers may call, Have Gloves, a white Apron, get drunk and that’s all. A Secret we have, which you never must tell; Lest you should be punish’d hereafter in Hell, A Fate which has never Free-Mason befell.25

Many other anti-masonic publications were less well argued, and some were frankly obscene. Stories were put about that part of the entry ceremony involved exposing the bottom and chest of the initiate, that sodomy was encouraged and prostitutes were on offer at bibulous lodge meetings. One particularly vicious attack on masonry came in The Free Masons; an Hudibrastick Poem which was published anonymously as early as 1723 by ‘A Freemason’ who in the dedication, allegedly to ‘One of the Wardens of the Society of Free-Masons’, explained that he had a priest at hand to give him absolution from the oaths of secrecy he had taken on becoming a mason. ‘This will effectually ease my tender Conscience from the Load it lies under, and I hope entitle me to Pardon and Forgiveness from all Free Masons’, he confidently stated before writing some 18 pages of damning verse. Whether there was any element of truth in the circulated rumours is impossible to determine: certainly heavy drinking was common, and as more lodges opened Grand Lodge would not have had close control over them all. There were also groups claiming to be masons who were not ‘warranted’ by Grand Lodge, but the

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anti-masonic movement seems to have had little, if any, effect on the growth of freemasonry in the early years and to have been largely ignored. However, in 1730, Desaguliers felt obliged to comment at a Grand Lodge meeting on a letter which had appeared in the press and which began: Sir, The Grand Whimsy of Masonry has long been the Subject of Amusement to diverse Persons, who have wonder’d. that among so many idle People as have been admitted into that Society many of whom are not noted for eminent Virtues, of the Gift of Taciturnity, the boasted Secret has never been, thro’ Inadvertence, or the Power of Liquor, divulg’d. Some have imputed this to one Cause, some to another, while others have judged, (with too much Appearance of Reason) that it must be of a very unaccountable Nature, that they are afraid or ashamed to divulge it; since, say they, if there were any thing Praise-worthy or Excellent in it, what should hinder their publishing of it for the Imitation of others?26

The article went on to discuss whether perhaps being a mason made a man a better person, but that it was hard to decide whether or not to belong as the secrets could not be considered in advance. There was nothing in the letter that had not previously appeared in pamphlet form, but Desaguliers was prompted to react. In particular he called for strict regulations ‘preventing any false Brethren being admitted into regular Lodges and such as call themselves Honorary Masons’. Another of Desaguliers’s important contributions to Grand Lodge was his involvement in the establishment of its charitable role, which has survived and expanded over the years. Remembering his family’s need in years gone by for help from the Bounty Fund for impoverished Huguenot refugees, this is likely to have been a subject close to Desaguliers’s heart. While individual lodges would have been likely to have funds for their own members in need (an extension of the idea of Box Clubs), Grand Lodge also appointed a committee in 1725 to consider a general charity. The Minutes record that Desaguliers was a prominent member of that committee but it seems that initially it had little success for it was not until early 1729 that ‘Dr Desaguliers acquainted the Brethren that he found the spirit of Charity reviving in several Lodges’. However, he also emphasized that care should be taken that members should not be admitted who joined merely ‘for the sake of the Loaves’. After further discussions, in the following January Desaguliers again ‘stood up and made a handsome Speech to the Society recommending the general Charity to them intimating that as they had at last agreed to set so commendable a Work on foot, it behoved them to carry on the same, with Unanimity and Zeal’. The question

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as to whether widows and orphans of brethren should be eligible for the Charity remained contentious but Desaguliers’s pragmatic proposal that the matter be deferred until the fund was sufficient to earn interest, and that then the widows and orphans might ‘be relieved out of the Interest but not out of the Principal’ was eventually agreed and the Rules governing the management of the Charity were passed and many individual lodges began to contribute regularly. In April 1730 Desaguliers reported that an annual grant of five guineas was to be given to Westminster Infirmary. The Directors of the Infirmary (‘several of them being Masons’) had offered ‘to take Care of any poor Brother who may happen to be disabled by broken Limbs &c from following his Employment which often happens amongst working Masons’. As by this time very few, if any, of the brethren were engaged in manual work, this probably meant that most of the grant could be applied to the Infirmary’s general fund. In subsequent years Grand Lodge recorded the payment of various sums to Brethren who had ‘fallen under unavoidable Misfortunes’; one of these was the first Grand Master, Anthony Sayer. Then in December 1733 they discussed the new colony of Georgia in America, and it was strenuously recommended that a collection be made amongst members to enable the Trustees of the Charity to send distressed brethren to Georgia where they might be comfortably provided for.27 The proposal by the Deputy Grand Master was seconded by Sir William Keith, who had been for many years Governor of Pennsylvania, by Desaguliers, and by ‘many other very worthy Brethren’, and was accordingly passed. John Perceval FRS, first Earl of Egmont, was closely involved with the projects in the 1730s to establish the colony of Georgia and in December 1732 he had written about ‘hopes that the Society of Freemasons would greatly advance subscriptions’.28 There is no evidence to indicate that Egmont was himself a freemason, but he was well acquainted with Desaguliers as he had attended his lectures, both at his home and at the Royal Society, and is likely to have hoped for help from him in influencing Grand Lodge to be generous. The first recorded masonic lodge in Georgia, at Savannah, dates from 1735 and was one of the first half-dozen in the American Colonies to be affiliated to Grand Lodge in London. Freemasonry quickly became established in the American Colonies and English lodges contributed to the relief of poor families there. The American press often carried reports from London of masonic interest. For example, the Pennsylvania Gazette dated 12 June 1735 referred to the Grand Lodge meeting at the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, that had taken place on 31 March when ‘upwards of 300 Masters and Wardens of Lodges were present properly cloathed’ and a handsome sum was disposed towards the relief of several poor brethren. Along with the Dukes of

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Richmond and Buccleuch, Desaguliers attended, together with ‘several other Persons of the first quality’. Desaguliers’s name often appeared in London newspaper reports of masonic gatherings where he played a significant role. For example, at a Lodge held at the Golden Spikes in Hampstead in April 1732, even though the then Grand Master of Grand Lodge, Lord Montacute, was present, it was Desaguliers who admitted two new brethren.29 The ‘Quarterly Communication of the Antient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons’, held at the Devil Tavern in December 1733 was also fully reported in the press.30 The list of those attending included the Earl of Strathmore, Grand Master; the Provincial Grand Masters of Ireland and of North Wales; Lord Crawford, the Grand Master Elect; Dr. Desaguliers; former Stewards; Members of Parliament and ‘many Masters and Wardens of Lodges in Town and Country’. It was ‘unanimously agreed to encourage Mr Theobald’s last new play, to be acted sometime this Spring’.31 The freemasons sponsored occasional theatrical performances, sometimes involving an element of self-promotion. On one such occasion an ‘Epilogue for the Free Masons spoken by Mrs Younger at the theatre in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, April 27, 1732’ was used to counter suggestions by anti-masons that marriage was threatened by freemasonry because secrets could not be shared with masons’ wives and led to suspicion between couples. The poem began: Well Ladies! Of the Art of Masonry, Altho’ I neither am, nor can be free, Some of their Signs, perhaps I may have seen, And well I know what ’tis they sometimes mean; And therefore I their Advocate appear, To tell you – what you’ll all be glad to hear. What monstrous, horrid Lies do some Folks tell us? Why masons, Ladies! – are quite clever Fellows; They’re Lovers of our Sex, as I can witness; Nor e’er act contrary to Moral Fitness. If any of ye doubt it, try the Masons; They’ll not deceive your largest – Expectations.32

This would certainly have been well received by all the lodge members in the audience; it would be pleasant to think that Desaguliers, and perhaps his wife too, might have been present. The occasion, and the complete epilogue, were reported in detail in the press.33 Over one hundred Brethren enjoyed Farquhar’s Recruiting Officer and ‘attended their Grand Master in procession’.

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In November 1737 an enigmatic notice appeared in the press, which merely stated: We hear that on Saturday last was held at Kew a Lodge of Free-Masons at which Dr Desaguliers presided, when there were admitted several Persons of high Distinction as Brethren of that Order.34

This was a veiled reference, although it would have been widely understood, to the initiation into freemasonry of Frederick, Prince of Wales. He was the first member of the British royal family to become a mason and his reasons for joining, and the timing of this, may well have been politically motivated. The event coincided with the upsurge of the so-called Patriot Opposition of which Prince Frederick became the effective leader. This sought to take issue with the Hanoverian Court of his father, George II, and of his ministers, led by Sir Robert Walpole. Several politicians, including Members of Parliament who were already freemasons and who presumably supported the so-called ‘patriots’, attended the initiation. For Desaguliers it was an undoubted honour to chair the extraordinary Lodge at Kew for the occasion. However, this, together with his appointment as chaplain to Prince Frederick soon after the death of Queen Caroline in 1737, must surely have signalled a cooling of any friendship that had existed between Desaguliers and George II. He had lectured before the royal couple earlier in their reign and they subscribed to his Course of Experimental Philosophy, but relationships between their court and Prince Frederick’s circle, never warm, had deteriorated further. In the event, the Prince of Wales never became notably active as a freemason, but his membership did appear to quell some earlier anti-masonic sentiment. Also, it did not deter the movement from continuing to attract a membership of varied political allegiance.35 From early in his masonic career Desaguliers would often combine his travels for other reasons with visits to lodges. In 1721 he was in Edinburgh for several weeks in late summer when he was solving problems with the city’s water supply. Freemasonry had long been active in Scotland, and an important centre was the Mary’s Chapel Lodge No. 1 in Edinburgh. The minutes of this lodge record that on 24 August 1721: Doctor John Theophilus Des Auguliers, fellow of the Royall Societie, and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Grace James Duke of Chandos, late Generall Master of the Mason Lodges in England, being in town and desirous of having a conference with the Deacon, Warden and Master Masons of Edinr., which was accordingly granted,

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and finding him duly qualified in all points of Masonry, they received him as a Brother into their Societie.36

Desaguliers’s meeting with the senior officers of a prominent Scottish lodge provided an opportunity for him discuss at first hand Scottish masonic practice and in return to pass on information about the formation and working of the Grand Lodge in London. Although Anderson’s Constitutions had yet to appear, the Scottish masons would undoubtedly have been aware of this new association, but their lodges had no such overall organization and no standard form of ritual at this time. A detailed study of Desaguliers’s visit to Edinburgh questions whether he was actually made a member of the Edinburgh Lodge, but as he was invited to two more meetings at Mary’s Chapel (on August 25 and 28) his presence was clearly not unwelcome.37 At these meetings several eminent Edinburgh citizens, including the Lord Provost, were made freemasons and would have become acquainted with Desaguliers who may even have participated in the initiation ceremonies and introduced some elements of Grand Lodge ritual. It is thought that Desaguliers, who fervently believed in this ritual, was keen to see it spread further afield. A suggestion that Desaguliers had been in Edinburgh earlier, on 20 January 1721, when the Burgh Council admitted him as a ‘burgess and gild brother in most ample form’, is based on the wording of the order and claims that this indicates that he was there in person to receive the honour.38 This is doubtful. A winter journey to Edinburgh would have been long and arduous, but more significantly, on that same day in January Desaguliers’s son Thomas was baptized at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster. It is unlikely that the father would have missed this event for which he had assembled distinguished and noble sponsors for the baby. The reason for this Scottish honour is unknown, as is why Desaguliers and a Mr William Walls were earlier made free honorary burgesses of Dunfermline, an ancient town in Fife, on 26 August 1720. The order was made by Sir Peter Halket, Provost of Dunfermline, and transmitted to the recipients by a Captain Halket in London. The records say that ‘Dr. Desagulier was an eminent scientific man, Public Lecturer on Natural Philosophy in London, and author of several scientific works’, but of Mr Walls nothing was known, and no mention was made of freemasonry.39 Whilst in Edinburgh Desaguliers met Sir Richard Steele, who was in the Scottish city in September 1721.40 Steele recalled meeting his old friend who had conducted a series of scientific demonstrations in his Censorium a couple of years earlier. Another acquaintance made by Desaguliers during his busy visit to Edinburgh was the poet Allan Ramsay (1684–1748). A handwritten poem

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was found and published in the nineteenth century and is entitled ‘To Dr John Theophilus Desaguliers, on Presenting him with my Book’ and dated 25 August 1721. Written by Ramsay in dialect, it begins: ‘Is then, the famous Desagulier’s son | To learn the dialect of Calidon’, thus acknowledging the presence of Desaguliers in Scotland. It goes on to ask him to keep Ramsay’s Scottish work in mind when he goes home, and ends flatteringly: O worthy wight, whase genius great refines, And puts in practice Euclid’s unko lines, Be ever blyth, and keeps a saul in heel, Sae beneficial to the common weal.41

The Euclidian reference would have been understood as a reference to Desaguliers being a freemason. Presumably Desaguliers travelled back to London with a copy of Ramsay’s poems in his luggage. On 11 May 1724 there was a total eclipse of the sun that was best visible in the West of England. Desaguliers travelled to Bath where he lectured on and observed the phenomenon, and also attended a masonic meeting in the evening at the Queen’s Head Tavern. He received ‘into the Society of accepted Free-Masons, several fresh Members, among them are the Lord Cobham, Lord Harvey, Mr. Nash, and Mr. Mee with many others’.42 Desaguliers may indeed have constituted the Lodge at the Queen’s Head in Bath the previous year, when he was Deputy Grand Master.43 The Duke of St Albans was its first Master – he too was present to see the eclipse – and it had several distinguished members but, possibly because many only visited Bath occasionally to take the waters, or for the social life, it was relatively short-lived, closing in 1736. However, in 1724 it was flourishing: ‘Mr Nash’ was undoubtedly the celebrated Beau Nash, while ‘Lord Harvey’ was Lord John Hervey of Ickworth (1696–1743), courtier, poet and political commentator. From 1733 a new lodge which met at the Bear Inn in Bath became active and Desaguliers is known to have visited it in 1737 and 1738. In the autumn of 1737 he attended four meetings, presiding as Master on one occasion. He presided again on 17 October 1738, having recently arrived in Bath after a perilous journey during which his coach was attacked by highwaymen.44 Desaguliers was then in Bath as part of the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who, as already mentioned, had become a freemason the previous year, and was now visiting the West Country. On 30 October 1738 both men attended an Extraordinary Meeting in honour of the birthday of King George II at the Bear Inn. Two days later the lodge met again with Desaguliers in the chair and this time the minutes record that he was accompanied by his

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son Thomas, who was then only seventeen years old. Thomas Desaguliers, who later became a distinguished Artillery Officer, had earlier visited a lodge with his father in July 1738, but that time they were at the Rummer Tavern in Bristol, together with other brethren from the Bear in Bath. Lodge minutes record that Desaguliers, always a welcome and honoured guest at any masonic meeting, was also at the St John’s Day feast at the Rummer in Bristol that year. As ‘Mr Thomas Desaguliers’ is listed as one of the brethren who ‘kindly encouraged’ James Anderson as the Author of the 1738 Constitutions it seems that, young as he was, Desaguliers’s son had already been made a freemason at this time. There are, however, no records of later masonic activity during his long military career. With his many scientific contacts in the Netherlands, Desaguliers is likely to have known of a very early masonic lodge in Rotterdam; said to have been founded in 1721, it is thought mainly to have served the British merchants living there at the time. Ten years later, when he spent some time lecturing in Holland, Desaguliers may well have visited this and other lodges on his travels, but he also had one very special masonic duty to perform in September 1731. As Master of an Occasional Lodge in the Hague he officiated at the initiation of His Royal Highness Francis, Duke of Lorraine (1708–65), soon to become Holy Roman Emperor, into the first two degrees of freemasonry.45 Anderson interrupted his chronological account of Grand Lodge meetings in his 1738 Constitutions to record this significant event. Seven brethren were necessary to form the special lodge: as well as Desaguliers, who received the gift of a gold snuff box from the young Grand Duke to mark the occasion, there was the Earl of Chesterfield (the English Ambassador), in whose residence the ceremony took place. Other freemasons present were Chesterfield’s brother (John Stanhope), and his secretary Charles Holzendorf, ‘—Strickland Esq., nephew to the Bishop of Namur’, Mr Benjamin Hadley and ‘an Hollandish brother’.46 While nothing is known of Strickland and Hadley, except that they were probably expatriates who belonged to an English lodge established in Holland, the final member of the group has been identified as Vincent La Chapelle, the Ambassador’s Maître d’Hôtel. La Chapelle was not a Huguenot but a French Catholic émigré who had earlier worked for the Earl of Chesterfield in England. He had belonged to the Union French lodge in London which met at the Prince Eugene’s Head Coffee House. His 3-volume work, privately printed in London in 1733 and entitled The Modern Cook, gives comprehensive instructions on running a gentleman’s household as well as many recipes. From 1735 La Chapelle was in service to William Prince of Orange, which may explain why Anderson, in 1738, called him ‘an Hollandish brother’.

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Anderson continued his account by reporting that later in the year, when Duke Francis was visiting England, Our said Royal Brother Lorrain coming to England this year, Grand Master Lovel formed an Occasional Lodge at Sir Robert Walpole’s House of Houghton Hall in Norfolk and made Brother Lorrain and Brother Pelham Duke of Newcastle, Master Masons. And ever since, both in G. Lodge and in particular Lodges, the Fraternity joyfully remember His Royal Highness in the proper Manner.

The Duke of Lorraine was elevated to the third degree of masonry; the joyful remembrance of this particular fact by the fraternity seems to countermand the supposed policy of equality between brethren, but he was very important politically. Walpole is known to have been a freemason, but this is seldom referred to; the date and place of his initiation is unclear but presumably preceded the use of Houghton Hall for this ceremony in 1731. The fact that the Duke of Lorraine and the Duke of Newcastle were brother masons was mentioned by Horace Walpole, in a letter to his brother Sir Robert Walpole in 1735 concerning intrigue over the exchange of territory in Lorraine for Tuscany.47 Few such examples of masonic influence in Walpole’s political affairs can be found, but there could well have been other instances that were carefully concealed. In 1736 Francis, Duke of Lorraine, married Maria Theresa of Austria, and the press noted that English freemasons had sent their congratulations: The Duke of Lorrain, having been made a Free-mason when in England, the Society has been pleas’d to send him their Compliments upon his Marriage with the Archduchess; and on Thursday last, the Rev Dr Desaguliers deliver’d to the Society a very obliging Answer, on behalf of his Royal Highness.48

Once again Desaguliers was the spokesperson for Grand Lodge. Apparently the only time Desaguliers returned to his native France was in 1735. He made some visits of scientific interest, such as to the waterworks of the Machine de Marly and to observe the steam engine in the King’s gardens, but the main purpose of this journey was masonic. It was reported that, together with the Duke of Richmond, he was in Paris that September for the inauguration of a new lodge at the Hôtel de Bussy: They write from Paris that his Grace the Duke of Richmond, and the Rev. Dr. Desaguliers (formerly Grand Masters of the Antient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons and now authoris’d by the present Grand Master

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10.  Charles Lennox, Second Duke of Richmond and Duke of Aubigny. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society and, like Desaguliers, a Member of Masonic Lodge No. 4. He was Grand Master of Grand Lodge in 1724–25 and was with Desaguliers in Paris in 1735 for the inauguration of the Lodge at the Hotel de Bussy. (Reproduced by kind permission of the Royal Society, London: IM 003820)

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under his Hand and Seal, and the Seal of the Order) having call’d a Lodge at the Hôtel Bussy in the Rue Bussy, his Excellency the Earl of Waldegrave, his Majesty’s Ambassador to the French King; the Rt Hon the President Montesquiou; the Marquis of Lomaria; Lord Dursley, son to the earl of Berkly; […] and several other Persons, both French and English were present, and the following Noblemen and Gentlemen were admitted into the Order, viz. his Grace the Duke of Kingston; the Right Hon. the Count de St Florentin, Secretary of State to his most Christian Majesty; the Right Hon. the Lord Cheuton, son to the Earl of Waldegrave; […] After which the new Brethren gave a Handsome Entertainment to all the Company.49

Although clearly an auspicious occasion, this was not the first French lodge to be listed by the Grand Lodge of England; that, also in Paris, was Au Louis d’Argent, incorporated in 1732.50 And, in 1734, the Duke of Richmond, who in addition held the French title of Duke of Aubigny, had established a lodge at his French chateau of that name.51 In letters to the Duke, his friend and erstwhile tutor, Thomas Hill, wrote in slightly mocking tone that ‘our brother [former] grand maître Desaguliers’ had drawn up the ‘necessary diploma in a style agreeable to the antiquity of the craft’ for the establishment of the Aubigny lodge.52 There was some confusion about the signing and sealing of the document, as the Grand Master had omitted to put his signet upon it, but Hill concluded this could be sent to ‘our brethren in Aubigny’ and pasted on later. ‘What will become of us when things sacred are managed in so negligent a manner!’ he added, perhaps hinting that Desaguliers (who was referred to as ‘Dessy’), with his penchant for correctness, might not have approved. Hill had reported to the Duke how pleased that Desaguliers was with ‘this further propagation of masonry’ and continued ‘I think I do not judge too severely if I say that [propagation] of the Christian religion would not affect him so much’. This hint that Desaguliers took his masonic role more seriously than that of a minister of the church was probably not far from the truth. One of those present at the Hôtel de Bussy was ‘the Rt Hon the President Montesquiou’. This gentleman was undoubtedly the distinguished French philosopher Montesquieu, who, when living in London from 1729 to 1731, had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. He also became a freemason, joining Desaguliers’s Lodge No. 4 which met at the Horn Tavern and whose Master was then the Duke of Richmond. In late July 1735 Montesquieu received an invitation in French from the Duke to visit his French estate: Richmond assured his friend that freemasonry was flourishing at Aubigny, with a lodge of more than twenty brethren.53 Furthermore he promised that ‘le grand Belzébuth de tous les maçons’, Dr Desaguliers, who was then in Paris, would be

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at Aubigny to attend the lodge. There is no definite evidence that Desaguliers did in fact journey the 150 km to Aubigny and attend the lodge there, but this correspondence does confirm that he was in France for several weeks, at least from late July until the lodge meeting in Paris in mid-September. Montesquieu declined Richmond’s invitation but acknowledged the safe arrival in France of Desaguliers, ‘the first pillar of freemasonry’.54 Montesquieu did, of course, renew his acquaintance with Desaguliers and Richmond a few weeks later at the Hôtel de Bussy. Montesquieu was a native of Bordeaux and from 1719 was President of the Academy of Sciences there which would, several years later, honour Desaguliers for his Dissertation Concerning Electricity. Desaguliers was also associated indirectly with the foundation of two masonic lodges in Portugal. The second lodge to be formed in Lisbon was established in 1733 by the mathematician George Gordon who had once lived at Desaguliers’s house. Gordon was sent by Grand Lodge to promote masonic activity within the British community in Portugal. This lodge was dissolved in 1738, but a third Lisbon lodge was created in 1741 by John Coustos, a Huguenot of Swiss origin who had lived in London and was acquainted with Desaguliers.55 Meanwhile, Charles Labelye (c.1705–81), another Swiss Huguenot, had set up a lodge in Madrid in 1727 or 1728; he was the friend and colleague of Desaguliers who later worked on the new Westminster Bridge.56 Naturally most of Desaguliers’s masonic activities were in London. As well as Grand Lodge meetings at which he participated regularly until shortly before his death, he attended the popular Horn Lodge near to his home in Westminster which, according to Pine’s list, met on the second Thursday of each month. As already mentioned, Desaguliers also belonged to the French Lodge known as Solomon’s Temple which met in Hemmings Row, near to the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields. In 1725 he was ‘Maître’ of this lodge; other members were Labelye, James Anderson and the sculptor Louis François Roubiliac (1702–62). From 1732 this lodge appears to have been incorporated into the Union French Lodge. In 1730 Desaguliers was listed as a member of the Bear and Harrow Lodge which met in Butchers Row near Temple Bar; he also went to the shortlived University Lodge that met at the same tavern. As a former Grand Master he was able to convene occasional lodges, usually for the purpose of making new masons: the lodge at Kew for the initiation of the Prince of Wales was a notable example. Another such occasion was after a New Year’s party that Desaguliers attended with the Duke of Montagu and his friends at Thames Ditton in 1735. Mick Broughton, the Duke of Richmond’s convivial chaplain and correspondent, who was also of the party, wrote of ‘Sunday Night at a Lodge in the Library’ when young Bob Webber was ‘Admitted Apprentice: the

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Dr. being very hardly perswaded to the Latter by reason of Bob’s tender years and want of Aprons’.57 Desaguliers clearly did not fully approve of the young man’s being made a mason, especially in such informal circumstances with few masons present, but he was presumably prevailed upon by the high-ranking company. It is obvious from Desaguliers’s diverse masonic activities that he was of great significance in the development of Grand Lodge from its earliest days; during the first twenty or so years from 1717 his name appears regularly in the records and he frequently took responsibility for meetings and committees. His influence and opinion were certainly important, which is why masonic historians still hold him in high esteem and many have written acknowledging his contribution to their movement. An unusual and whimsical history of freemasonry called The Revelations of a Square was written in 1855 by George Oliver (1782–1867), cleric, schoolmaster and prominent freemason. The ‘Square’ is a masonic jewel which was allegedly passed from Sir Christopher Wren to Desaguliers, who was then, in about 1712, said to be a member of the Goose and Gridiron lodge. Remarkably, the Square can talk and describe its adventures and so Dr Oliver learns of the early days of Grand Lodge and, as the jewel is passed on to others, of the subsequent history of freemasonry. Although clearly fanciful, the account is in large part taken from the historical sections of the Constitutions and the early chapters emphasize Desaguliers’s important role; the work is not highly regarded, however, by serious masonic historians. Also, in decidedly lighter vein, Desaguliers was in 2007 made the active hero of a French masonic crime novel, Les Mystères de Channel Row.58 The story certainly lacks historical accuracy, especially concerning Desaguliers’s origins, but many of the characters, such as Anthony Sayer, George Payne, James Anderson, the Duke of Montagu and Grand Warden, Jacob Lamball, were indeed prominent masons. To add authenticity to the eighteenth-century London setting, Newton, Voltaire and Jonathan Wild appear too, and the villain, appropriately, is the masonic exposer, Samuel Prichard. In a very busy life Desaguliers clearly devoted much time and energy to freemasonry and it is interesting to speculate why. Although it is not clear who first introduced him to freemasonry, this was a movement in which he found he could be influential and gain considerable status, and he undoubtedly relished this. Never secure financially, he must have made a considerable outlay on his masonic activities. It is likely that he was ever conscious of his Huguenot background and, despite his acceptance into London society, he may always have felt something of an ‘outsider’: as an active freemason he became part of a fraternity that embraced men from different social, political and religious

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backgrounds. There were indeed several Huguenots recorded as freemasons in London, and as Fellows of the Royal Society too. According to masonic principles intolerance was not to be countenanced, and Desaguliers would never have forgotten his father’s experience at the hands of the French Catholic regime. It was through no fault of his own that Jean Desaguliers had been obliged to flee his native France and later to receive charity; his son later became sympathetically involved in the charitable activities of the freemasons. The younger Desaguliers was keen to establish himself in early-eighteenth-century London, and he used his undoubted organisational and oratorical skills to aid his social advancement. He clearly enjoyed speaking before an audience and his abilities were valued both by Grand Lodge and by the Royal Society. The link that he provided between the two would not survive in years to come, but at the time of Desaguliers it was of mutual advantage to both organisations. Two prominent Fellows of the Royal Society for whom, perhaps surprisingly, there is no record of their becoming freemasons were Desaguliers’s patrons, Sir Isaac Newton and the Duke of Chandos. Newton, of course, was an old man when Grand Lodge was founded. Although fascinated by Solomon’s Temple, around which the masonic rituals are woven, he kept many such interests secret and he was never a sociable man. James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos, also apparently never became a freemason. A lodge met from 1723 at the Duke of Chandos Arms at Edgworth (or Edgware) and there is a possibility that this had developed from earlier occasional lodge meetings at his palatial home of Cannons, but no hint of the Duke’s involvement.59 Desaguliers’s connection with this lodge cannot be ascertained either, and his name does not appear as a member in the 1723 list, but he may have been instrumental in its formation. His enthusiasm for freemasonry was such that he would probably have attended any lodge meetings, if he could, when at Cannons. By 1729 the lodge no longer met at Edgware and apparently became incorporated with one which met at the Devil Tavern in central London. Had the Duke of Chandos been persuaded to become a freemason, it is likely that a lodge would have remained at Edgware and also that, given his status, he would have expected a prominent position in Grand Lodge. His son, Henry Brydges, Marquis of Carnarvon (later the 2nd Duke of Chandos), whom Desaguliers had known since boyhood, was never a Fellow of the Royal Society, but he did become a freemason; he served as Grand Master from 1738–39, albeit with no great distinction. It is likely that as Desaguliers came to know the Fellows of the Royal Society better he introduced some of them to freemasonry. On the other hand, of men who were members of both organisations, some were members of masonic lodges before being elected FRS. There is certainly evidence that,

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during Desaguliers’s masonic career, almost 90 brethren were also Fellows of the Royal Society, but it could be argued that this is to some extent a factor of the widespread popularity of clubs and societies at the time rather than of any direct recruitment drive in either direction. Desaguliers’s acquaintance with members of the aristocracy, such as the Dukes of Montagu and of Richmond and Lord Paisley, would have been reinforced as he would have met them in both situations, but in the masonic milieu there would, one imagines, have been more of a feeling of friendship and conviviality than at the more formal Royal Society. Yet at some masonic gatherings there were undoubtedly serious discussions, which would have included consideration of new ideas of Newtonian philosophy.60 It has been suggested that freemasonry was stimulated by scientific and antiquarian interests, and that in return the movement facilitated curiosity in these topics as lodges opened throughout the country.61 It is not easy to determine to what extent this is a valid claim, especially in the earlier part of the eighteenth century. Desaguliers would have eagerly participated in discussions in lodges but there is no record of any scientific talk that he gave; he did, though, use his power with words to make several notable and more general ‘orations’ at masonic meetings. To what extent he actively promoted himself within the masonic community, and whether he was specifically chosen for his charisma and energy, are questions impossible to evaluate today. He obviously took freemasonry very seriously and believed in its principles, and it represented a very important aspect of his life. He was eager to defend the movement against detractors, to uphold its traditions and rituals, and to see it grow in influence. What is also difficult to evaluate is Desaguliers’s true religious feeling and its relationship to freemasonry. Masons were, according to their Charges, expected to believe in one God, but the nature of that God was for the conscience of the individual to decide and discussion of politics and religion was supposedly forbidden at masonic meetings. The growing interest in, and understanding of, Newtonian philosophy supported the feeling that there must be an all-powerful being responsible for creating and maintaining the universe, for its laws were considered too complex to have developed by chance. The nature of this omnipotent force and its relation to the God of conventional Christianity was, however, the subject of controversy. Deism, which accepts the existence of a god, but which rejects revealed religion, was very much in vogue. Other Newtonians, including Sir Isaac himself, studied the bible and considered themselves Christian, but could not accept conventional trinitarian views. Desaguliers must have been aware that alternatives to Christian theology were being discussed and that these might seem more in tune with the physical

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phenomena and Newtonian ideas in which he was so interested. He may have had some sympathy with the opinions of the deists, but he gained income as an ordained Anglican minister and, at least publicly, he never questioned the accepted faith of the establishment. At masonic lodge meetings Desaguliers would have been accepted and respected as an Anglican clergyman. Some of his scientific friends may have been questioning conventional Christian thinking, but there is no evidence that he became involved in any such theological debate which would in any case have been excluded from masonic meetings.

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5

Translations from French and Latin, and Troubles with Booksellers

Desaguliers was certainly a sociable man who devoted considerable time to his lectures and to meetings at the Royal Society and at masonic lodges, but he must also have spent many hours at his desk. He wrote pamphlets and books that were directly related to his courses, and numerous papers for the Royal Society and articles for their Philosophical Transactions, but also he translated several works from French and Latin. Although English was not Desaguliers’s native tongue, he became fully conversant with the language. About 190 citations in the Oxford English Dictionary mention references to his works, including his translations, as having interesting or novel uses of words. Many of the terms are, understandably, technical, or used in a technical context, and 15 are claimed to be first citations. Apart from any possible financial reward, Desaguliers’s translations afforded him invaluable insight into a variety of specialized subjects that he worked on. He also became increasingly familiar with the difficulties and frustrations of the early eighteenth-century book trade. Not only was it costly to have a book produced, but, especially in the popular and rapidly growing field of natural philosophy, there were issues of priority and the risk of piracy. These frequently led to disputes between authors and their publishers or booksellers, haste in production, and consequent inclusion of errors in a printed text. Desaguliers became involved in some such disputes, for he was very sensitive about his reputation and how his work would be perceived by the public. Desaguliers’s introduction to the world of publishing came while he was still at Oxford, and was apparently uncontroversial. He translated into English at least three works from the French of Jacques Ozanam (1640–1717) who had written several books on practical aspects of mathematics. Hearne’s Collections, a digest of contemporary Oxford news, published a note on 23 March 1711 saying:

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In a week or two’s time will be published Monsr. Ozanams’s Mathematical Recreations translated out of French into English by Mr. Desaguliers, A.B., of Hart Hall and lately of Christ Church, a very ingenious young Gent. ‘Tis printed in 8vo at Mr. Litchfield’s press.1

Although an English version of Ozanam’s Recréations mathématiques et physiques, by an unnamed translator, is known to have appeared in London in 1708, no copy of Desaguliers’s 1711 version has been traced in current library catalogues. However, it seems reasonable to assume that it did appear and that it was Desaguliers’s first published translation. Mathematical Recreations is a work of over 500 pages, more serious in content than its title suggests, with sections of practical instruction on topics such as mechanics, cosmography, optics and even pyrotechny, as well as mathematics. It would undoubtedly have interested Desaguliers and he would have learned much from it. The first of Desaguliers’s translations which has survived was more specialized. It was Ozanam’s Treatise of Fortification, published in Oxford 1711 by John Nicholson, printed by L. Lichfield and sold by John Morphew of London. These were all men renowned in the contemporary book trade, who presumably considered that a translation of the work, originally published in French in 1694 and ‘Never before in English’, would appeal to a British market. It was advertised in the London-based Spectator on 16 May 1711. Desaguliers, as translator, included a short ‘epistle dedicatory’ to Lt-Gen. the Honourable John Richmond Webb, Governor of the Isle of Wight. Desaguliers, unlike Webb, had no particular knowledge of the subject matter: the work describes military fortifications and methods of defence against enemy siege. However, Vauban, considered in the appendix, was well known in France as the engineer of many seventeenth-century defences of geometric design, including the refortification of La Rochelle for Louis XIV prior to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Desaguliers must have listened to his parents talking about their early life in La Rochelle and have heard descriptions of the town which was originally fortified against the devastating siege of 1627–28; perhaps this prompted him to read Ozanam’s work in French and tempted him to try his hand at translating it. Whatever the reason, the project was a success and the next year, 1712, the same publisher produced Ozanam’s Treatise on Gnomonicks, which included complex details of the use of sundials and was again ‘done into English, and amended in several places, by J. T. Desaguliers’. In 1712 Desaguliers was also working on Ozanam’s Cursus mathematicus. This was a complete course in mathematics in five-volumes, originally in French, and which was ‘done into English […] by several hands’ for John

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Nicholson, and again printed by L. Lichfield and sold by John Morphew. Volumes 4 and 5, which treated respectively ‘Mechanicks and Perspective’ and ‘Geography and Dialling’, were specifically said to be translated ‘and amended in several places, by J. T. Desaguliers’. Interestingly, in the front matter of Volume 1 there is an announcement that the same publishers had recently produced the English translation of Ozanam’s Recreations; this could well have been Desaguliers’s work of 1711, but as he had little reputation at the time his name was not specifically mentioned. During his last years in Oxford, Desaguliers was clearly busy not only translating many hundreds of pages of Ozanam’s works, but also amending, and even correcting, the French mathematician’s works. In the eighteenth century a translator had perhaps more freedom than would be condoned today to put his individual mark on the translated text. Once he had moved to London, Desaguliers produced more translations. From the French of Nicolas Gauger came Fires Improv’d: being a New Method of Building Chimneys, so as to Prevent their Smoaking, which appeared in 1715. Gauger (1680–1730) was a versatile Parisian physician and lawyer who gave scientific lectures but his most famous published work was on the design of fireplaces and ways of making their heat output more efficient and costeffective. Desaguliers, in his Translator’s Preface, wrote that the ‘usefulness of this Book has induced me to give it to the World in English’ but admitted that ‘I have omitted whatever I thought Superfluous in the Author, to make Way for some Observations of my own’. He added to Gauger’s work ‘the manner of making Coal-Fires as useful […] as the Wood-Fires proposed by the French author’ and he developed a practical and commercial interest in this subject, especially in its implications for the warming and ventilation of rooms. An advertisement alongside his Preface read: The best Workmen that I know for curing the smoaking Chimneys, and performing what is directed in this Book, most effectually, and at the most reasonable Rates, are Henry Hathwel, Bricklayer, living over against the George Inn in Hedge-Lane near Leicester-Fields; and William Vream who may also be heard of there: Having try’d them several times with good Success.

William Vream was the scientific instrument maker who worked with Desaguliers in various capacities for many years. Desaguliers presented a copy of Fires Improv’d to the Royal Society, and the book, published by Senex and Curll, soon aroused considerable general interest. Desaguliers always had a good relationship with map maker and engraver John Senex (1678–1740), who was also an active freemason and was later elected to fellowship of the

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Royal Society. However, the co-publisher, Edmund Curll (1683–1747), was a bookseller with a reputation for unprincipled business practices.2 From the time he set up business in London around 1707 Curll was a prolific and successful publisher, but he was frequently accused of piracy and copyright infringements, of unauthorized publication of works promised to competitors, and of producing obscene and seditious material for commercial gain. He had a longstanding feud with the poet Alexander Pope, whose work he pirated and who responded with persistent satire. Curll was, with reason, dubbed shameless and unscrupulous and Desaguliers was soon to discover this for himself. An article, generally assumed to be by Sir Richard Steele, appeared in the 30 December 1715 edition of the satirical magazine Town Talk. Entitled ‘A Letter to a Lady in the Country’, it purported to be an account of a visit to a: Place which owed to Philosophy the greatest Benefits of ordinary Life [where there is] an Apartment, in which there is a Room, furnish’d in such a manner, that through imperceptible Passages in the Mouldings of it, fresh Air is always admitted; but before it is so, it is warm’d to what Degree of Heat shall be call’d for: This is perform’d by secret Meanders in the Structure of the Chimney, and was contriv’d by the Direction of that excellent Philosopher, Mr Desaguliers.

The idea of such controllable comfort in a domestic situation was so remarkable that the writer mocked the host of ‘ample fortune’ who can arrange arrival at his home from the ‘Frigid Zone’ to the ‘Temperate Region’, yet the notion had obvious appeal. The letter continued: The Invention which is brought to this Perfection by Mr Desaguliers is what I know will be an Entertaining Piece of News to you; for me there could not be a Thing more wished, especially for us Islanders, that without Motion you might enjoy the Air of any Country without the Trouble of sailing or travelling to it. Add to this, that it is always fresh, and for that Reason besides the Pleasures it affords to Men in Health, it administers new Life to the Sick and Decrepid who often perish for this sole Convenience of going into better Air. You are to know also that the Gentleman acknowledges the first Invention to a French Author.

Steele’s article, albeit amusing, was a frank endorsement of the ideas that Desaguliers had made available to an English readership and which he was already trying out. Edmund Curll realized the commercial possibilities and quickly set up a model grate at his shop and advertised this alongside the translation of Gauger’s book and copies of Town Talk containing Sir Richard Steele’s

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‘Letter’. Desaguliers found that Curll had also been publishing a pamphlet using his name and those of his workmen, and extracts from his book. His response was rapid. He too used Town Talk, but to complain to the editor in no uncertain terms of the way Curll had made exaggerated claims for his own pecuniary advantage. Desaguliers denounced the way that his book had been used as publicity without his knowledge, and disassociated himself from ‘that egregious Flatterer Mr Curl’.3 Desaguliers was obviously concerned for his reputation: any hint that he was a charlatan would have seriously compromised his position in the Royal Society and as a popular public lecturer, and he deplored Edmund Curll’s effusive use of his name. He had, in fact, already set up in business with Nicolas du Bois, an architect and ‘one of his Majesty’s Engineers’, to market a new ‘Stove Grate with Iron Cavities behind it’ which was claimed to heat and ventilate even the largest room in the coldest weather. Their advertisement claimed this was an improvement over the method proposed in ‘a Book called, Fires Improved &c.,’ which was only successful in small apartments. The new grate was demonstrated three times per week, both at Desaguliers’s Westminster house and by du Bois at a grocer’s premises near Leicester Fields. The partners entreated any persons who wanted one fitted by winter ‘to treat with them as soon as may be’ for many were already bespoke.4 Soon after this advertisement appeared, Curll published another for an apparently abridged version of Fires Improv’d, which he now claimed was by Desaguliers and du Bois, and was ‘a Treatise very necessary for all Gentlemen and Builders, the whole being suited to the Capacity of the meanest Workman’. He too would demonstrate the novel Stove Grate, which could make ‘the Thermometer rise 34 Degrees in Two Hours’, at his shop in Fleet Street, and he still gave away Sir Richard Steele’s account of the new invention.5 This time Desaguliers seems not to have reacted unfavourably; perhaps he was weary of the dispute and sensed that Curll was, in fact, helping his enterprise. There was, however, a reminder a year later of Curll’s dubious practices when, in a strongly worded advertisement, Desaguliers refused to testify for Curll in a dispute between the publisher and the horticulturalist Richard Bradley (c.1688– 1732). This concerned some of Bradley’s papers concerning heated greenhouses that Curll had appropriated for a book, saying they had been passed to him by Desaguliers. Desaguliers strongly denied this and concluded his statement by affirming that as ‘This is not the first time that Mr Curll […] made use of my Name, without my Knowledge or Approbation; I could not refuse Mr Bradley to do him Justice in this Case’.6 Fires Improv’d ran to a second edition in 1736, again published by Senex and Curll, and with a new appendix written by Desaguliers and containing

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yet further practical instructions for the installation of improved grates and fireplaces. Desaguliers had not completely dissociated himself from Curll, possibly due to the influence of John Senex, who was still engraving for the bookseller. Also, a second English edition of the Newtonian mathematician David Gregory’s book on reflection and refraction of light, Elements of Catoptrics and Dioptrics, published by Curll in 1735, has an appendix by Desaguliers with a note to say that this book ‘having been long out of print was greatly demanded’.7 Desaguliers wrote that he had himself, as one of the additions to the edition, written a ‘full Description of the Reflecting Telescopes, at present so much in Vogue and so justly valued’. In another venture, Desaguliers apparently collaborated with George Sewell (c.1687–1726), a physician and minor poet and playwright, to translate The Works of Dr. Archibald Pitcairn. Sewell had been taught by Pitcairn (1652–1713) who was a Scottish doctor who had known David Gregory and shared his enthusiasm for Newtonianism. Pitcairn’s medical works, collected together in this edition, were originally written in Latin, though an attached monograph on smallpox was originally in English. The first edition of the translation, printed in London in 1715 for Edmund Curll and two other booksellers, is now attributed to Sewell and Desaguliers, but the title page did not name the translators. The text included an eight-page letter (plus two post-scripts) addressed ‘To the Translator’ and signed ‘J. T. D.’. This corrected some uncertainties concerning the eye and optics and ends ‘If you think this worth publishing, it is at your Service’, suggesting that George Sewell was the main translator of the work and that Desaguliers (who had no medical expertise) merely advised him. In the second edition, published in 1727, however, the title page states ‘done from the Latin original by George Sewell M.D. and J. T. Desaguliers D.D. and F.R.S.’.8 Remembering that Sewell, never a well-known figure, had died the previous year, this strongly suggests that Edmund Curll was using the name of Desaguliers, now much more highly regarded than in 1715, to help promote the second edition of Pitcairn’s Works. A third edition, published in 1740 by F. Noble, with no mention of Curll, appears to be a direct reprint of the second edition. In 1718 Desaguliers translated an influential book on water engineering, Mariotte’s Traité du mouvement des eaux et des autres corps fluides. Published by Senex and Taylor, two identical English texts appeared with, for reasons unknown, differently worded title pages.9 Both named the translator, ‘by whom are added several Annotations for explaining the doubtful Places’, as ‘J. T. Desaguliers M.A. F.R.S., Chaplain to the Right Honourable James, Earl of Caernarvon’. Desaguliers dedicated this work to his patron (later the Duke of Chandos) to whom, he said: ‘I owe the Leisure which I have been able to

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allow my self in Translating this Book’. The original author, Edmé Mariotte (c.1620–84), was a French physicist and member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris. He was a meticulous experimentalist whose many interests ranged from optics (he discovered the blind spot in the eye), to the behaviour of gases (he independently formulated Boyle’s Law, which is still called Mariotte’s Law in France, and relates the pressure and volume of a mass of gas at constant temperature), to the impact of colliding bodies and ballistics and navigation. He is also remembered for his work in hydraulics and his involvement in the construction of the complex canals and fountains at Versailles and Chantilly. Mariotte’s book on the subject had been published posthumously in France in 1686; most of the books Desaguliers translated had only recently appeared in their original editions, but this older work may have attracted his attention as he was consulting it for practical help. It was around this time that he was working for his patron on the elaborate water features at Cannons, and the usefulness of Mariotte’s descriptions of jets d’eau and the like could have inspired Desaguliers to translate the entire book. The notes that Desaguliers had had printed in 1717, in English and in French, to help those attending his lectures have already been described, as has his dispute with Paul Dawson who produced a longer version, without the lecturer’s consent, in 1719. The publishers of the unauthorized version, who so angered Desaguliers and were obliged to reissue their copies with his explanatory preface added, were Creake and Sackfield, but the books were sold by William Mears, at the Lamb without Temple Bar. Desaguliers and Mears were soon to get into another acrimonious dispute.10 The work concerned was the translation of a Latin text by Desaguliers’s friend, Willem Jakob ’sGravesande of Leiden University. ’sGravesande, a strong advocate of Newtonian physics in the Netherlands, wrote Physices elementa mathematica, experimentis confirmata: sive Introductio ad Philosophiam Newtonianam, which arrived in England in 1719. Two English versions of this important work then appeared: one, translated by Desaguliers and dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton, was published by Senex and Taylor.11 This was quickly followed by the other, by an unnamed translator but apparently revised and corrected by John Keill, and printed for a group of booksellers which included W. Mears and T. Woodward.12 These publishers advised their readers in a forenote that their version was the later one only because ‘We resolved not to publish it without the Advantage of being revis’d by a Gentleman of unquestionable Ability in Every Part of this Kind of Learning’. They clearly meant this to be understood as Keill, and they claimed to have used superior paper and print, and that their plates were closer to the originals in size than in Desaguliers’s version.

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Desaguliers was not at all pleased at this threat of competition and possible discredit to his name. He wrote to his old friend John Keill in Oxford setting out the circumstances of the misunderstandings concerning the translations.13 At the end of December 1719 Desaguliers queried whether Keill knew that he had been attributed with the correction and revision of the Mears and Woodward translation, continuing: If not, I beg you wou’d do yourself justice in disapproving of the Booksellers making use of your Name purely to damn my Translation. I must here give you the History of the whole Matter of Fact, which is a great Piece of Knavery.

Desaguliers then explained how, the previous August, John Senex and Will Taylor had called at his house in Channel Row to ask if he would translate ’sGravesande’s book and ‘joyn with them in the Expence and Profits’. But Desaguliers had been out of town (he was on a tour with the sons of the Duke of Chandos), so Senex and Taylor publicized their intentions, thus ‘designing to prevent any Body else from undertaking it (as is usual among Booksellers)’. Following a series of misunderstandings in which he first thought, wrongly, that the translation for Senex was being undertaken by William Whiston, Desaguliers agreed to do it himself. He explained that Mears and Woodward then advertised their book, pretending they knew nothing of Senex’s earlier claim. The letter went on: These two Antagonists were resolv’d by this means to force us into a Partnership with them; which I would not agree to and sent them a Letter threatening that if they made Use of my Name without my Leave (as Mears had done before) I would have redress at Law. That as for translating the Book they might get who they wou’d to do it, but that I wou’d write to the Professors in the Universities and all those that gave Courses of Experimental Philosophy to hinder them from taking their Book (because they got it done by several Persons, and some of them unskill’d in the Subject) […] This I hop’d wou’d prevent them, but it seems they have gone on with their Translation, hoping to get it out before mine, which however they have not done.

Desaguliers retold in detail his previous dispute with Mears and warned Keill that the bookseller and his associates were the people now trying to use his name. He urged, ‘If you have not promis’d them to revise their Book, please to send to J Senex by the next Post an Advertisement to the contrary and he will take care to put it in the Papers’. But Keill had apparently had some

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contact with Mears, and, busy as he was in his post as Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford, he was disinclined to get too closely involved. Keill was also at this time preoccupied with championing Newton in his priority dispute with Leibniz concerning the discovery of the calculus, which he would have considered to be of greater importance than Desaguliers’s problems with booksellers. Undeterred, Desaguliers inserted his own advertisement in the press: Whereas there is lately publish’d a translation of Dr J Gravesande’s Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy, said to be corrected and revised by Dr J. Keill; this is to give Notice to the Publick, that the Doctor did not translate the Book, or revise any of it, till most of the Sheets were printed off, as I can make appear by his Letters to me about it […] The Translator […] appears neither to have understood Mathematicks, Mechanicks, nor Terms of Art, and to have mistaken even common Latin Words.14

Detailed criticism continued, but Mears and Woodward immediately responded by adding long notes to the next two advertisements for their book to counter and deny ‘the false, scandalous and malicious Advertisement sign’d by J. T. Desaguliers in Yesterday’s Post Boy’. They hinted that Desaguliers had not done his translation alone. An exchange of ever more acrimonious advertisements continued in several issues of the Post Boy, with Desaguliers pointing out more errors in the unknown translator’s version and denying that there was any dispute between himself and Keill, which Mears sought to be prove by a letter in his possession. Desaguliers also alluded to his previous experience with Mears, who ‘was endeavouring last year to persuade the Publick that I had written a Book which I knew nothing of, and now affirms that I did not translate a Book which I have set my Name to, and publickly own’. For their part the booksellers reasserted that ‘Dr Keill did revise and correct [their] Work throughout’ and alleged that Desaguliers could not disprove this. Desaguliers became furious as his integrity was challenged, and suggested that members of the public could call at Mears and Woodward’s shop, or at that of John Senex, to view the supposed letters, or to compare the plates in the two versions, as his had been accused of being inferior. Desaguliers’s final response in the Post Boy contained a paginated list of errors found in his adversaries’ edition, more of which he promised to point out little by little, so their printer would be obliged to make frequent corrections, and asked ‘Gentlemen, Are you not a couple of silly Fellows, to think to tire me out by foul Language?’ Mears and Woodward replied:

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Tho’ you fancy yourself a Wit, we look upon you but as an Under-Graduate. […] Pray, Doctor, apply yourself to more useful Studies, than tiring the Publick with Impertinence. We shall now leave you to Dr Keill, and own our selves as ignorant of the Mathematicks as you of good Manners.

Desaguliers declined to reply and the exchanges ceased; they must have cost both parties a not inconsiderable sum in payments to the Post Boy over a two-month period, but reputations were at stake as well as money, and for weeks neither side was prepared to give way. Keill’s involvement in the affair was never clear, but it can now be argued that Desaguliers had the stronger case as he was in correspondence with ’sGravesande, he had Sir Isaac Newton’s acceptance of the dedication, and he understood well the subject matter of the book. No further printings of the Mears and Woodward version were made, but Desaguliers soon produced a second edition of his translation with an addition to the preface explaining that: The first Edition of this Translation had some Errors of the Press and Faults in the Plates, which were occasioned by the haste in which it was printed off, to prevent the Injury that must have been done to Dr S’ Gravesande, by a Translation that some Booksellers endeavour’d to get out before mine, which was so ill done, that no Body that had read the Latin Book wou’d be able to know it again in their English. I have therefore in this Second Edition review’d and corrected every Error, both in the Book and Plates.

Subsequent editions were in two volumes, with the first dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton and the second to the Lord High Chancellor, who was then Thomas Parker, Earl of Macclesfield (and godfather to Thomas Desaguliers, born in 1721). Three years after Desaguliers’s death in 1744 the sixth edition of the translation was published, testifying to the ongoing popularity of the work; this was cited as being ‘translated into English by the late J. T. DESAGULIERS, and published by his son, J. T. DESAGULIERS […] greatly improved by the author’. It is a well-produced and newly laid out book, ‘illustrated with 127 Copper Plates all new engraven’, and reprints the prefaces from earlier editions, but omits the dedications. John Senex was involved with the production of all the editions up to the fifth in 1737, but he too was no longer alive in 1747; however, M. Senex, presumably his widow Mary who carried on his business, is named as a publisher of the sixth edition. For many years, during the 1720s and 1730s, Desaguliers was too preoccupied with his own writing and other activities to work on translations. The

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final one he carried out appears to have been of a short work by Jacques de Vaucanson (1709–82), published in Paris in 1738. This appeared in London in 1742 as An Account of the Mechanism of an Automaton playing on the German Flute, translated out of the French by J. T. Desaguliers. De Vaucanson, from Grenoble in France, was a celebrated maker of automatic performing figures; he is also credited with the reorganisation of the French silk industry and the first use of punched cards to incorporate patterns into woven cloth. The automated German flute player described in detail in the translation, life-size and with a repertoire of twelve musical pieces, was his first successful model. This was followed by a renowned mechanical duck which could flap its wings, eat and digest grain and excrete the remains, and by a man playing a pipe and tabor; these further models are described briefly in a letter at the end of the book. In his Translator’s Preface Desaguliers explains that, though readers may wonder why he is promoting anything that is merely exposed to the public view for entertainment, ‘it is laudable to encourage those who are truly ingenious’. De Vaucanson’s descriptions are remarkably skilful and, almost as an excuse for tackling something so frivolous, Desaguliers asserts that ‘in giving this Paper an English Dress I am still acting in my Province which has been for many Years to explain the Works of Art, as well as the Phænomena of Nature’. The automatons were, at the time the translation appeared, on view in London. Advertisements in the press mentioned that they had ‘been examin’d and publickly and authentically certified by the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris, and by Dr Desaguliers here in London, to be the greatest Curiosities of Art hitherto exhibited in the World’.15 The working models could be seen for one shilling, and, for a further shilling, were later shown unclothed so that the intricate mechanisms could be appreciated. Desaguliers’s translation of Vaucanson’s explanation of how they worked cost sixpence. This last published work of only twenty pages was much shorter than the translations Desaguliers had tackled earlier. The two volumes of the ’sGravesande translation, for example, were in total well over 500 pages long, and must have represented very many hours of work. It is not possible to estimate how much Desaguliers gained financially from his translations, but once printers and booksellers and others had been paid, it is unlikely to have been a significant sum. And he never forgot his disputes with the booksellers; when he published the first volume of his own Course of Experimental Philosophy in 1734 he added a note cautioning against over-enthusiastic booksellers who might attempt a hurried translation into French. As was common practice Desaguliers solicited subscriptions for the publication of his Course, but he also paid other authors in advance for copies of

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their books. These ranged from Pomet’s History of Drugs, a comprehensive work translated from French which Desaguliers subscribed to in 1712 while still at Hart Hall Oxford, to Tables of Logarithms and a Book of Sermons both published in 1742. In between were subscriptions to a Latin dictionary, a book on Optics, Anderson’s Royal Genealogies, a history of Portugal, poems by Allan Ramsay, a history of monastic buildings, John Senex’s Atlas of the World, a book on Oxford, an arithmetic manual, several more ecclesiastical works, and so on. The variety testifies to Desaguliers’s catholic interests as well as to the diversity of his acquaintance.

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6

Fire, Water and Air: Desaguliers the Engineer

The first half of the eighteenth century can be considered the early dawn of the industrial age when cities were becoming ever more crowded and there was a growing awareness of the possibilities of applying scientific advances to problems of everyday life. Natural philosophy was seen to have the potential to solve technological problems and bring about economic growth.1 As well as being an exponent and demonstrator of theoretical experimental philosophy Desaguliers saw that science could be used in the service of man, and he became interested in applying his knowledge practically and on a larger scale. He studied the development of stationary steam engines and compared the work they achieved with machines powered by men and horses. Having translated books on both hydraulics and chimneys, he became knowledgeable on water supply and on the heating and ventilation of enclosed spaces. He also acted as an occasional parliamentary adviser, for example when the feasibility of a bridge across the Thames at Westminster was discussed. He was undoubtedly encouraged by his patron, the Duke of Chandos, who, like several other Fellows of the Royal Society was interested in innovative ideas, especially if they had commercial possibilities. Desaguliers reported to the Society from time to time on new ideas for machines and the like. Both volumes of his Course of Experimental Philosophy contain descriptions of instances where a small-scale theoretical demonstration has been adapted to a real-life problem, or where an actual machine is cited as an example of a physical principle. When he had no first-hand knowledge of a particular machine he used, and generously acknowledged, the descriptions of others, often adding his own mathematical explanation of the working of the device. Desaguliers has been credited with being ‘one of the founders of engineering science: the first English writer to analyse machines on the basis of statics and elementary dynamics’ and also with formulating mathematical rules for problems of hydraulics.2 While still at Oxford Desaguliers became interested in steam power, and its applications fascinated him to the end of his life. It may well have been his patron John Wilkins, the Leicestershire mine owner, who first introduced him

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to the problem of water in mines. As miners had to penetrate into ever-deeper seams, flooding inevitably hampered their work; there were even instances recorded of miners drowning in the pits. Horse-driven pumps were first used to bring up the water, but in the late seventeenth century the first application of steam power to the problem was suggested. In 1698 Thomas Savery (1650–1715) obtained a patent for ‘the sole exercise of a new invention for raiseing of water […] by the impellant force of fire, which will be of great advantage for drayning mines’, and a model of his engine was shown to the Royal Society. In 1702 Savery published The Miner’s Friend, dedicated in part to ‘the Gentlemen Adventurers in the Mines of England’, and advertisements appeared in the press to say that Captain Savery’s engines were now ‘brought to perfection’ and available for use in mines ‘incumbered with water’. Demonstrations were offered twice a week ‘at his Workhouse in Salisbury Court, London’.3 The principle was to suck up water by the partial vacuum caused when steam cooled in a simple container, but Savery’s machines were limited by the relatively low pressures that could be obtained before the boilers and pipes exploded and they never, in fact, proved to have sufficient power for draining mines. Meanwhile, in the early years of the eighteenth century, Thomas Newcomen (1663–1729), an ironmonger from Devon, and his colleague, glazier John Calley, had been developing a more effective ‘fire engine’ which employed two cylinders with moveable pistons. In one cylinder steam was heated and cooled and its piston was connected by a cross beam to the second cylinder which was used to pump the water. The use of Newcomen’s ideas, which innovatively took advantage of the pressure of the atmosphere, was initially hampered by Savery’s comprehensive patent on using fire to raise water, but the two men apparently collaborated for a time before Savery’s death in 1715. Newcomen’s engine went on to be used successfully for many years. Desaguliers wrote extensively about the history and workings of steam engines4 and he recounted how French-born Denis Papin (1647–1712) first moved a piston in a cylinder by means of steam in his ‘digester’ or ‘pressure cooker’; had Newcomen been aware of this it might have inspired his invention. Also, Edward Somerset, second Marquis of Worcester (1601–67), had described the power of the pressure of steam, and, towards the end of his life, set up an experimental engine in his workshop in Vauxhall. The story that Thomas Savery stole the original idea for steam power from the Marquis, and then burned all the copies he could find of Worcester’s Century of Inventions, was published by Desaguliers who subsequently was variously credited with, or accused of, bringing this to public attention. In fact, the story had first appeared in 1725, in the Ladies’ Diary. This annual publication was edited

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from 1713 by Henry Beighton (1687–1743), and, despite its title, contained articles of a technical nature, as well as challenging mathematical and word problems for readers to solve. The Prize Ænigma each year was a puzzle in verse, the subject of which readers were invited to deduce and then send in; correct solutions were entered in a lottery for a prize. In 1725, the Ænigma began: I Sprung, like Pallas, from a fruitful Brain, About the Time of CHARLES the Second’s Reign. My Father had a num’rous Progeny, And therefore took but little Care of me: An Hundred Children issu’d from his Pate; The Number of my Birth was Sixty Eight. My Body scarcely fram’d, he form’d my Soul, Such as might please the Wise, but not the Dull: Yet sundry Pictures of my Face he drew; As many of his other of his Children too: These Pictures lay, whilst none my Worth did know, In Paul’s Church-Yard, and Pater-noster Row. My Father Dead, my self but few did see, Until a Warlike Man adopted me; Destroy’d what Records might disclose my Birth, Said He begot me, and proclaim’d my Worth. Begetting me he call’d a Chance – A Task Easie to him, assisted by a Flask.5

The poem continues to describe the working of an engine in anatomical terms, but says that until it was adapted (obviously by Newcomen) it failed to work in caverns (or mines). The ‘warlike man’, representing Savery (who was often given the title ‘Captain’), is clearly accused of destroying the Marquis of Worcester’s accounts of his discovery, for the ‘fire engine’ was number 68 in his Century of Inventions. This is the accusation that Desaguliers repeats in his account, presumably having heard it from his ‘ingenious and very good friend’ Henry Beighton, with whom he had shared early experiences of steam power. The authorship of the Prize Ænigma poems is never attributed. Beighton himself could have written them all, but it is interesting to speculate that Desaguliers, who was known to write verse of this kind, might have had a hand in the composition of the ‘fire engine’ puzzle. The 1726 edition of the Ladies’ Diary gave the solution to the previous year’s puzzle:

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The Prize Ænigma is a description of the Invention and Progress of the Engine for Raising Water out of Mines by the Force of Fire. It was first used by Herbert Marquiss of Worcester, about the year 1644, and published in his Century of Inventions anno 1661. In 1698, Capt. Tho. Savary got a Patent for 14 Years, and an Act of Parliament for 21 Years longer for that Invention. In the year 1712 Mr. Newcomen by applying the Weight of the Atmosphere instead of the Elasticity of the Steam, brought it to the Perfection wherewith it is now used.6

The story of the burning of copies of the Century of Inventions reappeared in 1778 when a new edition of the Marquis of Worcester’s book was published. The editor, John Buddle (1743–1806), a coal viewer (or mining engineer) from County Durham, wrote in his preface: The first, and only edition, of this work being extremely scarce, on account of the bulk of the impression being made a burnt offering to the disingenuous Principles and sinister Views of Captain Savary, who wanted to pirate the invention; yet the few copies still remaining, with the greatest certainty point out the MARQUIS OF WORCESTER to have been the original author of that incomparable machine the Fire-Engine; to whose memory therefore not only the gentlemen of the coal-trade, but the whole nation owe a tribute of gratitude.7

Buddle also added an appendix describing the history of the fire engine over the preceding 50 or 60 years, quoted extensively from Desaguliers’s Course of Experimental Philosophy, and acknowledged the fire engine as ‘the most valuable machine ever yet invented for the purpose of draining mines’. A nineteenth-century biography of the Marquis of Worcester also gave long consideration to the invention of the fire engine and argued strongly that Savery had taken his idea from the Marquis; Desaguliers was again quoted at length.8 By detailed comparison of the dates of Savery’s patent and publications and the activities of Worcester’s descendants, and also of the wording of the texts of the two men, it was concluded that Desaguliers had been correct in his accusations concerning Savery. Desaguliers’s account of early ‘fire engines’ was always considered to be comprehensive and was widely read; indeed, quite recently, when a ban on the export of the books and papers of James Watt (1736–1819) was applied for, it was stated that ‘Watt’s copy of A Course of Experimental Philosophy by John Theophilus Desaguliers, was a reminder of Watt’s statement that when he first came to work on steam engines, ‘my knowledge was derived principally from Desaguliers’.9 However, H. W. Dickinson, in his well-regarded Short History of

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the Steam Engine, published in 1938, was dismissive of Desaguliers’s accounts. Then, to the second edition (1963), A. E. Musson added a reasoned introduction and concluded that Desaguliers ‘appears to be a much more trustworthy source than Dickinson’s rather scornful remarks about him suggest’ and that the eyewitness to the book burning may well have been Henry Beighton. The story that Savery bought all of the Marquis’s books that he could find in Paternoster Row and burnt them to conceal his deception may seem far-fetched, but there was probably an element of truth in Desaguliers’s account.10 Desaguliers also disputed Savery’s explanation that an accidental experiment with an almost empty wine bottle thrown into the fire and then plunged into a bowl of water gave him the original idea of the power of steam. When he tried to repeat this, prudently protecting his hand with a thick glove, Desaguliers found that instead of the water being forced into the flask as Savery claimed, the whole apparatus was driven to the ceiling by the atmospheric pressure. Exactly how Savery came upon his ideas will probably never be known for sure. From about 1710 steam engines began to be set up in the tin mines of Cornwall and the coal mines of the Midlands and north-east England. As time went by they were modified and improved and Newcomen engines were in use for pumping out water for over a century. Desaguliers’s first known introduction to steam power was in 1711 when he observed an early engine at the coal mine at Griff, near Nuneaton in Warwickshire.11 At this time he was at Hart Hall in Oxford, lecturing in experimental philosophy and completing his own studies for his Master’s degree, and he was still associated with John Wilkins and in part, at least, financially dependent on him. There is no evidence that Wilkins had an interest in the actual Griff mine, but he certainly owned other pits in the area. Although written much later, Desaguliers’s descriptions with their intimate knowledge of the engineering appear to be first hand. It was probably at Griff that he first met Henry Beighton who became a close friend, and in 1718 attended Desaguliers’s lectures in London. Beighton was an accomplished map maker and draughtsman who provided diagrams for Desaguliers’s Course of Experimental Philosophy. He developed a safety clack12 for steam engines and became involved in setting up and refining several engines throughout England, as well as editing the Ladies’ Diary. He was proposed for Fellowship of the Royal Society by Desaguliers in 1720, and both were acquainted with Martin Triewald, a Swedish FRS who spent some ten years in London.13 Triewald attended Desaguliers’s lectures, and became an expert on steam engines in north-eastern England and later in his native country. Desaguliers’s second volume of his Course describes the workings of ‘fire engines’ in great detail and from first principles, and he compares the efficiency

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11.  The Steam Engine at the Griff mine in Warwickshire in about 1717. Desaguliers studied this early Newcomen Engine with his friend Henry Beighton, from whose drawing Plate 37 in CEP II was taken. Adjacent plates show details of how the engine worked to raise water from the mine. (BL Gale Databases: © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.)

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of different types. There were problems with the early engines: in particular, the solder holding together the pipework might fail with the heat of the boiler causing dangerous, even fatal, steam leaks. The friction between the moving parts always reduced the efficiency of the engine and had to be addressed. Desaguliers describes ‘the Operation of the Fire-Engine improv’d from Savery, or rather from the Marquis of Worcester’ which he himself had modified; he had ‘caused seven of these Fire-Engines to be erected since the year 1717, or 1718’. These simple Savery-type engines were never powerful or reliable enough for use in mines, but were mainly used to lift water to run fountains in ornamental gardens. The first, Desaguliers states, was set up in the garden of Czar Peter in St Petersburg,14 while another he had erected in about 1719 for a friend, so that several jets d’eau were produced. The ‘friend’ may well have been the Duke of Chandos. But in a cautionary tale about this type of engine he reported how once a man ‘entirely ignorant of the nature of the Engine’ attempted to make it work more quickly by adding extra counterweights to the steelyard and in so doing inactivated the safety clacks so that ‘the Boiler burst with a great Explosion and kill’d the poor Man who stood near’. With reason, Desaguliers was safety conscious and he was also aware of the economics of the operations. He claimed that with ‘about as much Fire as a common large Parlour-fire […] you may set your jets a-playing to entertain your Friends at any time’, which would have appealed to many gentlemen of his acquaintance. The poet and clergyman John Dalton (1709–63) wrote graphically about the steam engines which drained the mines near Whitehaven in Cumbria: While pent within the iron womb Of boiling caldrons pants for room Expanded steam, and shrinks, or swells, As cold restrains, or heat impels, And, ready for the vacant space, Incumbent Air resumes his place, Depressing with stupendous force Whate’er resists his downward course, Pumps moved by rods from ponderous beams Arrest the unsuspecting streams.15

In the footnote accompanying these lines Dalton mentioned that the reader might learn about the Savery engine in Harris’s Lexicon Technicum, ‘but the best account of it, its various improvements and uses, is, I think, in Dr Desaguliers’s course of experimental philosophy, vol. II’.

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The early Newcomen, or lever, engines were larger and more complicated but suffered from reduced efficiency due to friction between their moving parts. Desaguliers records an experiment ‘at Westminster in the Year 1728 or 9, when Mr Jones (commonly call’d Gun-Jones) set up a Leaver-Engine in my Garden (which Model he had mind to present to the King of Spain)’.16 Desaguliers himself had set up nearby a Savery engine with a boiler exactly the same size as Jones’s. This had cost him £80 while Jones had spent £300, and the Savery engine raised ten Tuns of water per hour compared with just four Tuns by the leaver-engine.17 Desaguliers left his readers to draw their own conclusions. It was, however, Newcomen engines which were eventually used successfully for mine drainage and for lifting larger quantities of water by steam power. Desaguliers had practical experience of the use of steam power, in particular in his work on water supply, but he also studied machines for raising water by other means, including those that used horse or human power, and he discusses several examples in his book. Most descriptions are second-hand, usually with the addition of his own comments and calculations, but one machine he set up himself and experimented with. On 2 May 1722 an advertisement appeared in the Daily Post: The Proprietors of the Engine for raising Water by the Help of Quicksilver do hereby give Notice to such Gentlemen who are desirous to see what Quantity of Water can be raised by that Means, to what Height and by what Power; that there is an Engine set up in Dr Desaguliers’s Yard at his House in Channel-Row Westminster where any Gentleman may see it perform from three to five o’clock in the Afternoon, every Wednesday and Friday, during the Months May and June next, beginning on Friday 4th May.

This engine, which was also demonstrated to the Royal Society, used a principle invented by Joshua Haskins and patented by him in 1720. Mercury reduced the friction which normally impaired efficiency when leather was used in the pistons of pumps. As usual, Desaguliers suggested some improvements to the original machine, described it in great detail in his Course, and had his ‘excellent Mechanick’, William Vream, work on it. There is no evidence that the engine, although effective, was ever much used; Desaguliers had hoped that the late Joshua Haskins’s family might have benefited from the invention, which he clearly endorsed. By comparison, Desaguliers questioned the claims made for a French engine made by Le Puy; this was described by Father Castel, a Jesuit whose account took 34 pages and, according to Desaguliers, was:

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arch, witty and florid, quotes the Scripture and brings in Poetry and Philosophy and compares this Engine with two very bad ones and cries it up beyond any Machine whatever, and says it acts upon a new Principle of Mechanicks. At last he says all (indeed) that was necessary to be said.

Maybe some anti-Catholic malice can be detected here, but Desaguliers goes on to describe the engine in detail with all its ‘Excellencies and Errors’, from a model given him by a friend. He had first-hand experience, however, of another French engine, invented by Messieurs Gosset and de la Deuille, which had been ‘much cry’d up beyond its real merit’ in the French and English newspapers about eight years before he was writing. These reports would have been in about 1735, as the second volume of the Course was completed in 1743. Desaguliers said that he was in Paris about six months after the engine was set up, which would fit with the time he is known to have visited the French capital to attend the new masonic lodge at the Hotel de Bussy. The engine was in the Royal Gardens in Paris and was demonstrated to him by M. du Fay, the King’s Intendant. Desaguliers saw merit in this invention and translated the description of it from that of the French engineer, Bélidor,18 noting that though it had been used successfully to raise water from mines in Brittany, it still did not match his quicksilver engine for efficiency. Desaguliers ended his study of engines in the Course with a long description of Richard Newsham’s engines on wheels designed to put out accidental fires. The Newsham machines, ‘fire engines’ in the modern sense, were patented in 1721 and 1725, proved very successful, and were even exported to the American Colonies. Desaguliers listed ten conveniences of the engines, calculated their efficiency and recorded Newsham’s assertion that he had ‘play’d water (on a calm day) upright to the Grass-hopper on the Royal-Exchange, which is 55 Yards high’.19 Desaguliers credited his account to drawings and measurements made ‘at my Desire, by Mr Charles Labelye formerly my Disciple and Assistant, and since that time appointed Engineer of the Works of Westminster Bridge’. Labelye was a Huguenot who had arrived in London from Switzerland around 1720 and was a gifted mathematician and engineer. In 1725, probably at Desaguliers’s suggestion, Labelye joined the French Masonic Lodge in London and became an active freemason who set up a Lodge in Madrid while travelling in Spain in 1727–28. Desaguliers quotes him on several occasions in the Course of Experimental Philosophy: for example, in the description of the carriages used by Ralph Allen of Prior Park to move stone economically from his quarries in Bath. As ‘a Friend [of Desaguliers] well skill’d in Mechanicks and Drawing’, Labelye explained how wagons were moved on rails, with a locking

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system to brake them so they could be manually controlled as they descended the very steep hill into the town. This is an early example of a ‘railway’ and although the description was ‘very intelligible’ and the ‘Draughts very well done’ Desaguliers could not resist adding some further notes of his own to Labelye’s account.20 Desaguliers had always included ‘hydrostaticks’ as a topic in his lectures, and, despite the name, this included studies of the movement of fluids or what would today be termed hydraulics. By 1718, when he translated Mariotte’s Treatise of Hydrostaticks, he had already had some practical experience of water engineering. In his additional notes that supplement the English text Desaguliers described experiments he carried out at Cannons with John Lowthorp (1659–1724)21 on the effect of friction on the flow of water through pipes of various lengths. At the time the two men were working to augment James Brydges’s gardens with fashionable water features and fountains. They designed a system of waterworks to pipe water from nearby Stanmore which was the envy of neighbouring landowners. Desaguliers devoted 13 pages of his Course of Experimental Philosophy to calculations and tables on the heights which can be achieved by jets d’eau and the like when varying lengths and diameters of pipe are used.22 He was interested in any system for playing fountains, such as that at Wanstead House in Essex set up for Lord Tilney and drawn by Henry Beighton. In his book Desaguliers used many descriptions and drawings made by Beighton, especially of several mills and water wheels; of course, he always added his own notes as well. A comprehensive modern history of water wheels recognizes Desaguliers’s contribution to the subject and quotes widely from his Course.23 As early as 1716 Desaguliers was involved as a witness in support of a hydraulic engineer, Dominick Donnelly, who had proposed a scheme to the House of Commons to improve the navigation on the River Thames in Essex by stopping the breach in the levels at Dagenham. The affair was fraught with misunderstandings, but when Donnelly attempted to attend a meeting of the Trustees at which his idea would be examined, he took ‘Draughts and Models’ and was ‘accompany’d by Mr Desaguliers, one of the Royal-Society, and several other gentlemen skill’d in the Mathematicks who approv’d of his Scheme’. The outcome was not clear, and all Donnelly could hope was that no other person would be allowed to benefit from the scheme which he had developed at considerable expense. It is also not clear whether Desaguliers had visited the site of the proposed hydraulic works, or had merely studied the plans and models, but Donnelly must have considered that Desaguliers’s reputation was already such that the use of his name would advance the cause.

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Stephen Switzer (1682–1745) was a gardener and landscape designer who in 1729 published a renowned work on hydraulic engineering in which are many mentions of ‘the learned and industrious Dr Desaguliers’ and his writings and translations. Switzer acknowledged that the ‘best account that has yet been given’ of the irregularity of the flow of water in natural springs was Desaguliers’s paper which he presented to the Royal Society in 1724.24 Demonstrations of the ‘Tantalus’ or siphon effect illustrated the unusual effects that were observed in springs in, for example, Berkshire and Kent, and which could have affected local water flow. Another reference to Desaguliers in Switzer’s book concerns the introduction of earthenware pipes for conducting water. Earlier wooden pipes were always a problem as their joints tended to fracture under pressure. A Mr William Edwards of Monmouthshire had, in 1725, patented pipes made of potter’s clay, such as the Romans had once used, and there were now manufacturers in London producing these. In particular Switzer had a neighbour, Aaron Mutchell of Vauxhall, who made excellent clay pipes and flower pots. Desaguliers was the trusted observer when Edwards’s pipes were tried out in London, on 24, 25 and 26 July 1727, using the power of the York Buildings engine to give as high a water pressure as it could. An 18-foot length of assorted pipes was constructed and, in the London Evening Post of 29 July 1727, Desaguliers put his name to the statement that: With all the compresure of Air and Water that the Engine was able to lay upon them, which amounted to a Pillar of water above one hundred Foot, they sustain’d it without breaking any of the Pipes; the So[l]der or Cement stood the Force as well as the Pipes. The Experiment having been try’d before me, and so well approv’d of, that I recommend them to be used in all Buildings and Aqueducts to convey Water.

In the early eighteenth century provision of a reliable supply of relatively clean water to serve the growing population of London and other cities was a considerably more serious concern than garden design. Several companies were already interested in the commercial possibilities this offered.25 The New River Company had supplied water by gravity from springs in Hertfordshire to reservoirs in Islington since 1613 and this, augmented by water raised by horsepower from the River Lee, remained an important source for parts of London until well into the twentieth century. The London Bridge Waterworks raised Thames water, polluted though it was, by means of a giant tidal water wheel underneath the bridge. This was reinstated around 1702 by water engineer George Sorocold (c.1668–1738?). Desaguliers had no apparent first-hand knowledge of this project but used a description of it by Henry Beighton, who suggested

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it would last for many years ‘as an Instance of the Excellence of its Erector’, and calculated that its efficiency compared very favourably with that of the great Machine de Marly near Paris which lifted water from the River Seine to the Palace of Versailles.26 For his account of Marly, Desaguliers again took his description from Bélidor’s Architecture Hydraulique, published in four sections between 1737 and 1753. Desaguliers was writing in the years up to 1743 and made occasional reference to it, which suggests that he was in correspondence with Bélidor in Paris, and may well have had sight of the Frenchman’s work prior to publication. A third important enterprise concerned with water supply in London was the York Buildings Company in which the Duke of Chandos had a substantial interest. The Company had been formed in the seventeenth century but was reconstituted with more diverse interests around the time of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. It acquired estates in Scotland that had been dispossessed following the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 and became concerned with, for example, timber, salt and soap production as well as supplying coal to the growing London market.27 Another of the York Buildings Company’s plans was to raise water from the Thames to supply the new estates that were springing up to the west of London. In 1721 brick storage cisterns were erected on the Strand, but it was soon decided to pipe water to a larger reservoir near Cavendish Square, on land partly owned by Chandos and nearer to potential customers. Chandos himself was planning to build a London house in Cavendish Square which would need a supply. The Company commissioned Desaguliers, in about 1723, to oversee the construction of the reservoir and it proved to be a contentious project. The work became so seriously behind schedule that Desaguliers incurred a financial penalty, but it was finally completed in late 1726. Then in 1730 Desaguliers, as the York Buildings Company’s agent, became involved in a court case in which a bricklayer, and the widow of another, claimed that they were owed money for work done on the reservoir. Desaguliers countered by suggesting their poor workmanship in claying and bricking the walls had caused serious leakage and flooding of nearby cellars. Witnesses were still being questioned two years later; one suggested that ‘Dr Desaguliers did suffer much in his Reputation by reason of the said Complainants’, but the final outcome of the case is unclear.28 The reservoir did eventually function and the rival New River Company was also interested in using it, but Chandos remained committed to the York Buildings Company. At this time Desaguliers may have suffered from divided loyalties, for he was also investigating the possibility of diverting water from the Cowley Stream in Uxbridge into central London, probably on behalf of the New River Company.

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This scheme met with strong opposition from local millers who, not unreasonably, feared loss of their water power. A printed letter addressed to ‘W. Bow--r Esq.’, signed ‘J. T. D-------rs’ and dated from ‘Channel Row, Westminster, January 9 1725’, indicates that Desaguliers had been to Uxbridge to try to talk to the millers and their representative, William Bowyer. To Desaguliers’s annoyance the meeting had not taken place ‘since the Millers will not give us the Opportunity to explain our selves to them’, so he was publicly explaining his case in this open letter. He wrote: Had we met, we should have demonstrated that we intended, and shou’d have done the Millers a very considerable Benefit, by turning their Mills from Under into Overshot Mills. […] I can make it very plainly appear (even to Persons of a moderate Capacity) that all the four Mills may easily be turn’d into Overshot without removing one of them above 200 yards from the Place where it now stands, and that we have both Water and Level enough, not only for them, but even to add another if Uxbridge Market should ever require a greater supply of Meal […], and yet leave Water enough for our selves to give a very ample Supply to the Town.29

At an earlier hearing before a Committee at the House of Commons Desaguliers had spoken for the scheme, pointing out that only a very narrow canal would have to be built.30 A beautifully drawn map of the land and rivers involved forms part of a pamphlet, attributed to Desaguliers and probably dating from 1724, which cites reasons for bringing water to London and Westminster from Cowley Stream and the River Colne. There would, it was claimed, be improved navigation on the Thames, a doubled supply to Hampton Court, more work for the millers and more water in their meadows.31 However, despite all the calculations made to persuade all parties of the advantages of supplying Marylebone Fields from the Cowley Stream, there is no evidence that it ever happened. The Uxbridge scheme was not alone in suggesting the diversion of rural streams in order to supply nearby town dwellers. Meanwhile the York Buildings Company had more advanced ideas and in 1725 began the construction of a Newcomen engine for lifting water from the Thames to fill its reservoirs. New technology was needed to gain greater volumes than could be achieved by conventional horsepower. A large Savery engine had indeed been tried around 1713–14 but this failed to give sufficient power and if the regulator was out of order it tended to blow up. As Desaguliers had already recognized, a major problem of this type of engine was the inability of the soft solder used to withstand the temperatures and pressures needed, and hard solder, or spelter, was expensive so the project was soon abandoned. By

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the time the Company again considered steam power Newcomen engines had proved their worth for draining mines, but they had never been seen in London or the south of England. Desaguliers described to the Royal Society a ‘Draught of the ffire Engine at York Buildings’ and on 2 November 1727 the entire meeting of the Society was taken up by a demonstration of a working model he had had made of the engine that lifted water.32 The pump barrel and the sucking and forcing pipes were made of glass with leather valves and the brass cylinder was very exactly turned and polished to move accurately. All was encased in glass plates so that the working could be clearly seen and the advantage of an air vessel in the engine was also simulated in glass. This meticulous model is a good example of the trouble and expense to which Desaguliers would go to make sure his audience, whether at the Royal Society or in his lecture courses, clearly understood the principles he was attempting to demonstrate. The real York Buildings engine should have been completed at the end of 1725 but was eventually ready for trial in April 1726. With its prominent tower, clearly seen in contemporary paintings by Canaletto and Samuel Scott, and coal-fired engine, the water works would undoubtedly have been noisy and dirty. In 1725–26 a satirical pamphlet attacking the project appeared, entitled The York Buildings Dragons.33 This rare publication has been attributed to Desaguliers, probably because his name was at some time handwritten on the copy of the second edition held by the Bodleian Library in Oxford and thus it was catalogued under his name.34 As the pamphlet clearly vilifies the scheme to lift water from the Thames by steam power, and as Desaguliers was committed to the Duke of Chandos to work with him on the project, it would surely have been foolhardy of him to risk offending his patron in this way. Chandos did have his suspicions, however, perhaps because he knew that Desaguliers was annoyed about his fee for the York Buildings reservoir being withheld. In January 1726 Chandos wrote to his agent, Samuel Horsey: There has been published a very stupid Performance called the York Buildings Dragons; they father it upon the Doctor, but I hope without Reason for surely he could never be the Author of such a Piece unless it was whilst the Gout was in his Head.35

Desaguliers was indeed suffering from gout at this time, but the flamboyant prose seems unlike his other writings; he usually turned to verse when not writing on technical matters. The text is clever, referring in anatomical terms to the complex structure of the huge York Buildings Dragons. The Dragons (or steam engines) were predicted to cause Londoners to suffer terrible noise ‘that

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will be heard as far as Calais’. When the Dragons drank, the Thames would have so much water drawn from it that barges would not be able to go under the bridge. The dirt and exhaust would so contaminate the atmosphere that the local populace would be poisoned, if not killed by an explosion, and the cities of London and Westminster would not be able to see one another for smoke. There would be a shortage of coal as the Dragons would have a prodigious appetite for fuel. The whole calamity was initially set to happen on 20 December 1725, but delays in getting the Newcomen engine working meant there was a second edition of the York Buildings Dragons ‘augmented by almost a half ’. The text is allegedly signed by a partly-named ‘Club of Ingenious Gentlemen who meet once a Week at B---m’s Coffee House’. The list included several men who had had various engineering projects rejected and who may have fallen out with Desaguliers and his circle. In the postscript to the second edition the secretary of the group, who is identified only as ‘Anodyne Necklace’,36 complained how a plot the group was hatching to sabotage the December start-up of the engine was leaked by ‘our Longitude-finder’. He rued the fact that because it was known that his ‘Bulldogs and Mastiffs’ were present, the Dragon, instead of starting up, only ‘piss’d into the Receptacle, then hastily retir’d into his Den’. The reference appears to accuse George Gordon, one of the signatories who had earlier published a proposal for finding longitude, of being the informer. He had not been seen at the club since he was assisted in making a reflecting telescope by ‘some of the Conspirators’ – or the York Buildings personnel. There was an ‘old Magician among the Conspirators, who was the first to make Dragons tame’ and who could render them invincible. This is a likely allusion to Desaguliers (and another reference to him as a magician), who certainly knew Gordon. By early 1728 George Gordon was described as ‘Assistant to the Rev. Dr J. T. Desaguliers’ and subscriptions to his new book on Algebra could be taken in at Desaguliers’s house in Channel Row.37 The authorship and true purpose of the very witty York Buildings Dragons pamphlet remains an enigma; it could have been written on behalf of the York Buildings Company’s great rival, the New River Company, or even for the London Bridge Waterworks, and would have been a serious attack, or it could merely have been a sophisticated joke. It was certainly penned by someone well read and with some knowledge of the law, as well as familiarity with the proposed Newcomen engine and its working. The second edition ends with a ‘speech’ by ‘Orlando Furioso’, a Westminster resident who had convened a group of his neighbours to make a final attempt to persuade them to oppose the York Buildings scheme, asking:

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Will you tamely stay to be deafened by the noisy Roar of the hellish Dragons? Will you be suffocated with the Smoak of their Nostrils and scalded with their burning Snivel? […] Will you stay till all your Wives China is broken with the terrible Concussions of the Dragons Tails? […] What, gentlemen! Will no body sign?

He is challenged by ‘Prudentio’, ‘a plain honest Tradesman who has a good estate in the Neighbourhood’ and who speaks up for the Dragons, saying Sir Orlando is ignorant and only self-interested. ‘For my part, I know the Masters of the Dragons to be very honest Gentlemen, and shall be very pleas’d to see the Working of the Dragons, when they are ready’, he declares. Orlando had complained of the effect of the Dragons on his ‘Whirligigs’ – presumably mills further down the river – but Prudentio merely poses a query and leaves: What are they to us in York Buildings […] I don’t care if the Dragons crack half a dozen Whirligigs for Breakfast every Morning. Gentlemen this is only losing our Time, farewel– Those that have nothing else to do may stay. So saying, Prudentio went away, and all the Rest follow’d him, leaving Sir Orlando in a Muz.

This makes it appear that ‘Prudentio’ was in the pay of the York Buildings Company and that the conclusion of the Dragons pamphlet was the defeat of the protesters. Desaguliers must have been aware of the first edition, even if he had no hand in it, and maybe he wrote Prudentio’s rejoinder, which would, of course, have pleased the Duke of Chandos, but there is no way of knowing. In the event, the Newcomen engine of the York Buildings Company did work successfully and was in use until 1731. It was then abandoned, largely because the cost of the coal it consumed was greater than the income from the sale of water from the reservoir, especially when cheap fuel supplies were no longer available from the Company mines in Scotland. But by this time Desaguliers, and also the Duke of Chandos, appeared to have lost interest in water supply. Ten years earlier, though, Desaguliers’s reputation had been such that he was asked to help with problems in the water supply to Edinburgh. His name is included in the entry in the record of strangers who dined with the Duke of Chandos at Cannons on 31 July 1721 when several distinguished gentlemen from Scotland were entertained.38 These included John Campbell, second Duke of Argyll (1680–1743) and brother of Desaguliers’s friend, Lord Ilay. Campbell was at the time Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and it seems that the conversation turned not only to the serious difficulties experienced by that

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city’s water supply, but also to the way in which Desaguliers had engineered the impressive water features at Cannons. Apparently an immediate invitation was given to the scientist to try to solve Edinburgh’s problems, as some three weeks later Desaguliers was in Scotland. His attendance at the masonic lodge in the Scottish capital on 24 August 1721 came about as a consequence of his reputation as a hydraulic engineer. Edinburgh has no river or flowing streams, and few wells can be sunk in its rocky terrain, so by the seventeenth century the increase in population had produced a severe water shortage. Epidemics were blamed on the unclean streets, fires were rife and brewers were blamed for taking an unfair proportion of the available supply.39 An aqueduct was built to pipe water down from reservoirs filled by springs in the Comiston (or Comestoune) hills and into the city, but when completed in 1675 the system functioned only intermittently. Work was done to enlarge the pipe diameter, but there were still interruptions to the flow. Desaguliers surveyed the pipeline and realized there were many undulations with high points subject to air locks. His initial solution was simple, as he explained later in his Course of Experimental Philosophy: he exposed the high points in the lead pipe and then: having driven a ten penny nail into the upper side of the pipe, so as to make a hole thro’ it […] hammer up the lead all round the nail with the pen of the hammer, so as to make a little button: then taking out the nail, the air will blow out violently, till at last the water succeeds the air, and then with a stroke or two of the hammer that hole will be quite stopp’d up. Doing this at every eminence of the pipe the whole air will be discharg’d and the full quantity of water brought home.40

This procedure solved the immediate problem; a more permanent solution was to install special valves or ‘riders’ to discharge air at the high points in the pipe. This still meant operatives had to open these at intervals along the 4.8 km length of the aqueduct, but Desaguliers calculated they increased the capacity of the pipe fivefold. Later he described an automatic air release valve or ‘Jack-inthe-Box’ which did away with the need for men to be stationed along the aqueduct.41 He also reassured the people of Edinburgh that the pipework at the end of the aqueduct, where the drop into the city was almost perpendicular and the pressure consequently increased, should be safe against bursting. A modern hydraulic analysis of the Comiston aqueduct has concluded that although Desaguliers overestimated the capacity of the pipe, and failed correctly to apply Mariotte’s theory, his work in Edinburgh was remarkable and led to later advances in calculating flow rates in pipes.42

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Another practical subject which engaged Desaguliers for many years was the flow of air, both for heating and ventilation. Conventional fireplaces were very inefficient for room heating, and the air in enclosed spaces often became so stale as to pose a health risk. In a Postscript to the second volume of his Course he claimed that he had: made Experiments these 28 Years upon the purifying of Air, conveying it from one Place to another and changing it for the Advantage of those that breathe in close Places to the Detriment of their Health.43

As this was written in 1743, it confirms that his interest in the subject began when he translated Gauger’s La Méchanique du Feu in 1715. The Postscript, Desaguliers said, was written to record his work on ventilation as he was dismayed at finding he was not acknowledged in a recently published book on the subject by the Rev. Stephen Hales, FRS. Hales, whom Desaguliers knew well, had successfully devised equipment to force fresh air into enclosed spaces. The two scientific clergymen had previously worked together on several projects, including ventilation, and Desaguliers had actively promoted Hales’s book, Vegetable Staticks. He was probably justified in feeling aggrieved, for he had given Hales his own ‘blowing wheel’ to test (‘though not as powerful as Hales’s’), and he himself was always meticulous in acknowledging the achievements of others. Desaguliers concluded that Hales ‘was in such haste to publish his Ventilators, that this Omission was pure Forgetfulness’. Nevertheless he determined to put on record his own achievements in the field ‘lest I should be look’d upon as a vain Boaster, when I say that I made most of the Experiments mention’d […] in the Ventilators; unless I give an account of Facts and the Dates of those Facts’. Gauger’s book, originally published anonymously, described improvements to fireplaces that burnt wood but, as usual, Desaguliers added some notes of his own to his translation, and also considered coal and turf fires. Gauger’s innovative principle was to insert metal plates, or jams, in various patterns around the fireplace so that heated air circulated back into the room rather than all going up the chimney. In the Translator’s Preface Desaguliers claimed that the new fires could be easily lit and would: take away the usual Inconveniences of being obliged to creep near, or to sit at such a distance from the Fire that we are either starv’d before or roasted behind; to make us breath fresh Air constantly which shall be of any degree of heat […] without ever being troubled with Smoak or Moisture.

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The work includes directions that could be followed by ‘the meanest Work-Man’. Desaguliers added an Advertisement recommending his workmen, including his instrument maker, William Vream. It was Vream who was called to Cannons in February 1720 to fit plates to the smoky fireplace in the Duke of Chandos’s library. This was possibly the occasion when two of Desaguliers’s devices were fitted to bring fresh air which had been passed over hot iron into the library; Desaguliers wrote that his Grace had had them some ‘four or five and twenty years’ and ‘never found any Inconveniency from them’. The improved fireplaces proved popular in private houses and the system was adapted to larger projects. Once Desaguliers had presented a copy of his translation to the Royal Society he oversaw an installation to improve the heating and ventilation of their meeting room. The House of Lords also had a problem as, in 1718, Desaguliers was asked to devise a machine to recirculate warm air from the fireplace so that those who stood near the fire did not suffer cold backs and legs while burning their shins. According to the House of Lords Journal an order was made ‘that Mr Disaguiliers do view the chimney in this House, and consider how the same may be made more useful’. The House was not far from Desaguliers’s Westminster home and he must have made a rapid inspection and report. Three days later the Lord Chamberlain told their Lordships: That His Majesty would […] order the Officers of his Works to cause the Chimney in this House to be amended […] by the method proposed by Mr Disaguiliers […] and would give proper Directions […] for that Purpose.44

The work was duly completed and improved the comfort of their Lordships for many years. Then in 1723 Desaguliers applied his expertise to a somewhat different problem in the House of Commons: here the ‘Air was made foul by the Breath of so many People, and the Steam of the Candles’. A system originally installed by Sir Christopher Wren failed to work whenever heavier cold air forced the foul air back down into the chamber from vents above. Desaguliers’s solution was to light specially designed fires in closets near the vents to keep the air circulating. This, despite opposition from Mrs Smith, the housekeeper, who had rooms above the House of Commons, gave the members somewhat fresher air. Desaguliers indicated in his Course of Experimental Philosophy that the work for the Lords was done after this for the Commons, but there is more than one instance in the second volume that suggests that by 1743 he did not remember accurately every chronological detail of his busy life.

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The innovative fireplaces also helped in the newly fashionable cultivation of exotic plants. The gardener Richard Bradley, who, although dismissed by the Duke of Chandos for financial irregularities, had a long career in horticulture, wrote in 1724: Since I have seen some of the new invented Chimneys, so judiciously improv’d by my learned and ingenious friend Dr Desaguliers F.R.S., I am of Opinion that nothing can be contriv’d more for our Purpose of preserving Plants in the Winter from Frosts and Damps, than one of them plac’d artificially in some Part of a Green-House; they will afford us all that we can desire from an artificial Heat […] the Air […] will be put in Motion, kept dry and warm […] there will be no Danger of Smoak, or the Charge of frequent Repairs: So that considering all these Excellencies I cannot conceive that any Invention can exceed this for the Preservation of Exotick Plants in the Winter. We may see a farther Account of these Chimneys in the Book published by Dr Desaguliers, call’d Fires Improv’d.45

There were other specialized needs for ventilation that Desaguliers addressed, such as the need to force air into mines, not only for the workers to breathe, but also so that their candles would stay alight. Strategically placed fires had been used to provide circulation via the mineshafts but ‘will not do in all Cases […] because several sorts of Damps extinguish Fire, and others fulminate and are dangerous when Fire comes near them’. Desaguliers devised a machine which was used on the Earl of Westmoreland’s estate for clearing polluted air from the mines without the use of fire. A man turned a wheel which was cranked to operate centrifugal bellows which could either suck out, or force in, large volumes of air. Experiments were made before the Royal Society in 1727 to show this ‘Engine to draw Damps or foul Air out of Mines’ and a paper described, with appropriate calculations, how the device worked in different situations.46 Desaguliers adapted it to other applications where enclosed spaces needed ventilation, such as in prisons. Both he and Stephen Hales considered the problems of sick rooms, where windows were never opened. Here the bellows could even be used as an early air-freshener, ‘to convey warm or cold air into any distant room, nay to perfume it insensibly on occasion’. In 1736, Sir George Beaumont and other members of the House of Commons decided that the ventilation system using fires that Desaguliers had set up was ‘frustrat’d’, and a Committee was set up to order Desaguliers to ‘find some Contrivance to draw the hot and foul Air out of the House’. Accordingly he produced one of his machines, which he called a ‘Blowing Wheel’, while the human operator was the Ventilator. Under orders of the Speaker, the Ventilator

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could arrange that the machine blew in fresh air, sucked out foul air, or even did both at once. In 1850 Charles Tomlinson wrote that ‘The centrifugal wheel of Dr Desaguliers continued to be used for ventilating the House of Commons, until 1820’.47 Desaguliers made a model of his centrifugal wheel and air pipes which he showed to the Royal Society, but which also drew the attention of the Lords of the Admiralty. Some of their Lordships went to see the set-up in the House of Commons, together with Sir Jacob Ackworth (c.1668–1749), surveyor to the navy. Desaguliers was asked to make a smaller version to be tried on board the Kinsale, a vessel moored at Woolwich. The quarters below decks in such ships, being enclosed and close to the bilge water, soon became fetid and better ventilation would be of great advantage to the well-being of all on board. Desaguliers recounted how Sir Jacob unreasonably expected the machine to be ready earlier than possible, and then how the trials were muddled and not properly observed. Although the machine successfully evacuated thick smoke produced by the deliberate burning of pitch and replaced it with air as cool as if on deck, to the delight of the assembled company, Sir Jacob was not present. Desaguliers reprinted a letter from his carpenter, Kembel Whattley, who had been sent on a subsequent occasion when Desaguliers himself was told he was not wanted, and when Sir Jacob refused to stay to see the trial of the machine, insisting the old methods of using sails to direct air were adequate. Ackworth was an ultra-conservative ship builder who was later attacked as being a ‘half-experienced surveyor’ who had ‘half-ruined’ the navy. Even though he never saw it working, he condemned the blowing wheel. At this, Desaguliers asked that ‘every impartial Person’ should judge ‘whether I have not Reason to complain’. He was sad that this last attempt, in 1740, at a scheme which he hoped would have ‘been of great Benefit to the Publick’ had been frustrated by an arrogant official.48 Desaguliers might have been gratified, however, had he been able to read a letter in the Daily News on 12 September 1863, headed ‘Health of the Navy’, which included the remark that: It is curious to find that the fan wheel, recommended by its ingenious inventor, Dr Desaguliers, a century and a quarter ago, for clearing the foul air from ships’ holds should be again brought into notice and its properties likely to be further extended. […] In war ships its blowing power might be employed in quickly dispersing the dense smoke produced on firing artillery, and also in clearing away the engine vapour […] The last attack on Charleston strikingly exemplified this result.

Desaguliers was always willing to help others in their aspirations if he felt they were justified. John Cowley was Geographer to the King and published

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maps and naval material. He developed a ‘New Improvement in the Art of Gunnery’ by which he claimed missiles could be fired considerable distances to destroy the rigging of a ship or a body of men on land, as well as being useful in sieges for setting houses on fire. Cowley petitioned Lord Harrington, one of the Secretaries of State, that his firearm be taken up, and attached a letter, signed ‘J. T. Desaguliers FRS LLD Etc.’ and dated 31 January 1741, which read: Mr Cowley having communicated to me the manner of putting the above particulars in practice, there remains no doubt but that the same will answer the Ends proposed, with great facility, dispatch, and success.49

It is not known whether Cowley’s cause was helped by Desaguliers, but his name was clearly thought to be of influence, even though he had no special expertise in ordnance. This was a subject in which his son would later become an acclaimed expert. Although Desaguliers supported and was closely involved with it, the building of the first Westminster Bridge was a project which must have caused him some regret towards the end of his life. Sadly the new bridge approach road necessitated the demolition in 1741 of the house he had occupied in Channel Row for over 25 years. It had been his family home and also the place where he delivered his lectures. The property contained his ‘experiment room’ – ventilated by his own system – and the courtyard for larger demonstrations. However, in the early eighteenth century the only bridge across the Thames in London was London Bridge, which was quite inadequate for the traffic it had to carry. Watermen constantly took passengers and goods across the river, but there was urgent need for another road bridge further west in the growing city. From around 1720 there had been much discussion of where the new bridge should be situated and how it would be built, and also of how it could be financed. Various proposals and designs were put forward, and the first Westminster Bridge was eventually completed in 1750.50 In 1736 a bill was finally passed through parliament ‘for building a bridge cross the river Thames from the New Palace Yard in the City of Westminster to the opposite shore in the county of Surrey’. Both Desaguliers and fellow Huguenot and freemason, Charles Labelye, were important witnesses before the House of Commons committee which discussed alternative crossing points and designs for the bridge.51 Labelye (who is named La Belie in the contemporary journal) affirmed that he had lived in England for 16 years and had observed the growth in both population and buildings in that time; he asserted a bridge would be a great convenience to the inhabitants, as well as lowering the price of

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provisions in the markets. It is likely that Labelye and Desaguliers had collaborated on taking borings to determine the state of the riverbed at various points along the Thames as their testimonies are similar in that respect. Desaguliers said: That he bespoke proper Instruments for boring the Soil under the River Thames: That he was present at several of the Borings between the Horse-ferry at Westminster and Lambeth […] That the nearer Westminster they were the deeper they bored, because of the Depth of the Mud, but came to hard Gravel, which makes him think it a good foundation for a Stone Bridge.

As well as seeking suitably firm foundations, there was also the effect of the proposed bridge on the flow of the river to consider. Desaguliers admitted that he had first thought of Whitehall as a commodious place for the crossing, but his investigations showed that a structure there, together with the ebb and flow of the tide against the bank, would cause difficulties for vessels on the river. He pointed out that the similar situation further downstream at Fulham Bridge had caused the loss of many barges until the bargemen learned the skill of coping with an oblique current. Another potential hazard which would be less serious at the straighter stretch of river at Westminster was damage to the bridge by lumps of ice which floated in the water during the severe winters that were experienced in the early years of the eighteenth century. Desaguliers’s input to the debate on these and other issues, and the calculations he made to support the arguments, were influential in deciding the location of the new bridge. He was also examined with other witnesses before the House of Lords, when models of the proposed bridge were used to show that the bridge should not hinder navigation.52 It was eventually decided that, despite the cost, a stone bridge at Westminster would serve better than a wooden one. The project was in part funded by public lotteries and was overseen by a group of Lords Commissioner, chaired by Henry Herbert, ninth Earl of Pembroke (c.1689– 1750), who had some experience as an architect. There was keen competition to be in charge of the construction, and the chosen engineer was Desaguliers’s protégé, Charles Labelye. This caused some resentment as he was perceived as a foreigner, but he had Lord Pembroke’s support and worked tirelessly on the project, overcoming various set-backs, until the eventual opening of the bridge in 1750. The following year Labelye published a description of his work.53 Desaguliers did not live to see the completion of Westminster Bridge, but he took a particular interest in two innovative aspects of the early stages of the construction. He commented

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on the caissons that Labelye devised; these were wooden structures from which water was pumped as cement was poured in to form the piers of the bridge.54 Desaguliers also admired, and described and illustrated, the piledriving machine that was made by a Huguenot watchmaker, James Vauloüé. He commented that, in: works where we are confin’d to Time by Tides, as in making and mending Bridges, there must be great Care to husband Power so well as to lose no Time. The late Mr Vauloüé contriv’d […] the best [Engine] of that kind that perhaps was ever seen […] It has been and is still in use at the new Bridge at Westminster.55

Vauloüé’s machine was driven by three horses walking round a windlass, which, by a series of gears, caused a ram to be dropped forcefully onto a spiked pole. This could then be driven into the riverbed five times every two minutes, which greatly speeded up the bridge construction. Little is known of Vauloüé who, although not listed as a Fellow of the Royal Society, received their Copley Medal in 1738 for his work on the pile driver.56 Desaguliers’s expertise had earlier been called upon officially, together with two of his circle, in a less controversial matter. A warrant from the Treasury was issued on 4 August 1730 to ‘Edmund Halley, LL.D., Astronomical Observator, James Hodgson, Master of the Royal Mathematical School in Christ’s Hospital, and John Theophilus Desaguliers, LL.D., desiring their repair to the Receipt of the Exchequer to examine and prove the dimensions and contents of the standard coal bushel’.57 The ‘said bushel’ was then to be kept as the national standard measure. Despite his interest in various technological projects that had commercial potential, Desaguliers apparently applied for only one patent during his career. In 1720, John Theophilus Desaguliers, Doctor of Laws, Daniel Niblett, Coppersmith, and William Vreem (or Vream), Instrument Maker, claimed that they had ‘by their great expense, labor and study, found out a new Invention’ for: Making the steam and vapour of boiling liquids useful for many purposes, and particularly for drying malt, hop, starch, and other humid substances, and for baking, brewing, distilling, boiling and making of salt, better and with a less quantity of fire, without mixing the fiery particles with the several substances so much as in the way commonly used, by which Invention several works may be effected without danger […] which, according to the common way, are apt to set houses on fire, and often prove a very bad consequence in great cities.58

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The idea was to transmit steam from a boiler to substances that needed heating so that they were kept away from contact with the fire. Explosive or inflammable materials such as gunpowder and alcohol could then, respectively, be safely dried or distilled. It was hoped that very thick and expensive bottoms to pans used in sugar-refining, soap-boiling and salt-boiling would be obviated, and, above all, fire hazards would be reduced where it was necessary to heat substances such as turpentine, varnishes and oils. The steam was not easy to manipulate, however, and heat losses meant that the temperature would never quite reach 100°C, so that the system was of no use for boiling aqueous solutions and higher boiling liquids. It is not clear how profitable the patent proved, but applications for drying may well have succeeded. Desaguliers wrote of ‘Captain Busby, a Buckinghamshire gentleman’ who owned a kiln and, in 1720, offered to make some further experiments, using Desaguliers’s workman, on his method for drying malt and to report the results.59 To his surprise and understandable annoyance, all that Desaguliers received was a letter from Busby indicating that he had ‘found out an excellent Method of drying Malt by Hot Air’, that he was offering shares in the venture, and that Desaguliers might subscribe to as many as he pleased ‘paying for them the rate of other people’. Desaguliers declined to reply, but he noted, perhaps not without some satisfaction, that he had heard that Busby had ‘gain’d twenty thousand Pounds in his Project, and lost it again in the South Sea’. John Busby, a Fellow of the Royal Society, later attempted to patent an Engine, based on an adaptation of Boyle’s air pump, to remove ‘Damps in Mines, Pitts and Wells’; this, Busby claimed, in a clear allusion to Desaguliers, had never been done before except ‘in a Minute Degree [by] those Persons who read Lectures in Experimental Philosophy’. In the early eighteenth century the patent system in England was not clearly defined; it was expensive to register a patent and the details required of specifications of an invention varied from case to case.60 Desaguliers was generally very sceptical about the benefits of patenting an invention. When discussing the effect of friction on machines he regretted the way: Projectors contrive new Machines […] which they suppose will perform much more than they have seen done with the same Power, because they allow too little for Friction. Full of this they go to the Charge of 70 or 80 l. for a Patent […] and draw in Persons more ignorant than themselves to contribute towards this (suppos’d advantageous) Undertaking; till after a great deal of Time and Money wasted, they find their own Engine worse than others which they hoped by many degrees to excel.61

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Desaguliers admitted that though some of the projectors were ‘knaves’, many were genuine but misguided. For this reason he decided, for ‘Use to the Publick’, to give as full an account of friction as he could, gathered from experiments made by others (especially the Royal Academy of Paris) and from his own experiments and observations. Another disadvantage of the patent system was the proliferation of grants to inventions that differed only slightly from those that had gone before. In the second volume of the Course Desaguliers devoted several pages to diving bells, and commented that: About 16 years ago I was inform’d that there had been granted about 14 Patents for making these kind of diving Instruments, several different Persons having obtain’d these Privileges because in their Improvements, which they call’d new Inventions, they varied a little from those that had gone before.

Desaguliers enjoyed seeing new inventions based on scientific principles used to the benefit of the population, but he was also keen to warn speculators of the risks involved in putting their money into projects that were not fully understood. He gave an example in the preface to the second volume of the Course, warning of the need for a ‘very necessary Caution’ as: There are several Persons who have Money, that are ready to supply boasting Engineers with it in the hopes of great Returns […] About two Years ago a Man proposed an Engine, to raise by one Man’s work about ten Times more Water than was possible to a certain Height in a certain Time.

He recounted how an Act of Parliament was proposed to support this project, and if this had passed a great many Persons would have subscribed to it and all their money would have been lost and ‘perhaps several families ruin’d’. Fortunately a nobleman ‘who understands the Nature of Engines very well, knowing the Impossibility of what was propos’d’ threw out the bill. Desaguliers concluded philosophically that ‘Our Legislators may make Laws to govern us […] but they cannot alter the Laws of Nature’. The engineer must always be honest and work within those Laws of Nature. Desaguliers’s views were remembered in 1772 when the philosopher Thomas Reid (1710–96) wrote to his friend, the political reformer and demographer, Richard Price (1723–91), to congratulate him on raising the alarm about ‘Visionary Schemes’ which could ruin innocent families. Reid continued:

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About forty years ago there was a Phrenzy in the Nation about mechanical projects. Many were ruined and many more were in danger of being drawn into ruin by such Projectors. This disease seems to have been cured in a great degree by shewing Men clearly upon principles of Science the utmost Effects that the Mechanical Powers can produce. And in this I think Desaguliers had no small Merit at that time. I hope your Observations will have no less success in curing the Epidemical Disease of trusting to visionary Projects of Reversionary Annuities; by shewing upon Scientifick Principles, the utmost Effects that can be expected from such Projects.62

The varied engineering projects that Desaguliers helped either to develop, or to communicate and explain, were in accord with his assertion that ‘to make Art and Nature subservient to the Necessities of Life’ is part of ‘the Business of a Science’. He was fascinated not only by the way in which men and animals worked physically, but also by the way the new technology could be adapted to take over tasks formerly performed manually or by horsepower. Desaguliers’s influential patron, the Duke of Chandos, was also enthusiastic in considering how new ideas might be adapted in various ways to enhance everyday life, and also for financial advantage.

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Patronage: Desaguliers at the Service of the Duke of Chandos and his Great Estate at Cannons

Desaguliers was helped at various times throughout his career by those who could be considered his patrons. He received financial help, encouragement and introductions from people more favourably placed than himself and was frequently able to offer his expertise in return. Also, as an Anglican minister, he was on occasion rewarded with ecclesiastical appointments. He was never wealthy and his initial status in society as the son of a Huguenot refugee was low, but he was a self-confident, hard-working and personable man. As his reputation, built largely on his undoubted natural skill as a lecturer and on his technical ability, grew, so did his influence. He gained acquaintance with a large cross-section of society, from artisans to aristocracy, and his social circle, which importantly included his masonic connections, became a useful asset. One measure of his rise in society was the increasingly prestigious sponsors that Desaguliers felt able to invite to the baptisms of his children. In time he was able to distance himself from his early life as the son of a scholarly but impoverished and displaced clergyman. Although it is likely that some benefactor arranged for the young Desaguliers to attend Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School on the death of his father, it has now become clear that his first obvious patron was John Wilkins. As already mentioned, the wealthy coal mine owner undoubtedly helped Desaguliers around the time that he was a student at Oxford. The most likely reason for this patronage was the friendship and tutorial help offered by Desaguliers to Wilkins’s son when both were at Christ Church, and the connection appears to have ceased rather abruptly on the death of young Francis Wilkins in 1711. Desaguliers may well have discussed with John Wilkins the use of the Newcomen steam engine for mine drainage and so have developed his early interest in the practical application of technical advances. Desaguliers’s first two translations have dedications which seemingly acknowledge early patronage. The 1711 translation of Ozanam’s A Treatise of Fortifications is dedicated to Colonel John Richmond Webb (1667–1724), an

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army officer of repute who had served with Marlborough. The connection between Desaguliers and Webb is not clear, but apparently they had met as the translator’s dedication reads: An Author appearing under so Powerful a Protector is as sure of Success, as a Souldier marching under so Invincible a Commander. Upon this Account it is that I presume to offer the following Translation to You, not as worthy of your Acceptance, but as wanting your Patronage.

It continues effusively to say that the subject of the book, fortification, was one that none understood better than Webb, but this is the kind of flattering remark to be expected in the context. Possibly Webb had sponsored Desaguliers to write the translation as he felt the subject matter worthy of an English version. The dedication in 1715 of the translation of Gauger’s Fires Improv’d, a work which gave Desaguliers considerable renown, was to Hugh, first Earl of Cholmondeley (c.1662–1725), Treasurer of His Majesty’s Household, and again indicates acquaintance between the two men: I have presum’d to dedicate this small Treatise to you […] because it gives me an Opportunity of returning my most unfeign’d Thanks for those Favours you have been pleas’d to confer upon me. […] Had I but given a bare Translation of the French Author, yet I shou’d have hop’d for its Acceptance from such an Encourager of Physical and Mathematical Sciences; but now that I have improv’d the Hint so far as to make it of general Use in England, I shall more boldly offer you the little which I contribute, in my way, to the Good of the Nation, which your Lordship is ever studying to promote.

Cholmondeley apparently had a practical interest in science, but it is unknown what favours he had offered Desaguliers, perhaps in return for instruction or advice on apparatus. Cholmondeley did not belong to the Royal Society but interestingly his brother George, who succeeded him as the second Earl and was a career soldier, was one of the first men nominated by Desaguliers for Fellowship to the Society, also in 1715. And in 1724, George’s son, Lord Malpas, stood as sponsor at the baptism of Desaguliers’s daughter, Sarah Jane, so the acquaintance with the family must have lasted for some years. Desaguliers’s poem The Newtonian System, published in 1728 and which compares government and astronomical science, is overtly Hanoverian and also pays tribute to Sir Isaac Newton, who had recently died. The verse can be read as acknowledging ongoing patronage which the author received from members

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of the royal family, and also support he had enjoyed from the great scientist himself. However, the actual dedication of Desaguliers’s poem is ‘To The Right Honourable Earl of Ilay, &c, &c, &c.’. This was Archibald Campbell, 1st Earl of Ilay and later 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682–1761), a Scot who, as well as having an important political career, was a renowned scholar and amateur scientist.1 Surprisingly he was not a Fellow of the Royal Society, but he must have known Desaguliers for some years as he was a godfather to Thomas Desaguliers, baptized in 1721. In the poem’s dedication Desaguliers wrote: Your Lordship’s consummate knowledge of the Laws of Nature which are establish’d in the Heavens, as well as the Laws of Nations, and particularly those of Great Britain, makes the Patronage of this Poem Your undoubted Right. […] I shall only beg Leave to return my humble Thanks for the Freedom and Goodness with which your Lordship has always receiv’d me.

Ilay espoused Newtonian ideas and it is likely that he had attended Desaguliers’s lectures and seen his apparatus at his house in Westminster. James Brydges, first Duke of Chandos (1674–1744)2 was, however, undoubtedly the most important patron of John Theophilus Desaguliers, and a man who had significant influence on his life and career. Desaguliers dedicated to Chandos his translation of Mariotte’s book on hydraulics, addressing it to the Right Honourable James, Earl of Carnarvon, which was the title Brydges held in 1718, the date of the publication: My Lord, As it is to Your Lordship’s Favours alone that I owe the Leisure which I have been able to allow myself in Translating this Book, so no one has a better claim to it than you […] It is to you, therefore, my Lord, that the reader is beholden for this excellent Treatise on Waterworks […] Among the Arts and Sciences, which your Lordship has always cherish’d and countenanc’d, Experimental Philosophy (to which I have more particularly apply’d myself) has met with so much Encouragement, that I think it not sufficient to acknowledge my Obligations to my Patron in a publick manner, unless I daily endeavour to produce something worthy his Acceptance.3

Whether the leisure for which Desaguliers was thanking his patron was due to financial help which freed him from the need to give so many courses of lectures, or whether perhaps he meant quiet space in which to work, is debatable. It was, however, an appropriate dedication as hydraulics was a subject on which they would collaborate over the years, both in garden design

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and in the field of water supply. They were in frequent contact from 1716, when Desaguliers became chaplain to Brydges, almost until the end of their lives; they both died in 1744. Son of the then Lord Chandos, James Brydges was born in 1674. After attending New College, Oxford, in 1698 he became Member of Parliament for Hereford, where there were family connections. In Parliament he soon became concerned with matters of the national exchequer and in 1705, under Queen Anne, was appointed Paymaster General. In this capacity he served the Duke of Marlborough who the previous year had gained victory at the Battle of Blenheim. Until 1712 Brydges was responsible for the financial arrangements of the forces overseas and gained the trust of Marlborough; he also made significant personal profit from the post. By 1714, when his father died and he inherited the titles both of Lord Chandos and Earl of Carnarvon, he was a very wealthy man, though perhaps subject to suspicion as to the legality of the acquisition of some of his fortune. Always a favourite of Queen Anne, who died that same year, he continued to enjoy royal favour and in 1719 King George I created him first Duke of Chandos. Brydges married three times. His first wife was Mary Lake and through her family he acquired the estate of Cannons, near Edgware in Middlesex. The Duke’s popular and active second wife was his cousin, Cassandra Willoughby (1670–1735), of Wollaton in Nottinghamshire, whom he married in 1713.4 After her death Chandos married Lady Lydia Davell, a wealthy widow some twenty years his junior. As a young man James Brydges showed a genuine interest in technical matters. He travelled through Europe and in Germany in 1694 he met Leibniz and subsequently corresponded with the famous mathematical philosopher. During his time in London as a Member of Parliament he frequented the City coffee houses where there was talk not only of investments and opportunities for new trade with countries overseas, but also the occasional scientific lecture and demonstration. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1694, at the age of just 20, served four times on the Society’s Council between the years of 1695 and 1702, and attended meetings whenever he could.5 As Paymaster to the army he spent less time in London, but from 1712 he was regularly back in the capital and beginning to plan the project which would engage him for the rest of his life: his palatial home called Cannons. His first wife died late in 1712 and so never saw the mansion and gardens that replaced the more modest house on the estate that her family had owned. Brydges, however, continued to fulfil his ambition to build a prestigious home that would reflect his status; he enjoyed a lavish lifestyle and acquired sumptuous decorations and furnishings as well as all the latest innovations.

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The Duke of Chandos was also an astute businessman who was always looking for new ventures.6 He had, for example, widespread mining interests, was involved in trade with Africa, and was a substantial stockholder in the York Buildings Company, one of whose interests was in water supply to London. He lost heavily in the financial collapse of 1720 when the South Sea Bubble burst, but was largely able to recover and continue his projects. Despite his extravagances, and possibly due to his judicious third marriage, he was solvent when he died in 1744, but his heir had neither interest in Cannons nor the means to maintain it. The palace with which Desaguliers became very familiar was dismantled just 35 years after its construction had started. The building materials and the remarkable contents were dispersed following three lengthy auction sales in 1747.7 How and when Desaguliers and the future Duke of Chandos first met is not known. The Brydges family were mine owners and there is a remote possibility that there was an early contact through a mutual interest in the drainage of coal mines using the Newcomen steam engine. However, nothing indicates that James Brydges knew Desaguliers’s early patron, the Midlands mine owner John Wilkins, who might have introduced him to the young experimental philosopher. Desaguliers’s Oxford mentor, John Keill, was a close friend of the Duke of Chandos and also a Fellow of the Royal Society. It is more likely to have been Keill who first mentioned Desaguliers to James Brydges and perhaps arranged for them to meet. Brydges was regularly in London from 1712, which is when Desaguliers moved there from Oxford and began his public lectures in the City. Then, early in 1714, Desaguliers became Newton’s demonstrator, performing experiments at meetings of the Royal Society which Brydges still attended on occasion. Brydges soon realized that Desaguliers had a gift for developing practical solutions to technical problems and decided to become better acquainted with the scientist. Knowing that Desaguliers was an ordained minister, he appointed him as his personal chaplain on 3 November 1716. It is tempting to question Brydges’s motives in making this appointment, and, indeed, Desaguliers’s in accepting it. At the time he was not active as a minister of religion and he was still only a deacon. He was, however, becoming well known in scientific circles and beginning to establish himself in London society. Acknowledgement from Brydges, who was now Earl of Carnarvon, would have been gratifying and the post probably brought some welcome, if not large, financial reward. For his part Carnarvon was a shrewd entrepreneur, and he was by now embarked on the construction of Cannons. He needed someone with technical expertise and useful contacts upon whom he could call, not only for help with the building project, but also for his various business interests.

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Brydges had within his gift the living of the church of St Lawrence (also known as Whitchurch), at Little Stanmore, as it was part of the Cannons estate. On 28 August 1719 Desaguliers, who was by then fully ordained as a priest, was appointed rector of that church. He frequently visited Cannons, and although the Duke of Chandos, as he now was, employed a domestic chaplain who conducted services in the private chapel in the house, Desaguliers had responsibility for the church. But, as will be seen, he had more enthusiasm for his role as technical adviser than for his parochial duties. The Duke of Chandos spared no expense in building his great estate at Cannons. Correspondence about the project, one or two contemporary accounts and just a few artefacts survive, together with some floor plans and engravings of two of the elevations, and these give some idea of the magnificence of the house.8 The 1747 sale catalogues also give an indication of the remarkable scale of the building and the quality of the furniture, paintings, sculpture and decorations that Chandos bought. The building cannot be attributed to any one architect: several were involved at different stages and included William Talman, James Gibbs, John James of Greenwich and John Price. For the interior decorations Chandos employed craftsmen of repute, many brought from continental Europe: there were, for example, painted ceilings by Bellucci, Paulocci and Laguerre, gilded plasterwork by Pergotti and carvings by Grinling Gibbons. The enamelled glass windows in the chapel were designed by the Italian, Francisco Sleter, and executed by Joshua Price of York. There were life-size statues everywhere, along the top of each front of the building and on the parterre; both George I and George II, the monarchs at the time, were represented and there is said to have been a spectacular gilt statue of a gladiator near to the canal. Diverging avenues of trees led from the house to the main gates with heraldic pillars on the Edgware Road, to Little Stanmore church half a mile away, and to the ‘Bason’, complete with spectacular fountain. There was a domestic garden growing exotic fruits and vegetables, and unusual animals and birds were kept. Everything was developed in record time and even when finances were strained, for example following the losses of the South Sea Bubble, life at Cannons was extravagant, with a staff of over a hundred. Chandos employed a private orchestra and vocalists to entertain his family and guests and provide the music at services in the chapel. His resident musical director for twenty years from 1717 was Johann Christoph Pepusch (1667–1752), but for almost two years from 1718 George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was also in residence at Cannons as organist and composer. Handel composed the Chandos Anthems for his patron; the Chandos Te Deum and the oratorio Esther also date from this period. The first performance of Acis and Galatea is reputed to have

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taken place on the terrace at Cannons in the summer of 1718 so that a nearby fountain could be played at the appropriate point in the finale.9 At this time too, the church of St Lawrence was being renovated, or, more correctly, rebuilt, for all that remained of the original parish church was the fifteenth-century tower. Handel played on the new church organ which was theatrically situated at the east end behind the sanctuary and opposite a comfortable gallery for the Duke and his family. Desaguliers must surely have taken particular interest in the work on the church as he was the first incumbent

12.  The Chandos Mausoleum at St Lawrence Church, Little Stanmore. The Duke had the white marble monument of himself, in Roman dress and flanked by his first two wives, erected after the death of Cassandra, his second wife, in 1735. Desaguliers held the living of the church and would have seen the construction of the mausoleum as well as the restoration of the body of the church in high baroque style. (Photograph: Marije Rommes)

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to enjoy the new building. The extravagant baroque decoration, with which he would have been familiar, including the ceiling paintings by Laguerre, can still be seen today, as can the adjoining mausoleum containing the elaborate tombs of Chandos and his family.10 The decoration of the chapel within Cannons was also high baroque, and its magnificence can now be appreciated at the remote church of Great Witley in Worcestershire. The fittings, windows and ceiling paintings were purchased by Lord Foley, the then owner of nearby Witley Court, and painstakingly transported and reinstalled there in the late 1740s.11 Daniel Defoe visited Cannons. In A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain he described the estate as he saw it in 1722, and he was lavish in his praise: Near Edgworth […] the present Duke of Chandos has built a most magnificent palace or mansion house, I might say the most magnificent in England. The whole structure is built with such a profusion of expence, and all finish’d with such a brightness of fancy, goodness of judgment […] every part of this building adds to the beauty of the whole. […] I venture to say that not Italy itself can show such a building rais’d from the common surface, by one private hand, and in so little a time as this. The inside of this house is as glorious as the outside is fine; the lodgings are indeed most exquisitely finish’d, and if I may call it so, royally furnish’d; the chapel is a singularity, not only in its building, and the beauty of its workmanship, but the Duke […] maintains there a full choir, and has the worship perform’d there with the best musick, after the manner of the Chappel Royal […]. The avenues and vista’s to this house are extreamly magnificent, the great walk or chief avenue is near a mile in length, planted with two double rows of trees, and the middle walk broad enough for a troop of horse to march in front […] there is a large basin or fountain of water, and the coaches drive round it on either side.

In the same year John Macky also wrote, even more effusively, about his visit to Cannons.12 Even though it was then not quite complete, the layout of the house was described in detail, with the painted ceilings by Belluci and Laguerre and in the dining room ‘a nobler Side-Board of Plate than most Sovereign Princes have’. Macky was impressed by the fact that the Duke had water for the grand canal piped some ‘two miles from the mountains of Stanmore’, but even more by the quantity of ‘Ironwork about this noble Palace’; in the gardens ‘the greatest pleasure of all is that the Divisions of the whole being made of Ballustrades of Iron, and not by walls, you see the whole at once, be you in what part of the Garden or Parterre you will’. The pipework for transporting water to the canals and reservoirs had been installed with the advice of Desaguliers, who worked

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with another Fellow of the Royal Society, John Lowthorp,13 on the project. The great basin with its jet d’eau was one of several features which presented Desaguliers with problems to overcome. Of course, the extravagance of Cannons did not go uncriticized, and it was often thought that the Duke of Chandos’s estate, at least in part, provided the model for Timon’s Villa in Alexander Pope’s Epistle to Burlington. The poet himself denied this, and while some lines could indeed represent an expression of distaste for the ostentatious lifestyle of the Duke, Chandos was not without artistic sensitivity and he was certainly not the only person alluded to by Pope in his attack on profligacy and poor taste. In particular, Timon’s lack of knowledge of books would have been unjustified, for Chandos took a genuine interest in his library which was well-chosen and up-to-date. John Keill is known to have visited Cannons and his dedications in both the Latin and English versions of his work on astronomy were to the Duke of Chandos. In the predictably effusive English text he praised Chandos’s diverse accomplishments, and continued: To the particular Science that is the Subject of this Book your Grace is so Eminent, so Benificent a Patron, that in the stately and beautiful Structure of Cannons, Astronomers will find every thing for the improvement of their Knowledge; Instruments worthy of the Science and an Observatory worthy of its Lord. The Book I now present is a Translation of those Astronomical Lectures which were honoured with your Grace’s Name at their first Publication in the Language they were read in at the University of Oxford. The Version was made at the Request and for the Service of the fair Sex, and particularly for the Service of the great Ornament of her Sex, the Duchess of Chandos.14

Chandos clearly owned and enjoyed high quality scientific equipment and had an observatory which Keill appreciated. Desaguliers would also have had access to all this, and probably used it on occasion to entertain the Duke’s guests with demonstrations of Newtonian natural philosophy and astronomy. During the evening of 22 December 1722 he observed a spectacular appearance of the Aurora Borealis while he was staying at Cannons. He would have alerted the household to see this and later he described the phenomenon in detail to the Royal Society, with drawings to show its position in the heavens and how it had changed in appearance five times.15 The Duchess of Chandos, whose father Francis Willoughby had been an eminent collector of biological specimens, had a genuine interest in natural philosophy and knew Desaguliers well. In the summer of 1730 the Duke and Duchess took the waters at Tunbridge in

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Kent, and Desaguliers had been with them and other members of their family. Lettice Cornwallis, wrote to her second cousin, the Duchess, describing how Desaguliers continued to give lectures for a while after Chandos and his wife had left. ‘Straingers might come & pay 5d a peice only’ Lettice wrote on 6 August, adding that ‘His desection of an eye is a glorious sight’.16 Desaguliers served the Duke of Chandos in various ways. From his correspondence with John Keill concerning the translation of ’sGravesande’s book it is clear that in August 1719 he had left his own family and was out of London accompanying the Duke’s sons, John and Henry Brydges, on a tour; possibly he was charged with trying to interest the young men in some of their father’s technological ventures. Two years later when the elder son, then Lord Carnarvon, left Oxford after his father had paid off his debts, the young man was told to return home via the west of England in the company of Desaguliers who had business in the copper mines of Devonshire. The Duke of Chandos had a London residence in St James’s Square, and later he bought land and built in Cavendish Square. He had plans for a private road to facilitate journeys from central London to Cannons free from fear of highwaymen, but this was never built. Desaguliers would at times have met his patron in London, but he was also expected to be available for duties at Cannons. That he was there quite often in 1721 and 1722 is indicated in an incomplete manuscript listing those who dined at various tables during that time.17 It is likely that for some years Desaguliers, and his servant, must have had sleeping accommodation available somewhere within the house. Desaguliers would usually be seated for dinner at the Chaplain’s Table, or, sometimes, at His Grace’s Table, while ‘Dr Desaguliers’s man’ was in the Servants’ Hall. In March and April 1722 they were present during three entire weeks, but more often just individual occasions are noted before the record lapses. A letter written by a relative of the Duke refers to a dinner at Cannons on 4 January 1718 and praises the grandeur of the occasion and mentions that ‘Monsr. Des Egguliers, the Mathematician and Experimental Philosopher, and Dr Pepus, the famed Musician, lay in the house’ that night.18 Further indications of when Desaguliers was at Cannons are found in the diary of the brother of the Duke of Chandos, the Rev. Henry Brydges.19 On several occasions between 1718 and 1723 Brydges travelled by coach from his house in Chelsea to dine at Cannons or at the Stanmore Bowling Green and he recorded the names of the people he met; at times these included Desaguliers. For example, on 20 May 1718 he wrote: ‘went to Brother Carnarvon’s where we met Mr Lowthrop, Capt. Jacob, Dr Arbuthnot, Mr Philpot, Mr Grey and Mr Desaguliers. I was home by 6’. A surprising encounter took place on Sunday 30 June 1723. Brydges wrote

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that ‘ye Duke of Wharton call’d and went with me to dine at Canons’ where they met a dozen gentlemen including Desaguliers. As this was just a few days after Wharton had stormed out of an acrimonious masonic Grand Lodge meeting after which Desaguliers, as the newly elected deputy Grand Master, had to close proceedings, it would be interesting to know if the two freemasons spoke to one another. After 1723 Henry Brydges became more engaged in clerical duties and visited Cannons less often. When he died in 1728 it was Desaguliers who conducted the funeral service at Little Stanmore. Handwritten copies of almost 60 letters that Chandos wrote to Desaguliers between 1717 and 1741 are included in the volumes of his Outbook which is now held at the Huntington Library in California; unfortunately none of Desaguliers’s letters to his patron survive but much can be gleaned from Chandos’s side of the correspondence.20 Most of the Duke’s letters fall very roughly into one of three categories: several of them will be quoted, at least in part, as they tell their own story of the fluctuating relationship between the two men. There are requests for Desaguliers to act as an intermediary between Chandos and various people ranging from Sir Isaac Newton, to workmen supplying items for Cannons, and to a supplier of chessmen; there are communications about the management of the church and parish of Little Stanmore; and there are matters concerning business ventures. The first type of correspondence gives a fascinating insight into the variety of services asked of Desaguliers by his patron, and of their activities, and also into some of the people with whom they were dealing. For example, on 16 December 1719 Chandos wrote on assorted topics: I send you enclosed a Lre. for Mr Bradley wch. I desire you’l convey to him, not knowing how to do it my self, you’l receive it open, that you may see what I have wrote within, having mention’d your name to him. I am heartily sorry to hear the ill state of health yr. Lady is in, I shall be glad to congratulate you upon her Recovery. I was in hope I should have had the Engine fixt up in the House in the Square before this time.21 I cannot but complain to you of Mr Harding who hath not yet done the Door Hinges for Cannons tho’ above 2 Mos. ago, He promist Me they shd. be ready in a Fortnight’s time, I wish he doth not use Me after the same Manner with the Iron rails, I have employ’d him about in the Square. I think it a great misfortune always, to have to do with such sort of Workmen. (XVI 410)22

Richard Bradley FRS was a horticulturalist who had been employed on the gardens at Cannons, but he was dismissed by Chandos in 1719 on suspicion

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of having misappropriated some money. Bradley knew Desaguliers, possibly through the Royal Society, and in his book on gardening he enthusiastically advocated Desaguliers’s methods of ventilation for use in heated greenhouses.23 Desaguliers was charged by Chandos with the task of delivering Bradley’s letter of dismissal, but glasshouses with the newly designed chimneys that the gardener had fitted for the benefit of the exotic plants continued to be used at Cannons. The final paragraph of the 1719 letter is typical of several that show the Duke’s impatience at slow progress in his projects and his attempts to get Desaguliers to hurry people on his behalf. There was understandable frustration at the delay in alterations to chimneys at Cannons, when Chandos wrote on 15 February 1720: The Chimneys in my Library smoak so very much there is no sitting in it, wch makes me very impatient for Vream’s coming down wth the plates. It is now above a week since he took measure of the Plates and surely they may be made in this time. Pray hasten him all you can. (XXVIII, 33)

William Vream had been recommended by Desaguliers as an expert Workman ‘for curing the smoaking Chimneys’, and fortunately he was able to solve the problem in the library to Chandos’s satisfaction. The coppersmith, Daniel Niblett, with whom Desaguliers and Vream had issued a patent in 1720, was another workman employed at Cannons, for in March 1726 Chandos wrote: I give you this trouble to desire you will inform me, whther you have yet spoken to Mr Niblet about the Copper Pipe of 7 Inches Bore and 200 Yards in length which I design to lay in the Garden at Cannons. If you have not, I desire you will discourse with him about it and agree upon the Price at the easiest rate you can. (XXVIII, 33)

A month later Chandos was in Bath, and left the construction of more water features in the Cannons garden in the care of Desaguliers: I give you the trouble of this to desire you wil let me know whether the large Pipes that are to be laid in the garden at Cannons are yet ready and whether you have bespoke the Jet pipe of 1 1/4 inch diameter and the other appurtenances for the Jet d’Eau. As I cannot yet come to any resolution how long I shal stay in these parts, and that I would gladly have this waterwork carried on and finished without loss of time I desire you will, in my absence, give the necessary Directions that may be wanted for that purpose as well for Opening the ground in the Garden as for

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all other matters relating to this affair. Pray let me know from time to time what progress is made in it, and consult with Coll. Watkins and Dr Baxter in everything you do therein. I continue in the mind to have two Rows of Pipes of five Inches bore each from the reservoir to the Garden and one length of 7 or 8 Inches pipe from thence to the Bason, and the Pipe which is to ly in the Bason I would have to be of Lead. (XXVIII, 79)

Colonel Watkins was Master of the Household at Cannons, while Dr Baxter was domestic Chaplain and librarian to the Duke. Watkins also received a letter from Chandos which explained (and warned): I have wrote to Dr Desaguliers to desire him to come down and look after the workmen and see what progress they make in boring and laying the Pipes; and to give directions for the brass Pipe which is to fling up the water […] When the Pond is drained there must be special care taken by the Gardiner of the Fish. (XXVIII, 80)

There were several other highly technical letters to Desaguliers concerning pipes, both of iron and lead, such as this query from a secretary, dated 23 February 1728/9: My Lord Duke has been put to so great an Expense this frosty Winter in repairing the Lead Pipes at Cannons as in St James’ Square that His Grace apprehends they are defective as to the Dimensions of their Bores or have not a thickness answerable to the Diameters of their Bores; and desires to know your Opinion what ought to be the Diameter of the Bore and what the weight of the Lead in a yard of Pipe of that Bore which is to Carry Water to a Water Closet fed by a Cistern that holds five Tuns and which is forty feet higher than the Level of the Pipe. You’ll please to let myself have your thoughts upon this as soon as may be. (XXXIII, 36)

It is to be hoped that Desaguliers’s expertise in hydraulics meant that he was able to answer this request. Others seemed less complex, such as one in the following April: I should be glad to hear from you whether you have agreed with the gentlemen for the Ten yards of Iron pipe I desired; upon Second thoughts I judge that quantity will be too small; and would therefore have it increased to thirty yards and desire to know how soon I may depend upon having it and at what price. The sooner I receive your answer to this the better. (XXX, 80)

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Some concern for Desaguliers’s health and personal life is indicated by the addition by Chandos of his comment on the health of Joanna Desaguliers in the December 1719 letter (XVI, 140; see above). In 1725 Desaguliers must have suffered toothache for his patron wrote: I am much concern’d at your indisposition; but hope you have got over it before this time, tho I doubt nothing will effectually do it, but drawing the tooth. (XXVI, 158)

And in 1736 came a congratulation on recovery from yet another attack of gout, a commission concerning chessmen and an obscure passage which nonetheless indicates the extent to which Chandos trusted Desaguliers’s opinion: As for the other papers, I return them you again and desire you’l acquaint the person who owns them that I am determining to have nothing to do with any secrets of that sort, unless he acquaints you first of all with it, and that you declare to me you believe firmly it will in all respects answer the opinion he himself has of it. (XLVIII, 176)

Desaguliers asked favours of the Duke on various occasions; he may have been trying, unsuccessfully, to interest Chandos in a children’s dramatic performance when in 1732 he received the reply: I have received the favour of yours and return you many thanks for your Civility in sending me the Tickets, but in regard they will be of no use to one (having for many years last past left off partaking of that diversion) I return em you again not questioning but you will bestow em much better, than upon one who has as little relish in these Entertainments. (XXXVII, 133)

Although chastising Desaguliers for passing on a friend’s request for a loan of money, Chandos, who received many such appeals as well as unsolicited gifts, showed consideration for his chaplain by ending a reply in January 1720 more kindly: I send you enclosed a Note for 20 L. on return for his Book, a favour I did not desire, nor wou’d have accepted had it not come by your friend, for I am not fond of receiving presents. (XVI, 438)

Soon afterwards, Chandos asked Desaguliers to enquire of Sir Isaac Newton whether he was acquainted with a gentleman who claimed him as a referee (XVII, 11). On another occasion Chandos asked Desaguliers to vote for his

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preferred candidate in the election for secretary to the Royal Society (XXXV, 23). And, in 1725, another service was asked: I send you enclosed a letter I have received from Mr Long at Cambridge, in which you’l see he tells me he has made a sphere of glass which he intends to present me with. I am no stranger to the Charge of such sort of presents and therefore unless it is a very curious thing of its kind, I would decline being troubled with it. In order to my knowing this, pray will you be so kind to go & see it as from yourself […] and let me know your opinion of it as soon as may be. (XXVI, 220)

Roger Long (1680–1770) was a clergyman and astronomer who devised celestial spheres for teaching purposes. Desaguliers was lecturing in Cambridge in 1725 so may well have visited Long, but his verdict on the proposed gift is not known. However, in March 1732 Chandos asked him to tell Dr Long he was willing to have two globes, presumably as a purchase, and to ask how long it would be before they were finished. In the same letter Desaguliers was charged with calling on the renowned London optician, Edward Scarlet, and hastening him in the construction of a telescope he was making for the Duke.24 In the Cannons auction catalogue, amongst a good collection of scientific instruments in the library, are listed two reflecting telescopes and also ‘a fine pair of 27 inch globes’. Chandos was sometimes willing to indulge the whims of others. When in 1723 Ghirardo (or Ghiraldo), who, as well as being one of the violinists at Cannons acted as page to the young Marquis of Carnarvon on his foreign travels, had an idea for an improved steam engine, Desaguliers was asked to help: I send you enclosed a letter I have just received from Signor Ghirardo whom you may remember one of the violins of Cannons, you’l see by reading it what hope he has of making himself a vast fortune & as nobody knows what may happen since stranger things have come to pass I desire you’ll be pleased to order such a model of the Fire Engine to be made as he wishes for & the description necessary for the use of it drawn up & I’ll take care to send it over to him. (XXIII, 280)

There is no evidence to suggest that anything came of this project, or of another which Desaguliers was prevailed upon to look into. This was an idea for determining longitude at sea. Since 1714, when the Government had offered a substantial prize for a device which would help determine a ship’s position at sea with sufficient accuracy to aid navigation, innumerable ideas of varying ingenuity had been proposed and many had been offered to the Royal Society for assessment. Desaguliers was obviously weary of giving an opinion on such

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ideas, many of which were wildly impractical, and Chandos knew this, but still he wrote in 1735: A Gentleman has left with me a small Treatise in which he has described an instrument he has invented, and of manner of using it, for taking the Longitude at sea. I know you are so tried with these pretended discoveries, that you have little inclination to give any attention to any thing of this sort, but if you’l give your self the trouble of looking over this, & let me have your opinion upon it you’l oblige. (XLVI, 83)

As late as 1740, Chandos was still making diverse requests of Desaguliers. One of the last letters in the Outbook, from a secretary, has two such queries: The Duke of Chandos orders me to write to you to desire you will acquaint him whether there has been yet published an entire collection of Sr. Isaac Newton’s Works in one Edition, & if there has not, whether you know of any intention to put such an one out; if there is not, my Lord desires you will send him a list of the principal Treatises he has wrote, that he may buy em to make a present of to a Colledge in Oxford. My Ld. having taken down sev’l of his Iron Gates & Rails in his garden wo’d be glad to know whether any of your Acquaintance are making Gardens or Avenues & wo’d be willing to purchase any of them; they may be had at a moderate price, tho’ my Lord thinks it too much to let ‘em go as old iron. (LVII, 19)

Another category of the letters demonstrates that, throughout their relationship, the management of the parish of St Lawrence caused friction between the Duke of Chandos and Desaguliers. Because his time was so taken up with technical matters for the Duke (which frankly were of more interest to both of them), and with his courses of lectures and work for the Royal Society, as well as with freemasonry, Desaguliers employed a curate to carry out the day-to-day running of church affairs. The church records show that he did sign personally the Minutes of the Easter Vestry meetings each year from 1720 to 1730, but from 1731 until after his death they were signed, if at all, by a curate. Chandos intended to leave responsibility for the church to the incumbent but in February 1720, soon after Desaguliers had taken the living, he was concerned at his minister’s judgment and for his own reputation and wrote to him: You must excuse the Liberty I take in mentioning one Matter to you wch is of no small concern. When I told you I wd not meddle nor make in the Choice of a Curate which I thought and still think is but reasonable to be entirely in the Behest of the

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Minister of the Parish it was upon a supposition yt you wd make choice of such an One as was not liable to any Objectivity. I am now told you have agreed wth one who hath undergone a Publick Tryal, been condemn’d & punisht for Disaffection to the Governmt. If this is the Case (which will argue so great an Indiscretion in you yt I can hardly believe it) I must desire you will think of some other, for I have rec’d too many Obligations from His Majesty to shew such Countenance to a Man of that sort whose principles are so very different from mine & you may be assured he may never come into my House. (XVII, 11)

The proposed curate of uncertain reputation was not named, but presumably an alternative appointment was made to Chandos’s approval as for some years he wrote no more on the subject. A newspaper account at the time of the accession of King George II in 1727 described the active role taken by Desaguliers as minister at Whitchurch, in the local celebrations arranged by Chandos: On Thursday last, His Majesty was proclaimed, with great Joy and universal Acclamations, at Whitchurch (alias Edgware) in Middlesex, where His Grace gave the Sheriff a very splendid Entertainment and Three Hogsheads of Strong-Beer to the Common People. All the Inhabitants of the Town rode out with Trumpets and Musick to meet the Sheriff at Hampstead with their Minister the Reverend Doctor Desaguliers at their Head, who play’d off a very handsome Firework at Night to conclude the Rejoicing.25

It was then on 16 May 1728 that Chandos wrote to ensure that Desaguliers, as his chaplain, would officiate personally at the funeral of his brother, the Rev. Henry Brydges, who had died in Gloucestershire where he had lately been rector of Adlestrop: Dr Brydges is to be at Cannons on Saturday morning whence he proceeds to Whitechurch to be laid in my Vault. I desire therefore you will give hours to have it opened against the time & take the trouble upon you of officiating on this melancholy Occasion. If you are inclined to go down upon Saturday morning & will be at my house in the Square by eight of the Clock at the furthest you will have the opportunity of a Coach which carries down Lord Carnarvon and one or two other Gentlemen. (XXXI, 272)

The other gentlemen in the coach from London, apart from the duke’s son, were Dr Freind, the headmaster of Westminster School, and Dr Cockburn, the elderly vicar of Northolt in Middlesex.

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Not long after this sad occasion there was concern over the tithe payments that Desaguliers received as rector of St Lawrence. On 28 June 1728 Chandos wrote: I received yours of the 24th and will speak to Mr Peters26 to pay what was due for the Tythes last Mich[aelma]s and also to clear you up til Lady Day last. But as I have […] most of the lands I held in hand, for the future you must be contented with the Tythes that they afford, for I think it cannot be expected I should be at the Expense of contributing any longer toward their Increase especially when it is considered how little the agreement I made with you when I gave you this Living has been observed, viz that you should reside constantly upon it all the summer time. (XXXII, 12)

Chandos had obviously been content to overlook Desaguliers’s neglect of parish duties, including an arrangement that had been made that he should live near Stanmore during each summer, for he was too useful in many other ways. Desaguliers for his part was always in need of money and had hoped for more from the tithes than they in fact yielded. There was further correspondence about the tithes during 1732 and 1733 and Chandos promised to order those of his tenants who were in arrears to pay immediately. But when he received Desaguliers’s list of names he was not so conciliatory: Having seen the letter you wrote to Farquhrson27 with the names of the Farmers in Whitechurch who are in Arrear for Tythes, and the sums they owe you, I find three of them are not my Tenants, & therefore I have nothing to do with them, & the others who are, you shall be at liberty to take what course you think proper with them in order to recover your dues. But I must observe, that the sum is far from being so considerable as one would have imagined, from the clamour you have made; & considering the neglect of Duty on your part which they complain of, I wonder that they pay you so well, for I am credibly informed, that a dead body has lain in the Church this last week for three days together without Christian burial, & tho notice was sent to you of it last Wednesday neither you nor your Curate thought fit to attend till today. (XLI, 185)

Desaguliers must have queried the veracity of the claim about the unburied corpse, for Chandos forwarded to him a Clerk’s Certificate confirming ‘how ill the Parish has been served’; but with his mind always more on technical matters, in the same letter he sent thanks for some special model Desaguliers was making for him, and then added a postscript: ‘Pray be so good to let me

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know what thickness of Iron pipe of 2:00 Inches bore should cost’ (XLI, 205). But in March 1739 Chandos was yet again very angry at the neglect of the parish and wrote to Desaguliers in no uncertain terms, threatening recourse to church law: I find by the Church Wardens that ever since the 6th day of Nov’r there has been no settled Minister to officiate in the Parish in so much that the Inhabitants & Officers of it have been forced to go a begging to other Ministers to bury their dead; This is a very shameful neglect of what I have more than once complained to you of. Your saying that you have appointed a Curate and made him a handsome allowance is no excuse; it is your duty to see he does his, and if he neglects it, rather than let the Parish suffer to do it yourself. But since what I have already said is of no force or weight with you I am sensible it is my duty (as I stand in the Bishop’s place with regard to this Church) not to suffer the abuse to continue longer; and therefore I must be so free as to tell you that if you appoint not another Curate within a week’s time, who shall be a person of Learning & Character, to come and reside in the Parish, & regularly do the Duty of his Function, I will write to Dr. Paul to take the course the Law prescribes, in such cases, against you. (LI, 131)

This must have elicited an immediate response from Desaguliers, who presumably proposed two alternatives as possible curates, for two days later Chandos wrote in more friendly and generous terms: I have rec’d your letter, & am glad to find you are disposed to remedy the Abuse I have more than once complained to you of. I hope it will be such an effectual one as will prevent my being under the necessity of writing again in such a style, I am sure, as uneasy to myself as it can be to the person who receives it. I don’t know who the gentleman is you propose to send hither, but I shall be very well pleased to have Mr. Perkins, who was sometime ago Curate to Dr. Hudson. He was very well esteem’d by the gentlemen in the neighbourhood whilst he was at Stanmore but has since been treated in a most inhuman (I may say unchristian) manner by Dr. Hudson, & therefore I wo’d hereafter choose to have him here that it may be seen there are others who live near enough to Stanmore to be judges of his Character, who think he does not deserve the infamous one which the Dr. has given of him to his College. If he comes here I will likewise make it easier to you, & go a part of the allowance you make him; for I must confess, considering the smallness of the Living, I think what you give is more than what ought to be reasonably expected out of it. If therefore you are not too far engaged with the other Person I’ll have Mr. Perkins wrote to, to come up hither. (LI, 137)

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Mr. Perkins, who had clearly been unfairly abused in some way by Dr. Hudson, the incumbent of Chandos’s other living at Great Stanmore, was indeed appointed. The choice was a happy one for not only did Daniel Perkins serve well as curate, but he became rector of St Lawrence after Desaguliers’s death in 1744 and held the post there until 1753. The business ventures of the Duke of Chandos are reflected throughout his correspondence and chiefly concern the African Company and the York Buildings Company, in both of which he had invested heavily; in the 1720s he was aiming to recover some of the losses he suffered on the collapse of the South Sea Bubble. The African Company had found trade in slaves and ivory to be unprofitable and Chandos hoped to revive its fortunes by concentrating on imports of cotton, potash and medicines from West Africa, and by prospecting for gold. One of the main objectives of the York Buildings Company was the plan to use steam power to raise water from the Thames and pipe it to supply parts of London. Desaguliers was frequently asked for technical advice, and his involvement with the water supply projects has already been described.28 In 1723 and 1724 Desaguliers was liaising on the Duke’s behalf with Colonel Samuel Horsey29 on a project to manufacture soap, using potash that was imported from Africa. At first it seemed the ‘African ashes’ were to be used, but then the possibility arose of potash made from trees on the Duke’s Scottish estates; Desaguliers was instructed to send a person to Scotland to assess the possibility as it would be ‘more prudent to try there first before we put ourselves to the Expense of freighting a ship to Gambia’ (XXIV, 256). Sums of money invested by Chandos passed between Horsey and Desaguliers for work on the soap manufacture, but it was not a commercial success. In December 1724 Desaguliers received a letter in which Chandos admitted to some financial embarrassment and soon afterwards the project appears to have been abandoned: I have wrote to Col. Horsey to desire he will pay you £40 out of the Money he hath of mine in his hands & I send you an order upon Mr Peters to pay you £60 more at Lady day next, this I hope will fully answer your Questions as it will be more easy for me, since I must freely own to you my own Affairs are not in such a Situation as to be able to spare such large Sums with any Convenience to myself. I find the Difficulty in getting off the small parcel of soap already made to be so much greater than was expected that I hope Col Horsey will not make any further Provision of Materials for another Quantity, till he can go upon surer Grounds &

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I had much rather the Remainder of the Money […] should lye in his hand till a better Opportunity offered of disposing of it. I desire you will let me know what Strength is usually allowed for the Boyler of the Fire Engine, which it is to force water up to the height of about 140 Feet at a Mile & an half or two Miles Distance. (XXV, 69)

The final paragraph indicates that Desaguliers’s engineering expertise was now to be applied to the problems of water supply. He was soon being asked to meet some gentlemen concerning the reservoir planned for Cavendish Square, and to consider the route pipes should take to reach it, and their cost (XXVI, 158). Desaguliers’s work with Chandos on water supply, including the York Buildings project, was, however, never straightforward. Other projects on which Chandos consulted Desaguliers included one for importing chalk for use as manure (XXVII, 65), and the development of plaster of Paris, which in April 1733 called for some translation. Surprisingly Desaguliers was not asked to do this himself: Find you enclosed a Priviledge granted by the King of France, relating to a new sort of Plaister invented at Paris, and in regard there are several terms of art in it, wch I don’t so well understand, I shall be much obliged to you, if you’l get some body to translate it into English for me, & I will readily pay the charge of his so doing. (XLI, 243)

Another idea which obsessed Chandos for some time was the search for gold, and the use of mercury in its extraction. Always looking out for new possibilities, and knowing that Desaguliers was lecturing in the Netherlands in the summer of 1732, he took advantage of this to ask him to use flattery if necessary to attempt to gain some secret information from a Baron Silburghe: The occasion of my giving you this trouble is on account of a very odd relation that has been given me, of the performance of Baron Silburghe. I am told he has found out a secret of fixing Quicksilver, and my Lord Delaware brought over a piece of that which was so fixt, which upon the test appeard to be real & pure Silver. […] I should be glad you would make a particular inquiry into this, & let me know the truth of it. My nephew Leigh30 tells me he is lookt upon to be a Quack, but has done some considerable cures; He says he is a man very easy to be acquainted with, but that he has amongst his failures one great one, which is, that he drinks prodigious hard he is likewise a man of very great vanity, & no incense of that kind you can offer him will be too gross, but his secret (if real) is certainly worth finding out, &

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I wish you would talk with him & try if you can prevail upon him, either to tell the secret, or admit a partner into the participation of it. I shall be glad to hear from you what you can do in this matter. P.S. This Gent lives at the Hague but has a country house within two or three miles of it, where he generally resides. (XL, 9)

Unfortunately there is no account of Desaguliers’s visit to the hard-drinking baron, nor of whether he revealed his secret. However, during 1734 Chandos was experimenting with a furnace at Cannons in the hope of obtaining traces of gold from various ores and minerals. There was a ‘smelting house’ in the grounds ‘in the road towards Edgware’ which was probably set up for this work. In July of that year Chandos asked Desaguliers for the reference in Philosophical Transactions to an account of how the Spaniards worked their gold and silver mines (XLIV, 229). Desaguliers must have replied in some detail as he elicited thanks and a critical discussion from Chandos of the use of quicksilver in the gold mines of Chile. Desaguliers was also asked his: Opinion upon the following question, viz. Suppose a round ball was made of some ashes (because that substance will bear the greatest heat without running into fusion) containing in the middle a hollow, fill this hollow with Quicksilver, and give it one of the strongest heats one of the great foundries will give. Query, what will become of the Quicksilver; will it evaporate thro the ball, notwithstanding the thickness of the shell (let this thickness be never so great) and the sides of the ball as well cemented together as one can make them? (XLIV, 264)

Desaguliers’s response is again not recorded, but he may have sought advice from a Dr Barker, whom Chandos was then keen to meet as on 25 July 1734 he wrote: I return you thanks for the trouble you have given yourself, in the enquiry you have made about the management of mettals. I shall have no occasion of buying the french book of Dr. Alonzo de Barba having it already in English, into which language it was translated in 1669. The gentleman you mention, Dr. Barker, has not only great knowledge in this particular, but likewise I understand in all other parts of learning, and I should be very glad to be acquainted with him: in order to it, if you’ll bring him hither the next time you come down, and that he has leisure enough for such an Airing, you’ll oblige. (XLIV, 282)

Exactly who Desaguliers’s friend Dr Barker was is not clear, but he did indeed visit Cannons, as some two weeks later Chandos wrote (XLIV, 337):

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Pray make my Compliments to Dr Barker, and let him know I esteem myself much obliged to him for the favour of his visit. You will be so good to put him in mind of letting me have in writing the sevl Process’s he told me of for Smelting the mineral Earths and Testing[?] off the Lead; and the sooner I receive them, the more obliging it wil be.

The book mentioned in the July letter above was Arte de los metales, published in Spanish in 1640 by Alvaro Alonso Barba, which discusses mining and extraction of various metals.31 The English version which Chandos had in his extensive library was The Art of Metals, translated in 1674 by Edward Montagu, First Earl of Sandwich. It may have been referred to also with respect to the various mines owned by the Brydges family, some of which were long-established and profitable. Unfortunately none of the Duke of Chandos’s ventures became a great commercial success. He was, however, an intelligent enthusiast, always ready to try something new, and keen to be up-to-date with Newtonian philosophy and the latest technologies. This was one of the main reasons he kept in such close contact with Desaguliers, whose acquaintance he valued as much as his advice. It is regrettable that not one letter from Desaguliers to his patron seems to have survived for it would have been interesting to read the tone of his replies and requests. The two men must have known each other well and at times been on quite confidential terms. Desaguliers would have enjoyed the status that his familiarity with Cannons conferred, but he was in reality never more than one of many trusted servants of the Duke. A claim that the collaboration between Desaguliers and his patron had been ‘at the focus of some of the most remarkable ventures of preindustrial Britain’32 seems somewhat exaggerated, but both had made their mark and their lives had undoubtedly benefited from their mutual association. There is no evidence to indicate the financial arrangement between them apart from the income Desaguliers received as rector of St. Lawrence. He was certainly paid for his services to the York Buildings company, but whether Chandos gave him a fee for being his ‘personal chaplain’ which covered advice on technical rather than theological matters, or whether he was paid occasionally for services rendered, can only be a matter for speculation. In the 1740s the letters from Chandos to Desaguliers all but cease, but this need not indicate an estrangement between them. Both men were by then elderly: Chandos’s health was poor and he had lost interest in new projects, and Desaguliers was working hard to finish the second part of his Course of Experimental Philosophy for which his subscribers (including the Duke) were becoming increasingly impatient. And there was now a competent curate looking after St Lawrence’s church.

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The Duke of Chandos had hoped to found a dynasty to ensure continuation of the title granted to him by George I. Of his nine children, all born to his first wife, only two sons survived infancy and their education caused considerable concern; both were reluctant scholars at Westminster School. Their father charged Desaguliers with their care at times, but even he was unable to instil into them any academic interests. The elder, John, went to Balliol College, Oxford, but left without graduating having run up considerable debts. A marriage was arranged for him, and he became a Member of Parliament, but he died of smallpox at the age of 24, leaving two daughters. His brother Henry, who had no more success at Cambridge than his brother had had at Oxford, thus became Marquis of Carnarvon and sole heir to the dukedom. His son eventually became the third and last Duke of Chandos in the direct line. Despite his disappointment that his only surviving son shared neither his business acumen, nor his technological or artistic interests, nor, sadly, his passion for Cannons, the first Duke of Chandos attempted to gain preferment for him and also arranged his marriage. Probably thanks to his father, Henry Brydges, Marquis of Carnarvon, was associated with the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales, from 1729, the year the Prince settled in England. He was initially a Gentleman of the Bedchamber and in 1742 gained the more prestigious and lucrative position of Groom of the Stole. It is likely that Henry Brydges fitted in well with the fast-living set associated with Prince Frederick. It is not known when he became a freemason, nor whether he was influenced in this by his acquaintance with Desaguliers, but he was appointed Grand Master of the Grand Lodge in 1738–39. Chandos himself never showed interest in freemasonry. While the Duke of Chandos had in his early years received patronage, for example from Queen Anne and the Duke of Marlborough, he in turn offered help to many others, most of whom were in the world of art or music. Desaguliers, whom he had once called ‘certainly the best Mechanick in Europe’,33 appears to have been singled out for patronage, however, for the variety of his accomplishments and especially for his technical expertise and the contacts he had made within the broad sphere of Newtonian London.

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8

Desaguliers’s Influential Work on Contemporary Science: The Publication of A Course of Experimental Philosophy and A Dissertation Concerning Electricity

Desaguliers was, above all, a communicator of scientific and technical information, whether by lectures and demonstrations, or in written texts. He always provided those who attended his lectures on experimental philosophy and astronomy with notes to aid their studies. As early as 1717 he promised that, when he had more leisure, he would expand these notes into a comprehensive text. This was to be illustrated with over 60 copper plates and be adapted for those of both mathematical and non-mathematical ability, but it would take time. It was seven years later that a notice appeared in a trade publication which invited subscriptions for a forthcoming work: A Course of Experimental Philosophy, in two Volumes, in Quarto: With a great many Copper-Plates, curiously engraven by the best Hands. By John Theophilus Desaguliers, L.L.D. F.R.S., Chaplain to his Grace the Duke of Chandos. Subscriptions are taken in by J. Senex over against St Dunstan’s Church in Fleetstreet and W. Taylor in Pater-Noster-Row.1

This was soon followed by a similarly worded newspaper advertisement which added that subscriptions were also taken in by the Author at his house in Channel Row, and that the proposal had the approval of the Royal Society: On Thursday December 5th 1723, The Author having brought several Sheets of this Work and several of the Plates to the Royal Society, a Committee was appointed to examine them, who the Thursday following having made their Report in Favour of what they examined, the President was pleased to give his Imprimatur in these Words – December 12 1723 Imprimatur Liber cui Titulus, A Course of Experimental Philosophy. Is. Newton P.R.S.2

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Publication by subscription was an increasingly popular way of financing a book; it signified an agreement that the author and his bookseller would produce the book and that the subscriber would duly receive a copy, or copies, for which he had paid in advance. Desaguliers’s advertisement was followed by claims that ‘The Book, after some unavoidable Delays, is now in the Press […] and special Care is taken to avoid the Typographical Errors that are too common in Mathematical Books’. As the first volume did not appear until ten years later, and then contained a long list of errata to be corrected, these assertions seem to have been decidedly exaggerated. Subscribers were to pay ‘One Guinea in Hand and Half a Guinea more at Delivery of the two Volumes in Sheets’; for twice the price the book would be available ‘Printed on Large Paper’. In the first volume of Desaguliers’s Course over 300 names were listed of ‘such Persons as have encouraged this Work by their Subscriptions’. This was not a particularly large list for the time, but it was impressively headed by ‘His Late Majesty King George the First, His Present Majesty, Her Present Majesty’. The late Sir Isaac Newton was also listed, who, like George I, had died in 1727. In 1728, at the end of his published poem The Newtonian System, Desaguliers apologized to ‘those Persons, who have subscribed some Time ago’ for the delay in completion of his Course of Experimental Philosophy, which he promised to finish ‘with all Expedition’. Among the subscribers were the Dukes of Chandos, Montagu, Norfolk and Wharton and the Earl of Pembroke; Hans Sloane, Brook Taylor, Martin Folkes, William Rutty and Stephen Hales (all Fellows of the Royal Society); Ralph Allen of Bath, Horatio Walpole, James Anderson, Colley Cibber the actor and theatre manager, John Grundy, surveyor of Spalding, and J. Thurloe Brace who had once offered hospitality when Desaguliers was caught in the rain. Twelve ladies, perhaps some of those who had attended Desaguliers’s lectures, were included in the list. The patience of the subscribers was eventually rewarded in 1734 when the first volume of the Course of Experimental Philosophy appeared, printed for John Senex of Fleet Street, the bookseller, map and globe maker and freemason (and also himself a subscriber) whom Desaguliers had nominated to fellowship of the Royal Society in 1728. Named on the title page as booksellers were W. Innys and Richard Manby of St Paul’s Churchyard, and John Osborn and Thomas Longman of Paternoster Row. The entire group had collaborated in printing a large number of scientific texts, including the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, which are listed in an advertisement at the end of the Course. Other advertisements publicized Desaguliers’s lectures and the globes made by John Senex. The second volume of the Course, which did not appear until 1744, was published by Innys, Longman, and M. Senex of Fleet Street; John Senex had

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died in 1740 and his business was carried on by his widow, Mary. The second volume has, following the title page, the statement: ‘Nov.17 1743 | At a meeting of the ROYAL SOCIETY | Imprimatur | M. FOLKES Pr. R. S.’. This suggests that the Royal Society, whose President was by then Desaguliers’s friend Martin Folkes, authorized or licensed the printing of this book somewhat at the last minute. Desaguliers was by then gravely ill and it was just a month after his death that a notice appeared in the press inviting subscribers to the Course (several of whom were also by then no longer alive) that they could send for their copies of Volume II to the Bedford Coffee House where the author had recently lived and died.3 Desaguliers dedicated both books to Frederick, Prince of Wales. In the first volume he acknowledged that, ‘Philosophy in All Ages having been thought worthy the consideration of Princes’, he had had encouragement in his lectures from both the Prince’s late grandfather, George I, and his father, George II. Given the animosity between Frederick and his father, this was perhaps not wholly tactful, but, in conventional terms, Desaguliers assured the Prince that he ‘had spared no Pains, that the work might not be wholly unworthy of Your Patronage’. The second volume was just ‘humbly inscrib’d’ to Frederick by ‘His Royal Highness’s most oblig’d, most humble and most devoted servant, chaplain and experimental philosopher’, with no further elaborate text. It was in 1737, between the publication of the two volumes that Desaguliers had become more closely acquainted with the Prince, and been appointed as one of his chaplains. The Prefaces to both volumes are interesting as Desaguliers wrote in a personal way to his readers and attempted to explain some of his motivation and philosophy. The Preface to Volume I begins: All the knowledge we have of Nature depends upon Facts; for without Observation and Experiments, our natural Philosophy would only be a Science of Terms and an unintelligible Jargon. But then we must call in Geometry and Arithmetick to our Assistance, unless we are willing to content our selves with natural History and conjectural Philosophy.

Desaguliers went on, perhaps arrogantly, to suggest that while Descartes’s ‘philosophical Romance’ with its ‘plausible Accounts of natural Phænomena’ had displaced Aristotolean physics, the world had gained little from Cartesianism. Desaguliers made no attempt here to detail the hypotheses of Descartes, or to explain their shortcomings, but he did so later in his text. His introduction acknowledged that, although the Frenchman was a master of geometry, those who followed his philosophy were of a ‘lazy Disposition’

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and it is ‘to Sir Isaac Newton’s Application of Geometry to Philosophy that we owe the routing of this Army of Goths and Vandals in the philosophical World’. Desaguliers acclaimed Newton’s contribution to the understanding of the motion of heavenly bodies, the figure of the earth and optics, but said he would ‘pass over Sir Isaac Newton’s noble Inventions in pure Mathematicks, justly admired at home and abroad’, because these are ‘foreign to my present subject which is Physicks’, and ‘the Thoughts of being obliged to understand Mathematicks have frighted a great many from the Newtonian Philosophy’. However, he added that although the truth of Newtonian philosophy ‘is supported by Mathematicks, yet its Physical Discoveries may be communicated without’. As an example, Desaguliers explained that the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704) ‘was the first to become a Newtonian Philosopher without the help of Geometry’, for, having been assured by Mr Huygens4 that ‘all the mathematical Propositions in Sir Isaac’s Principia were true’, Locke took them for granted. Desaguliers says that he was told several times by Sir Isaac himself that John Locke had read the Opticks with pleasure ‘acquainting himself with every thing in them that was not merely mathematical’. However, Desaguliers claimed that one achievement of courses of philosophy that use machines and experiments to demonstrate the Newtonian ideas was that while ‘a great many Persons get a considerable Knowledge of natural Philosophy by Way of Amusement […] some are so well pleas’d with what they learn that Way as to be induc’d to study Mathematicks, by which they at last become eminent Philosophers’. Desaguliers credited John Keill, in Oxford, with having been the first to develop empiricism in order to inculcate a love of Newtonian philosophy. Keill had conceived a systematic series of experiments in order to demonstrate the concepts sequentially and then, when he left the University, Desaguliers began to teach using the same methods. Desaguliers recounted how he then carried on when he settled in London, ever adding new propositions and experiments and improving the machines that helped explain the concepts. In his Preface he asserted that he derived great satisfaction from ‘being any way instrumental to the Improvement of others’. Returning to the vexed subject of mathematics he emphasized that, as in the actual course, the lectures printed in the book were ‘free from difficult geometric Demonstrations and algebraical Calculations’. He stated rather sternly that: I only require Attention and common Sense, with a very little Arithmetick, in my Readers to qualify them for understanding the Lectures, provided they begin at the first Lecture and go on regularly, that they may advance from the easiest Truths to

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those more complex ones […] for otherwise many things may seem difficult to a Person who should open the Book at random.

Desaguliers also apologized to mathematicians who may ‘think me tedious and verbose’, hoping that they would surely understand that ‘one cannot be too plain and explicit with those that are not born with a Genius for Mathematicks (whatever good Understanding they are otherwise endow’d with)’. The pattern of the Course of Experimental Philosophy was that each ‘Lecture’ was followed by ‘Annotations’ which gave supplementary material and also more detailed analysis and practical examples of the topics covered. The author hoped that this would appeal both to ‘rigid Philosophers’ and ‘common Readers’. Desaguliers regretted the large number of errata and entreated his readers to correct these with a pen, for, ‘after all the Care an Author can take, mathematical Books have been of late so incorrectly printed as to give Readers a great deal of Trouble’. Then, as a further afterthought, and ever wary of unscrupulous booksellers, Desaguliers warned that some might try to pass off, as his new work, surplus copies of the unauthorized book on Experimental Philosophy based on his lectures and put out some sixteen years previously. He also added a note in the preliminary text to advise that: Whereas some booksellers have declared that as soon as my Course comes out, they will get it translated into French (as cheap as they can, no doubt); lest my Book should be spoil’d by an hasty and perhaps ignorant Translator, I intend to translate it my self, having already done more than half; and if any other Translation appears, I shall write my Name in each Book with my own Hand, that my foreign Auditors may not be imposed upon.

In fact, Desaguliers never published his French edition; the two volumes of his Course did not appear in French until 1751, translated, apparently wordfor-word and with no added comments, by a Jesuit priest, astronomer and mathematical writer, L’Esprit Pezenas.5 Translation into Dutch was quicker, reflecting the interest that had been engendered by Desaguliers’s lectures in the Netherlands in 1729 and 1731 and also the esteem in which Desaguliers was held by Newtonian friends in Holland, such as Musschenbroek and the followers of ’sGravesande. The first volume appeared in 1736. The translator is named only as ‘a lover of physics’, but it has been suggested that the labour may have been done by Jacobus Krighout, a non-conformist theologian who possessed a remarkable library of volumes on natural philosophy.6 From the translator’s Preface, it is clear that the writer considered physics useful for a study of theology and he

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claimed that it was because of his interest in physico-theology that he had been asked to translate Desaguliers’s work. But he found the task difficult, especially as many of the subjects had never before been discussed in Dutch and so he was obliged to invent a number of artificial words. The translator also complained about the delay in publication of Desaguliers’s second volume, saying that had he realized that the whole task would take over a decade he would never have undertaken it. The high level of interest in the subject persuaded him to carry on, and the publisher, Isaac Tirion of Amsterdam, even arranged for a smaller third volume to be added. This consisted mainly of some material from Desaguliers’s articles in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and a translation of a comprehensive work on optics by Robert Smith. Optics was a topic that Desaguliers admittedly had barely touched upon in his books, but he did refer his readers to Smith’s Compleat System of Opticks, published in 1738.7 The three volumes of the Dutch edition of Desaguliers’s were reissued together in 1751 under the title De Natuurkunde uit Ondervindingen opgemaakt and proved very popular. Desaguliers’s Preface to the second volume of his Course differs in tone from that to the first volume, written almost ten years earlier. It begins by admitting that ‘this second Volume has more need of an Apology than a Preface, on many accounts’ for it should have followed immediately upon the first; subscribers had had a very long wait. Desaguliers’s stated reason for the delay was that he had promised to incorporate into the book an answer to the long-standing question concerning the mathematical expression of the force of a body in motion. He explained that while the ‘Gentlemen of Germany, Italy and Holland’ considered the force to be the product of the mass and the square of the velocity of the body, or vis-viva (mv2), the French and British calculated it as the mass times the simple velocity, or momentum (mv).8 He had considered all the experiments supporting both schools of thought, and, although personally favouring the momentum theory, Desaguliers was going to publish arguments for both, when he was delayed. His friend, the Dutch Professor Petrus von Musschenbroek, begged him to wait until he had read the latest edition of ’sGravesande’s Philosophy. This contained the account of extensive experiments made in Holland on the effects of collisions of different types of body, and it led Desaguliers to conclude in his Preface that ‘the Philosophers on both sides were right in the main […] and that the whole was only a Dispute about Words; the contending Parties meaning different Things by the Word FORCE’. Desaguliers devoted almost 90 pages9 of Volume II of the Course to the ‘Congress of Bodies’, or what happens when different objects collide under various circumstances. This first ‘Lecture’ in the book covers

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his own discussion of the vis-viva controversy, and cites notes from, amongst others, the Newtonian mathematician Colin Maclaurin (1698–1746) and the Westminster Bridge engineer, Charles Labelye. There are also details of four experiments that Desaguliers devised and that, he concluded, show how all the ‘Phænomena of the congress of bodies may be equally solv’d according to the Principles of the Defenders of the new, as well as those of the old Opinion’. The French mathematician d’Alembert (1717–83) had come to a similar conclusion, published in 1743 in his Traité de dynamique, and is often credited with having solved the vis-viva question. As Desaguliers makes no mention of the French scientist, it is unlikely that he was aware of d’Alembert’s work and that he formed his own conclusions independently. He had undoubtedly spent many hours pondering the matter and concluded that it all really rested on a question of terminology. Having made his excuses for the delay, Desaguliers then claims in the Preface to Volume II of the Course that he complied with the wishes of many of his subscribers in another matter, for: As my curious Friends know that I have made the Consideration of Water-Engines my Study for many Years [a great Majority of Subscribers] desired that I would fully treat upon that Subject by Rules deduc’d from my Hydrostatical and Pneumatical Lectures, and give a Description of a sufficient Number of Engines to make the practice of so useful an Art easy.

However, by giving detailed descriptions of many varied engines, with drawings and calculations to make clear how they function, Desaguliers took up so many pages that he admitted he now had no room to include his intended ‘easy and popular’ section on optics. It was here that he referred his readers instead to ‘the Book of Opticks publish’d by the Reverend and Learned Dr Smith, Master of Trinity College in Cambridge’. For details of his own experiments, especially on Newton’s work on light, specific articles in the Philosophical Transactions are mentioned. Desaguliers’s final apology to his subscribers concerned the price of the second part of the Course. He hoped they would not ‘think it too much to pay 18 Shillings for this Volume in Sheets or one Guinea bound’. This was double what was originally intended due to the extra bulk of the text and number of plates and ‘Besides, those that think it too dear need not take it’. Finally, to counter all the apologies, Desaguliers hoped that he had ‘at last one Merit to plead’. He pointed out that his calculations on engines give an indication of the reasonable amount of work that can be expected in different circumstances, and cautioned

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that those who claim more are not to be trusted and may indeed cause ruin to those who invest in them. Desaguliers’s rule that: No Man must hope that with any Engine in the World, a Man shall raise more than one Hogshead of Water ten feet high in a Minute, with moderate Work, or such as he may hold all Day; nor an Horse above one Hogshead 50 feet high in the same time,

was often quoted in years to come, although sometimes with reservations.10 It is sad that Desaguliers did not live to see the eventual publication of the second volume of his influential work. It was followed the next year (1745) by a corrected second edition of the first volume. His elder son and executor, the Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers, was involved in this reissue; he also published the revised sixth editions of the two volumes of his father’s translation from the Latin of ’sGravesande’s Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, as his name on the title page confirms. In December 1746 these were advertised as ‘just published’, and also available were the two volumes of ‘the Second Edition of Dr Desaguliers’s Course… ’, and the four volumes together were said to provide ‘a complete system of Natural and Experimental Philosophy’.11 In 1763 Desaguliers’s two volumes were reissued as a third edition; it was a popular work and often quoted in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. But even before the second volume was published, a glowing recommendation came from the directions for ‘the Study of several valuable Parts of Learning’ by John Boswell (1698–1757), a clergyman, and a freemason at the Queen’s Head Lodge, Bath. In his Method of Study he wrote: In Desaguliers’s Course of Experimental Philosophy, the Reader will see Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles not only explain’d and illustrated by various Experiments, but improv’d, and apply’d to the most useful Purposes imaginable. Here the Laws of Motion are made serviceable to the great Business of Life, there being scarce an Art or Occupation that Mankind are engag’d in but has receiv’d some Improvement from the Experiments that this Author has publish’d.

Boswell did however point out that despite reading the text and looking at the ‘cuts’ or engravings, the scholar should, for full understanding, ‘at least once in a Life-time’ attend a Course of Experimental Philosophy. This underlines the fact that Desaguliers’s books developed from his lecture notes. As already mentioned, the content is divided into ‘Lectures’ with definitions, suppositions and descriptions of experiments and of machines, followed by the ‘Annotations’

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with supplementary examples and mathematical analyses to amplify the subject matter. There are also anecdotes, for some of the Course becomes almost autobiographical, and is amplified by copies of letters Desaguliers received from other scientists, or quotations from their work. The first edition of Volume I also contained several pages of ‘Addenda’, which were obviously afterthoughts the author had, once the text had been set: these were incorporated into the body of the work in later editions. Volume I consists mainly of five Lectures and Annotations; in 432 pages Desaguliers dealt with the nature of matter and mechanics and offered many practical and everyday examples of the use of machines. There are, predictably, various references to Newton. In the first Lecture, in a discussion reminiscent of Query 31 in Newton’s Opticks, Desaguliers concluded that all matter is made up of solid and indivisible particles or atoms ‘which the Wise and Almighty Author of Nature did at first create’. This was a noteworthy reiteration of Newton’s prescient ideas on the atomic nature of matter. The interactions between the particles cause all natural phenomena, in particular the attractive force known as gravity and the cohesion which holds bodies together. Although admittedly not fully understood, attraction and repulsion in various situations are paramount, and Desaguliers ended his first lecture with some experiments on their manifestation in the mysterious phenomena of static electricity. He promised to return to this topic later. Desaguliers returned to the philosophical attack on Cartesianism in the Annotations to the second Lecture of Volume I. He discussed the nature of the ‘subtile Matter’ which was supposed to fill all the interstices in bodies as well as maintaining the plenum or the space they occupy.12 Desaguliers argued that Cartesian theory meant that there should be a difference between the weight of a lump of gold and the same metal when converted into dust, which was clearly not the case: vacuities have no weight. He also disputed the Cartesian explanation for the fact that bodies of different weight fall at the same rate in an evacuated vessel. This assumed that the air in the vessel had been replaced by a plenum of zero resistance, but if this were the case, the explanation given by Descartes for gravity, based on resistance in the space between bodies, would be invalid. Desaguliers asserted that there were many more contradictions in the Cartesians’ endeavours to explain phenomena by the powers they attributed to their ‘subtile Matter’, but he would say no more on the subject until he would ‘come to speak of the Motions of the heavenly Bodies’. Later in his book Desaguliers duly reconsidered Descartes’s assertion that a vacuum could not exist and that the universe was a plenum filled with matter of some sort.13 Cartesian theory suggested that the movement of the planets was due to

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vortices, or whirlpools of this matter, in which they were transported around the sun. Desaguliers carried out experiments with whirlpools of various fluids in which he observed the movement of solids of varying density, and he worked out that if the planets were denser than the matter of the vortex they would continually recede away from the sun in a spiral line. On the other hand, if they were less dense, then the planets would spiral towards the sun until they fell into it. This left the possibility that all the planets were equal in density to the vortex, but Desaguliers argued that this would mean that all matter had the same specific gravity, and thus that all the planets would move at the same pace, clearly contrary to all observations. He went on to say that as the Cartesian hypothesis was clearly not sufficient to explain the motions of heavenly bodies, the real cause must be sought, not by conjecture, but by observation and experiment. Therefore Desaguliers had a complex ‘machine’ designed and built to demonstrate the application of Newton’s Laws of Motion and to simulate the effects of gravitational and centrifugal forces on bodies in motion. Experiments with this apparatus led to further investigations of falling bodies, pendulums and devices such as inclined planes and the battering ram, but also explained the observed motion of heavenly bodies. The results reinforced a final refutation of Cartesian ideas which, unlike Newtonianism, cannot even attempt to explain the eccentric orbits of comets.14 More considerations of the behaviour of moving bodies, machines (levers, pulleys, inclined planes and similar devices) and friction were considered in the ensuing Lectures of the Course which led up to a full discussion of Newton’s Laws of Motion in the fifth Lecture. Desaguliers emphasized that a proper understanding of natural philosophy was necessary if the judicious use of machines was to enhance the power that they could provide, but he realized there were limitations. Manually operated machines depended upon the strength of the operator, and those powered by steam or water were subject to external constraints, which might even be geographical or economic.15 Desaguliers made models to demonstrate the efficiency of machines: these could be used to compare the power attained under different conditions and his principles were applied later to industrial applications. He also provided arguments, backed up by experiments, to reject the claims of ‘pretenders to perpetual motion’.16 In 1718 a group of eminent observers, including the London instrument maker, John Rowley, had been convinced that the wheel demonstrated by the enigmatic Orffyreus at Hesse-Cassel in Saxony was moving constantly without any further supply of energy. The Dutch scientist, ’sGravesande, tried unsuccessfully to examine the inner workings of the wheel, but nonetheless seems to have been impressed.

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Desaguliers did not see the wheel, but he remained satisfied that Isaac Newton’s contention that ‘the seekers after perpetual motion are trying to get something from nothing’ was correct. In 1721 he presented a paper to Royal Society entitled ‘Remarks on Some Attempts made towards a Perpetual Motion’, and he was always sceptical of the idea. The strength of men and horses was a subject that always fascinated Desaguliers. He considered the body to be a machine and studied and illustrated the ways in which different types of carter lift their loads, and also how ‘strong men’ perform their feats before the public.17 He recounted how, some fifteen years previously (that is in about 1719), he had become suspicious of ‘a German of middle size [who] got considerable sums of Money by the daily Concourse of Spectators’ gathered in the Haymarket to see his apparent feats of uncommon strength. Desaguliers decided that: being resolved to be fully satisfied in the Matter I took four very curious Persons with me to see him again, viz. the Lord the Marquis of Tullibardin, Dr Alexander Stuart, Dr Pringle and a mechanical Workman who used to assist me in my Courses of Experiments. We plac’d our selves in such manner around the Operator as to be able to observe nicely all that he did.18

That evening the group found they could easily carry out several of the feats themselves and, once they had built a wooden frame similar to the one used by the showman, were able to repeat all the performance. Desaguliers made this known, and also demonstrated his methods before the Royal Society; he was then able to report that ‘I don’t hear that any of these Sampsons have attempted since to impose upon people in or near London’. In his Course Desaguliers gave a detailed description of all the alleged feats of strength and how the German was able to fake them. There was, however, another strong man, Thomas Topham, whom Desaguliers knew and respected. Topham (c.1710–49) was a carpenter and publican from Islington who found he could make money by performing feats of strength. Desaguliers studied his physique and methods and had him demonstrate before the Royal Society. Topham was found to be genuine: indeed it was been suggested that he was not intelligent enough to have been a charlatan. One of his acts was to restrain a whipped horse while he was lying down, and Desaguliers listed nine other feats ‘which I saw him perform a few Days ago’, the methods of which he then analyses.19 On one occasion Topham rolled up a pewter plate weighing seven pounds ‘as if it were a sheet of paper’ and the dish, bearing the inscription ‘April 3d 1737, Thomas Topham of London, carpenter, rolled up this

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dish (made of the hardest pewter) by the strength of his hands, in the presence of Dr. Jno. Theop. Desaguliers, Mr Jno. Machin [and six others]’, was once in the British Museum. Topham was clearly phenomenally strong and Desaguliers’s authentication of this was well known. In the popular book known as Cassell’s Wonders of Bodily Strength and Skill, translated from the French of Guillaume Depping in 1870, Topham, ‘who was most honest in all his performances’, was featured. It was concluded that ‘Desaguliers has done Topham’s feats the honour of admitting them into his “System of Experimental Philosophy” and has thus given them the stamp of unimpeachable authenticity’. And Desaguliers’s description in the Course was quoted at length by Harry Houdini in 1920 in his discussion of strong men.20 In 1733 a masonic lodge was constituted in the City of London named ‘Strong Man Lodge’; it still exists and its insignia is an image of Topham holding back a whipped horse. There is no evidence that Topham was a freemason, but his connections with Desaguliers do make it a possibility. Although Topham performed in several cities of England, a suggestion21 that Desaguliers used the strong man as a bodyguard when on masonic journeys seems unlikely; he primarily used his many remarkable feats as technical examples in his book. The use of anecdotes from Desaguliers’s life, frankly described to illustrate technical points, is one reason for the enduring appeal of his Course. An interesting example is the account of an accident on the Thames at Mortlake when, on ‘a rejoycing Day’ – unfortunately the year is not stated – Desaguliers, Colonel Samuel Horsey22 and others went out on the Thames in a ‘great Barge belonging to the Vintners Company, where we played off some Fire-works’.23 These included water rockets that were designed to ‘go under Water several times and rise again, and at last burst upon the Top of the Water’. First of all one of these exploded under the stern of the barge causing it to lift up; Desaguliers remarked on the force produced by ‘so small a quantity of Powder’. Then, however, ‘some Gentlemen and Ladies’ in a smaller barge asked him to throw water rockets between the two vessels ‘that they might better observe their motion’. Desaguliers obliged, but one burst under the guests’ boat causing ‘so great a Hole in the Barge’s Bottom that there was only time for the Company to get out of their Barge into ours [before their boat] was half full of Water’. Fortunately everyone was soon rowed ashore. Desaguliers used the incident to consider the relative resistance of the water and the wood of the barge to the exploding powder. Later, in order further to investigate the effect of gunpowder under water, he threw a loaded water rocket into a large pond when ‘so great was the Shock, that several Persons, who stood round the Pond, felt it like a momentaneous Earthquake’.

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The detail into which Desaguliers went on this anecdote, or whatever subject he was addressing, makes it understandable why the Course of Experimental Philosophy took him so long to write, and the mathematical proofs are evidence of his patience and proficiency in that field also. At the end of Volume I Desaguliers wrote that ‘At the Desire of several Friends, I have here subjoin’d a short Description of my Planetarium, an Instrument, which I made lately, to show the Motion of the heavenly Bodies’. The intricate planetarium, designed to make his course on astronomy clearer to his auditors, was beautifully made in ebony and brass, with pearls to represent the planets and a complex clockwork mechanism.24 Desaguliers’s was not the first such machine, and he explained that although George Graham and John Rowley (c.1668–1728) had devised earlier working models of the heavens, often called orreries, his was designed to be transported to various venues and to be adapted to show different astronomical phenomena. Desaguliers also produced a novel instrument which he showed to the Royal Society in 1732 and which was later known as a cometarium.25 This ‘device ahead of its time’ consisted of elliptical brass plates connected by a figure-of-eight cord and graduated ‘to show the different velocities of a planet or comet in its motion around the Sun’. The complex mechanism was first designed to calculate the eccentric path of the planet Mercury, but it could also describe the elliptical orbit of comets which were beginning to be understood according to the laws of Newton and Kepler. The cometarium provides further evidence of Desaguliers’s originality in making complex subjects accessible to his auditors. Desaguliers had 32 plates engraved for volume I of his Course. Two are signed ‘J van der Gucht’, and one, a copy of William Whiston’s ‘Scheme of the Solar System’ (which is censured in the text), is by John Senex. The other copper plates were unsigned but are very similar in style to those attributed to Vandergucht.26 Each plate carries several diagrams, or Figures, economically arranged to save space, which illustrate different experiments and are crossreferenced to the text. Several show human figures performing experiments, or demonstrating the strength of the human body as it works as a machine. The final pair of engravings illustrated Desaguliers’s planetarium, with signs of the zodiac around the edge and the working models of the heavenly bodies above. Volume II of Desaguliers’s Course takes up some 580 quarto pages, and begins with Lecture 6, on, as already mentioned, the congress of bodies and the vis-viva controversy. Then Lectures 7 to 11 cover ‘Hydrostaticks’.27 This broad topic covers the behaviour of liquids, air and vacuums, with numerous experiments and practical descriptions. In Lecture 9 Desaguliers considered specific gravities of fluids and their behaviour under different conditions of pressure.

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13. A typical plate from A Course of Experimental Philosophy, Vol. I (1734): Engraving by van der Gucht illustrating a number of experiments demonstrated by Desaguliers during his lectures and described in his book. (BL Gale Databases, Image 511, © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.)

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This led to a discussion of diving bells, used mainly for investigating wrecks, and the modifications Edmund Halley had made in 1716 to the then standard bell, and included a long letter Martin Triewald had sent from Sweden on the subject. Desaguliers described how he had studied and modified a gauge described by Stephen Hales in his Vegetable Staticks for measuring the depth of the sea. The device used a mixture of mercury and honey or, better, treacle, and had been demonstrated before the Royal Society. Incidentally, Desaguliers’s linguistic skills led him to notice an error in the translation into French of Vegetable Staticks by M. de Buffon, which he corrected in his Course. The long twelfth Lecture,28 subtitled ‘On Engines’, comprises Desaguliers’s comprehensive descriptive catalogue, collected from many sources, of engines that work by the power of men and horses, or of water, or by the newly developed steam power (‘fire-engines’). At the end of the volume Desaguliers appended his prizewinning Dissertation Concerning Electricity, although this was also available separately in pamphlet form. Volume II of the Course was ‘Adorn’d with Forty-Six Copper Plates’. The majority of these illustrations, with figures as economically arranged as in the first volume, are signed ‘J. Mynde, Sculp’. James Mynde was a master engraver who was active in London from about 1720; he produced portraits, maps and architectural plates but little seems known about his life or origins. Desaguliers would have met him as he signed many of the plates which illustrated papers in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions from 1732 until 1770. These were largely of biological subjects such as exotic plants and animals and anatomical drawings of deformed creatures, but they also included scientific diagrams. As well as the original plates in the Course explaining Desaguliers’s own experiments and machinery, Mynde supplied adaptations of other engravings. Notable amongst these are the reworking of Henry Beighton’s drawing of ‘A Water Mill for grinding Corn at the Barr Pool by ye Abbey in Nunn Eaton in Warwickshire’, and a series of annotated diagrams showing the workings of the Machine de Marly near Paris. The latter were taken directly from Bélidor’s Architecture Hydraulique and a comparison of the two texts shows that Mynde must have made meticulous copies of the original drawings, reducing them slightly in size and putting in all the text in English instead of French.29 Copies of Desaguliers’s Course were widely distributed: many appear in London sale catalogues, as does his translation of ’sGravesande, throughout the later part of the century and into the nineteenth, suggesting that many gentlemen had copies in their libraries.30 The immediate interest in the Netherlands has already been noted. In France Voltaire (1694–1778) certainly knew of Desaguliers’s work: the two may well have met during the Frenchman’s

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14. An unattributed engraving from A Course of Experimental Philosophy, Vol. I (1734) illustrating Desaguliers’s interest in the strength of the human body. (BL Gale Databases, Image 522, © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.)

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15. The Water Mill at Barr Pool near Nuneaton in Warwickshire. Plate 32 in Desaguliers’s CEP II (1763) was engraved by James Mynde from a drawing made in 1723 by Henry Beighton and is accompanied by detailed calculations of its efficiency for grinding corn under different conditions. (BL Gale Databases, Image 489, © The British Library Board. All Rights Reserved.)

stay in London from 1726 to 1729 when he became acquainted with several Fellows of the Royal Society and developed his interest in Newtonian ideas. The first edition of Voltaire’s Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton, which dismissed Cartesian ideas, was published in 1738. In a letter that year urging an assistant

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to distribute of copies of his book, Voltaire also expressed great annoyance that he had not received two promised volumes of the works of ’sGravesande, adding ‘Je ne peux vivre sans ce ’sGravesande, et sans Desaguliers. Voyla l’essential’.31 He could, at that time, only have been referring to the first volume of Desaguliers’s Course, but obviously found it useful. In the American Colonies, the Library Company of Philadelphia acquired a copy of the first edition of volume I of the Course in 1744 and later owned several of Desaguliers’s works. Harvard College catalogued both volumes of the Course in 1773. Sir William Johnson (1715–74), a colonial officer who settled in New York State and had strong links with the Mohawk tribe, sent to London for some ‘trifles’ in 1750. At the very top of his list (which included pictures, books, musical instruments, lead pencils, sealing wax and linseed oil) Johnson asked for the two volumes each of Desaguliers’s translation of ’sGravesande and of his Course.32 Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) imported copies of Desaguliers’s works for distribution, and in his own library were both volumes of the Course as well as the ’sGravesande translations. I. Bernard Cohen, who has studied Franklin’s scientific legacy, considers that the American was influenced by Desaguliers in various ways.33 It is possible that the two met when Franklin was first in London from 1724 to 1726. If, as has been suggested,34 Franklin’s best friend when in London was Isaac Greenwood, the meeting almost certainly took place, for Greenwood was lodging with Desaguliers’s family at Channel Row at the time. The young Franklin was already interested in Newtonian science and acquainted with Sir Hans Sloane and Henry Pemberton of the Royal Society; he is known to have been disappointed that he never met Isaac Newton. Later, in 1744, Franklin acknowledged the ‘ingenious and learned Dr. Desaguliers’ to whose ‘instructive writings’ he was much indebted, when he wrote on innovative fireplaces, and he was obviously aware of Desaguliers’s experiments on the effect of heated metals upon air. Cohen considers that Franklin was not only instructed in various aspects of mechanics by Desaguliers’s books, but that the summary of electrical facts in the appendix of Volume II helped to introduce the American to a subject for which he would later become renowned. Cohen, perhaps somewhat extravagantly, says that: No words of description can convey the charm of Desaguliers’s Experimental Philosophy. Only an examination of the book itself can suggest the delight that Franklin must have found in leafing through its pages. For not only are the major principles of Newtonian physics explained in words, without any mathematics such as used in ’sGravesande, but the illustrations have an attractiveness of their own.

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Sentiments such as these may well have been felt by many of Desaguliers’s readers. In 1826, Scottish scientist and industrialist Andrew Ure (1778–1857), professor of natural philosophy at Anderson’s Institution in Glasgow,35 recalled the progress of physics over the previous century, and Newtonian ideas in particular, when he spoke at a commemorative dinner. He considered that Desaguliers: may be reckoned the father of Popular Physics. His great work in two quarto volumes on Experimental Philosophy, of which the last edition appeared in 1763, is still resorted to as the mine whence public teachers derive the chief part of their experimental illustrations.36

More recently Desaguliers’s book has still proved useful. Cotterell and Kamminga wrote in their Mechanics of Pre-Industrial Technology in 1990 that: [Newton’s] Principia fired the imaginations of many educated Europeans and created the readership needed for the publication of popular books on mechanics. The most interesting of these earlier works was A Course of Experimental Philosophy by John Theophilus Desaguliers [which is] a lively introduction to the science of mechanics and some of the data in it has been invaluable to our work.

Despite its length and complexity, Desaguliers’s book was regarded as a popular work, which is what he had intended, and it is for that reason that its appeal survived. He was, as already discussed, a communicator rather than an original scientist and the inclusion of personal anecdotes and lively illustrations made the blunt science more approachable. His material was meticulously researched, collected and checked and was recognized as being authoritative and quotable. While working on the second volume of his Course Desaguliers was also writing his Dissertation Concerning Electricity. His many contributions to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society described experiments and provided comments on a remarkably wide variety of topics but towards the end of his life he wrote exclusively on the subject of electricity. Electrical phenomena had been discussed at the Society from the early 1700s when Newton’s first demonstrator, the elder Francis Hauksbee, produced static electricity by rubbing a rotating and evacuated glass globe and demonstrated the light-producing and attractive powers of the resultant ‘electrical effluvia’. Stephen Gray had copied and extended Hauksbee’s groundbreaking experiments but his communications failed to impress the Royal Society. When he

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was lodging with Desaguliers, from about 1716 to 1720, Gray carried out more electrical investigations and continued these when he was a pensioner at the Charterhouse. Gray collaborated with Granville Wheler at his estate in Kent; Wheler carried on the electrical experiments after Gray’s death in 1736 and also described his findings to the Royal Society. There was much discussion about the passage of ‘electric vertue’ through different materials (experiments included the remarkable electrification of a suspended boy), but the nature of the forces they were dealing with was not understood. In 1729 Desaguliers wrote a detailed commentary37 on a letter from his former associate Martin Triewald that had recently been read before the Royal Society. Triewald, in Sweden, had considered the effluvia emanating from a tube electrified by friction, but Desaguliers disagreed with his explanations. Desaguliers also mentioned some of ’sGravesande’s experiments that had not succeeded and tactfully concluded by calling for scientific collaboration: So odd are the Phœnomena in electrical Experiments that it were to be wish’d that an History was made of such Experiments with all their Circumstances; that by comparing them with each other […] one might hope at length […] to come at the Knowledge of the Cause. And if in the same Manner all that have made new Experiments with the Magnet wou’d communicate them […] the many Matters of Fact wou’d, no doubt, be of use or the Improvement of Natural Knowledge and might at length come to give some Light in so intricate a Matter.

It was prescient that Desaguliers mentioned magnetism in the same context as electricity, for at the time there was no suggestion of a connection between the two subjects. In France, Charles du Fay was also investigating the electrical properties of different substances; he had visited London and Holland in the company of another experimental philosopher, the Abbé Nollet, and the Frenchmen had had discussions with Desaguliers in 1734 and ’sGravesande two years later.38 Desaguliers had been following closely the electrical researches of all these investigators and around 1739 he wrote eight papers on electricity for the Philosophical Transactions. In one of these he explained why he had, up to then, been uncharacteristically silent about the topic: I have hitherto avoided entertaining the Society upon this subject, or pursuing it so far as I might have done (considering that I can excite as strong an Electricity in Glass, by rubbing it with my Hand, as any body can) because I was unwilling to interfere with the late Mr Stephen Gray, who had wholly turn’d his Thoughts that

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way, but was of a Temper to give it intirely over, if he imagin’d that any thing was done in Opposition to him. But now I intend not only to go on myself in making electrical Experiments, but shall always be ready to make such as shall be proposed by any Member of the Society.

Gray was obviously a sensitive character and Desaguliers would have known the personality of his former lodger well and clearly did not want to upset his innovative investigations. As he explains at the start of the same article, little progress had been made in explaining electrical effects since he wrote his response to Triewald ten years earlier: The Phænomena of Electricity are so odd that although we have a great many Experiments upon that Subject; we have not yet been able by Comparison to settle such a Theory as to lead us to the Cause of that Property of Bodies, or even to judge of all its Effects, or find out what useful Influence Electricity has in Nature.

Desaguliers went on to set out a series of Queries (in the style of the ‘Queries’ that Newton put forward in his Opticks) which were then examined in turn, in the light of experiments done by himself and others. One experiment, described in detail in a separate paper in the Philosophical Transactions sequence, indicates his relationship with Frederick, Prince of Wales, for Desaguliers made use of the royal property at Cliveden. The garden, together with a suite of rooms in the mansion, provided a space in which the passage of electricity through 420 feet of packthread string could be tested under different conditions. Desaguliers and his assistants found that, once the size had been washed off the string, electricity passed along it when damp, but not when dry. He records that, although the wind was high, it was blowing in a different direction to the flow of electricity. He does not, however, mention whether the Prince observed the experiment. Desaguliers made a number of other electrical experiments, but none of these added significantly to the prevailing understanding of the subject: most confirmed and consolidated the work of Gray, Wheler and others. The real contribution made by Desaguliers was to bring together and concisely summarize the prevailing findings about static electricity and to create some definitions. In his papers, and in the Dissertation which was submitted to the Academy of Sciences in Bordeaux, he distinguished materials as being electricsper-se, which can be electrified by friction, and non-electrics which cannot be excited themselves, but which remove the electricity from the electrics. These would now be termed insulators and conductors, respectively, and Desaguliers did indeed introduce these terms, although he did not fully understand what

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was occurring. His statement that ‘communicated electricity, as it is conducted, jumps from one non-electrick body to another’ does, however, presage the subject of current electricity and he tried to demonstrate that ‘the Electricity receiv’d by the conductor advances from one end of it to the other in a kind of cylindrical Vortex’. Desaguliers realized that there could be confusion between some electrics-per-se and non-electrics, especially when conditions were damp, and Benjamin Franklin, replying to a correspondent in 1751, considered the terms to be mistaken and confusing, and preferred the terms non-conductor and conductor. Attraction and repulsion were important but unexplained forces that had been observed in branches of experimental philosophy such as elasticity and magnetism, and these clearly were manifest also when objects had been electrically stimulated. Desaguliers carried out experiments with feathers and gold leaf but could find no credible explanation of how ‘electrical effluvia’ worked. Electricity was full of mysteries, but the Academy at Bordeaux appreciated his attempts to solve them and he received a letter from their Président Barbot in August 1742, saying that he would receive the prize of a gold medal, said to be worth 300 livres. The letter was printed in full in the second volume of Desaguliers’s Course and must have been a source of considerable pride to the author as, towards the end of his life, he hurried to complete his book. At the end of his Dissertation Desaguliers made reference to other writers’ work on electricity. This useful annotated list ‘Concerning the several Authors who have treated of Electricity’ includes Gilbert, Boyle, Hauksbee, Gray, Wheler, Du Fay and Musschenbroek, and concludes by indicating that Desaguliers himself proposed further communications to the Philosophical Transactions on the subject. Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), although better known for his work on chemistry and for his dissenting religious views, wrote a comprehensive and scholarly account of the history of investigations into electricity up to 1766.39 This included his own experiments, theories on the subject and an extensive bibliography. It is interesting to note that although many works on the subject were published in the years following Desaguliers’s death, the Dissertation was one of a few that Priestley singled out as having been consulted by him. Indeed, he devotes a chapter to ‘the labours of that indefatigable experimental philosopher, Dr Desaguliers, in this new field of science’ and acknowledges that his ‘dissertation is excellently written up and comprises all that was known of the subject till that time’. Much later, in 1979, the American science historian J. L. Heilbron was not so complimentary, calling the Dissertation ‘a farrago of fuzzy thinking and tired experiments’.40 He considered that the Bordeaux Academy might have been well-advised to withhold their award, as they did in some

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years, but that ‘perhaps the judges judged Desaguliers the better physicist for his masonry, which counted several adherents among their colleagues’.41 Such an anti-masonic remark is possibly more typical of the twentieth century than the eighteenth, when such prejudice was unlikely to have been mooted. In his widely researched book, Heilbron did grudgingly concede that Desaguliers had a role in the history of electricity as a ‘terminologist and systematizer’ and that, being francophone, he had brought Du Fay’s work to the attention of Englishspeaking philosophers. At the time, the Royal Society was, however, appreciative of Desaguliers’s efforts in this very difficult new field of research, for in 1741 he was awarded their prestigious Copley medal for ‘his Experiments towards the discovery of the properties of Electricity’. And in 1781 his contribution to the study of electricity was remembered by the poet Capel Lofft (1751–1824) when discussing the topic in Book VI of Eudosia, his long poem on the Universe: Then came, Who gave a form and method to the art And technic terms, and first included Air In the electric class – dear be his fame – Unwearied Desaguliers.42

It is probably because he made no significant original scientific discoveries that some earlier twentieth-century science historians such as Heilbron and, in the field of engineering, Dickinson, belittled Desaguliers’s contribution to experimental philosophy in the first half of the eighteenth century. The contemporary view, which now seems better appreciated, was that his influence was as an educator and a facilitator, and that as such he was important and should be better known. For example, towards the end of the eighteenth century the educationalist Maria Edgeworth commented on Desaguliers’s analysis of human movement and wrote in Practical Education, ‘If any person unused to mechanics was to read Dr Desagulier’s description of the manner in which a man walks […] he would scarcely believe that he could ever again perform such a tremendous operation’. It was also recommended that ‘the prints in Desaguliers’, amongst others, ‘may be put in the hands of children. The most simple should be selected first’ but, after some explanation, the pupils ‘may afterwards be left to themselves’ to copy and study them to enhance their technical knowledge. More recently, interest in various aspects of Desaguliers’s scientific work has occasionally been revived, and one or two instances can be cited. In the science of tribology, or the study of the interaction of adjacent surfaces, his experiments on the cohesion of solids are quoted, and diagrams

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from the Course have still been found to be significant.43 In an entirely different field it has been argued that Desaguliers’s optical investigations into binocular vision and colour perception influenced the emergence of psychology as an empirical discipline.44 And his influence on the development of human physiology and the use of the Graham–Desaguliers dynamometer for measuring the effort in muscle contractions is still discussed with interest.45 Desaguliers not only made the theories of the new scientific advances accessible to a wide audience, but by explaining how many everyday applications worked he enabled others to use and develop them. He was never backward in challenging the results of others and on several occasions he devised experiments to attempt to prove or disprove a hypothesis. The value of Desaguliers’s work lay in his meticulous attention to detail and the thorough and comprehensive treatment of the diverse subjects covered. In his Course, for example, when discussing the efficiency of different types of cart and wagon in Volume I, or of mills in Volume II, Desaguliers researched and documented (and sometimes translated) all that he could possibly find at the time on the subject. The same can be claimed for theories, such as the vis-viva controversy: his discussion includes verbatim quotations from other philosophers, whether or not their views agree with those of the author. Desaguliers coined or clarified several definitions, as he emphasized the importance of consistency in the words used in scientific descriptions declaring that, ‘Men can never rightly understand one another till they mean the same Things by the same Expressions’. He was respected as an authority on many topics, but he never claimed to have done more than to use his abilities to demonstrate the nature of the world around him, which was ordained by God and available for man to use as best he could. Desaguliers made surprisingly few overt religious references in the Course although he was writing at a time when Newtonianism promoted the idea of the Universe as an ordered entity and gave rise to active discussion of God’s role in its design. Desaguliers made it clear, however, that he acknowledged a supreme creator, and he decried atheists. In 1718 he wrote a supportive letter to the translator of The Religious Philosopher by the Dutch mathematician Nieuwentyt, which was printed in English editions of the work. This influential book set out ‘all the late discoveries in anatomy, philosophy and astronomy’ in such a way that the idea of an all-powerful creator was upheld and it was ‘designed for the conviction of atheists and infidels’. Desaguliers agreed with this sentiment and wrote: He that reads Nieuwentyt will easily see that a Philosopher cannot be an Atheist; and if it were true, that a smattering of Physicks will give a proud Man a Tincture of

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Atheism, a deep search of Nature will bring him back to a Religious Sense of God’s Wisdom and Providence.

The translator, John Chamberlayne (1669–1723) admitted to some judicious editing and was commended for this by Desaguliers, who considered that the translation then did not promote too forceful a Christian viewpoint. It would: perhaps do more good than the Original because in giving us [the Author’s] Arguments for Natural Religion, you have omitted those which his too Eager Zeal made him also draw from the Modern Philosophy for Reveal’d Religion; the Weakness of which latter might give those Free-Thinkers occasion to triumph, who would be struck dumb at Convictions from the former.

Many thinking people, either openly or covertly, considered themselves deists and it was to them that this comment presumably referred. Desaguliers’s true beliefs are hard to ascertain, but he certainly acknowledged a Universe designed by an all-powerful deity. As an ordained minister of the Anglican faith – in part financially dependent on this – he appeared openly to be a committed Christian. His masonic affiliation encompassed belief in an all-powerful God, but in no particular religion. He apparently kept clear of controversial physicotheological discussions and behaved as a conventional clergyman, but one who concentrated more on practical matters than on his ministry.

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9

Poems, Plays and Pictures: a more Personal Perspective

Desaguliers’s career may have been dominated by his scientific and engineering activities and by freemasonry, but there was sometimes a lighter side to his life. He wrote poetry and, although his verse was not always of the highest quality and not a great deal has survived, it provides occasional glimpses into the breadth of his character, his congeniality and even his sense of humour. The same is true of a few personal anecdotes of the man that have come to light, and of the evidence that he became involved in amateur dramatics, both on his own and with his children. Desaguliers’s portrait was painted at least twice but it is not easy to judge character from the engravings that survive from these formal pictures. He was undoubtedly ambitious and enjoyed the entrée that some of his less serious activities gained for him into higher social circles. Although it is not known how it was received, Desaguliers’s best-known and most important poem was directly addressed to the royal family. In 1728 a small book appeared in Westminster, priced at 1/6d, which contained two poems by ‘J. T. Desaguliers, LL.D., Chaplain to His Grace the Duke of Chandos, and FRS’. The main work was The Newtonian System of the World, the Best Model of Government: An Allegorical Poem, to which was added Cambria’s Complaint Against the Intercalary Day in the Leap-Year. As Desaguliers makes clear in his preface to The Newtonian System, the idea of this poem was to celebrate the accession of King George II and Queen Caroline in 1727 in a novel way which was at the same time adulatory and didactic: The universal Joy that fill’d all English Hearts at His present MAJESTY’s Accession to the Throne, had so strong an Effect upon me, as to draw me from the serious and rugged Researches of Philosophy, to the lighter and more agreeable Amusement of Poetry. Thus influenc’d, I was resolv’d to endeavour at something that might at once shew my Zeal and Loyalty, and at the same Time divert Her most Gracious Majesty with my first Poetical Experiment, as I have had the great Honour of entertaining

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Her with Philosophical ones. The following Poem was wrote last Summer, and intended to be publish’d on the Day of the Coronation: But when I consider’d that several Astronomical Terms and Allusions wou’d want explaining to such Readers as had not been conversant in the Cœlestial Science, I resolv’d to add a few notes, tho’ they were not necessary to those Great Persons, for whom my Poem was chiefly design’d. Then again, remembering that it is a common Saying, that Philosophers are the worst of Poets, and yet, being unwilling to suppress the first Offspring of my Muse, I enlarg’d my Annotations, and illustrated them with Copper Plates, so as to give a full Account of the System of the World, in a plain, and intelligible manner, together with a confutation of those false hypotheses which have sometimes obtain’d among learner men. Thus I have tack’d my Poetry to Philosophy to make it go down; and tho’ it shou’d be thrown out by a Majority, I hope, by this expedient, to gain a sufficient Number to keep it from being waste Paper.

The Preface explains the reason for the structure of the work, with flattering allusion to the astronomical competence of the Royal family, and especially Queen Caroline, who had almost certainly received instruction in the subject from Desaguliers himself. The Dedication, to the Earl of Ilay,1 indicates that its content will show how earlier theories of the structure of the universe were false and could be equated with poor government. But, Desaguliers asks rhetorically, when ‘the incomparable Sir Isaac Newton’, who had died the previous year, ‘gives us Facts and Demonstrations, instead of Suppositions and Conjectures, how is the Mind charm’d by the beauty of the System?’ Newtonian ideas, especially the theory of gravity, or attraction, explain in elegant terms the movements of heavenly bodies, but also give a basis for the good government which will, the writer asserts, characterize the new reign. This is an early example of the idea which developed during the eighteenth century that Newtonianism – with its emphasis on order that can be maintained as long as certain fundamental laws are obeyed – provides a model for an ideal regime. In Britain the hope, expressed by Desaguliers’s poem, that the Hanoverian era would be stabilised as the new mechanistic philosophy overcame the upheavals of the previous century, was relatively short-lived. However, the American colonists were soon to write the Constitution of the United States, and it is widely thought that this was indeed influenced by Newtonian ideas. The new nation was not to be founded on ignorance and superstition, but on knowledge in various fields, including natural philosophy, which was acquired and reinforced by experiment.2 The Newtonian System covers 34 pages of text, but so engrossed did Desaguliers become in his astronomical explanations that many have little or no poetry on them; indeed three contain only notes. The poem itself begins by

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echoing Dryden: ‘In Ancient Times ere Bribery began | To taint the heart of undesigning Man’. This, Desaguliers says, was when Pythagoras put forward the idea of circular motion within the solar system which, given the limitations of his observations, was reasonably accurate, and ‘The Musick of his Spheres did represent | That Ancient Harmony of Government’. The poet perhaps exaggerates the happy state of ancient Greek politics, but then ‘Usurping Ptolemy depos’d the Sun | And fix’d the Earth unequal to the Throne’. The Ptolemaic theory of an earth-centred universe became more and more complex as it attempted to explain observed phenomena, yet geocentricity persisted until the time of Galileo and his telescope. Alluding to Swift’s Tale of a Tub, ‘Like Peter’s Coat, the System burthen’d grew, | Keeping old fashions, adding still the new’. As astronomy was perplexed with these ideas, so rulers became increasingly ambitious and greedy, and populations suffered. Copernicus was praised for reviving heliocentric ideas, even if he was not entirely accurate. Especially in France, the Cartesian theories of vortices attempted to explain the new observations and overshadowed other ideas, but were generally condemned elsewhere. It was not until Newton’s genius explained the real nature of the movement of the planets and their moons, together with the comets which had so perplexed the ancients, that the solar system, and the working of the zodiac, were truly understood: ‘By Newton’s help, ‘tis evidently seen, | Attraction governs all the World’s Machine’. Desaguliers ends his allegory in an over-optimistic and patriotic vein by associating the delight in order in the universe with government: When ministers within their Orbits move, Honour their king, and shew each other Love: When all Distinctions cease unless it be Who shall most excell in Loyalty: Comets from far, now gladly wou’d return And, pardon’d with more Ardour burn. ATTRACTION now in all the Realm is seen To bless the reign of GEORGE and CAROLINE.

The notes and associated diagrams made the whole publication very much a lesson in astronomy, but if any readers bought the pamphlet for the poetry they should not have been disappointed: the ideas are novel and the verse flows, and the explanations, albeit somewhat tedious, are comprehensive. Desaguliers’s verse was at times clearly derivative: as well as the opening lines which recall Dryden, the section of the poem describing the sun with its circling planets owes much to Milton’s Paradise Lost, and some of the passages of verse

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concerning Newton are openly acknowledged as translations from the Latin lines of Edmund Halley which were written to accompany the first edition of the Principia. The Newtonian System is overtly Hanoverian and sycophantic; in particular Desaguliers was keen to impress Queen Caroline who had shown more interest in his philosophical lectures than had her husband. Cambria’s Complaint, published in the same binding, also refers directly to Queen Caroline. Its subject is a plea for calendar reform so that those born on 1 March should not suffer every leap year by having to wait for an extra day to celebrate their birthday: Desaguliers and the Queen shared this birth date.3 There is, however, some doubt as to whether Desaguliers actually wrote Cambria’s Complaint. The Rawlinson manuscript in the Bodleian Library, which gives contemporary biographical details of Desaguliers, mentions The Newtonian System as one of his writings, but adds (in the hand of an amanuensis) that Cambria’s Complaint was written by a ‘Friend who desir’d him to publish it […] without mentioning the author or that he had it from another’. A further note on the manuscript suggests the author was Mr Davy, vice-principal of Hart Hall.4 Desaguliers, of course, had connections with Hart Hall, but the title page clearly indicates that poem was by him. The style is not unlike that of The Newtonian System, but that was the fashionable form at the time; the preface explains that the poem was written ‘since the Astronomical Poem was in the Press’ and says that the writer bore with patience his inconvenient birthday ‘because the bissextile was settled by Astronomers; but as it is Her Sacred Majesty’s Birthday […] cou’d bear it no longer’. The poet certainly knew Oxford well as the verse mentions the current Oxford Almanack and several colleges in some detail. The explanatory notes on the reasons for the discrepancies between the Gregorian and Julian calendars, and the complex difficulties in accommodating the time regression that builds up after several years, clearly could have been added by Desaguliers, even if he had not written the entire poem. He is likely, in either case, to have endorsed the tongue-in-cheek sentiments expressed. Cambria’s Complaint ends by suggesting that, if King George were to reign for as long as had Queen Elizabeth, and were the intercalary day to be disregarded for all that time, then the Gregorian calendar would finally catch up with the Julian. Recently a satirical response to Desaguliers’s poetry has come to light in an anonymous manuscript poem entitled An Astrological Experiment Propos’d to the Revd Dr. D[esagulie]rs; Occasion’d by his Late Poem on the Newtonian System.5 Astrology was discredited by the early eighteenth century, so the title alone points to the ironic nature of the verse. The work divides into two parts; the first attacks Desaguliers for his arrogance in using Newtonian philosophy

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for political ends, while the second is directed at Richard Newton (1676–1753), principal of Hart Hall. Desaguliers, not for the first time, is likened to Sidrophel, the Rosicrucian astrologer in Samuel Butler’s Hudibras and he is mocked for mixing Isaac Newton’s thoughts with ‘Mysteries of State’. ‘Can nothing for thy Genius be too hard | Melodious Wizard, and Enchanting Bard?’ asks the anonymous poet before mentioning several of the experiments Desaguliers demonstrated before the Royal Society. He was certainly familiar with these, and with Desaguliers’s freemasonry. In the second section Desaguliers is invited to write a poem based on astrology about the ‘other Newton’ as, ‘Like Thee, he seeks with new Designs to please’. This refers not only to Desaguliers’s use of experimental philosophy to flatter the new reign, but also to Richard Newton’s frustrated plans for the incorporation of Hart Hall as a full Oxford College, with strict disciplinary rules for the students. Desaguliers and Richard Newton had become associated with Hart Hall at much the same time, in 1710, when Newton became principal. Desaguliers then left Oxford in 1712 but there is no apparent evidence of any further close association between them. However, the author of the satirical poem, who appears to attack Newton more than Desaguliers, implies familiarity between them. He suggests that Desaguliers, the magician, should carry out an experiment in judicial astrology to work out Richard Newton’s horoscope in order to tell him when best to press his case for ‘The Charter, he so long has sought in vain’. The poet forcefully makes his point against Newton’s ambitious plans, but is not overly vindictive. He represents an eighteenth-century conservatism which is opposed to too rapid change, either in natural philosophy or in institutional management, and it is unfortunate that his identity may never be known. A French translation of The Newtonian System is included in a fairly recent book which attempts to use it to analyse Desaguliers’s Newtonianism in political and legal terms.6 The author, Pierre Boutin, also cites the Constitutions of the Freemasons to argue for what is termed Desaguliers’s ‘volontarisme’,7 and attributes the work to him; but while the Constitutions undoubtedly had some input from Desaguliers, the author was, in fact, James Anderson. Boutin considered Desaguliers to have had legal qualifications – he calls him a ‘philosophe et juriste’– perhaps unaware that the LL.D. degree was honorary. The suggestion that, after being ordained in the Anglican Church in 1717, Desaguliers then completed a university course in law is highly improbable, given the pressure of work he was under at the time and his other interests. Further misconceptions concern the French translation of Isaac Newton’s Optics. Boutin states, without offering any evidence, that Desaguliers visited several countries in Europe in 1715, and that in France he met the Huguenot

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writer Pierre Coste (1668–1747) and asked him to make a French translation of the Optics. Desaguliers was fully occupied in London during 1715 (his only documented visit to France was in 1735), and Pierre Coste was resident in England for several years from 1714 (he was in Kensington, acting as tutor to the son of the Earl of Shaftesbury), so they would have met in London. Coste certainly translated the Optics, but in his preface he states it was at the request of Caroline, Princess of Wales. He was an experienced translator, but found the technical matter difficult and asked Desaguliers to review his translation, which again he makes clear in the preface. Regrettably, Boutin’s book skims over Desaguliers’s scientific, masonic and other achievements and gives scant mention of the letter to the translator that he wrote as a foreword to the English version of Nieuwentyt’s The Religious Philosopher. As this provides a good summary of Desaguliers’s views on religion and natural philosophy, and as this is a subsidiary theme of Boutin’s work, the omission seems surprising. The main argument relating an individual’s free will to political and legal thought and Enlightenment philosophy is not easy to follow, and to quote a reviewer ‘the texts by Desaguliers on which the argument is based seem a slight foundation for the superstructure they are made to bear’.8 Another reviewer also found the work deeply flawed, and considered that ‘the imprecision present in the central thesis is typical of the book as a whole, which is marred by factual error’.9 Boutin unfortunately tried to read too much into The Newtonian System: it is quite possible that Desaguliers never wrote the poem with any deeply serious end in mind, but did it almost for his own amusement, and in the hope of notice from the royal family. Nevertheless, Desaguliers may have had more of a reputation as a poet than has been recognized. When writing a biography of Alexander Pope in 1769, Owen Ruffhead recalled that when Pope’s An Essay on Man first appeared in 1734 ‘our author carefully concealed its being his production and it was ascribed either to Dr Young, to Dr Desaguliers, to Lord Bolingbroke, or to Lord Paget among several others’.10 It was possibly for the passages mentioning Newton and astronomy that Desaguliers’s name was briefly considered in connection with Pope’s complex poem, for at the time some readers would have remembered his Newtonian System. And Desaguliers did, it seems, sometimes enjoy writing verse. One day, when on a journey on horseback, Desaguliers and a companion were caught in heavy rain and given shelter overnight by a stranger, Mr John Thurloe Brace, of Astwood Hall in Buckinghamshire. The next day Brace received a thank you letter in the form of a poem. This has survived in manuscript form, annotated in 1812 by Elizabeth Mansel, who was step-grand-daughter

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to Brace.11 Referring to his own interest in astronomy, Desaguliers started by explaining that his experience had ‘made a bard of a Stargazer’ and: Be’t how it will I find that I Have ye Itch to versifye, But whether well or ill you best Can tell, so you’ll excuse ye Guest. Tis all ye Way I have to Thank You.

He went on to recall the evening’s entertainment and all the people he conversed with, both family and visitors, and to wish good fortune upon the Brace family. Finally he mentioned the tree under which he sheltered until he received Brace’s generous invitation: Mayst thou for ages verdant grow And never feel ye Axes blow May all ye Birds of Harmony Bred in thy boughs secur’d by thee In tuneful Warblings stretch their throats And sing thy Praise in thankful Notes.

The poem was written, Desaguliers said, at ‘Gamgay’, where he was continuing his journey; this probably refers to the Cambridgeshire village of Gamlingay. As he and his companion had already apparently passed through Bicester and Buckingham (where the inns could in no way compare with the hospitality at Astwood), it seems likely they were on a journey from Oxford to Cambridge. It is possible that Desaguliers was travelling to give lectures on Newtonian philosophy at the university cities but unfortunately there is no definite date on the letter. The diarist John Byrom (1692 –1763) wrote in July 1723, in a letter to his wife, that ‘Mr Desaguliers, a famous man of the Royal Society, passed through Oxford while we were there’. Possibly this was the same journey ‘about the year 1725’ during which Desaguliers met Brace, or maybe the lecturer visited Oxford more often than has been realized. He is known to have lectured in Cambridge around 1725, when he met the oculist, John Taylor. It is interesting that John Thurloe Brace appears in the list of subscribers to Desaguliers’s Course of Experimental Philosophy; maybe the two men kept in touch, or perhaps Desaguliers extracted a subscription during his unplanned stay at Astwood. Another light-hearted poem, which refers to a lecture Desaguliers gave in Bath, was enclosed in a letter he wrote on 14 April 1731, from Channel Row, to

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‘Captain Macro at Greenwich’.12 The letter mainly concerns the performance of a children’s play but a postscript says that he was asked also to send verses made upon the occasion of one of his lectures, and that they needed the following explanation: The late honble Mrs Smith (Prince William’s Governess)13 going thro’ a Course of Experiments with me at Bath, suddenly took away some live Fish intended to be put into the Air-Pump, and ran out of the Room with them, thence in to the Garden where she threw them into the River. I follow’d but woul’d not overtake her, tho’ I seem’d to intend it, to please those who expected (and were baulk’d off) the Experiment. The simile alludes to Sir Isaac Newton’s Experiments of Light and Colours, which Experiments I had perform’d the Day before to my Company.

The verses, entitled Amanda, or good Nature the only true Greatness of Soul, celebrate the compassion of the governess in saving the fish when: Her Soul afflicted for the harmless Brute She rescu’d from our Hands the scaly Mute; And, to compleat her noble Victory, Restor’d not only Life but Liberty. I stand reprov’d that I did this pursue, Reflection rous’d makes me my Folly view.

They end, as Desaguliers had mentioned, with charming lines on the classic experiments on light which were perhaps more popular than those in which creatures were observed when deprived of air using an air pump: In darkened Room we view a little Ray, And all its Colours with our Glass display; Surprizing Charms, unknown before, we find In that bright Orb, whose Lustre unconfin’d, Had barr’d our Search, and struck th’Observer blind.

The rescue of the fish was not the only time a trick was played on Desaguliers by the auditors of his lectures. Some verses entitled The Stichers were ‘made on Lady Beck Herbert and ye rest named, sowing up Mr Desiguleurs sheets, after they had heard one of his lectures at Bristoll this year’ and have survived, handwritten, amongst the assorted ‘Papers of Sir Kenelm Digby etc.’.14 They relate how a mischievous group of ladies stitched together the bedsheets of ‘yon

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Gimcrack Wizard | Who by his Crabbed Speeches | His scholars so bewitches’. Unfortunately not dated, the verses are with other papers from 1720–26. They are more about the women who hatched the plot than about Desaguliers himself, but do suggest he was someone who might have appreciated having a practical joke played on him. The fun, presumably from his reaction, would surpass the amusement of quadrille, the ball or a game of faro, suggested Lady Beck, and Desaguliers was told: ‘Philosopher be easy | And let this not displease ye | In silence pick your stiches | Or next they’ll stich yr britches’. Both Bath and Bristol were early centres of freemasonry in the West Country and it is known that Desaguliers combined attendance at lodges in the towns with some public lectures on experimental philosophy: the ladies had clearly found these entertaining. As mentioned above, the 1731 letter to Captain Macro chiefly concerned a play performed by children, including Desaguliers’s own sons. Desaguliers wrote that he had ‘remember’d my Resolution of applying to my Friends to get off some Tickets […] and therefore take the Liberty to send you one Ticket which, if you don’t make use of it you’ll please return next week’. Enclosed with the correspondence were a verse Prologue and Epilogue specially written for the children, and a separate letter concerning their authorship: The author of the Prologue who desires to be unknown, declar’d to me that he did not intend to give a copy of it. You have it only from my Memory at Miss Sadler’s Entreaty, and I can give no Leave about it. As for the Epilogue (which is mine and was written long before the Prologue) it is at your service to do what you will with: only this, should you print a Miscellany, I wou’d have nothing further mentioned of an Author’s name – but the Father of one of the Children. I am Sir, Your most humble Servant J. T. D__________s.

The play performed by the children was Sophonisba; or Hannibal’s Overthrow by Nathaniel Lee. It was produced late in April 1731, and again on Monday 6 September that year at Vanbrugh Castle in Greenwich, as evidenced by the surviving playbill. The cast list fits that of Lee’s play but not that of the later but better-known version of Sophonisba written by James Thomson. The names of the young performers are interesting as they give an indication of the social circle, with strong masonic connections, in which Desaguliers was moving. As well as Mr (Charles) Vanbrugh (1720–45), Giles and Edward Vanbrugh are listed: Charles was the only surviving son of the late Sir John Vanbrugh

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16. Playbill for the 1731 Performance of Sophonisba with Desaguliers’s children in the cast. (Borthwick Institute, University of York.)

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(1664–1726), and these were probably his cousins, as was Miss Yarborough. Lady Caroline Lennox (1723–74) was the eldest daughter of the Duke of Richmond, who was known to Desaguliers through both Grand Lodge and the Royal Society. ‘Dr Misaubin, jun.’, who was to take the part of Varro and also sing between the acts, was Edmund, the son of Dr John Misaubin (1673–1734), a controversial physician and also a freemason.15 The part of Hannibal in the play was taken by My Lord Leimster [sic], and also acting were three ‘Farmer’ children, William, Charlotte and Sophia. These four were all members of the Fermor family, children of the Earl of Pomfret, whose alternative title was Baron Leominster or Lempster. Also in the cast of children were John Theophilus Desaguliers, junior, and Thomas Desaguliers; they were respectively 13 and 10 years old and took the parts of King Massinissa and Massina. Judging by their father’s correspondence they were in both productions. Lady Caroline Lennox spoke the epilogue at Vanbrugh Castle, but the handwritten text with the letter says that Desaguliers’s lines16 were spoken by ‘Miss Cowper’, presumably referring to the earlier production. Similarly the prologue was spoken by ‘Mr Blackerby junior’, who was not on the later cast list, so there were some changes between the two performances.17 Lee’s Sophonisba is a complex play in five acts: even if they had not performed it in its entirety it would have involved an impressive feat of memory on the part of the young actors. Another children’s play involving Desaguliers and some of the same society people (but not Desaguliers’s sons) was a performance of Dryden’s The Indian Emperor or the Conquest of Mexico. This was given in 1732 at the London home of John Conduitt (1688–1737),18 and was recorded in a vivid conversation piece by William Hogarth. On stage are Conduitt’s daughter, Kitty, Lord Leominster and his sister Lady Sophia Fermor, and Lady Caroline Lennox. The distinguished audience included Prince William, Duke of Cumberland, two royal princesses with their governess, the Duke and Duchess of Richmond, the Duke of Montagu and the Earl of Pomfret. Also present was Thomas Hill FRS, public servant and poet and a member of the Duke of Richmond’s household. The setting is opulent and Conduitt and his wife are represented by their portraits on the wall. The proceedings are dominated by a bust of Sir Isaac Newton above the fireplace: the influence of his intellect and philosophy upon the assembled company was not to be forgotten. Desaguliers himself, a leading Newtonian, is closely involved in this distinguished company as he is standing, half-hidden by the curtains at the side of the stage, acting as prompt to the young actors. He peers short-sightedly at the text which can be seen to be open at Act IV, Scene IV of Dryden’s play. The production was directed by the actor Theophilus Cibber (1703–66), who, like Hogarth, is known to have been a freemason. It

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is thought that Conduitt commissioned Hogarth’s painting to perpetuate the honour done to his house by the presence of the distinguished audience. The performance was repeated ‘in the great ballroom at St James’s […] before their Majesties and all the Royal Family, who expressed their entire satisfaction at the same’,19 but it is not known whether Desaguliers was involved on that occasion. Hogarth (1697–1764) was probably introduced to freemasonry by his mentor and father-in-law, James Thornhill; the artist later became a Steward of Grand Lodge and designed the jewel still worn by the Grand Stewards. It has been argued that Desaguliers, whom Hogarth undoubtedly knew quite well, was the inspiration for the clergyman in the anticlerical painting and engraving, The Sleeping Congregation. In 1781, John Nichols, wrote in his Biographical Anecdotes of William Hogarth that ‘the preacher was designed as the representative of Dr Desaguliers’, which probably fuelled the suggestion. Ronald Paulson, in his standard work on Hogarth, analysed The Sleeping Congregation and concluded that the artist, by using Desaguliers as the preacher, was reinforcing masonic references in the engraving (the inverted equilateral triangle and the all-seeing eye). Paulson’s argument that Desaguliers was ‘notoriously more interested in Masonry’ than in his work as an Anglican clergyman and thus was a deist who, in the Anglican chapel where he preached, would ‘close all the eyes of his congregation’ is, however, unsound. Desaguliers was, undeniably, not always assiduous in his clerical duties, but there is no evidence to suggest that either freemasonry or Newtonianism had led him away from the conventional views of the Church of England. The likeness of Hogarth’s preacher to known representations of Desaguliers is slight, and there is no firm evidence to suggest that he was used as the model. The possibility has also been discussed that Desaguliers is the clergyman depicted in Hogarth’s painting The Hervey Conversation-piece. Set in Hervey’s Suffolk parkland, this shows a group of friends, all Whigs and supporters of Sir Robert Walpole. Lord John Hervey, whom Desaguliers had initiated as a freemason, is looking at a plan of an elaborate house which is held by another mason, Surveyor-General Henry Fox. Meanwhile, Fox’s politician brother, Stephen, is seated on a chair and surreptitiously toppling another chair on which stands a clergyman, looking hopefully through a telescope at a distant church. Horace Walpole, in 1762, identified the parson as Desaguliers, but this was later denied by descendants of the Fox family who claimed he was Peter Villemin, who had officiated at clandestine family marriages but who later often became a butt of their jokes. Despite theories that the telescope could allude to Desaguliers’s interest in optics and astronomy, and the toppling chair might signify balance and gravity, it is now thought that the Huguenot was not

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involved. Again the likeness is not marked, and recent research suggests that the clergyman was probably Conyers Middleton (1683–1750), the biographer of Cicero who counted Hervey as a friend and patron.20 The best-known representations of Desaguliers are the engravings made by Peter Pelham and James Tookey from a portrait painted by Hans Hysing (1678–1753) in about 1725, but which is now lost. In wig and clerical dress, Desaguliers is seated at a table on which rests a prism. He holds a magnifying glass which has caught the light from a distant window. A less familiar engraving of Desaguliers, by R. Scaddon after a painting of Thomas Frye (1712–62), is dated about 1743 and shows him as a heavy-featured older man. A sale catalogue in 1799 offered: ‘A Painting of Dr Desaguliers, black frame, 10s 6d’. It is impossible to know whether this was one of the originals by Hysing or Frye from which the engravings were made, or what became of the picture. There is also a third engraving (see page xvi) made in Paris by the French artist Etienne Jehandier Desrochers.21 In a style typical of the engraver, Desaguliers, again in wig and clerical dress, is depicted half-length in an oval frame, with brief biographical details and a short verse below: Si le Docte Desaguliers Par tout l’Univers se signale Aprouver des faits singuliers Par Science Experimentale: C’est qu’estant Philosophe et defet et de nom Il contente a la fois l’Esprit et la Raison.

The date of the engraving is unknown but, as Desrochers is thought to have worked exclusively in France, it is likely that the engraving was made from life during Desaguliers’s visit to Paris in 1735, by which time his work in experimental philosophy was well known on the continent. There is also a half-length oil painting which is said to be of Desaguliers and which was given to the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich as part of the George H. Gabb Collection of pictures and artefacts in the 1930s. Originally this portrait was attributed to Jonathan Richardson the elder (1667–1745), but since it was transferred to the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford in the 1980s no artist has been credited with it. There is no catalogue raisonné of Richardson’s works, but his subjects included the Duke and Duchess of Chandos and two of their relatives, as well as the Earl of Pembroke, Sir Richard Steele, Martin Folkes, and Frederick Prince of Wales. As these were all in Desaguliers’s circle, it is quite feasible that he also sat for Richardson, but unfortunately this

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17. John Theophilus Desaguliers: Engraving by J. Tookey from portrait by Hans Hysing c.1725. (Wellcome Library, London.)

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18.  John Theophilus Desaguliers: Engraving by R. Scaddon from portrait by Thomas Frye c.1743. Mezzotint. (© Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.)

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19. John Theophilus Desaguliers (?). Detail from oil painting once attributed to Jonathan Richardson. Date unknown. (Museum of the History of Science, University of Oxford.)

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cannot be confirmed. The portrait certainly could be of Desaguliers, again in wig and clerical dress, and, if so, it presents a more natural likeness than do the engravings.22 Some of these poems, plays and paintings help to give an occasional insight into Desaguliers’s world and character. Other scattered mentions and reminiscences of him that have come to light add to the impression that he was a well-known and congenial man who could mix business with pleasure. He was a good conversationalist whose company added to the conviviality of a gathering and he was not reluctant to join in with any entertainments. An extract from the diary of John Grano, who was once Handel’s trumpeter, recalls a visit on 5 August 1729 to the home of Alderman Sir Humphrey Parsons in Reigate, where he was invited to dinner. Grano wrote: To my pleasure and Surprise Doctr Desaguliers appear’d and Din’d with us. After Dinner went into the Garden and Sounded about 24 Airs […]. Soon after, took a Walk up to Reigate […] When I returned to the Alderman’s there was fire Works agoing forwards of the Docter’s Composition, and when they were play’d off I gave a Tune or two on the Trumpet, next went in a Doors, sang a Couple of Ballads – at the Conclusion of Which Supper Came on the Table, and at which I ate a Hartichoke and drank a little Bourgundy. In about half an Hour we were call’d into another Room where a Pastoral was perform’d by Doct. Desaguliers, Some Young Gentlemen and His Servant, as also several Songs and a Dance, to Which I perform’d by way of Interludes. The whole was concluded by a Story or two the Doctr told, and a blast of my Trumpet – after which I came home to my Inn, and so I went to Bed the Clock struck One in the Morning.23

The next day the Alderman, Grano, Desaguliers and his ‘Young Gentleman’ took the coach to Vauxhall from where they then proceeded in separate boats across the Thames. Desaguliers had stayed overnight with Sir Humphrey at the family home, Reigate Priory24, and had certainly added much to the diversions of the previous evening, with his fireworks (which he must have brought with him), his pastoral and his stories. The real reason for his visit is not clear. Sir Humphrey Parsons was a brewery owner, a staunch Tory and Member of Parliament for the City of London, and is unlikely to have been in sympathy with Desaguliers’s Whig and Hanoverian sentiments. However, all were freemasons, and as John Grano wrote, during this evening of entertainment ‘the spirit of toleration […] prevailing among members of the fraternity inspired […] a basis which should unite together in harmony those who were divided by religious and political schisms’.

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Another occasion when Desaguliers was involved in entertainments is recorded in a letter written by Mick Broughton, a convivial clergyman who was chaplain to the second Duke of Richmond. Broughton described to Richmond a gathering, just after Christmas 1734, at Ditton, one of the homes of John, Duke of Montagu. On 27 December he wrote that ‘Some great Mason is wanting to intitiate Bob Webber’ and then on New Year’s Day 1735: Bad as [the weather] is, it has not hindered our [Sport], without doors or within: Rowing every day to old Windsor or Dachett; and within, Hollis and Desaguliers (who came hither on his Crutches on Saturday, and able to go without them in 24 hours) have been super-excellent in their different ways, and often at one anothers. We have been entertained sometimes with scenes out of Don Sebastian, Tamerlane, Love for Love &c.; the chief Actors Desaguliers, St John, Bodens and Webber. Mick, having a bad memory, excus’d himself from Acting, and Seated, Solus, upon a large Sopha, Represented A Full Audience. […] On Sunday night at a Lodge in the Library, St. John, Albemarle, and Russell made chapters; and Bob Admitted Apprentice; the Dr. being hardly perswaded to the latter by reason of Bob’s tender years and want of Aprons. My being out of this Farce likewise, excludes me the Honour of styling myself Brother […]. P. S. Russell left us on Monday; Ld Albemarle yesterday; and this day Ld. Pem., Hollis, Stanhope and the Dr, in the Earl’s Coach; and Bodens in the Windsor Stage.25

This interesting account shows Desaguliers in distinguished company; he was clearly the ‘great Mason’ who had arrived on Saturday 28 December at the Thameside home of the Duke of Montagu and had soon recovered from the attack of gout which had caused him to arrive on crutches. Some of Montagu’s other guests can be identified. The ninth Earl of Pembroke was an architect who was soon to be closely involved in the building of Westminster Bridge and a supporter in that project of Desaguliers’s friend, the engineer and freemason Charles Labelye. Henry St John, Viscount Bolingbroke, was a politician who had renounced his Jacobite affiliations and was a long-standing Fellow of the Royal Society, while the Hon. Charles Stanhope FRS was a lawyer and controversial politician. The second Earl of Albemarle was an army officer married to the Duke of Richmond’s sister, and Lord Cardigan was a young relative of the Duke of Montagu. Mr Russell cannot be identified, but like St John, Stanhope and Albemarle he was a freemason. Captain Bodens served in the Coldstream Regiment, and Hollis, who rowed them all across the Thames, appears to have had a naval background. Unfortunately Bob Webber, who

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acted in the plays and was made a mason in the Library, cannot be precisely identified; he may have been the son of Robert Webber, who was a minor canon of Winchester Cathedral and a frequent visitor to the Duke of Richmond’s home at Goodwood. Desaguliers’s masonic credentials appear to have been the reason for his inclusion in the party, but he obviously added to the conviviality of the occasion. He must have been familiar with the three plays mentioned, by Dryden, Nicholas Rowe and Congreve, respectively, to have acted in them. Desaguliers was on friendly terms with John Byrom who kept detailed journals describing his daily activities and the people with whom he associated.26 Byrom was the inventor and teacher of a system of shorthand; his home was in Manchester, but he travelled frequently and was often in London. He had refused an offer to become a freemason in 1725, but by 1730 he was a member of the lodge that met at the Swan in Long Acre. In 1724 Byrom was elected to the Royal Society and when in London he would often attend their Thursday meetings. For example, on 8 April 1725, he ‘went to the Society [where] Desaguliers showed some experiments above stairs about a bowl of spirits immersed in water’. And on 6 May the same year Desaguliers had brought to the meeting an ‘engine […] to shew experiments with leaden balls’. Over ten years later, on 20 May 1736, Byrom again ‘came to the Royal Society […] and Dr Desaguliers tried some electrical experiments’. According to Byrom’s journal for 1729, his friend Henry Salkeld arranged a meeting at the request of Desaguliers. Byrom reported, undoubtedly gratified, that Salkeld had told him that ‘Dr Desaguliers was to be with them on Tuesday and he desired my company […], and that I was a very clever fellow, that all the world said so. I wish I could deserve the good opinion of good men’. Byrom then recorded the ensuing lively encounter on Tuesday 1 July 1729, and the account of the topics covered in the conversation gives a good indication of Desaguliers’s breadth of interests. On his way to call upon Salkeld, Byrom found him not at home, but, he continued: Coming back I met him and Dr Desaguliers arm in arm, and so we all went up stairs; and by-and-bye Dr Douglas, the youngest of the three brothers, (says Desaguliers, and the cleverest fellow of them all)27 came to us; we had Florence wine, very good, and bread and butter, and anchovies and olives. […] I showed [Desaguliers] Mr Gore’s book of the Elements of Geometry, demonstrated Algebraically,28 he said he thought it would sell if it was true done, as he supposed it was, but if there were any blunders in it it would damn it at once […]; he said that I had diverted him much with the epilogue to Hurlothrumbo;29 that Metaphysics was Natural Logic, and yet said that Sir Isaac Newton had no opinion of them; that Dr Clark’s vanity would

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not let him think that he did not understand Sir Isaac Newton’s Optics, which in some places he knew he did not; that one Williams30 had been at the Royal Society last Thursday hoping for some reward for the longitude, that he had once been with the Duke of Chandois, and the Duke had sent him to him, and when he saw him he said, “Well, you have been to show your scheme to the Duke, and he has sent you to me,” and the man took him for a conjuror.

It is interesting that Desaguliers, staunchly Hanoverian, was clearly on familiar terms with Salkeld. Salkeld, who had medical qualifications, came from an old Northumberland family which was overtly Jacobite and actively attempting to restore the Stuarts to the British throne. Once again, discussion of politics was apparently avoided. Byrom’s journal entry for 1 July went on to say how Desaguliers told the company of ‘Leech’s way of teaching to write in twenty-four hours’. The pupil had to pay a guinea, as for that sum he would take pains to learn; then, shut up with the tutor who wrote backwards as he wrote forwards, all his faults were instantly corrected. Desaguliers also reported on a ‘way of curing stammerers, which was to make them speak slow, or to spell or write the words upon the wall’, and said he himself had done some experiments on stammering and realized the sufferers should learn to speak more slowly. Then Desaguliers asked Byrom if he had had printed his book of shorthand, but received the curt reply, ‘No’.31 Finally they all left in a coach ‘and the Dr.’s man, Ben, with us’. Byrom was invited to Desaguliers’s lectures at his house (though mistakenly Byrom gave the address as Paternoster Row instead of Channel Row). One unusual instance which shows that Desaguliers’s name and expertise were well known and trusted was his intervention, in 1739, in the raffle of a house, much publicized in the press.32 Mrs Elizabeth Simmons decided to dispose of the Great Centre House in Grosvenor Square, built by her late husband and said to be worth £10,500, by selling 39,999 tickets at 5/3d. each and having these put into a draw, using Mr Foubert’s Mathematical Machine to ensure fair play. The ‘Shares’ were sold at many venues throughout the country and the draw was fixed for 18 May 1739. However, the raffle was postponed until 8 June, apparently because not all the vendors had returned their proceeds and unsold tickets. It was probably this delay that caused unease as to the honesty of the proceedings, but a reassuring notice appeared in several papers in late May and early June: In Consideration of the Knowledge which I have had of the late Mr Simmons, Master Builder, and in Justice to the Character of his now Widow, Mrs Elizabeth Simmons, I do hereby certify that I have carefully examin’d and consider’d the

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several Wheels and Figures which compose Foubert’s Mathematical Machine, at the Centre-House in Grosvenor Square, and whereby the Raffle for the said House will be finally determin’d on Friday the 8th Day of June next, and find that the same is founded on the Principles of Mathematicks, and cannot admit of any Imposition whatever: And further, at Mrs Simmons’s Request, as well as that of several of my worthy Friends who are Adventurers therein, I will, God willing, attend the Decision of the said Raffle. Given under my Hand this 28th of May 1739, J. T. DESAGULIERS. 33

Reassurance was separately given that Desaguliers and other eminent mathematicians had promised to be present at the draw and that ‘this important Affair shall meet with no further Delay’. In the event Desaguliers, Mr Clare (presumably his friend, the freemason Martin Clare FRS) and several unnamed mathematicians were present when ticket No. 83 won the draw, and the house then passed into the possession of a grocer from Piccadilly and his lodger, who had taken two tickets in partnership. The whole process had proved much more complicated than Mrs Simmons had anticipated, and she complained that her family had suffered as 8,000 tickets had remained unsold, but she thanked her friends, including, presumably, Desaguliers, who had helped her in her endeavour. These few recollections of Desaguliers add to accounts that have survived and were recounted by others who attended his lectures or who met him through freemasonry. They all help to build an impression of a congenial and trustworthy man with a wide range of acquaintances who was as much at ease amongst the aristocracy, and even royalty, as he was with more modest company. His writings show meticulous attention to detail and in matters masonic he would insist on correctness to the point where he was occasionally mocked, albeit in a friendly way. On more than one occasion Desaguliers was referred to as a wizard when, in clerical dress, he entertained and instructed with his remarkable experiments. He overcame chronic ill-health and, undoubtedly to his own satisfaction, became a respected and acknowledged member of London society. For many years his family home in Channel Row, Westminster was well known as Dr Desaguliers’s address and place of work, and the venue for his lectures, demonstrations and other meetings.

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10

The House in Channel Row: Family, Lodgers, Health and Descendants

Desaguliers lived in the same house in Channel Row, Westminster for roughly 25 years and it served as his place of work and a focus for all his activities, but above all as a family home. Many details of family events were recorded, in French, on the flyleaf of a bible which passed, via Desaguliers’s granddaughter, to the Shuttleworth family of Gawthorpe Hall, in Lancashire. The bible, printed in France in 1669 and probably brought by the refugee family from La Rochelle, cannot now be traced but fortunately it was studied and recorded by the Chetham Society in 1856 and by a genealogist, Henry Wagner, in 1881.1 The details from both their published accounts agree and together with records from church registers and other sources help with putting together the Desaguliers family story. Until 1712 Desaguliers was still living in Oxford, though by the time of his marriage in October that year he had probably already decided to leave Hart Hall and to move to London. Unlike many refugees from France he did not marry within the Huguenot community. His bride, Joanna Pudsey, was from a family well established in the village of Kidlington, just north of Oxford, where she was baptized in 1686. Her parents were William and Anne Pudsey; one of William’s brothers was Sir George Pudsey, a Recorder of Oxford who had been knighted by Charles II. Sir George was probably the most distinguished member of the family, but they were not without some local influence. Interestingly, remembering Desaguliers’s time at the school in Sutton Coldfield, there were connections with the Pudsey family there too. Joanna’s paternal grandfather, George Pudsey of Yarnton (in Oxfordshire), was the son of a niece of Bishop Vesey who had founded the eponymous grammar school, and her grandmother also came from the Warwickshire town. There were several related Pudseys acting as trustees of the school, both before and after Desaguliers was there under William Sanders.2 So it could be speculated that an introduction to the local Pudsey family was proffered to the young student who arrived in Oxford

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fresh from Bishop Vesey’s School. It is perhaps cynical to speculate whether his choice of wife was in part influenced by a desire to become established in English society and we shall probably never know how John Theophilus and Joanna met. But what is truly surprising and even more difficult to explain is their choice of church in which to be married. The wedding took place on 14 October 1712, by licence obtained and duly signed by Desaguliers the previous day,3 at St Paul’s Church, Shadwell, in East London. In the register the groom was named as ‘John Theophilus Desagutiors of Harthall Oxon’ and the bride was ‘Joana Pudsey of St Clement Danes’. This suggests that Desaguliers still considered Oxford to be his home, but how Joanna came to be resident in a London parish near to the Strand is again a mystery. Neither had any obvious connection with Shadwell which, in the early eighteenth century, was a small dockland and boat-building community largely separated by fields from the City of London to the west. St Paul’s was a fairly new church, consecrated in 1671. The ceremony was carried out by a Reverend William Simpson; he was not the incumbent at Shadwell, but later became the husband of Joanna’s younger sister Jone (also known as Joan or Jane) so presumably he was invited to officiate as he was a family friend. The newly wed couple set up home in London in Plow (or Plough) Yard, off Fetter Lane, which was not far from the home and shop of the elder Francis Hauksbee, nor from Crane Court, the premises of the Royal Society. The address is recorded in the register of nearby St Andrew’s, Holborn, where on 14 March 1715 their first son, born on 7 March, was baptized as John Theophilus. His father recorded in the family bible that the child’s sponsors were Dr Alexander Stuart, his brother-in-law William Pudsey, his sister-inlaw Joan Pudsey (who stood in for his mother-in-law who was sick), and Miss Mary Hawksbee. The inclusion of the daughter of the late Francis Hauksbee attests to the friendship between his family and Desaguliers. Alexander Stuart (?1673–1742), then an up-and-coming physician, had recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society; he was also a freemason and proved to be a lifelong friend of Desaguliers. Sadly, just 17 months after his baptism, young John Theophilus died, on 19 August 1716. This was a time of high infant mortality, especially in the crowded and unsanitary city, and indeed, of the seven children who were born to John Theophilus and Joanna Desaguliers, only two survived to adulthood. Probably not long after the baptism of their first child the family moved house from the City of London to Westminster. One can only speculate what motivated the move in 1715 away from the City with its proximity to the Royal Society and the discussions in the coffee houses. Possibly Desaguliers felt there

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was too much competition in the City where, from 1713, Francis Hauksbee the younger and William Whiston from Cambridge were together advertising lecture courses very similar to his, close to the Royal Society.4 The move could have represented a manifestation of social climbing as Westminster was developing fast and becoming fashionable as it was close to the seat of government and the royal household. More likely, however, it was an expedient way to get a more comfortable and affordable home in a less crowded part of town, and one which had space for lectures and experiments, and a courtyard where large demonstrations could be set up. From 1715 until 1741 the Rate Book for the ‘Assessment made on Inhabitants of the Parish of St Margaret’s Westminster in the County of Middlesex for and towards the Relief of the Poor’ includes the name Desaguliers, with some variants in the spelling.5 John Theophilus Desaguliers was responsible for a house in Cannon Row and initially paid around £30 per annum in poor rate; in later years the rates on all the houses were reduced. Based on the sums paid, his was one of the larger houses in the street which, although officially listed as Cannon Row, was invariably known as Channel Row. It ran parallel to the Thames and linked the Privy Gardens of Whitehall to New Palace Yard and Westminster Abbey. There were at least two public houses in Channel Row: the Brazen Head Inn and the Rummer and Grapes Tavern. As a freemason Desaguliers undoubtedly knew the latter well for it was home to his own Lodge No. 4 until it outgrew the Rummer and meetings were moved to the nearby Horn Tavern. Jonathan Swift had associations with Channel Row: writing in the Tatler as Isaac Bickerstaff, he datelined his satirical articles from 8 February to 20 March 1710 as ‘From my own apartments in Channel Row’. Swift also mentioned Channel Row in a poem, Ay and No: A Fable, adding the footnote: ‘Channel Row is a dirty street near the Parliament-house, Westminster’. He was probably maligning the road that was, although narrow, home to a cross-section of the social spectrum and was used by the royal family as a quick route from Whitehall to the Abbey at Westminster. A mathematical school for boys was run by William Alingham near the Rummer and Grapes Tavern in Channel Row from about 1694 until his death in 1710. Alingham’s book on Euclidian Geometry, published in 1695, was, according to the title page, ‘to be sold by the Author, over against the Rummour Tavern in Channel Row, Westminster’, while the 1703 edition of his book on maps carries an advertisement that ‘at the house, late the Lord Weymouth’s, in Channel Row Westminster, are taught the Mathematicks in all its Parts. Also Youth Boarded, Land Survey’d, Timber Measur’d and Dials Delineated, by the Author’. William Alingham was responsible for payment of the poor rates on a house in Manchester Court, Cannon Row, until 1709, and his widow then

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20. Maps showing the location of Channel Row. In the 1692 William Morgan map Desaguliers’s house would have been somewhere near to the Woolstaple and Manchester House. In the 1747 John Roque map, made after the construction of Westminster Bridge, the house had been demolished to make way for the new Bridge and Parliament Streets.

paid until 1713. Although the order in which the occupiers of the properties are listed varies somewhat year by year, comparison of the names of the neighbours, and the rates charged, strongly suggests that it was Alingham’s sizable property, unoccupied when assessed in 1714, which Desaguliers took over in 1715.6 The house was on the corner of Manchester Court, which went down to the Thames at Manchester Stairs. The nearby frontage on the river was occupied by Manchester House at this point, and plenty of eager boatmen would have provided a convenient means of transport to other Thameside locations. Desaguliers lived in Channel Row until the house was demolished in 1741: together with other nearby properties and several in New Palace Yard it had to make way for the approach road to the new Westminster Bridge. Some idea of the scale of the house is obtained from an advertisement for the new grates that Desaguliers designed in 1716. A demonstration was set up on three afternoons a week in his Channel Row house:

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Where not only the room where the Fire is (which is 30 Foot long, 18 wide and 15 high) is warm’d so as to make the Thermometer rise 34 Degrees in 2 or 3 Hours; but afterwards the hot Air is conveyed into a large Bedchamber so as to give as great a Degree of Heat as is desired.7

The 30-foot room may have been the venue for lectures as Desaguliers certainly had space to accommodate a group of well over a dozen people and for them to observe his experiments. He would also have needed a room for the preparation of apparatus and the courtyard enabled larger demonstrations to be carried out. Another indication of the capacity of the house comes from a surprising newspaper advertisement early in 1720 which announced that: The celebrated collection of Wm. Tallman Esq. deceas’d (Comptroller of the Works to his late Majesty) consisting of several excellent Statues, Busto’s, and small Figures […] with Pillars in Marble, Tables in Porphiry, Chimney Pieces and Fragments of Ancient Greek Marble; The whole being a curious and well-chosen Collection, either for adorning Gardens or Galleries, will be sold by Auction for the Benefit of his Widow […] at the Rev. Dr. Desaguliers’s in Channel Row.8

William Talman (1650–1719) was an architect who had been involved in the design of many country houses, and who was Comptroller of Works to King William III.9 An apparently unpleasant character who made enemies not only of fellow-architects, but also of many of his aristocratic clients, Talman was dismissed from the Royal Household on the accession of Queen Anne in 1702. When he died in 1718 he left to his son an important collection of prints and drawings, and also, according to the probate inventory, about a hundred items – vases, statues, busts, tables, pillars, etc. – in marble or brass. It was these, together with three vast paintings (the largest measured 11 by 19 feet), that passed to Talman’s widow and executrix and were moved to Desaguliers’s house to be auctioned from there. They must have occupied a considerable space, probably both indoors and out in the courtyard. As well as having a home in Norfolk, Talman had inherited leases on three houses in King Street, Westminster, which was not far from Channel Row, so presumably the collection came from there after his death. Apart from both occupying property in Westminster, there is no obvious connection between Talman and Desaguliers. Talman is known to have worked at Cannons for James Brydges, the future Duke of Chandos, but he was dismissed in 1713, well before Brydges became Desaguliers’s patron. Talman was not a Fellow of the Royal Society. It is not known whether he was a freemason, but given his occupation and associates in the building trade this

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was quite likely, so maybe he belonged to Lodge No. 4 in Westminster and Desaguliers was helping his widow for this reason. In the years after moving to the large house in Channel Row six more children were born to Joanna Desaguliers; all were baptized at St Margaret’s Church, Westminster, and four were buried there too. Their father recorded the baptisms of all his children in the French family bible and the identity of their godparents gives an interesting insight into the increasingly elevated social milieu in which he moved and the importance of freemasonry in his circle of acquaintance. A second son born in 1718 was also named John Theophilus and he survived to adulthood; his godparents were of no especial note, one being a neighbour and another ‘ma cousine Isabelle du Bois’. The following October another son arrived and was baptized John Isaac; his illustrious sponsors were John, Marquis of Carnarvon, the elder son of the Duke of Chandos, Sir Isaac Newton (hence, presumably, the baby’s names) and Miss Cassandra Cornwallis, a cousin of the Duke. It would have been a rare honour to have Sir Isaac as godparent, but whatever hopes the family had for this child were shattered when he died, aged just two weeks. The fourth Desaguliers child was another boy. Uniquely his father made a poignant record in the family bible which translates from the French: Today the 5th January 1720/1 my fourth son Thomas was born to the great peril of the life of his mother, who by the mercy of God was finally safely delivered. This child had as godfathers Thomas Parker, Earl of Macclesfield and Lord Chancellor of England, and Archibald Campbell, Earl of Ilay, and for godmother Theodosia Countess of Clifton, and daughter of my Lord Clarendon, who has since died. May God give this child grace and benediction.

The entry is confusing as it records the birth of Thomas (whose name probably derived from the family name of his paternal grandmother) and the fact that his godmother had died, which occurred in the following year, 1722. Of his godfathers, the first Earl of Macclesfield (1667–1732) was an influential Hanoverian and Fellow of the Royal Society, while Archibald Campbell, Earl of Ilay and third Duke of Argyll (1682-1761), was a Whig politician and freemason who had a strong interest in science and was the dedicatee of Desaguliers’s poem, The Newtonian System. Thomas Desaguliers fulfilled his father’s hopes and grew up to become a renowned General in the Royal Artillery, and to have a family and descendants of his own. After the four Desaguliers sons there were three daughters, Joanna, Sarah Jane and Elizabeth. Joanna’s godparents included freemason Joseph Taylor and

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the Countess de Lippe whose husband was in Desaguliers’s Lodge No. 4, at the Horn Tavern in Westminster. Sarah Jane had for sponsors the Duchesses of Richmond and of Dalkeith, wives of eminent masonic colleagues of her father, and Lord Malpas, son of the Earl of Cholmondeley. In 1727, for his youngest child, Elizabeth, Desaguliers called on two more brethren from Lodge No. 4, William Cowper and Alexander Chocke, and the wives of two others, Mesdames de la Faye and Sorrell, to act as godparents. Sadly, despite their illustrious sponsors, none of the Desaguliers daughters survived early childhood. The elderly mothers of both John Theophilus and Joanna Desaguliers lived, and died, in the house in Channel Row. In March 1722 Marguerite Desaguliers, formerly Marguerite Thomas de la Chapelle, was buried at St Margaret’s, Westminster. The French woman who began life in the troubled times of the persecution of Protestants in La Rochelle, and escaped with her baby son to make a new life first in Guernsey and then in London, lived to be over 80 years of age and to see her son firmly established in English society. Since her husband’s ordination by the Bishop of London the family had embraced the Anglican Church and had apparently had little contact with the Huguenot communities that were established in many parts of England.10 It is probable that Marguerite Desaguliers’s father and her husband’s aunt Sara Desaguliers were both exiled to London in the late seventeenth century. In 1709, Sara, who had been an independent businesswoman in La Rochelle and by then would have been approaching 80 years of age, was in receipt of charity in London. Some years after the death of Desaguliers’s mother, his mother-in-law, Anne Pudsey, died at the age of about 82 and was also buried at St Margaret’s, in November 1732. She had probably been living in her old age with her daughter and son-in-law, as she named Joanna Desaguliers as sole executrix in her will, dated 30 September 1731, and the two witnesses lived respectively in Channel Row and ‘Westminster’. Anne referred to the will of her late husband, William Pudsey of Kidlington, who had died in 1709; under the terms of this will she had been left money in trust, and also William had provided for his son and heir (another William, who was wished ‘greater fortune in the World than his father has had’). Anne therefore bequeathed her assets, which appear to have consisted of £250 plus the residue from a legacy of £1,000 that had been made by a cousin many years before, to her two daughters, Jane Simpson, the wife of the Reverend William Simpson (who, as mentioned earlier, had conducted the Desaguliers’s marriage), and Joanna Desaguliers. Jane was to receive £100, and Joanna was to share £100 between Anne’s ‘loving grandsons’, John Theophilus and Thomas Desaguliers. The boys

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at the time would have been about 14 and 12 years of age. The residue of her mother’s estate was then to go to Joanna herself which may have been given her some degree of independence, as later in her life she appears to have lived apart from her husband. A rather enigmatic advertisement was published in 1731 concerning a robbery from the house in Channel Row: Whereas a few months since the Drawers of a Buero in the Rev. Dr Desaguliers’s House in Channel Row, Westminster, were broke open, and a Suit of Cloth Cloaths, of a dark Colour inclining to Purple, and lined with a scarlet Ratinet; together with a large thin Folio Manuscript Book, written by Bishop Cosin, entitled Regni Angliæ Religio, &c, bound in red Turkey Leather, were stolen from thence: This is to give Notice that if any Person or Persons will bring the said Book and Cloaths to the above-mentioned Dr Desaguliers, they shall have Five Pounds Reward. Likewise any Person giving Notice of the Thief, so that he or she shall be convicted of the said Theft, shall be entitled to the Reward above-mentioned.11

It seems odd that Desaguliers should have offered a generous sum as a reward some months after his loss of the somewhat disparate items. The book was an updated version, published in 1729, of a sixteenth-century text on ecclesiastical procedures and the structure of the Anglican Church; Desaguliers, as Rector of Whitchurch, Middlesex, was listed as one of many distinguished subscribers.12 As the theft occurred within the house, maybe Desaguliers was subtly accusing someone close to home of taking his clothing and book, but the outcome of the case is unlikely ever to be known. Not only did the Desaguliers family and the domestic servants they would have employed live in the house in Channel Row, but it also accommodated lodgers. Boarders would have provided extra income, and gentlemen who attended Desaguliers’s lectures and had ‘a mind to apply close to these studies’ were offered accommodation. Whether this appealed to many of the general auditors is not known, but several interesting people did indeed lodge at Channel Row. Desaguliers also at times had a resident technician or instrument maker helping develop new experiments and demonstrations. One such was David Barclay who assisted Desaguliers with his firework displays and said that he had learned those skills ‘and several other Philosophical Experiments of the said Doctor, with whom he liv’d’.13 Stephen Demainbray, who was of Huguenot parentage and became, as already mentioned, a noted lecturer in natural philosophy, lived as a boy with the Desaguliers family. He attended nearby Westminster School, but gained

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his initial interest in the sciences from Desaguliers. It is possible that other Westminster pupils were similarly accommodated and had their conventional classical education augmented by experimental philosophy. Stephen Gray, as has been described earlier, is now best remembered for his early work on electricity. He lived with the Desaguliers family from 1716 until 1719 or 1720, when he left to become a pensioner at the Charterhouse. Gray assisted with Desaguliers’s lectures while at Channel Row and the two men conducted experiments together and made astronomical observations. A little-known watchmaker from Alsace, Philippe Vayringe (1684–1745), also lodged at the Channel Row house, in 1721.14 He was a protégé of Duke Leopold of Lorraine, who sent him to London that year to collect, and learn about, some scientific instruments that he, Leopold, had ordered. Vayringe spent 13 months in London and learned algebra and geometry from Desaguliers, as well as expertise in the use of the varied scientific apparatus that he took back to Lorraine. He became a skilled instrument maker: one of his inventions was a form of orrery based on the machine made by Rowley and Graham and improved by Desaguliers. Vayringe was appointed Professor of Experimental Philosophy at the Academy of Lunéville in Lorraine, and later moved to Tuscany. It is likely that all his lectures were based on those he would undoubtedly have witnessed in Channel Row. Yet another man likely to have lived for a time at Channel Row was George Gordon, a minor author of books on algebra, astronomy, geography and dialing. In an advertisement in 1726 he announced that his newly published Introduction to Geography and Astronomy was dedicated to Sir Robert Walpole and recommended by Dr Desaguliers, and that it was sold by the author at Desaguliers’s house in Channel Row. Printed facing the title page was the message: ‘Jan 11 1725–26. I have read this Book, and think it will be very useful to Beginners. J. T. Desaguliers L.L.D. F.R.S.’. Two years later Gordon styled himself ‘Assistant to the Rev. Dr Desaguliers’ when calling for subscriptions for a new System of Algebra he proposed publishing. The subscriptions would be taken in, by the author, at Desaguliers’s house in Channel Row which suggests he either lodged, or spent much time, there. As already surmised Gordon is likely to have been one of the signatories of the York Dragons pamphlet which opposed the Newcomen engine on the Thames.15 By April 1729 Gordon was referred to as ‘Late Assistant’ to Desaguliers in a report saying he had invented, and applied for a patent for, a pneumatic engine to cure smoking chimneys. Although little is known of George Gordon, this does suggest that he may have gleaned some ideas from Desaguliers and was hoping to benefit from them. Whether this was with the approval of his former master is unknown, but

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Gordon did continue to use Desaguliers’s recommendation in further editions of his book. He was also a freemason and in 1733 set up a lodge in Madrid on behalf of the Grand Lodge. In 1738, when work on the new Westminster Bridge was starting under the direction of Desaguliers’s friend, Charles Labelye, it was reported that, They will begin driving the piles for the intended Bridge at Westminster in about a fortnight […] and M. Labelles the principal Engineer is lodg’d at Dr Desaguliers’s House near the Woolstaple that he may have an Eye to the River and the Works.16

The conveniently located house was, of course, a little too near to the river and the works, and a couple of years later had to be demolished on account of the bridge. Earlier, Isaac Greenwood (1702–45), who later became the first professor of natural philosophy at Harvard University, was another who lodged with Desaguliers during a stay in London, in 1725 and 1726.17 Greenwood was a Harvard graduate and dissenting minister who developed an interest in Newtonian science. He was given an introductory letter to James Jurin (1684–1750), secretary of the Royal Society, by Cotton Mather, the renowned Puritan preacher from Boston who was already a corresponding Fellow of the Society. Thomas Hollis (1659–1731), a London merchant who was a benefactor of Harvard University, wrote of Greenwood whilst he was in London: His Genius leading him chiefly to the Mathematics and Philosophy, he applied himself mostly to these and under the direction of Dr Disaguliers that great Mecanic and Master of Experimental Philosophy, he made such strange and surprising Advances in these his daily Studies as not only gained him the entire Love and Esteem of his Tutor, but wro’t so much upon that Gentleman that he condescended to make him an Assistant in his Lectures, and wou’d even venture to leave him to officiate in his Stead if he was ill himself or oblig’d to be otherwise absent.

Greenwood was clearly talented and trusted by Desaguliers, but he returned rather suddenly to Massachusetts in 1726 leaving behind considerable debts, including board and lodging owed to his mentor. This dismayed Hollis, but, nevertheless, Greenwood was in due course appointed to the chair at Harvard that his benefactor established for him. He had learned much from his association with Desaguliers and ran courses of experimental philosophy

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along his lines, both at Harvard, and as public courses in Boston and, later, in Philadelphia where he was befriended by Benjamin Franklin. Greenwood’s An Experimental Course of Mechanical Philosophy, published in Boston in 1726, publicized his lectures and demonstrations and owed much to Desaguliers’s teaching. These methods were copied by other early American colleges and by itinerant teachers who helped spread scientific interest throughout the colony. When Greenwood arrived in London in 1723 he brought with him some papers concerning inoculation against smallpox. During an epidemic in Boston in 1721 Greenwood had himself been successfully inoculated, although the procedure was controversial. As an ‘inoculate’ he was thus considered something of a ‘specimen’ by the Royal Society. Desaguliers would have been most interested, for on 13 June 1723 he presented a paper to the Royal Society whose subject was somewhat different from his usual topics of physical science. It was entitled ‘An Account of the Appearance of the Matter of the Small Pox seen thro’ the Microscope’ and he described that, Having a daughter of a year old sick of the distinct small Pox and pretty full of pustules I was desirous to have my eldest son, who is between 4 and 5 years old, inoculated with the matter taken from his Sister.18

The unfortunate little girl would have been Joanna, who had just had her first birthday, and the son was John Theophilus, junior. A junior surgeon called Alexander Geekie19 had performed the operation on the previous Monday, 10 June. Both children survived the ordeal, though Joanna was to die two years later of an unrecorded cause. At the same time their father took matter from the pustules to examine under the microscope ‘with a pretty large magnifier’ and found that it consisted of irregular globules some bigger and some smaller than the globules of the blood; he presented simple sketches of the particles and also he intended ‘that as soon as the Pustules come to be full in my son who is inoculated to examine that Matter’. Possibly Desaguliers had had smallpox in his youth; if not he was certainly putting himself at great risk by handling the infectious material, but he was interested to discover all he could and communicate it to the Society. He probably also felt he was doing the right thing by his elder son; whether his other son, Thomas, was also inoculated later is not recorded. For much of his life Desaguliers was plagued by chronic gout; he frequently suffered severe pain and there were times when he was so disabled that he was unable to work, or needed to walk with crutches. He gave a frank and detailed account of his condition in a letter to Theophilus Lobb (1678–1763), who published it, together with a number of other case histories and his own

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comments upon them, in 1739.20 Lobb was a non-conformist minister and physician; he apparently had greater success at the latter profession and was elected FRS in 1729 and so would have met Desaguliers at Royal Society meetings. Desaguliers wrote that he first gained weight in about 1709 but was in very good health until 1717, when, aged about 34, he started to have pain in his great toe and to become sleepy after dinner. At first he would not believe he had gout as neither of his parents had suffered from it and he had always shunned hard drinking. However, the attacks increased and he suffered two or three ‘painful fits’ of up to a month, two or three times a year, the soreness being so great that he ‘was forced to go with a cut shoe’. During a fit he ‘generally lived low’, eating pudding and fish, and water gruel. There was a belief that gout could affect the stomach, and that, to avoid this problem, wine was beneficial, so he was ‘with Difficulty sometimes persuaded to drink a glass of Mountain Wine, with which I generally mix’d Water’. However the gout increased, especially in cold weather. Desaguliers described some of the measures he took in an attempt to relieve it: If in the Summer my Business allow’d me so much Time, as to go often into the Thames, or to wash in any other temperate Bath, if the Thames was too cold; or to sweat, and wash, in a Bagnio; and also to ride on horseback, I generally escaped that Winter.

Another remedy Desaguliers tried was to apply stuphes, or flannels dipped in a warm decoction of herbs, but these were helpful only sometimes and he feared forcing the gout from one part of his body to another, for he now suffered in his knees, hands and elbows as well as feet. He believed in the benefit of profuse sweating and found that being wrapped in flannel and drinking ‘A Quart of Thames Water, with or without a Toast, generally made me sweat more than any Thing else taken on Purpose’. Given the disgusting state of eighteenth-century river water, it is perhaps surprising that this ‘remedy’ did not have dire side effects, and it certainly did not achieve a cure. Unhappily, in the four years from 1733 to 1737 Desaguliers was ‘laid up with the Gout at least six Months in the Winter, by a Succession of nine or ten Fits’. In 1736, when he caught cold after a fit of gout, he consulted Dr A. Stewart (almost certainly his friend Alexander Stuart who by then was a distinguished physician and closely involved with Westminster Hospital). Stuart’s remedy, remarkably, was to induce the gout to reappear, but this apparently cured the quinsy or sore throat. That year also Desaguliers discussed his condition with a fellow sufferer from gout, William Stukeley (1687–1765). Perhaps best remembered as an antiquarian, Stukeley was

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also a cleric, physician, FRS and freemason. He recommended the application of oils that he himself found beneficial, but Desaguliers was unimpressed: ‘what relieves one Person in the Gout, will do another no good’, he concluded. He next tried a strictly vegetarian diet, with ‘a Bolus of Flower of Brimstone and Treacle’ every morning. This cured the severe piles from which he had been suffering and his limbs felt stronger; he was less sleepy after dinner and the fits of gout were reduced. He lost so much weight that his waistcoat had to be taken in by four inches, but even then he still weighed a substantial 224 pounds in 1737. He had decided to continue his vegetarian regime, but was ‘frighten’d out of it by a paralytick Attack’. Twice, at dinner, he found he lost his ability to speak for about five minutes and this he attributed to lack of meat and fish. But a ‘trimming diet’ with a normal dinner but limited supper caused him, he wrote, to ‘find myself better in Health than I have been these ten Years’. Theophilus Lobb’s discussion of Desaguliers’s account did little beyond reiterating what he had been told and emphasized the benefit of suitable aliment in medical practice. Gout was a common and distressing condition, thought to be caused by ‘gouty humours’ which moved about the body and needed to be released, for example by perspiration. Desaguliers suffered more than most for over twenty years, with frequent swellings and ‘exquisite pain’. He sought alleviation by taking the waters during his several visits to Bath, but to no avail. It is surely a tribute to his will and determination that this misunderstood and debilitating disease did not curtail Desaguliers’s energy and his varied activities to a greater extent. As already mentioned, the house in Channel Row was demolished around 1741. Having been involved with the plans for the new bridge across the river, Desaguliers would have understood the reason but, probably with regret, he was forced to move to rooms above the Bedford Coffee House in the Piazza of Covent Garden. He continued with his lectures, having taken much of his equipment to his new lodgings, and he was still working hard to complete the second volume of his Course of Experimental Philosophy. By late 1743 Desaguliers had become seriously unwell; in the will he wrote on 29 November that year he admitted to being in a very infirm state of health. His last recorded appearance at the Royal Society was on 12 January 1744, and at Grand Lodge on 8 February, only about three weeks before he died at his lodgings, of cause unknown, at the age of almost 60. There is slight discrepancy in reports of the exact date in the press21 but he was generally described as ‘Dr Desaguliers, a gentleman universally known and esteemed’. The Gentleman’s Magazine, probably reliably, recorded the death as occurring on 29 February. This offers an interesting coincidence for this was the intercalary day deplored in the poem Cambria’s Complaint, published in 1728. The burial, on 4 March, was

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reported briefly in the press, but, rather surprisingly, there is no suggestion that Desaguliers was given a masonic funeral: Last Sunday the Corpse of the Rev. Dr Desaguliers was buried in the Savoy Church, from the Bedford Coffee House, Covent Garden, where he had a large Conveniency for shewing his Experiments.22

Desaguliers was buried within the Savoy Chapel, rather than in the churchyard. The Chapel had in the past had Huguenot associations, but by the 1740s almost none of the names in the registers appears to be French.23 Perhaps, however, at the very end of his life Desaguliers had remembered his origins and requested this resting place, rather than St Paul’s, Covent Garden, close to his last home, or even St Margaret’s, Westminster, where his mother and several infant children were interred. Desaguliers’s death and burial at the Savoy were recorded in the register of St Lawrence Church, Stanmore, where he was still the incumbent at the time of his death. The entry was made by Daniel Perkins, his curate, who succeeded him as rector. The now discredited story that Desaguliers died neglected and in poverty apparently arose because of lines from a poem by James Cawthorn, entitled The Vanity of Human Enjoyments: An Ethic Epistle, addressed in 1749 to the Right Hon. George Lyttleton Esq., one of the Lords of His Majesty’s Treasury.24 The verse deplored the way frivolous Britain neglects her science, ‘… which might be great | Could science but allow her sons to eat’. It was suggested that Edmund Halley, despite his great achievements in magnetism and exploration, allegedly received but £90 per year in his old age, and then Cawthorn asked: Can Britain […] still permit the weeping muse to tell How poor neglect’d Desaguliers fell? How he, who taught two gracious kings to view All Boyle enobled, and all Bacon knew, Died in a cell, without a friend to save, Without a guinea and without a grave?

The poet can perhaps be condoned for drawing attention to the plight of some of the country’s struggling scientists, but he wildly exaggerated the situation. Desaguliers may not have been wealthy, but he was certainly not friendless nor without family, and he died at his comfortable lodgings and had a prestigious inside burial place at the Savoy Chapel.

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Desaguliers left his entire estate, which was not valued for probate, to his elder son and sole executor, the Reverend John Theophilus Desaguliers, stating that his son Thomas was sufficiently provided for. Surprisingly, and unusually, there is no mention in the will of his wife, Joanna, though she was still alive. The fact that no recognition of her, nor provision for her, was made suggests that the couple were estranged and that she did not accompany him to the lodgings in Covent Garden. Even without taking into account the loss of five of her seven children, Joanna Desaguliers is unlikely to have had an easy married life. Undoubtedly often short of money, she would have had to manage a complex household at Channel Row, with its assorted lodgers and the constant comings and goings of the auditors to her husband’s lectures and demonstrations. Desaguliers was often in need of nursing for his gout, and at other times he was away from home, for example at the bidding of the Duke of Chandos, or when lecturing in Bath or in Holland, or on masonic business, leaving his wife with responsibility for the house. Perhaps Joanna Desaguliers had had a surfeit of experimental philosophy and freemasonry. It seems likely that she had means of her own, presumably from the legacy left by her mother, and so, unusually for a woman at that time, she was able to live apart from her husband when they were forced to leave their home in Channel Row. When she died in 1753 she was living in Grafton Street, not far from Leicester Fields; she was buried nearby at St Anne’s Church, Soho. Her elder son, a country clergyman, had died unmarried the previous year, and her younger son was by then an active soldier and a widower. It is conceivable that Joanna Desaguliers was befriended by the Countess of Pembroke, who would have been aware of the loss of the Channel Row home as her husband chaired the Commissioners for the building of the new Westminster Bridge. Pembroke House was nearby at the Privy Gardens, Whitehall. The register of the baptisms of the first entrants to the Foundling Hospital for abandoned babies, which was established in London following the efforts of Captain Thomas Coram (c.1668–1751), shows that the infants were named those who supported the foundation.25 One was christened Joana [sic] Desaguliers, a name chosen by the Countess of Pembroke: it is tempting to surmise that this was in tribute to Desaguliers’s wife. Several members of Desaguliers’s circle were benefactors of Coram’s Hospital. While there is no direct connection between the Hospital and the charitable activities of Grand Lodge, babies’ names were chosen by several freemasons and Fellows of the Royal Society of Desaguliers’s acquaintance – these included the families of Martin Folkes and of the Dukes of Richmond and Montagu. Desaguliers had been working until near to the end of his life to finish the

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second volume of his Course of Experimental Philosophy, and on revising the first volume for a second edition. It was left to his elder son and executor, John Theophilus junior, to arrange details of the publication of the revised Volume I in 1745. He also published, in 1747, the sixth edition of his father’s translation from Latin of ’sGravesande’s Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy. Presumably the same son inherited his father’s papers, books and scientific instruments, but unfortunately there is no record of their fate. John Theophilus Desaguliers, junior, had been educated at Westminster School from the age of nine, and then, like his father, at Christ Church and Hertford College in the University of Oxford. He matriculated in 1735 when he was sixteen and obtained his BA degree in 1739: he did not inherit his father’s technical abilities and decided to enter the church as a career. Richard Newton, Principal of Hertford College, and his deputy, J. Saunders, signed a reference on 24 May 1742 to certify that: John Theophilus Desaguliers […] for the time he hath Resided in [Hertford] College within the three years last past, he hath appeared to Live Piously Soberly Honestly & Studiously; and that he hath never, as we know, held, taught or written any thing contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of England.26

He was ordained by Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London, as a deacon in 1742, and then as a priest on 29 May the following year, in the Royal Chapel at St James’s. On that day his father wrote to Bishop Gibson from the Bedford Coffee House in his capacity as Rector of Little Warley Church in Essex, nominating his son as his curate and promising to: Allow him the yearly sum of Twenty Pounds for his Maintenance in the same, and to continue him to officiate in my said Church until he shall be otherwise provided of some Ecclesiastical preferment, unless by any fault by him committed he shall be lawfully removed from the same.

Desaguliers had been given the Essex living many years earlier but had never taken any active role in the church at Little Warley; it was now to provide a convenient occupation for his elder son until he found his own parish to serve. The younger Desaguliers may never have taken up the curacy, however, as he soon became vicar of two churches, in the adjacent villages of Cratfield and Laxfield in rural Suffolk. He died, unmarried, at the early age of 34, as the Cratfield register records: ‘John Theophilus Desaguliers vicar, Departed this life November the 28th and was buryed December the 7th anno Dom 1752’. He

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had not left a will but on 18 December 1752 his brother, Thomas Desaguliers, was granted letters of administration ‘of the Goods & Chattels & Credits of the Revd. John Theophilus Desaguliers […], Joanna Desaguliers widow and lawful mother and next of kin of the said deceased first renouncing’. Joanna lost her second-born son, a competent but undistinguished clergyman, only a few months before she herself died. When his fourth son, Thomas, was born in the house in Channel Row on 5 January 1721, Desaguliers wrote a unique appeal in the family bible: ‘Dieu donne cet enfant sa grace et bénédiction’. His request seems to have been granted, for of all seven children born to the family, it was Thomas who was to have the longest and most distinguished life, with a career as an officer in the Royal Artillery. He was very different from his more classically academic elder surviving brother, John Theophilus, and his father would have been pleased to see Thomas’s technical skills develop. If he did join his brother at Westminster School, it is not recorded in the school lists,27 and he never went to University. He is likely to have been educated by his father, or possibly he attended a school such as the Little Tower Street Academy which advertised a broad education including mathematics and accounting, and experimental philosophy. Desaguliers is recorded as taking one of his sons, probably Thomas, to occasional meetings of the Royal Society from 1738, and it was Thomas who was with his father at masonic lodge meetings in Bath and Bristol in the same year. Then, in May 1739, 18-year-old Thomas Desaguliers sailed to Russia on board a ship captained by Charles Calvert, fifth Baron Baltimore (1699–1751). Lord Baltimore was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a member of the household of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and the purpose of the voyage was for him to represent the English Court at a royal wedding in St Petersburg. The Italian Newtonian, Francesco Algarotti, was in the party and recorded the voyage in amusing letters written to Lord John Hervey. He mentions that the company included: Young Desaguliers whom his father sent to sea to learn the practice of navigation; and Mr King, who had desired my Lord to give him his passage to Petersburg where he intends to exhibit a course of experimental philosophy, in presence of the Empress. Imagine now what quantity of machines we are provided with to demonstrate to all the Russias the weight of the air, the centrifugal force, the law of motion, electricity and all the other philosophical discoveries. What, however, undoubtedly excels them, is our ample provisions of lemons and exquisite wines; and above all, our French cook.28

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The Augusta set sail from Gravesend and took well over a month to reach St Petersburg, calling on the way at Elsinore in Denmark (whence Algarotti sent his first letter) and encountering severe storms, one of which lasted for six days. Algarotti travelled on in part overland, but presumably Thomas Desaguliers, after a stay in Russia, sailed back to England with Lord Baltimore. The ‘Mr King’, who was to give lectures on experimental philosophy in Russia, was Erasmus King who had been an assistant to Desaguliers, and later gave his own courses of lectures. One day, when becalmed during the voyage, King entertained the ship’s company by dissecting ‘with great dexterity’ the eye of a sheep (the body of which, Algarotti reported, was enjoyed for dinner). Erasmus King probably joined the Russian expedition at the suggestion of Desaguliers, not only to be a companion to Thomas, but also to carry out trials in the Gulf of Finland of a novel sea-gauge. This device for measuring the depth of the ocean had been made by Desaguliers according to an idea of Stephen Hales, the author of Vegetable Staticks, and a version was first shown at Royal Society meetings in 1728. Thomas Desaguliers is likely to have helped with the trials on what was his first sea voyage. The device was an adapted barometer which used treacle and quicksilver to record the compression of air in a glass tube which was dropped overboard on a line until it touched the seabed. King’s results compared well with those obtained by the sailors dropping a line overboard. Thomas Desaguliers was destined for the army. In January 1740, soon after his return from Russia, he joined the Royal Artillery as an officer cadet and he rapidly rose in the ranks to captain and colonel. He was chief firemaster at Woolwich Arsenal from 1748 until his death, and promoted to major general in 1772 and lieutenant general in 1777. He commanded four companies of the Royal Artillery in Brittany in 1758 and the entire regiment at the siege of Belle Isle in 1761, during the Seven Years’ War. He was seriously injured at Belle Isle, but continued with his command. As well as his artillery activities Thomas Desaguliers had the honour and financial advantage to serve as an equerry to King George III, from December 1760 until March 1778. The newspapers of the time recorded many examples of General Desaguliers’s activities. There are several instances where Thomas Desaguliers is reported as being present at George III’s levee, or accompanying him on his daily horseback ride; he appears to have been on quite familiar terms with the King for some years.29 In 1775, there was an unfortunate accident: Yesterday as His Majesty was going to take the Air on horseback, precisely at Nine o’Clock, accompanied by Col. Desaguliers, […] as the Colonel was placing himself

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on his Horse, the Horse flung him off a considerable Distance; whereby he was very much bruised. His Majesty immediately dismounted and did not ride out. All possible care was taken of the Colonel, who after being let Blood, was thought not to be dangerously hurt.30

Thomas Desaguliers would surely have remembered his father’s astronomical interests when on 3 June 1769 King George and Queen Charlotte observed the transit of Venus, at the specially built royal observatory at Kew. Thomas was in attendance, as was the experimental philosopher Dr Stephen Demainbray whom he would have known as a boy. The King was the first to see the ‘Penumbra of Venus touching the Edge of the Sun’s Disk’ through the reflecting telescope, and Demainbray, in charge of the royal scientific equipment, computed the exact time of the phenomenon.31 At other times Thomas Desaguliers demonstrated the achievements of the Royal Regiment of Artillery to the Royal Household. For example, in 1773 there were complex manoeuvres to show ‘curious experiments with case-shot’ and George III was ‘pleased to signify his good opinion of the transactions of the day’.32 It is for his scientific achievements at Woolwich, as well as his military campaigns, that Thomas Desaguliers is now remembered by the Royal Artillery. Several experiments that he made with John Muller, Professor of Fortification and Artillery, are mentioned in Muller’s standard Treatise of Artillery. Colonel Desaguliers developed a ‘method of throwing small shot to the number of 400 to 600 from mortars, to descend on the heads of troops’ and he made numerous experiments in the Royal Laboratory on the construction of rockets. The very successful ‘Desaguliers Instrument’, which he designed for examining and verifying the bores of cannon, was in use until rendered obsolete by the disappearance of small bore ordnance; it was then consigned to the Regimental Museum. In 1779 he wrote from Woolwich in friendly terms to another professional soldier, General Charles Rainsford (1728 – 1809) of the Coldstream Guards: I am much obliged to you […] for the account of what you intend publishing. I am certain it will be of great use to the military. As to the Velocity of Sound, the Experiments I tried all agreed with Mr Flamsted’s, viz 1142 feet in one second. I am greatly surpriz’d at the French: that there is a difference with or against the wind, I have no doubt of. I heartily congratulate you on your admittance to the Royal Society, you must recieve great amusement and knowledge there. I am just reading Dr Priestly’s 4th Vol on fix’d air etc. I am Dear Rainsford, with great esteem, very faithfully yours indeed, T Desaguliers.33

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The book that General Desaguliers was referring to was probably one that Rainsford wrote on the movement of troops. The experiment to determine the velocity of sound was most likely made by measuring the time elapsed between the discharge of a gun and hearing the report. Desaguliers’s figure of 1,142 ft/ sec. was very close to the accepted value of 1,128 ft/sec., given that the value depends, as he obviously realized, on external conditions. It is interesting that he congratulated Rainsford on his election to the Royal Society, as the following year Thomas Desaguliers himself was proposed for Fellowship (with Rainsford as one of the seconders). He was the first officer of the Royal Artillery to be elected FRS, but unfortunately he died just a few days after receiving the honour. Thomas Desaguliers had been a freemason – as a young man he had been to lodge meetings with his father and he is mentioned in Anderson’s 1738 Constitutions – but, unlike General Rainsford, there is no evidence that he took any active masonic role later in his life.34 Thomas followed his father in other ways, though. He would have recalled the older man’s expertise with fireworks when, as Chief Firemaster, he was in part responsible for the lavish pyrotechnic display in Hyde Park which accompanied the first public performance of Handel’s Firework Music in April 1749. The music, commissioned by George II to celebrate the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle the previous year, was a great success. The fireworks were also impressive, but the pavilion to the right of the display caught fire and was destroyed, fortunately without causing any casualties.35 Another accident with explosives occurred in 1760. The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that: At a proof at Woolwich of the new invented smoke balls, one of them burst whereby Col. Desaguliers had his arm broke […] and various other gents were injured. HRH the Duke of York was present but rec’d no hurt.

A much earlier but happier occasion was on 18 March 1745, when Thomas Desaguliers was married at St George’s Church, Mayfair. His bride was Mary Blackwood, a grand-daughter of Admiral Sir Cloudsley Shovel (1650–1707); she was barely 18 and he is said to have ‘run away with her from Ranelagh’.36 This is likely to be an exaggeration as the marriage took place in a fashionable London church, but perhaps the couple had met clandestinely at the Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens. The bride’s father was a London art dealer and collector who had a home in Crayford in Kent. Mary Desaguliers bore two daughters, Mary Catherine and Anne, and a son, Frederick, before she died in 1750, aged just 23, and was buried at Crayford. A portrait of ‘Mrs Desaguliers’ was painted by William Hogarth; as it was dated 1751, it is likely to have been a posthumous likeness done from memory.37 Thomas Desaguliers never remarried and in

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his will he requested that he should be buried at Crayford in a grave wide enough for two coffins and that his wife’s coffin be reinterred beside his own. He died unexpectedly on 1 March 1780, aged 59. He had suffered acute pain and was attended at Woolwich by John Hunter (1728 – 93). Hunter was the physician who had treated Thomas Desaguliers’s injuries at Belle Isle and whose elder brother William, also a physician, had received instruction in natural philosophy from Thomas Desaguliers’s father in 1741. A post-mortem examination showed General Desaguliers had suffered a ruptured spleen.38 No portrait or engraving of Thomas Desaguliers has been found, but a small vignette of him as an older man comes from the amusing report of a court case in 1789.39 As the General had been dead for some years it was deemed not inappropriate to describe his behaviour with an attractive young woman, Mrs Dodwell, in the defence of a Rev. Dudley, who was accused by Mr Dodwell of adultery with his wife. It transpired during the hearing that Mrs Dodwell had had relations with several different men, including General Desaguliers. He was said to have been about three score years of age and a ‘healthy and alert old gentleman, much given to pleasure’ who was a neighbour of the Dodwells in London and an ‘ardent admirer’ of Mrs Dodwell. Servants had observed him alone with her on various occasions, and also he stayed with her one night in 1776, at the White Hart, Colchester. The General owned a pleasure yacht on the Thames at Woolwich and Mr and Mrs Dodwell once visited him there. Mrs Dodwell was alleged to have feigned illness when ‘the General, like a man of true gallantry, led her down to the cabin where a bed had been prepared for their reception’. She later rewarded the cabin boy with half-a-crown, but he still told the court how he found the bed in a state of disarray. Mr Dodwell, meanwhile, was reported to have remained ashore ‘amusing himself with a quick-firing gun the General had put in to his hands’. Thomas Desaguliers had lived many years as a widower, and he was, of course, unable to give his side of the story, but it seems that the witness who said he was not averse to pleasure may have been correct. The outcome of the case was acquittal for the Rev. Dudley. Thomas Desaguliers had homes in London (for example, he paid rates on a house at 34 Queen Street from 1765–68) and he also had a country estate called Graces, at Little Baddow in Essex, which he mentions in his will. Financially he fared much better than had his father. He received a stipend for his duties as a royal equerry and also a regular salary for his services to the Royal Artillery. Also, he collected over £450 on successive years for ‘Extra services at the Siege of Pallais in Belleisle, and upon Several Expeditions’, and £500 as Inspector of Brass and Iron Ordnance.40 There was also booty to be had. In 1759 Colonel Desaguliers took church bells from Cherbourg which were deemed to belong

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to him as commanding officer of the action. He asked to know their value and eventually agreed to part with them for 1s 4d per pound weight for the five serviceable bells, and 9d per pound as scrap brass, for an unserviceable one.41 The three children of Thomas Desaguliers were probably raised by their mother’s family, for he had no living relations and, as an active soldier, he was frequently away from home. The elder daughter, Mary Catherine Desaguliers, was married first to Thomas Cartwright of Aynho Hall in Northamptonshire and, after his death, to Sir Stephen Cotterell. ‘My daughter Cotterell’ was the executrix and major beneficiary of General Desaguliers’s will. In particular he asked that two marble slabs that he had taken at Cherbourg should be put in the wall at Aynho42 and that some memoirs he had received from the King should go to the library of his grandson, William Cartwright. The Cartwright family lived at Aynho until the 1950s. One direct descendant of John Theophilus Desaguliers was Dame Mary Lucy Cartwright (1900–98), a distinguished Cambridge mathematician, who was born at Aynho. Her four times greatgrandfather would have been proud of her. She contributed to over a hundred academic papers on mathematics and is credited with groundbreaking work which contributed to the development of chaos theory. In 1947 she became one of the first women to be elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and she was the first woman to serve on their Council. She was at times Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, and President both of the London Mathematical Society and of the Mathematical Association, and was created DBE in 1969. In an interview towards the end of her life she acknowledged her Desaguliers ancestry.43 Anne, the second daughter of Thomas Desaguliers, married Robert Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe Hall, near Burnley, in Lancashire; it was he who inherited most of his father-in-law’s guns. Anne’s grand-daughter married James Phillips Kay (1804–77). He took the name Kay-Shuttleworth and was created a baronet; he is remembered as a civil servant who publicized the appalling working conditions of the Lancashire cotton workers in Victorian times. The Kay-Shuttleworth’s son became the first Baron Shuttleworth. The present Lord Shuttleworth, a direct descendant of John Theophilus Desaguliers, is Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire, but he no longer lives at Gawthorpe, which is now managed by the National Trust. Frederick, the youngest child of Thomas and Mary Desaguliers, followed his father into the Royal Artillery. He joined the regiment as a cadet in 1762 when he was 13 years old. His record indicates that he went to North America in 1769, but resigned from the regiment in the following year, to be ‘restored as 2nd Lieutenant’ in 1773. It is not clear when he returned to the American

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Colonies, but Frederick Desaguliers died there in 1777, together with over a hundred other British soldiers during the Battle of Princeton in New Jersey, at the height of the American War of Independence.44 The great-grandson of Jean Desaguliers, who had found refuge from religious persecution in England almost a century earlier, lost his life defending the colonial interests of the family’s adopted country. With Frederick’s death, the male line of the Desaguliers name came to an end in Britain. It was, though, John Theophilus Desaguliers who was without doubt the most distinguished member of his family. He lived at the very time when men began not only to think systematically about life in the present but to realize that it could be managed and changed for the future. Desaguliers seized his chance and, through hard work and natural ability, he overcame many hurdles and was able to contribute to the dissemination of knowledge and to gain a position of respect and trust in society. He crossed paths with a remarkable array of his contemporaries and his story provides glimpses of many aspects of early eighteenth-century life. He firmly believed that through freemasonry the spirit of toleration and enquiry prevailing among members of the fraternity could inspire a basis that would unite men together in harmony. Just as sincerely he felt that once Newtonian natural philosophy was understood and appreciated it would not only explain natural phenomena but point the way in which science could be developed and exploited for the future benefit of mankind. He was a true polymath whose range of interests included poetry, astronomy, steam and water power, theories of matter, optics, electricity, and even fortifications and fireworks. Despite this, or maybe because of it, Desaguliers did not make any one significant scientific discovery, and it is perhaps for this reason that his name is not as widely remembered, apart from in masonic circles, as it should be. Nonetheless, his novel practical demonstrations clearly exemplified empiricism, or the doctrine that considers experience to be the only true source of knowledge, and which was becoming increasingly accepted in the early eighteenth century. The historian Robert Schofield summed up Desaguliers’s scientific achievements in 1970, and wrote that: ‘It would be hard to find a man more involved in all aspects of British natural philosophy, theoretical, experimental and practical, for the years from 1714 through 1744’.45 This tribute must be assumed to include his teaching and writing, and to this must be added occasional activity as a cleric and as a poet, and, in particular, his significant contributions to freemasonry, if a full assessment is to be offered of the life of John Theophilus Desaguliers.

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Appendix 1

A Catalogue of the Experiments in Mr. Desaguliers’s COURSE.

MECHANICS. Lecture the First. An Experiment to shew what Cartesius meant by his Three Elements. Oil of Tartar pour’d on Oil of Vitriol to cause Heat. The Smell and Solidity of Camphire destroy’d and restor’d. Cold produc’d by Sal Armoniac. Brass made to look like Silver on the sudden. Filings of Brass and Steel heated by Aqua-fortis. The Colour of Ink destroy’d by Aqua-fortis. Phosphorus. The Phænomena of the Æolipile. Lecture the Second. Experiments concerning Motion and Velocity. An Experiment to shew the Effect of Mechanical Engines in general.

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Three Experiments concerning the Centers of Gravity, Magnitude and Motion. A Rolling Lamp. A Mechanical way of finding the Center of Gravity of a Body. An Experiment concerning the Center of Gravity of two Bodies. An Experiment concerning the Center of Gravity of a Balance. Lecture the Third. An Experiment concerning the Line of Direction of a Power, and that of a Weight. An Experiment concerning the Distance of a Power, or Weight. Experiments to illustrate the Suppositions. A heavy Body made to roll upwards by its own Gravity. A heavy Body, which of itself would fall from a Table, hinder’d from falling by adding a heavier Body to it.

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Another way of making the Experiment. Experiments about the falling, rolling, and sliding of heavy Bodies. Lecture the Fourth. Eight Experiments concerning the Balance. Four Experiments concerning the several Kinds of Leavers. Three more Experiments concerning the Leaver. Upper and Lower Pulleys reduc’d to Leavers. Three Experiments concerning Pulleys. Two Experiments concerning the Axel in the Wheel. Three Experiments concerning the Wedge. Two Experiments concerning the Screw. A Compound Engine. Lecture the Fifth. The first Law of Nature prov’d by Experiments. Experiments concerning the Centripetal and Centrifugal Force of a Solid or Fluid in Motion. A heavy Body made to rise, and a lighter to descend, by means of a Centrifugal Force given to the heavy Body. Experiments to shew what Motion a Body will have, when its Centrifugal Force is equal to, greater, or less than its Force of Gravity.

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Cork made to descend in Water. Oil made to descend in Water. Lecture the Sixth. The Second Law of Nature prov’d by Experiments. Four Experiments concerning Bodies on inclin’d Plains. Three Experiments concerning Pendula. Lecture the Seventh. The Third Law of Nature prov’d by Experiments. The Phænomena of the Load-stone. An Experiment to shew the Reason of the Tide. Several Electrical Experiments. An Explanation of the Motion of the Planets round the Sun. Lecture the Eighth. Experiments concerning the Congress of heavy Bodies. Several Experiments to illustrate Elasticity. Experiments concerning a Lacryma, or Glass-Drop. Nine Experiments concerning the Congress of Elastick Bodies. HYDROSTATICS AND PNEUMATICS. Lecture the Ninth. An Experiment to shew, that the

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A Catalogue of the Exper iments in Mr. Desaguliers’s COURSE.

Upper Parts of Fluids press upon the Lower. —–That Water weighs in Water. Three Experiments to shew, that the Pressure of a Fluid upon the Bottom of a Vessel, which contains it, is according to the Height of the said Vessels, be the Top wide or narrow. Experiments to shew, that Fluids press upwards, downwards, and sideways, according to their Height. An Experiment to shew where a Barrel, tapp’d in any determinate Place, will spout. Experiments to show why, and how high, Water will rise in Fountains. Three Experiments to make Lead swim in Water. Lecture the Tenth. Several Experiments to shew how the Specifick Gravity of Bodies may be found, whether they sink of swim in water. An Experiment to shew whether a Piece of Gold be good or bad, by weighing it in Water. Water-Clocks. An Instrument to find the Specifick Gravities of all Liquors. Suction and Syphons explain’d. The Nature and Pressure of the Air. Bubbles of Glass, or little Images, made to rise and fall in Water. Several more Experiments on Glass Bubbles.

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Lecture the Eleventh. The Pressure of Air upon Fluids and Solids. Seven different Sorts of Fountains. The Diver’s Bell. Artificial Lungs. The Manner of Cupping. Sucking, lifting and forcing Pumps. Lecture the Twelfth. A Wind-Gun. Several Sorts of Weather-Glasses, viz. Barometers, Thermometers and Hygrometers. An Artificial Storm, to shew how the Mercury in the Barometer is affected in Stormy Weather. Lecture the Thirteenth and Fourteenth. Fifty or more Experiments upon the Air Pump. Lecture the Fifteenth. Experiments made in a Condensing Engine. An Experiment to shew, That as great a Weight is requir’d to draw Two Brass Hemispheres asunder, when the Density of the Air on the outside of ’em is doubled, (tho’ the Air between ’em be of the same Tenour with the common Air) as when there is a Vacuum made between ’em. Another Experiment shewing,

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That if the Air in the Vessel containing the said Hemispheres, be made three times more dense than the Air between ‘em, they will require twice as much Weight to draw ‘em asunder. A Bottle broken by Condensing the Air on the outside of it. Sound encreased by Condensing the Air. Phosphorus put out by Condensing Air. Four or Five more Experiments in this Engine. OPTICS. Lecture the Sixteenth. Four Experiments to shew the Nature and Motion of Rays of Light. An Experiment to shew Vision in general. Four Experiments on plain Mirrours. Three Experiments on concave Mirrours. Three Experiments on convex Mirrours. A Cylindrick Concave Mirrour. Lecture the Seventeenth. Six Experiments to shew the Manner of Refraction. A Multiplying-Glass. Six Experiments on Convex Glasses. The Dark Chamber. The Magick Lanthorn.

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Lecture the Eighteenth. Six Experiments to shew, by the Helps of Threads, how Rays pass thro’ Concave and Convex Glasses. An Experiment upon a Piece of Money, which in a Glass of Water appears bigger and double. The Dissection of the Eye. An Instrument to shew the Manner of Vision. The Portable Camera Obscura. The Faults of Vision shew’d by an Instrument. Two Instruments to shew how the Myopes or how the Presbytæ may be helped. Lecture the Nineteenth. Six Experiments on a Concave Lens. Six Experiments to shew how to find the Focus of a Lens, and whether it be truly center’d. A Meniscus Glass. An Aerial Speculum. An Experiment to shew the Difference between Looking and Seeing. An Experiment to shew why Beams seem to dart from a Candle. An Experiment to make Two Candles seem but One. An Experiment to shew why both Eyes see Things only Single.

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Lecture the Twentieth. Several Kinds of Microscopes and Telescopes.

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Lecture the Twenty First. Sir Isaac Newton’s Theory of Light and Colours, prov’d by his Experiments.

Those who desire to be present are to give One Guinea at the Time of Subscription and One Guinea more the Third Night after the Course is begun. Subscriptions are taken in by Mr. Desaguliers at the French School in Islington; Mr. Jonah Bowyer Bookseller at the Rose in Ludgate-street; Mr. Jonas Brown Bookseller at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple-Bar; Mr. George Payne at the Leather Office in S. Martin’s Lane; or Mrs. Hawksbee in Hind-Court, in Fleet-street, where the Course is given. N.B. This Course begins on the    Day of    171  , at Six in the Evening.

Source: Transcribed from pamphlet distributed to Desaguliers’s potential auditors in about 1713–14 (Courtesy British Library) See Chapter 2, p. 30.

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Appendix 2

Desaguliers’s Unpublished Poetry Three unpublished poems by John Theophilus Desaguliers from manuscript sources 1. thank you verse addressed to john thurloe brace esq. Sr, Ovid of old in merry Verse, Did Transmutations strange and ch[…]se But you’ve outdone all in his Book With Wine and Ale, a cheerful Look. You’ve alter’d quite me and my Way, Sir, And made a Bard of a Stargazer. Can hospitality thus […] us From Lunar Mountains to Parnassus? And make me tho’ I shun it all I can, Leave Hydrostaticks, to drink Helicon? Did you into me Rhimes infuse As Boyle was wont Blood to transfuse Or did Sam help by Inspiration Or was it done by Inoculation? Be’t how it will I find that I Have ye Itch to versifye, But whether well or ill you best Can tell, so you’ll excuse ye Guest. Tis all ye Way I have to Thank You For what we eat and what we drank You Such Company and splendid fare

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a b

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Will make me so my Friends declare I was so entertained at Brace’s c I ne’er lived better at his Grace’s. My Tory thoughts Thurloe took down And made me quite forget ye Crown At Buckingham I mean, where Butter And Skim Milk-Cheese made Badger mutter Where ye long Ostler wears no Breeches And scarce would [wise] for all our Speeches The Maid was worse than yrs at Bister And would not speak till John had kist her. May all things be to your content Your tenants duly pay their Rent The Trees and Hedges thrive and grow At Astwood Hall refer’d by You. May You with ye Parson still agree d T’won’t hurt You to be blest by He You won’t be poorer or less refer, For paying (as you do) your Tythe. If shall preferment you pursue, e May those that govern think like You Or may you still (or its ye same) Be Wise enough to think like them. But if you chuse a Country Life, Delight in Children and a Wife, May your good Lady crown your Joys, With many more such Girls and Boys, May She and You have length of Days Enjoy each Hour with Health and Ease For if her Features should decay Her humour ever will be gay. With white and red time may make bold But such a mind will ne’er grow old May pretty Miss and Master grow f, g In stature and in goodness too Remember me to their half-brother h Long may he live to please his Mother Monsieur Deligé [?] I don’t forget, May he sufficient knowledge get

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Desaguliers’s U npublished Poetry

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In ye English, but pronounc’t no better It would unfit him for a Tutor. Now for ye Tree yt gave ye Occasion, To ye unexpected Invitation O Tree whose branches wildly spread, From falling Rain refer’d my Head, Whose cover tempted me to stay Till gen’rous Brace called me away Be termed no more a Barren Tree, Who dids’t produce such fruit for me Mayst thou for ages verdant grow And never feel ye Axes blow May all ye Birds of Harmony Bred in thy boughs secur’d by thee In tuneful Warblings stretch their throats And sing thy Praise in thankful Notes. I am Sir Your most humble Servt J. T. Desaguliers P.S. When e’er I think of you I am gay Made on ye Road writ at Gamgay.

Note by E. Mansel, 1812: About the year 1725 Dr John Theophilus Desaguliers the Philosophical Writer was travelling near Astwood Hall in Buckinghamshire with a Friend when he was obliged by a shower of rain to take Shelter under some Trees near Mr Brace’s house. Being seen from the window it produced an invitation to him and his friend to come in – the evening turning out wet they staid all night and the day after Mr Brace received the preceding letter in verse. The verse also has some annotated letters, which refer to the following, also in Elizabeth Mansel’s hand: a Sam was a Quaker who supped that evening with Mr Brace b Inoculation was lately introduced and had been part of the conversation c John Thurloe Brace. He was grandson to John Thurloe Brace secretary of state to Oliver Cromwell d The Parson of the Parish supped that night at Astwood e Mr Brace was Member for the Town of Bedford

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f Anna Maria, wife of Godfrey Copley of Shotsborough, Yorkshire. Secondly married to William Perkins Esq. She died in Paris about 1795 g William Browne Esq., Mrs Brace’s son by her first marriage. He was educated at Westminster School and died of a decline about 1735 h John Thurloe Brace’s only son Harris Thurloe Brace died very old unmarried 1799 Additional note in ink by ‘H.G.’: The writer of the note signed E Mansel 1812 was Elizabeth d. of William Browne Esq. Of London, solicitor. Married in 1799 to Mansel Dawlin Mansel Esq. Who acquired an estate at Lathbury Bucks the same year and died in 1823. She died a few days later. Their 3 sons were: Rev James Temple Mansel MA ChCh died Feb 1880 George Barclay Mansel, Barrister M Temple 1832 Charles Grenville Mansel

Source: Bodleian Library, Oxford: MS Add B105: English Poems (18th Century). Handwritten collection (several by John Dryden) presented to the Bodleian Library 1884 by Henry Gough who rec’d it from Miss Mansel, d. of James Temple Mansel. See Chapter 9, pp. 208–09. 2. amanda, or good nature the only true greatness of soul Poets, of old, a frightful Picture drew Of those fam’d Chiefs which they expose’d to View. A stony Heart, and Hands embrac’d [?] in Blood, Distinguish’d those they counted great and good: With wrathful Beings fill’d the bless’d Abodes, And copied all their Heroes from their Gods. But [Rowe?] has shewn the Greatness of a Soul, Where Reason does the Stubborn Will controul, Where we compassionate another’s Pain, And in good Nature dress’d his Tamerlane. ’Tis God-like Mercy must our Praise deserve Mercy, the Attribute of Him we serve. — Then let us celebrate Amanda’s Name, Give her the Glory, but our selves the Shame

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When we a cruel Pleasure did Prepare To see poor Animals depriv’d of Air, And to examine each convulsive Strife, When rolling Eyes foretell departing Life. Her Soul afflicted for the harmless Brute She rescu’d from our Hands the scaly Mute, And, to compleat her noble Victory, Restor’d not only Life but Liberty. — I stand reprov’d that I did this pursue, Reflection rous’d makes me my Folly view, As in a Glass, when I consider you. — From this one Action rightly may be guess’d What Heav’n-born Soul informs your gentle Breast. Thus, as we want the Eagle’s stronger Sight, To look undazled at the God of Light, In darkened Room we view a little Ray, And all is Colours with our Glass display: Surprizing Charms, unknown before, we find In that bright Orb, whose Lustre unconfin’d, Had barr’d our Search, and struck th’ Observer blind.

Written on the occasion of the rescue of a fish from one of Desaguliers’s demonstrations in Bath in about 1730. Source: BL Add MS 32556 fol. 193v See Chapter 9, p. 210. 3. epilogue [to sophonisba], spoken by miss cowper The late fam’d Actress, who had all the Vogue, Her self exerted in an Epilogue: In Tragedy exalted Virtue’s Laws; But e’er she went, would shew you what she was. One while, she wak’d the Soul with matchless Art, Another while, strove to corrupt the Heart. The tragick Queen, before, so good and great, Appear’d at last, to be a loose Coquet. But, as I’m proud of Rosalinda’s Name, No wanton Epilogue shall taint my Fame:

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She shall my Pattern be; I’ll copy her, Her Virtues and heroick Character; And if my Sexe’s Softness e’er shou’d move, (As some Years hence it may) my Soul to Love; I shall despise the powder’d Coxcomb’s Air, Th’ embroider’d suit and primm’d up Solitaire; The Favourites of our Sex unworthy deem, And value only whom the Men esteem. He that defends his King’s and Country’s Cause, And, by his Services, deserves Applause, Shall claim my Person and my Heart incline, Resolv’d, like Rosalinda, still to shine. Her Life I’d live; but hope for better Fate: My Hannibal I’d have more Fortunate — Not that a glorious Death I wou’d evade — Only methinks, ’tis hard to… die a Maid. To Lorenzo

Source: BL Add MS 32556, fols 192v–193r See Chapter 9, p. 213.

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Appendix 3

Family Tree

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Endnotes

Notes to Introduction: New Ideas in a Changing Society  1 Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 142.   2 Isaac Newton, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (London: for the Royal Society, 1687); Opticks: or a Treatise on the Reflections, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light (London: for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1704).   3 Frank Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. v. The standard biography of Newton is: Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). The very valuable online Newton Project is making Newton’s writings, and comments on them, widely available and includes a comprehensive bibliography.  4 Voltaire, Letters on England, Leonard Tancock (trans.) (London: Penguin Books, 1980), 68–85; J. B. Shank, The Newton Wars and the Beginning of the French Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).   5 A. Rupert Hall, Philosophers at War: The Quarrel Between Newton and Leibniz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980).  6 Andrew Kippis and others, Biographia Britannica, or the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons who have Flourished in Great Britain and Ireland, from the Earliest Ages, 2nd ed., 5 vols (London: [by various printers], 1778–93), V (by J. Nichols for T. Longman and others, 1793), 120–5.   7 John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, 9 vols (London: for the author, 1815), IX 640–1.   8 John Stokes, ‘Life of John Theophilus Desaguliers’, AQC, 38 (1925), 285–307; Dudley Wright, England’s Masonic Pioneers (London: Kenning, 1925), 75–88; Wilfred Reginald Hurst, An Outline of the Career of John Theophilus Desaguliers (London: privately published, 1928); Edward Newton, ‘Brethren who made Masonic History’, AQC, 78 (1965), 130–4.   9 Jean Torlais, Un Rochelais grand-maître de la franc-maçonnerie et physicien au XVIIIe siècle. Le Révérend J.-T. Désaguliers (La Rochelle: F. Pijollet, 1937).

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notes to pages 5–11

10 Margaret E. Rowbottom, ‘John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683–1744)’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society, 21 (1968), 196–218. 11 Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, 29 vols (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1932–94), X (1962), 1168–9.

Notes to Chapter 1: Early Life: From Forebears in La Rochelle to Education at Oxford   1 Louis Etienne Arcère, Histoire de la ville de la Rochelle et du pays d’Aulnis (La Rochelle: [n.pub.], 1756); P. S. Callot, La Rochelle protestante. Recherches politiques et religieuses 1126–1792 (La Rochelle: [n.pub.], 1863); David Carnegie A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France in the Reign of Louis XIV; or, the Huguenot Refugees and their Descendants in Great Britain and Ireland, 3 vols, 2nd edn (London: Reeves & Turner, 1871); E. Haag and É. Haag, La France protestante, 2nd edn, (Paris: Librairie Sandoz et Fischbacher, 1888); Katherine Louise Milton Faust, ‘A Beleaguered Society: Protestant Families in La Rochelle, 1628–1685’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Northwestern University: Evanston, Illinois, 1980).  2 Jean-Baptiste-Ernest Jourdan, La Rochelle historique et monumentale (La Rochelle: Siret, 1884).  3 A younger sister, Sara, never married and left France for London at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, while the family of another brother, Henri, settled in the Netherlands.   4 This translates roughly as ‘trade inspector of the ancient rights to salt at Luçon’. Luçon was an important salt-producing town near to La Rochelle.  5 Henri Feuilleret, ‘Desaguliers ou Des Aguliers (Jean)’in Biographie de la Charente-Inférieure: Aunis et Saintonge, 2 vols (La Rochelle: Niort, 1875), I, 224–9, has some useful details of the Desaguliers family.   6 Recorded in a family bible which survived in the hands of the Shuttleworth family of Gawthorpe Hall (into which John Theophilus Desaguliers’s granddaughter married) and which was recorded by the Chetham Society in ‘Home and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall’, ed. by John Harland, Remains Historical and Literary Connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester, Vol. 41 (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1856), 276–8.  7 Callot, 138. The Confession of Faith would have reinforced the ministers’ allegiance to the Protestant religion.  8 The deceased Henry’s son, also a merchant called Henry, had in turn two legitimate children, a third Henry and Elisabeth (born respectively in 1678 and 1680), and also an illegitimate daughter, Henriette; her mother was a domestic servant called Marguerite Chevalier who is recorded as taking Henry to court, presumably for support, in 1682. It is apparently the ‘third’ Henry of this branch

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of the family who reappeared in Holland early in the eighteenth century as a ‘professeur de mathématiques’ and who published works on accounting and on the geography of the Low Countries (see Dictionnaire de biographie française, 29 vols (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1929), X, 1169).   9 Louis Delmas, L’Eglise réformée de la Rochelle. Etude historique (Toulouse: [n. pub.], 1870), 241. 10 Callot, 65. A passport signed by Condé is said to have survived. 11 Edward Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop, being the Life of Henry Compton, 1632–1713, Bishop of London (London and New York: Longmans Green, 1956). 12 Chetham Society Papers (see note 6), 277; Guildhall Library, MS 9535/3, fol. 33. The date 1692 is sometimes quoted, inaccurately, for the date of Jean Desaguliers’s ordination. 13 Samuel Smiles, The Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries in England and Ireland (London: J. Murray, 1867). 14 The Mandat is held by the Ecclesiastical Court of the Bailiwick of Guernsey. 15 Both Detandebarantz and Duprat, as well as Delaizement and Jean Desaguliers’s friend, André Lortie, were later recorded among many Huguenot ministers who found refuge in England. Carton TT259 at the Archives Nationales, Paris, contains a paper dated 1689 recording the value of property abandoned by ministers exiled from the Aulnis region and which names all these men. Desaguliers had lost 1160 livres, being one of the least wealthy listed. The document also mentions that the wives of the ministers gave up the value of their ‘dot’, or dowry, to avoid the consequences of confiscation. Delmas, pp. 393–6, lists religious fugitives and includes several ministers and also Desaguliers’s aunt, Sara Desaguliers, and father-in-law, Jean Thomas sieur de la Chapelle. 16 Agnew, II, 89. The quotation translates: ‘Whosoever has faith in the living God shall never perish’. 17 Matthieu de Larroque (or La Roque), Conformity of the Ecclesiastical Discipline of the Reformed Churches of France with that of the Primitive Christians, Joseph Walker (trans.) (London: for Tho. Cockerill, 1691), xxvii–xxviii. 18 Agnew, II, 361. 19 Charles Harris, Islington (London: Hamilton, 1974), 30. 20 Written in a mathematical notebook in the Cambridge University Central Science Library (formerly Scientific Periodicals Library), attributed to Desaguliers, but more likely to have belonged to John Keill. 21 Daily Courant, 4 May 1713; Guardian, 5 May 1713. 22 D. W., ‘A Document Rescued from Oblivion. Accurate Autobiographical Details of the Career of Bro. the Rev. J. T. Desaguliers, Grand Master of England, 1719; Deputy Grand Master, 1722–23 and 1725’, The Freemason, 1925, 472–4; Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS J f3 (fols 29–34), dated 8 July 1736.

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23 Kerry Osbourne, A History of Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School: The First 375 Years (1527–1902) (Sutton Coldfield: privately published, 1990). Desaguliers’s association with the school was remembered in a biographical article, not always strictly accurate, in the Old Boys’ Magazine in 1967: Cyril Batham, ‘John Theophilus Desaguliers (B.V.G.S. 1699–1705)’, Old Veseyan News’, Summer 1967, 17–23. 24 J. T. Desaguliers, ‘Some Instances of the Very Great and Speedy Vegetation of Turnips’, PT, 30 (1717–19), 974–5. 25 A Fellow of the Royal Society wrote that had it not been for the reputation of the ‘Reverend and Learned Dr Desaguliers, so famous for his intimate knowledge in the Experimental Philosophy’, the growth rate of the vegetables would not have seemed credible: Patrick Blair, Botanick Essays (London: for W. & J. Innys, 1720), 357. Also, surprisingly, the remarkable result was quoted, and attributed to Desaguliers, in an article on ‘Growth of the Turnip Seed’ in a newspaper in Atchison, Kansas, in 1890: The Atchison Champion, 9 July 1890. 26 Feuilleret (1875). 27 Victoria History of the Counties of England: A History of the County of Leicester, W. G. Hoskins and R. A. McKinley (eds), 5 vols (London: Dawsons, 1953–8), III (1955), 34–5. 28 See note 34 for reference to full text. 29 Impressive almshouses built by his mother in memory of Francis Wilkins are still in use in the village of Ravenstone in Leicestershire. 30 Joseph Foster, Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1500–1714: their Parentage, Birthplace, and Year of Birth, with a Record of their Degrees: Being the Matriculation Register of the University, 4 vols (Oxford: Parker, 1891), I, 399. 31 A. D. Godley, Oxford in the Eighteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1908), 117–19. 32 Christ Church College, Oxford, Library, document 17OT/6: Collections 1699–1771 (a catalogue of some of the books read by individual undergraduates). 33 Guildhall Library, MS 10326/40. 34 Guildhall Library, MS 10326/7. John Pelling DD (b. 1670) was a graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, and Canon at St Paul’s Cathedral from 1705–15. 35 John Jones, Balliol College: A History, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 148–9; Benjamin Martin, ‘The Life of John Keill’, in Biographica Philosophica, being an Account of the Lives, Writings, and Inventions of the Most Eminent Philosophers and Mathematicians, who have Flourished from the Earliest Ages of the World to the Present Time (London: W. Owen, 1764), 457–9. 36 Hart Hall was a residential and teaching establishment founded in Oxford in 1284; it did not, however, become a full college of the University (Hertford

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College) until the nineteenth century. Andrew Goudie, ed., Seven Hundred Years of an Oxford College: Hertford College, 1284–1984, (Oxford: Hertford College, 1984). 37 M. G., Mercurius Oxoniensis, or the Oxford Intelligencer, for the Year of our Lord 1707 (London: for Egbert Sanger, 1707). 38 Anthony à Wood, The History and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the University of Oxford (Oxford: for the editor, 1786), 641. 39 Bodleian Library, MS. Add c272. 40 Foster J., Alumni Oxonienses, I, 399; John Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part 1, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922), II, 37.

Notes to Chapter 2: Lecturing in London and Beyond, Royal Recognition and Ecclesiastical Preferment   1 Nicholas A. Hans, New Trends in Education in the Eighteenth Century (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1951), 137.   2 Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800: The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).   3 Bob Clarke, From Grub Street to Fleet Street: An Illustrated History of English Newspapers to 1899 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 39–76 and 139–42.   4 Aytoun Ellis, The Penny Universities: A History of the Coffee-Houses (London: Secker & Warburg, 1956); Markman Ellis, The Coffee House: A Cultural History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2004); Markman Ellis (ed.), Eighteenth Century Coffee House Culture, 4 vols (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2006), I, xi–xxxi.   5 Larry Stewart, ‘Other Centres of Calculation, or Where the Royal Society Didn’t Count: Commerce, Coffee-Houses and Natural Philosophy in Early Modern London’, BJHS, 32 (1999), 133–53.   6 Margaret Rowbottom, ‘The Teaching of Experimental Philosophy in England, 1700–1730’, Actes du XIe Congrès Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences, 4 (1965) 46–53; Simon Schaffer, ‘Natural Philosophy and Public Spectacle in the Eighteenth Century’, History of Science, 21 (1983), 1–43.   7 For example: Daily Courant, 13 January 1705; 15 January 1706.   8 John Harris, Lexicon Technicum; or, an Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2 vols, 2nd ed. (London: for Dan. Brown and others, 1708). The Lexicon ran to several editions and Desaguliers is mentioned in later ones. Harris and Desaguliers collaborated in experiments with a burning glass, for the Royal Society in 1718.   9 Robert Boyle was an important and prolific experimental scientist, and founder member of the Royal Society. See: . 10 Post Boy, 6–8 January 1713; Daily Courant, 7 January 1713.

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11 Daily Courant, 4 May 1713; Guardian, 5 May 1713. 12 A Catalogue of the Experiments in Mr Desaguliers’s Course (London, n.p., 1713?) is transcribed in Appendix 1. 13 Daily Courant, 14 and 18 October, 1723. 14 Daily Courant, 9 January and 9, 14, 19 and 21 March 1724. 15 For example: Post Boy, 24 July 1722, Daily Post, 29 October 1722, Daily Courant, 30 October 1723, 24 January, 27 June and 4 November 1724. 16 For example: Daily Post, 21 March, 22 May, 17 July and 24 July 1724. 17 In 1717 Vream published a short but comprehensive book on air pumps, with engravings, and advertised that he and Richard Bridger sold these: William Vream, A Description of the Air-Pump, According to the late Mr. Hawksbee’s Best and Last Improvements (London: for the author, 1717). The book was also published in a bilingual Latin and French version; it is tempting to think that Desaguliers helped, or at least encouraged, this, as these were the languages he used in his lectures. 18 J. T. Desaguliers, The Newtonian System of the World, the Best Model of Government: an Allegorical Poem (Westminster: J. Roberts, 1728), 47. 19 Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 14 September 1717. 20 J. T. Desaguliers, Physico-Mechanical Lectures: Or an Account of what is Explain’d and Demonstrated in the Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, given by J. T. Desaguliers (London: printed for the author and sold by him, and by Richard Bridger, and by William Vream, 1717). 21 J. T. Desaguliers, A System of Experimental Philosophy, Prov’d by Mechanicks, ed. by Paul Dawson (London: printed for W. Mears, B. Creake and J. Sackfield, 1719). 22 John Loftis, ‘Richard Steele’s Censorium’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 14 (1950), 43–56. 23 Hans (1951), 82–7. 24 Benjamin Worster, A Compendious and Methodical Account of the Principles of Natural Philosophy: as they are Explain’d and Illustrated in the Course of Experiments, Perform’d at the Academy in Little Tower-Street (London: printed for the author, and sold by W. and J. Innys, 1722). 25 James Stirling and others, A Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy (London: [n. pub.], 1727). 26 John Perceval, Diary of Viscount Perceval, Afterwards First Earl of Egmont, R. A. Roberts (ed.), 3 vols (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1920–3), I, 103. 27 Joseph Ames, Typographical Antiquities, or an Historical Account of the Origin and Progress of Printing in Great Britain and Ireland, augmented by William Herbert (ed.), 3 vols (London: for the editor, 1785), I, xxi.

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28 Samuel Foart Simmons and John Hunter, William Hunter 1718–1783: a Memoir, C. H. Brock (ed.) (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1983), 3. 29 Mary Cowper (1685–1724), a Lady of the Bedchamber to the Princess of Wales, was the wife of William, first Baron Cowper, who was twice Lord Chancellor and was the great-uncle of the poet William Cowper. Lord Cowper was, like Desaguliers, a member of Masonic Lodge No. 4, and was Deputy Grand Master of Grand Lodge in 1727. A ‘Mr William Cowper’ was sponsor at the baptism of Desaguliers’s youngest daughter in 1727. 30 Hertfordshire Record Office: General Correspondence addressed to Lady Cowper, DE/P/F203 D24. 31 Thomas Wright (1711–86) was a mathematician, astronomer and landscape gardener who also lectured in London. He was a freemason who Desaguliers unsuccessfully proposed for Fellowship of the Royal Society. See: 32 Elizabeth Carter, Elizabeth Carter 1717–1806: An Edition of Some Unpublished Letters, Gwen Hampshire (ed.), Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2005, 43 and 96. 33 Jean Torlais, L’Abbé Nollet, 1700–1770, et la physique expérimentale au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Université de Paris, 1959), 8–9. 34 London Evening Post, 12 February 1741. 35 Jacob Friedrich von Bielfeld, Letters of Baron Bielfeld, William Hooper (trans.), 4 vols (London: Robinson and Roberts; Richardson and Urquart, 1768–70), IV (1770), 81–9. 36 George Graham FRS was a skilled watchmaker who had taken over the business of the renowned Thomas Tompion. He was also a renowned astronomer who made an orrery and other instruments. He knew Desaguliers well, and the two men worked together not only on the planetarium, but at other times when Desaguliers needed accurate timekeeping. 37 John Taylor, The History of the Travels and Adventures of the Chevalier John Taylor, Opthalmiater, 3 vols (London: for J. Williams, 1761), I, 3–7. 38 Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, 9 May 1724. 39 Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 16 May 1724. 40 Trevor Fawcett, ‘Science Lecturing at Bath, 1724–1800’, Bath History, 7 (1998), 55–77 (55–8). 41 See Chapter 9, p. 210 and Appendix 2. 42 CEP I, 274–9. 43 CEP II, 199. 44 Jacob de Castro Sarmento, Theorica Verdadeira Das Mares, Conforme à Philosophia do Incomparavel Cavalhero Isaac Newton (London: [n. pub.], 1737), vi. 45 London Evening Post, 17 October 1738.

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London Evening Post, 11 November 1738 London Evening Post, 23 November 1738. Daily Journal, 8 July 1727. London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 5 August 1740. Desaguliers was paid £48.3s for ‘Disbursements for the Fireworks at Cliffden the 1st of August 1740’: Duchy of Cornwall Office, Household Accounts of Frederick Prince of Wales, Vol. X, fol. 98. 50 Royal Commission on Historical Manucripts, The Manuscripts of the Earl of Carlisle, preserved at Castle Howard, R. E. G. Kirk (ed.) (London: by Eyre and Spottiswoode for H.M.S.O., 1897), 191. 51 Johan A. van Reijn, ‘John Theophilus Desaguliers, 1683–1983’, Thoth, 5 (1983), 167–204. This article, published in a Dutch masonic journal to celebrate the tercentenary of Desaguliers’s birth, gives a well-researched account of his activities in Holland. The account of his visit given here is largely taken from a privately arranged and unpublished translation of that paper. 52 The National Archives: SP 84/314, fols 188–7. 53 John Theophilus Desaguliers, A Sermon Preach’d before the King, at HamptonCourt: on Sunday, Sept. 29th, 1717 (London: William Taylor, 1717). 54 Church of England Clergy Database: Ordination Record ID 14877. 55 The Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, 7 December 1717, recorded that ‘The Reverend Mr Desagulieres, a famous French Mathematician, is presented to a living in Norfolk’. 56 Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, 2 February 1723. 57 General Evening Post, 18 June 1772. 58 W. M. Jacob, The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680–1840 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 95–112. 59 BL, Add MS 24399, fol. 44: Register of Warrants issued by Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales to Tradesmen and Others without Salaries, 17 Feb 1728/9–22 June 1747; entry dated 10 December 1737. 60 Whitehall Evening Post, 22 June 1738. Phineas Bowles’s regiment later became the Prince of Wales’s Dragoons and was incorporated into the Royal Lancers. 61 Gentleman’s Magazine, 55 (1785), 426. 62 BL, Add Ms 35401, fol. 38. In Hogarth’s less well-known illustrations to the later 1726 edition of Hudibras, Sidrophel is shown observing the heavens with a telescope, with Whacum as his assistant, so Wray’s comment could also allude to Desaguliers’s optical and astronomical activities. 63 James Anderson, The New Book of Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons (London: for C. Ward and R. Chandler, 1738), 137. 46 47 48 49

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64 John H. Appleby, ‘Erasmus King: Eighteenth Century Experimental Philosopher’, Annals of Science, 47 (1990), 375–92. The voyage to Russia is described in more detail in Chapter 10, pp. 241–2. 65 Erasmus King, A Catalogue of the Experiments made by Mr King, in his Course of Natural Philosophy (London: [n. pub.], 1741?). 66 London Courant, 21 December 1747. 67 Daily Advertiser, 21 June 1754. The eventual fate of the planetariums is not known; they are no longer at Blenheim Palace, nor are they listed in the 1882 Sunderland Library Sale Catalogue. 68 Daily Advertiser, 7 April 1748. 69 Public Ledger or the Daily Register of Commerce and Industry, 2 February 1760. 70 Gibbes Rigaud, ‘Dr. Demainbray and the King’s Observatory at Kew’, The Observatory, a Monthly Review of Astronomy, 66 (1882), 279–83. 71 Newcastle Courant, 11/18 March 1749. 72 Alan Q. Morton and Jane A. Wess, Public and Private Science: the King George III Collection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 73 J. R. Millburn, Wheelwright of the Heavens: the Life and Work of James Ferguson, FRS (London: Vade-Mecum Press, 1988). 74 James Ferguson, Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, and Made Easy to Those who have not Studied Mathematics (London: for the author, 1756); James Ferguson, Lectures on Select Subjects in Mechanics, Pneumatics, Hydrostatics and Optics (London: for A. Millar, 1760). 75 J. E. Calthrop, ‘James Ferguson, the Astronomer and the Ferguson Relics’, Journal of Scientific Instruments, 9 (1932), 145–50; The Clockwork of the Heavens: Exhibition Catalogue published by Asprey and Company, London, 1973. 76 E. G. R. Taylor, The Mathematical Practitioners of Hanoverian England, 1714–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 319. 77 The Times, 18 March 1796. Benjamin Wilson was a portrait painter and scientist, renowned for experiments on electricity for which he was awarded the Copley Medal of the Royal Society.

Notes to Chapter 3: Demonstrator and Fellow of the Royal Society  1 Charles Richard Weld, A History of the Royal Society with Memoirs of the Presidents (London: Parker, 1848); Thomas Thomson, History of the Royal Society, from its Institution to the End of the Eighteenth Century (London: Baldwin, 1812); Dorothy Stimson, Scientists and Amateurs: A History of the Royal Society (London: Sigma Books, 1949); .   2 Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Society, facsimile edn,, Jackson I. Cope and

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Harold Whitmore Jones (eds) (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1959), ix. Robert Lomas, The Invisible College: The Royal Society, Freemasonry and the Birth of Modern Science (London: Headline, 2002) argues strongly for links between freemasonry and the early Royal Society.   3 Richard Westfall, The Life of Isaac Newton, Canto edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 247–51, 263–5.   4 The Crane Court premises were not large; the meeting room measured about 25 feet by 16 feet, and other subsidiary rooms were smaller: .  5 Francis Hauksbee, Physico-mechanical Experiments on Various Subjects: Containing an Account of Several Surprizing Phenomena Touching Light and Electricity, Producible on the Attrition of Bodies, 2nd edn (London: for J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1709).  6 The Journal Book Copy of the Royal Society is a handwritten record of the minutes of the ordinary meetings. It consists of a series of leather-bound ledgers in date order. The Volumes which are relevant to Desaguliers are JBC XI (1714–20); XII (1720–6); XIII (1726–31); XIV (1731–4); XV (1734–6); XVI (1736–9); XVII (1739–42) and XVIII (1742–6).  7 Acta Eruditorum was a prestigious scientific journal published in Leipzig from 1682 which carried articles in Latin by many European natural philosophers and mathematicians, including Newton’s detractors, Leibniz and Descartes.   8 RS, Account Books AB/1/1/3, entry 3 July 1714.   9 A. R. Hall, ‘ ’sGravesande, Willem Jacob’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 16 vols. (New York: Scribner, 1970–80), V (1972), 509–11. 10 William Stukeley, The Family Memoirs of the Rev. William Stukeley, Roger Gale and others (eds) (Durham: Andrews, 1882), 41. 11 RS Copley Archive Winners 1799–1831: 12 Michael Ben-Chaim, ‘Social Mobility and Scientific Change: Stephen Gray’s Contribution to Electrical Research’, BJHS, 22 (1990), 3–24. 13 J. T. Desgauliers, ‘An Account of an Experiment to Prove an Interspers’d Vacuum; or to Shew that all Places are not Equally Full’, PT, 30 (1717–19), 717–20. 14 Sir Godfrey Copley left money to the Royal Society to fund the medal that bore his name as well as some special experiments. Desaguliers would thus have received a special payment for this experiment. On another occasion, in December 1729, Desaguliers’s demonstration of mistakes in allegedly frictionless machines was deemed the Copleian Experiment and he was paid for this too. 15 J. T. Desaguliers, ‘An Account of Experiments made on 27 April 1719 to find how much Resistance of Air retards falling Bodies’, and ‘Further Account of Experiments made on 27 April last’, PT, 30 (1717–19), 1071–8.

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16 RS, RBO/20/22; A. J. Turner, ‘Julien Le Roy’s Improved Horizontal Sundial’, Antiquarian Horology, 17 (1988), 463–6. 17 J. Harris and J. T. Desaguliers, ‘An Account of some Experiments tried with Mons. Villette’s Burning Concave, in June 1718’, PT, 30 (1717–19), 976–8. The Lexicon Technicum was a comprehensive dictionary of arts and sciences that first appeared in 1708. Suggestions that Desaguliers was involved with the dictionary, or with later editions of it, cannot be confirmed, but he does get various mentions in the revised fifth edition published in 1736, several years after Harris’s death. 18 J. T. Desaguliers, ‘A Dissertation concerning the Figure of the Earth’, parts 1, 2 and 3, and ‘An Experiment to illustrate what has been said concerning the Figure of the Earth’, PT, 33 (1724–5), 201–22, 239–55, 277–304 and 344–5. 19 John L. Greenberg, The Problem of the Earth’s Shape from Newton to Clairaut: the Rise of Mathematical Science in Eighteenth Century Paris and the Fall of “Normal” Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 15–78. 20 Desaguliers’s articles may not have been appreciated by many in France as they were written in English. Pierre-Louis de Maupertuis 1698–1759), was an influential member of the Académie who, although like many others he knew no English, became a convinced Newtonian. He visited London in 1728 and may well have conversed in French with Desaguliers. Maupertuis recognised the conflict between Mairan and Desaguliers in his own work on the figure of the earth and supported the Newtonian view. Mary Tyrrell, The Man who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences of the Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 21 This is but one English translation, quoted from Tom B. Jones, The Figure of the Earth (Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1967), 153, of Voltaire’s lines: ‘Vous avez confirmé dans des lieux pleins d’ennui | Ce que Newton a connu sans sortir de chez lui’. These are from his Discours en vers sur l’homme, Quatrième discours: ‘De la  modération en tout, dans l’étude, dans l’ambition, dans les plaisirs’, in Complete Works of Voltaire  (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1968– ), XVII (1991), 491–502. 22 J. T. Desaguliers, ‘An Account of an Optical Experiment made before the Royal Society on Thursday Dec. 6th and repeated on the 13th, 1722’, PT, 32 (1722–3), 206–8. The significance of the experiments is discussed in detail in Simon Schaffer, ‘Glass Works: Newton’s Prisms and the Uses of Experiment’ in The Uses of Experiment: Studies in the Natural Sciences, David Gooding and others (eds) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). 23 BL, Sloane MSS 4049, fol. 215. 24 RS, Early Letters M2/75.

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25 Francesco Algarotti, Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the Use of the Ladies (London: E. Cave, 1739). 26 L. L. Laudan, ‘The Vis-Viva Controversy, A Post-Mortem’, Isis, 59 (1968), 130–43; Carolyn Iltis, ‘The Leibnitzian-Newtonian Debate: Natural Philosophy and Social Psychology’, BJHS 6 (1972–3), 343–77 (365–71); J. T. Desaguliers, ‘Dissertation concerning the Measure of Force of Bodies in Motion, with Experiments relating to that Subject shewn before the Royal Society on Thursday the 8th and Thursday the 15th of January 1738/9’: BL, Add MSS 4436, fols. 1–10. 27 Anita McConnell, ‘Luigi Ferdinando Marsigli’s Visit to London in 1721’, Notes and Records of the Royal Society, 47 (1993), 179–204 (191–2). 28 Desaguliers, ‘Some Observations on the Crane, with Improvements on that Machine. Shewn the Society in Models, but here Exemplified by Figures’, PT, 36 (1729–30), 194–204. 29 Stephen Hales, Vegetable Staticks: or an Account of some Statical Experiments on the Sap in Vegetables: being an Essay towards a Natural History of Vegetation (London: Innys and Woodward, 1727). 30 J. T. Desaguliers, ‘An Account of a Book entitl’d Vegetable Staticks […] By Stephen Hales BD, FRS’, and ‘The Conclusion of Dr Desaguliers’s Account of Mr Hales’s Vegetable Staticks’, PT, 34 (1726–7), 264–91 and 323–31. 31 A. E. Clark-Kennedy, Stephen Hales, D.D., F.R.S.: An Eighteenth Century Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1929); D. G. C. Allen and Robert E. Schofield, Stephen Hales, Scientist and Philanthropist (London: Scholar Press, 1980). 32 Biographical details of those proposed for Fellowship, usually including the names of their proposers can be accessed at < http://royalsociety.org/Catalogues/>. 33 J. L. Heilbron, Physics at the Royal Society during Newton’s Presidency (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1983); Heilbron analysed statistical data from the Journal Books to determine the percentage of physics experiments and papers presented during this time. 34 BL, Add MSS 4007, fol. 669. 35 RS, Account Books AB/1/1/3–10. 36 BL Add MSS 4007, fol. 669. John Gaspar Scheuchzer (or Scheutzer) (1702–29) was a young Swiss physician and FRS who was living with Sir Hans Sloane and acting as the Society’s foreign secretary. 37 Francis Hauksbee, nephew of the earlier demonstrator of the same name, was, from 1723, the paid clerk and housekeeper to the Royal Society; although a competent scientist, he was precluded from fellowship because of this appointment. 38 RS, Early Letters, D2, fol. 73.

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39 RS, Early Letters, D2, fol. 75. 40 BL, Sloane MSS 4049, fol. 68. 41 PT, 34 (1726–7), 331. 42 John Perceval, Diary of Viscount Perceval, afterwards First Earl of Egmont, R. A. Roberts (ed.), 3 vols (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1920–3), II, 471. The tide machine had already been shown at Bath in 1737. 43 Stephen Pumfrey, ‘Who did the Work? Experimental Philosophers and Public Demonstrators in Augustan England’, BJHS 28 (1995), 131–56. 44 J. R. Clarke, ‘The Royal Society and Early Grand Lodge Freemasonry’, AQC, 80 (1967), 110–19. 45 In memoriam: Les Membres de l’Académie des sciences depuis sa création (en 1666) . 46 Michael Honeybone, ‘The Spalding Gentlemen’s Society: the Communication of Science in the East Midlands of England, 1710–60’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Open University, 2002). 47 Spalding Gentlemen’s Society, MS MBI fols.100, 189a and 189b. 48 The second Duke of Buccleuch FRS was Grand Master of Grand Lodge in 1723–4 and would have been well acquainted with Desaguliers. 49 RS, Smeaton Drawings, JS/6/121. Lincolnshire Archives, Spalding Sewers, MS 451/4, 9; the handwriting in this record is thought to be that of Maurice Johnson of the Spalding Gentlemen’s Society. 50 Although Desaguliers is said to have lectured at Spalding (Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 143), there is nothing in the Gentlemen’s Society records to indicate that he was ever there in person.

Notes to Chapter 4: Freemasonry: Desaguliers’s Contribution to the Early Years of Grand Lodge  1 For classic accounts of the history of freemasonry see, for example, Robert Freke Gould, The Concise History of Freemasonry, 2nd edn (London: Gale and Polden, 1920); Alfred Farthing Robbins, English-Speaking Freemasonry (London: Ernest Benn, 1930); Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Genesis of Freemasonry: An Account of the Rise and Development of Freemasonry in its Operative, Accepted, and Early Speculative Phases (Manchester: University of Manchester Press, 1947); John Hamill, The Craft: A History of English Freemasonry (Wellingborough: Crucible, 1986). A Masonic Lodge dedicated to the history of the movement is Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, London; they publish their annual transactions as Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (AQC). The Centre for Research into Freemasonry at Sheffield University is unfortunately

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no longer active, but its websites still provide a useful masonic bibliography: and stimulating accounts of masonic research in the papers of Andrew Prescott: .  2 David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590–1710 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).  3 Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991); Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, 2nd edn (Morristown, N. J.: Temple Publishers, 2003).   4 Francis de Paula Castells, Was Sir Christopher Wren a Mason? (London: Kenning & Son, 1917).   5 Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580–1800: The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).   6 Dudley Wright, England’s Masonic Pioneers (London: Kenning, 1925), 75–88; John Stokes, ‘Life of John Theophilus Desaguliers’ AQC, 38 (1925), 285–307; Wilfred Reginald Hurst, An Outline of the Career of John Theophilus Desaguliers (London: privately published, 1928); Duncan Campbell Lee, Desaguliers of No. 4 and his Services to Free-Masonry (London; privately printed, 1932); Edward Newton, ‘Brethren who made Masonic History’, AQC, 78 (1965), 130–4.  7 In Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, 29 vols (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1932–94), X, 1168 it is suggested that Desaguliers’s father became a mason in 1690 when he moved to London from Guernsey, and that his son followed him into the movement, but this cannot be substantiated (and the family was not in London until 1692).   8 Robert Freke Gould, The Four Old Lodges, Founders of Modern Freemasonry (London: Spencer’s Masonic Depôt, 1879); Arnold Whitaker Oxford, No. 4: An Introduction to the History of the Royal Somerset House and Inverness Lodge (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1928). Lodge No. 4 later changed its name again to the Royal Somerset House and Inverness Lodge.  9 R. Theodore Beck, ‘Anthony Sayer, Gentleman: The Truth at Last’, AQC, 88 (1975), 65–77. Sayer received financial help as early as 1724, before the general charity system was set up, and then again in 1730. 10 Albert F. Calvert, ‘George Payne, Second Grand Master’, AQC, 30 (1917), 258–62. 11 J. R. Clarke, ‘The Royal Society and Early Grand Lodge Freemasonry’, AQC, 80 (1967), 110–19. 12 OED, Second Online Edition (1989). From ‘Freemason 2’: ‘The distinction of being an “accepted mason” became a fashionable object of ambition, and before the end of the 17th c. the object of the societies of freemasons seems to have been chiefly social and convivial. In 1717, under the guidance of the physicist J. T. Desaguliers, four of these societies or “lodges” in London united to form a

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“grand lodge”, with a new constitution and ritual, and a system of secret signs; the object of the society as reconstituted being mutual help and the promotion of brotherly feeling among its members. The London “grand lodge” became the parent of other “lodges” in Great Britain and abroad, and there are now powerful bodies of “freemasons”, more or less recognizing each other, in most countries of the world’. The New Edition of the OED (2008) has an amended definition which omits the mention of Desaguliers, but the Second Edition is still accessible online. 13 David Stevenson, ‘James Anderson: Man and Mason’, Heredom, 10 (2002), 93–138. 14 London Evening Post, 1– 2 June 1739. 15 James Anderson, The New Book of Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons (London: for C. Ward and R. Chandler, 1738), 110. 16 W. J. Songhurst (ed.), ‘The Minutes of the Grand Lodge of Freemasonry of England, 1723–1739’, Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha (Masonic Reprints), 10 (1913), 1–360 (viii–xii). 17 Post-Boy, 24–27 June 1721. 18 The word derives from a term meaning a dry-stone waller, or one who builds without mortar and so is not a true stonemason. 19 Songhurst (1913), 49–53. 20 Gilbert W. Daynes, ‘Some Records of the Lodge Constituted at the Maid’s Head, Norwich in 1724’, AQC, 38 (1925), 227–55 (230–1). 21 Marie Mulvey-Roberts, ‘Hogarth on the Square: Framing the Freemasons’, British Journal for Eighteenth Century Studies, 26 (2003), 251–70 (255–9). 22 Jenny Uglow, Hogarth: A Life and a World (London: Faber & Faber, 1997), 108–11 23 Hiram is a character who figures prominently in an allegorical story that is presented during the third degree of Craft Freemasonry. In it Hiram is said to have been the chief architect of King Solomon’s Temple, who is murdered by three ruffians during an unsuccessful attempt to force him to divulge the Word of a Master Mason. 24 H. Poole, ‘Masonic Song and Verse of the Eighteenth Century’, AQC, 40 (1927), 7–29 (12). 25 Reprinted in Poems on Several Occasions, by a Lady (London: for J. Roberts, 1728); although attributed to ‘A Lady’, this collection contains verse by several authors, both male and female. 26 Daily Post, 15 August 1730. 27 Melvin Maynard Johnson, The Beginnings of Freemasonry in America (New York: G. H. Doran, 1924), 108–9.

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28 John Perceval, Diary of Viscount Perceval, afterwards First Earl of Egmont, R. A. Roberts (ed.), 3 vols (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1920–3), I (1920), 301. In 1742 James Anderson published a genealogy of the House of Yvery, which includes the Perceval family. 29 The Universal Spy, or The Royal Oak Journal Reviv’d, 29 April 1732 30 London Evening Post, 15–18 December 1733 31 Lewis Theobald (1688–1744) was a minor playwright and Shakespearean editor; it is difficult to determine which of his plays the freemasons were supporting here. 32 A Curious Collection of the Most Celebrated Songs in Honour of Masonry (London: printed for B. Creake and B. Cole, 1731), 45. 33 London Evening Post, 27–29 April 1732. 34 London Evening Post, 5–8 November 1737; London Spy Revived, 9 November 1737. 35 Jessica L. Harland-Jacobs, Builders of Empire: Freemasons and British Imperialism, 1717–1927 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 109; Stephen Conway, War, State, and Society in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 150–1. 36 David Murray Lyon, History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, Mary’s Chapel No. 1 (London: Gresham Publishing, 1900. The question of Desaguliers’s motivations for contacting the Scottish masons is further discussed in: Lisa Kahler, ‘Scottish Definitions and Transitions’, in Freemasonry in Context: History, Ritual, Controversy, ed. by Arturo de Hoyos and S. Brent Morris (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004), 9–12. 37 Trevor Stewart, ‘ “…it is of Service to the Public to shew where the error is”: A Re-examination of the Visit to the Lodge of Edinburgh by the Revd Dr John Theophilus Desaguliers’, unpublished paper presented at the first International Conference on the History of Freemasonry, Edinburgh, May 2007. 38 Stewart (2007). 39 Ebenezer Henderson, The Annals of Dunfermline and Vicinity (J. Tweed: Glasgow, 1879); Extracts from the Annals of Dunfermline online: 40 Calhoun Winton, Sir Richard Steele, MP: The Later Career (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 203. 41 The Works of Allan Ramsay, Alexander M. Kinghorn and Alexander Law (eds), 6 vols (Edinburgh: William Blackwood for Scottish Text Society, 1970–4), IV, 259 and VI, 191. 42 Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post, 16 May 1724. 43 George Norman, ‘ Early Freemasonry in the West of England as Exemplified in Bath, Bristol and Exeter’, AQC, 40 (1927), 243–8.

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44 London Evening Post, 17 November, 1738. 45 E. E. Stolper, ‘The Initiation of the Duke of Lorraine’, AQC, 95 (1982), 170–9. 46 Evert Kwaadgras, ‘Masonry with a Message and a Mission: Some Remarks on the History of Freemasonry in the Netherlands’, Address to Internet Lodge, Kingston-upon-Hull, 8 August 2002, , 3. 47 William Coxe, Memoirs of the Life and Administration of Sir Robert Walpole, Earl of Orford, 3 vols (London: Cadell and Davies, 1798), III, 260. 48 Old Whig or the Consistent Protestant, 15 April 1736. 49 General Evening Post, 18 September 1735. 50 Mildred J. Headings, French Freemasonry Under the Third Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1949), 27. 51 W. Wonnacott, ‘Charles, Duke of Richmond: Grand Master 1724–5’, AQC, 30 (1917), 176–210. Strictly speaking, the Duke of Richmond established the Aubigny Lodge in the house of his grandmother Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth and former mistress of King Charles II. Richmond did not succeed to the Aubigny title and estate until her death in November 1734. 52 Freemasons’ Hall, London, Library and Museum: MS HC 8/F/3–4 Correspondence is dated 23 August and 3 September 1734. 53 Montesquieu, ‘Une Correspondance Inédite de Montesquieu’, Lettre 27, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, A82, N2 (1982), 217–18 54 Freemasons’ Hall, London, Library and Museum: MS HC 8/F/5. The letter from Montesquieu is dated 2 July 1735, but this is thought to be in error for 2 August as it replied to Richmond’s letter of 31 July. 55 Coustos and Desaguliers were both members of the Union French Lodge in London and, although not listed in the records, Coustos claimed to have been present at the initiation of Frederick, Prince of Wales. Coustos was tortured by the Catholic Inquisition in Portugal and recorded his experiences: John Coustos, The Sufferings of John Coustos for Freemasonry and for his Refusing to Turn Roman Catholic in the Inquisition at Lisbon (London: for the author by W. Strahan, 1746). 56 Labelye was back in London for the November 1728 meeting of Grand Lodge, when he was thanked for his services in Madrid. In 1733 he was Senior Warden at the newly formed lodge at the Bear in Bath, but resigned because of pressure of engagements in London. 57 Charles Henry Gordon Lennox, A Duke and his Friends: The Life and Letters of the Second Duke of Richmond, the Earl of March (ed.), 2 vols (London: Hutchinson, 1911), I, 295. 58 Alain Bauer and Roger Dachez, Les Mystères de Channel Row (Paris: J. C. Lattès, 2007). Alain Bauer is a former Grand Master of the Grand Orient of France, which is the premier masonic organization in that country.

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59 Allan Beaver, Middlesex Matters: A History of Middlesex Freemasonry in Celebration of the 125th Anniversary of the Founding of the Province on 22nd January 1870 (Addlestone: Ian Allen, 1995), 24–5. 60 Trevor Stewart, English Speculative Freemasonry: Some Possible Origins, Themes and Developments (London: United Grand Lodge, 2005). The appendices of this Lecture reprint include lists of topics discussed at some masonic meetings: for example the programme of talks at the Old King’s Arms Lodge in the 1730s and 1740s featured some on scientific subjects. 61 Paul Elliott and Stephen Daniels, ‘The “School of True, Useful and Universal Science”? Freemasonry, Natural Philosophy and Scientific Culture in EighteenthCentury England’, BJHS, 39 (2006), 207–29.

Notes to Chapter 5: Translations from French and Latin, and Troubles with Booksellers   1 Thomas Hearne, Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, Charles E. Doble (ed.), 11 vols (Oxford: The Oxford Historical Society, 1885), III (25 May 1710–14 December 1712), 135.  2 Ralph Straus, The Unspeakable Curll (London: Chapman & Hall, 1927); Paul Baines and Pat Rogers, Edmund Curll: Bookseller (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007).  3 Town Talk, 28 January 1716  4 Post Man and the Historical Account, 28 February 1716.  5 Flying Post, 3 March 1716.  6 Evening Post, 4 April 1717. Richard Bradley used Desaguliers’s heating and ventilation techniques in greenhouses for the cultivation of exotic plants, and promoted them in his publications.   7 David Gregory, Dr. Gregory’s Elements of Catoptrics and Dioptrics. Translated by William Browne, M.D. To which is added an Appendix by J. T. Desaguliers, LL.D., F.R.S., 2nd edn (London: for E. Curll, 1735); the first edition (1715) was printed for Curll, Pemberton and Taylor and the only mention of Desaguliers is in the Translator’s preface where he and a ‘Mr Jones’ are acknowledged as having given their valued approbation to Browne’s addenda.  8 Archibald Pitcairn, The Whole Works of Dr. Archibald Pitcairn, Published by Himself. Wherein are Discovered, the True Foundation and Principles of the Art of Physic. Done from the Latin Original by George Sewell M.D and J. T. Desaguliers D.D. and F.R.S. With some Account of the Author. 2nd ed. (London: for E. Curll, J. Pemberton and J. Innys, 1727). Desaguliers is incorrectly called D.D. (Doctor of Divinity) but his doctorate was nominally in law (LL.D.).  9 Edmé Mariotte, The Motion of Water and other Fluids. Being a Treatise of Hydrostaticks, J. T. Desaguliers (trans.) (London: J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1718).

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The alternative version is entitled: A Treatise on the Motion of Water and Other Fluids: with the Origin of Fountains or Springs, and the Cause of Winds. 10 This dispute has been comprehensively studied: Jeffrey R. Wigelsworth, ‘Competing to Popularize Newtonian Philosophy: John Theophilus Desaguliers and the Preservation of Reputation’, Isis 94 (2003) 435–55. 11 Willem Jakob Storm ’sGravesande, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy confirmed by Experiments, or An Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy, J. T. Desaguliers (trans.) (London: J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1720); this translation actually appeared in late December 1719. 12 Willem Jakob Storm ’sGravesande, Mathematical Elements of Physicks, proved by Experiments; being an Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy, revised and corrected by Dr John Keill (London: for G. Strahan, A. Bettesworth, W. Lewis, W. Mears and T. Woodward, 1720); this translation appeared in January 1720. 13 Cambridge University Library: MS O XIV 278 (3ix and x). 14 Post Boy, 26 January 1720. 15 Daily Advertiser, 9 February, 13 April and 27 June 1743.

Notes to Chapter 6: Fire, Water and Air: Desaguliers the Engineer   1 Joel Mokyr, The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700–1850 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009); Margaret C. Jacob and Larry Stewart, Practical Matter: Newton’s Science in the Service of Industry and Empire 1687–1851 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).   2 A. W. Skempton ‘Desaguliers, John Theophilus, FRS’, in A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. I, 1500–1830, ed. by A. W. Skempton (London: Thomas Telford, 2002), 177–8.  3 Post Man and the Historical Account, 9 April 1702.  4 CEP II, 464–90.  5 Quoted in H. W. Dickinson, A Short History of the Steam Engine, 2nd edn (London: Frank Cass, 1963), 52–3.  6 The Ladies Diary: or, the Woman’s Almanack, for the Year of Our Lord 1726, ed. by Henry Beighton (London: for A. Wilde, 1726), 10.   7 Edward Somerset, Marquis of Worcester, The Marquis of Worcester’s Century of Inventions to which is added an Appendix Containing an Historical Account of the Fire-Engine for Raising Water; which Invention Originated from the Above Work. By John Buddle (Newcastle: by T. Slack, 1778), i.   8 Henry Dircks, The Life, Times, and Scientific Labours of the Second Marquis of Worcester to which is Added a Reprint of his Century of Inventions, 1663, with a Commentary Thereon (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1865), 475–99.

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 9 Department for Culture, Media and Sport: Export of Works of Art 2003–4. Individual Export Cases: Case 2, The Papers of Sir James Watt and his family, 25. 10 The first edition of the Marquis of Worcester’s book is now extremely rare. However, Erasmus Darwin, in a footnote to his poem The Botanic Garden, (4th edn (London: Johnson, 1799) Vol. 1, 30–1) considered Desaguliers’s accusation to be ‘unfounded slander’. 11 The Griff mine was on the estate of Sir Richard Newdigate of Arbury Hall. 12 A clack is a valve in the form of a hinged flap; Desaguliers is cited by the OED as using the word in this sense in PT in 1726. 13 Svante Lindqvist, ‘The Work of Martin Triewald in England’, Transactions of the Newcomen Society, 50 (1980), 165–72. 14 This Savery engine with a spherical boiler, sent by Desaguliers to Russia in 1717 or 1718, was said to be the first steam engine exported from Britain. Richard L. Hills, Power from Steam: A History of the Stationary Steam Engine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 35. 15 John Dalton, A Descriptive Poem Addressed to Two Ladies at their Return from Viewing the Mines near Whitehaven (London: for Rivington and Dodsley, 1755), 11–12 (lines 123–32). 16 Desaguliers apparently misremembered the date of the experiment as the Daily Post for 17 May 1727 carried an advertisement for a two page ‘Draught in Perpective of the engine to raise Water by Fire done after a model erected at Dr Desaguliers’s House by Richard Jones Esq.’. 17 A tun was a measure usually used for wine and ale; in the early eighteenth century it was approximately equivalent to 4 hogsheads or 204 gallons (about 927 litres). The significant sums of money mentioned here indicate the great cost of contemporary experimental apparatus and machinery. 18 Bernard Forest de Bélidor, Architecture hydraulique, ou l’art de conduire, d’élever et de ménager les eaux pour les différents besoins de la vie, 4 livres (Paris: 1737–53), Livre 3, 33–41. 19 CEP II, 505–19. 20 CEP I, 283–8. A model wagon based on Desaguliers’s description is displayed in Bath at the ‘Building of Bath’ Museum. 21 John Lowthorp FRS was a clergyman who abridged the Royal Society’s early Philosophical Transactions and was librarian to the Duke of Chandos, as well as having an interest in water supply. 22 CEP II, 128–41. 23 Terry S. Reynolds, Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983). Desaguliers regretted that Britain was over-run with millwrights who claimed to be engineers, but who set up waterworks with no prior calculations of their requirements. Reynolds

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describes how Desaguliers used the work of Antoine Parent (1666–1716), whose methods of measuring forces of moving water were compatible with Newtonian measurements of momentum, to quantify problems with water wheels (pp. 204–8). Overshot water wheels were demonstrated by Desaguliers to be 10 times as efficient as undershot wheels, while breast mills were highly inefficient. 24 J. T. Desaguliers, ‘An Attempt to Account for the Rising and Falling of the Water in some Ponds near the Sea, or Ebbing and Flowing Rivers; where the Water is lowest in the Pond at the Time of High-Water in the Sea or River; and also for the Increasing or Decreasing of the Water in such Pools or Brooks as are Highest in Dry Seasons, and Lowest in the Rainy Seasons; with an Experiment to Illustrate the Solution of the Phænomena’, PT, 33 (1724), 132–5. 25 H. W. Dickinson, The Water Supply of Greater London (London: The Newcomen Society, 1954), chapters 1–5. 26 CEP II, 436–49. 27 A. J. G. Cummings, ‘The York Buildings Company. A Case Study in Eighteenth Century Corporation Mismangement’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Strathclyde, 1980); David Murray, The York Buildings Company. A Chapter in Scotch History (Glasgow: Maclehose & Sons, 1883). 28 The National Archives: E133 105/74,75 (Roberts and Wisdish vs Desaguliers, 1730/31). 29 BL, Lansdowne MS 1056, fol. 47. 30 House of Commons Journal, 10 Geo I (1723), 285. 31 Guildhall Library, PB Closed Access, A3.5 No. 3 in 3, ‘Sir You know very well our designs…’. 32 RS, JBC, 11 May 1727 and 2 November 1727. 33 There appears to be only one known surviving copy of the first edition of The York Buildings Dragons, in the University of Kansas Library, which is said to be ‘Anonymous, by John Theophilus Desaguliers’; it warned that the fatal consequence of the Dragons ‘Will not only Distract the Present Age, but Affect the Three Next Generations’. The ‘Murder’ was due to take place on 20 December 1725. The second edition contained a postscript which took into account the delay in getting the Newcomen engine at the York Buildings into working order. 34 Cambridge University Library, which owns the other known example in England, does not attempt any attribution. 35 Huntington Library, Stowe MS 57 (XXVII) fol. 207. 36 ‘Anodyne Necklace’ is thought to represent a fraud, as this at the time was a popular but ineffective comforter for teething children. 37 Daily Journal, 20 January 1728; Daily Post, 28 February 1728. 38 Trevor Stewart ‘ “…it is of Service to the Public to shew where the Error is”: a Re-Examination of the Visit to the Lodge of Edinburgh by the Revd. Dr John

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Theophilus Desaguliers’, unpublished paper read at the International Conference for the History of Freemasonry, Edinburgh, May 2007. 39 James Colston, The Edinburgh and District Water Supply. A Historical Sketch (Edinburgh: privately printed, 1890). 40 CEP II, 124 41 J. T. Desaguliers, ‘An Account of Several Experiments Concerning the Running of Water in Pipes, as it is Retarded by Friction and Intermixed Air, Some of which were made before the Royal Society on Thursday the 5th of May 1726. With a Description of a new Machine whereby Pipes may be cleared of Air as the Water runs along, without Stand-Pipes or the Help of any Hand’, PT, 34 (1726), 77–82. At the end of the article Desaguliers acknowledges that the Jack-inthe-Box device was a joint invention of ‘Mr Richard Jones, Mr James King, Mr Thomas Newcomen, Mr Joseph Hornblower his Operator, and my self ’. 42 E. H. Winant and E. L. Kemp, ‘Edinburgh’s First Water Supply: the Comiston Aqueduct, 1675–1721’, Civil Engineering, 120 (1997), 119–24. 43 CEP II, 556 44 House of Lords Journal, 5 Geo I (1718), 38 and 43. 45 Richard Bradley, New Improvements of Planting and Gardening, both Philosophical and Practical, 5th edn (London: for W. Mears, 1726), 336–7. 46 J. T. Desaguliers, ‘An Attempt made to Shew how Damps or foul Air may be Drawn out of any Sort of Mines, &c. by an Engine’, PT, 35 (1727), 353–6. 47 Charles Tomlinson, A Rudimentary Treatise on Warming and Ventilation: Being a Concise Exposition of the General Principles of the Art of Warming and Ventilating Domestic and Public Buildings, Mines, Lighthouses, Ships, &c. (London: John Weale Architectural Library, 1850), 237. Tomlinson makes several references to Desaguliers and was clearly familiar with his work on ventilation. 48 There is no mention of Desaguliers’s ventilation system in the first edition of Samuel Sutton, An Historical Account of a New Method for Extracting the Foul Air out of Ships &c. (London: for J. Noon, 1745), but he would probably have been gratified to know that the French translation, published four years later, includes a full account, largely taken from CEP, of his work on ventilation: Samuel Sutton, Nouvelle méthode pour pomper le mauvais air des vaisseaux &c., Louis-Anne Lavirotte (trans.) (Paris: chez Durand, 1749), 154–220. 49 The National Archives, SP 36/55 fol. 54. 50 R. J. B. Walker, Old Westminster Bridge: The Bridge of Fools (Newton Abbott: David and Charles, 1979). This comprehensive and well-illustrated book gives an excellent account of the history of the bridge. 51 House of Commons Journal, 9 Geo II, (1736), 569. 52 Daily Journal, 15 April 1736. 53 Charles Labelye, A Description of Westminster Bridge. To which are Added

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an Account of the Methods made Use of in Laying the Foundations of its Piers (London: by W. Strahan for the author, 1751). 54 CEP II, 497. 55 CEP II, 417–18. 56 An eighteenth-century model of the pile driver is displayed at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. See Pile Drivers Past and Present: 57 Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, August 1730, Entry 477. 58 Patent No. 430, Heating by Steam for various Manufacturing Processes (London: 1720). 59 CEP II, 560. 60 Christine MacLeod, Inventing the Industrial Revolution: The English Patent System 1660 –1800 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988). 61 CEP I, 138 62 The Correspondence of Thomas Reid, by Paul Wood (ed.) (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002): Letter 42, Thomas Reid to Richard Price, 1772.

Notes to Chapter 7: Patronage: Desaguliers at the Service of the Duke of Chandos and his Great Estate at Cannons   1 Roger L. Emerson, ‘The Scientific Interests of Archibald Campbell, 1st Earl of Ilay and 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682–1761)’, Annals of Science, 59 (2002), 21–56.  2 C. H. Collins Baker and Muriel I. Baker, The Life and Circumstances of James Brydges, First Duke of Chandos, Patron on the Liberal Arts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949). This comprehensive biography was published in co-operation with the Huntington Library in California and draws upon the Stowe manuscripts housed at the Library, which include many letters and papers relating to the Duke. Other useful accounts of Brydges’s life and activities are: John Robert Robinson, The Princely Chandos, A Memoir of James Brydges (London: Sampson Low, Marston & Co., 1893) and Joan Johnson, Princely Chandos: James Brydges, 1674–1744 (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1984).  3 Edmé Mariotte, A Treatise of the Motion of Water and other Fluids, J. T. Desaguliers (trans.) (London: for Senex and Taylor, 1718), iii –iv.   4 Joan Johnson, Excellent Cassandra: The Life and Times of the Duchess of Chandos (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1981).   5 James Brydges, ‘A Journal of My Daily Actions, 1697–1702’, Huntington Library, Stowe MSS, ST26. This sadly short-lived diary gives an indication of Brydges’s early scientific and business interests and social life.  6 Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science: Rhetoric, Technology, and Natural Philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University

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Press, 1992). This book contains many references to the association between Chandos and Desaguliers, and highlights the importance Chandos placed upon Newtonian experimental philosophy.   7 Mr [Christopher] Cock, A Catalogue of all the Genuine Household Furniture &c of His Grace James Duke of Chandos, Deceas’d, at his late Seat call’d Cannons, near Edgware, in Middlesex… which will be sold by Auction by Mr Cock on Monday the 1st of June 1747 and the ten following days, at Cannons afore-mention’d (London: 1747); A Catalogue of all the Materials of the Dwelling-house, Out-houses, &c. of His Grace James Duke of Chandos, Deceas’d, at his late Seat call’d Cannons, near Edgware in Middlesex… which will be sold by auction, by Mr. Cock, on Tuesday, the 16th of June 1747, and the eleven following days (at Cannons aforesaid) (London: 1747); A Catalogue of all the Genuine Collection of Pictures of His Grace James Duke of Chandos, lately Deceas’d (London: 1747). The pictures were sold at Cock’s premises in Covent Garden and that sale took 3 days.   8 Ian Dunlop, ‘Cannons, Middlesex: A Conjectural Reconstruction’, Country Life, 106 (1949), 1950–4, gives an interesting view on how the Cannons estate might have looked. Susan Jenkins, Portrait of a Patron: The Patronage and Collecting of James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos (1674–1744) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). References to Cannons are found throughout Baker & Baker (1949).   9 This was probably an early and limited version of Handel’s opera with libretto by John Gay, based on the story in Ovid’s Metamophoses. 10 The church of St Lawrence and its history are described at 11 Great Witley Church is described at 12 John Macky, A Journey Through England. In Familiar Letters from a Gentleman here, to his Friend Abroad, 2 vols (London: for J. Pemberton, 1722), II, 4–9. 13 John Lowthorp was a clergyman who wrote an abridgement of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and was librarian to James Brydges. 14 John Keill, An Introduction to the True Astronomy or Astronomical Lectures Read in the Astronomical School of the University of Oxford (London: for B. Lintot, 1721), Dedication (unnumbered). 15 RS, Classified Papers, 4(1)/66. 16 Rosemary O’Day (ed.), Cassandra Brydges, Duchess of Chandos, 1670–1735: Life and Letters (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007). 17 ‘An Account of What Strangers Dined at ye Undermentioned Tables During 1721–1722’, Huntington Library, Stowe MS, ST59. 18 Letter from William Brydges of Tyberton Herefordshire to his elder brother, Francis, quoted by: Graydon Beeks, ‘ “A Club of Composers”: Handel, Pepusch and Arbuthnot at Cannons’, in Handel Tercentenary Collection, Stanley Sadie and Anthony Hicks (eds) (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1987), 209–21.

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19 BL, Add Ms 61999. 20 Huntington Library, Stowe MS, ST57: ‘The Outbooks of James Brydges, First Duke of Chandos’. The letters to J. T. Desaguliers are collected and annotated by Andrew Pink and Audrey Carpenter at 21 The ‘Square’ is likely to refer to St James’s Square where Chandos had his London house, and where a steam engine was planned in connection with the water supply. 22 Stowe MS, ST57, XVI, 410. Subsequent references to the collection will be given in this way, by volume and page number in parentheses in the text. 23 Richard Bradley, New Improvements of Planting and Gardening, both Philosophical and Practical, 5th edn (London: for W. Mears, 1726), 336–7. Bradley also described in a later book how he and ‘other gentlemen’ were entertained by Desaguliers, not generally known for biological observations, when he demonstrated the behaviour of water insects under the microscope: Richard Bradley, A Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature as Founded upon a Plan of the late Mr Addison (London: for James Hodges, 1739), 202–3. 24 Chandos ordered a reflecting telescope from Scarlet in 1731 at a cost of £89: Baker and Baker (1949), 343. Desaguliers knew Scarlet well as he was a freemason and catalogues for Desaguliers’s lectures were distributed from the optician’s premises 25 Daily Journal, 8 July 1727. 26 Francis Peters held the legal stewardship of Chandos’s Middlesex estates for many years from 1720 and so would have paid Desaguliers his dues in respect of the Whitchurch living. 27 James Farquharson was for many years steward and secretary to the Duke of Chandos. 28 See Chapter 6, pp. 136–40. 29 Horsey, a member of Desaguliers’s masonic Lodge No. 4, was a former soldier who became a key figure in the York Buildings Company and was very much involved with Chandos’s enterprises; he retired from the management of the Company under a cloud of suspicion in 1733 and died five years later. Stewart (1992), 369–72. 30 Dr Theophilus Leigh, the son of Chandos’s sister Mary Brydges and her husband Theophilus Leigh of Adelstrop. 31 Alvaro Alonso Barba (died 1662 in Peru) was a Spanish Catholic priest who was sent to Peru in 1588 and there became an expert in the extraction of metals, especially involving the use of mercury. 32 Stewart (1992), 218–19.

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33 Huntington Library, Stowe MS, ST57, XV, 252: Letter from James Brydges to Wm. Mead, 16 June 1718.

Notes to Chapter 8: Desaguliers’s Influential Work on Contemporary Science: The Publication of A Course of Experimental Philosophy and A Dissertation Concerning Electricity  1 The Monthly Catalogue: Being an Exact Account of all Books and Pamphlets Published in February MDCCXXIII-IV, together with Proposals for Printing by Subscription and a List of Books Printed in Foreign Parts, Issue No. 11, Collected by John Wilford, Bookseller in Little Britain, 11. The preceding Proposal for Printing by Subscription was, interestingly, for a manual on shorthand by Desaguliers’s acquaintance, John Byrom.  2 Daily Courant, 31 March, 1 and 3 April 1724.  3 Daily Advertiser, 29 March 1744.   4 Christiaan Huygens (1629–95), the distinguished Dutch astronomer, physicist and mathematician, had met Locke in London.   5 J. T. Desaguliers, Cours de physique expérimentale, R. P. Pezenas (trans.), 2 vols (Paris: Rollin et Jombert, 1751). On the title page Pezenas is styled ‘Professeur Royale d’Hydrographie à Marseille’.   6 Huib J. Zuidervaart, ‘Science for the Public: the Translation of Popular Texts on Experimental Philosophy into the Dutch Language in Mid-Eighteenth Century’, in Cultural Transfer through Translation: the Circulation of Enlightened Thought in Europe by Means of Translation, Stefanie Stockhorst (ed.) (Amsterdam – New York: Rodopi, 2010), 231–62 (243–7).  7 Smith’s Optics was also translated into French, with some additions, by Pezenas in 1767, presumably primarily as a supplement to his translation of Desaguliers’s Course.   8 The so-called vis-viva controversy represented part of the argument that raged between the supporters of Newton and those of Leibniz. It was reconsidered by several writers in the second half of the twentieth century, including Thomas Hankins, ‘Eighteenth-Century Attempts to Resolve the Vis Viva Controversy’, Isis, 56 (1965), 281–97; L. L. Laudan, ‘The Vis Viva Controversy, a Post-Mortem’, Isis, 59 (1968), 130–43; Carolyn Iltis, ‘Liebniz and the Vis Viva Controversy’, Isis, 62 (1971), 21–35.  9 CEP II, 8–95. 10 See, for example, Olinthus Gregory, A Treatise of Mechanics: Theoretical, Practical and Descriptive, 4th edn, 2 vols (London: Whittaker and others, 1826), II, 67. 11 St James’s Evening Post, 30 December 1746. 12 CEP I, 64–5.

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13 CEP I, 306–12. 14 CEP I, 353–5. 15 Alan Q. Morton, ‘Concepts of Power and the Uses of Machines in Mid-EighteenthCentury London’, BJHS 28 (1995), 63–78. 16 CEP I, 175–7 17 CEP I, 254–74. 18 Desaguliers’s choice of companions for this enterprise was interesting. Dr Pringle is probably the John Pringle MD who subscribed to CEP and who wrote A Rational Enquiry in to the Nature of the Plague in 1722. Dr Alexander Stuart was an old friend, freemason and godfather to Desaguliers’s firstborn son, and a medical FRS who was interested in muscle function. The Marquis of Tullibardin(e) was the title used by William Murray (1689–1746), a staunch Jacobite who had been involved in the 1715 Stuart uprising, after which he escaped to, and settled in, France. As it is unlikely he was in London in 1722, it is possible that Desaguliers was referring to his Hanoverian brother, James Murray (1690–1764), second Duke of Atholl. Desaguliers describes how ‘my Lord Tullibardin’ repeated one of the strong man’s feats and did ‘indeed what was harder, for he untwisted one of the Irons the Man had twisted’ 19 CEP I, 280–3. 20 Harry Houdini, Miracle Mongers and their Methods: A Complete Exposé (New York: Cosimo Books, 2007), 101–7. This is a reissue of Houdini’s 1920 work. The famous escapologist was a collector of eighteenth-century books, many of which are now in the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. 21 Bryan Clark, Strong Man Lodge No. 45: , 3. 22 Horsey was known to Desaguliers as a fellow member of masonic Lodge IV and through his connection with the York Buildings company and the Duke of Chandos 23 CEP I, 402–3. 24 This was the expensive instrument which had so impressed Baron Bielfeld (see Chapter 2, p. 40). 25 Martin Beech, ‘The Mechanics and Origin of Cometaria’, Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage, 5 (2002), 155–63. 26 John Vandergucht was a member of a Dutch family of engravers who were active in London in the eighteenth century. He suffered from severe gout and died in about 1730, so the engravings for Desaguliers’s book were either done before that date, or if some were made later, they were possibly by the more famous brother, Gerard Vandergucht (1697–1776). 27 CEP II, 96–411. 28 CEP II, 412–537.

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29 Bernard Forest de Bélidor, Architecture hydraulique, ou l’art de conduire, d’élever et de ménager les eaux pour les différents besoins de la vie, 4 livres (Paris: 1737–53); compare Bélidor, Livre 3, plans 17 et 18 with CEP II, plates 30 and 31. 30 For example: Samuel Baker, A Catalogue of the Entire and Valuable Library of the late Martin Folkes, Esq., President of the Royal Society (London, 1756) listed Desaguliers’s Experimental Philosophy (2 volumes) (sold for £2.14s), Leçons PhysicoMechaniques (which did not sell) and Electricity (3s.). Thomas Evans, A Catalogue of a Capital Collection of above Thirty Thousand Volumes of the most Rare and Valuable Books […] (London, 1780) listed the two volumes each of ’sGravesande and Desaguliers’s Course, priced respectively at £1.11s.6d. and £1.18s, and with the note that together these make ‘a compleat System of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and are uniformly bound’. Leigh and Sotheby, A Catalogue of a very Large and Valuable Collection of Books […] (London, 1780) offered a variety of editions of Desaguliers’s Experimental Philosophy; the 1734 Volume I was estimated at 9s., the two volumes dated 1745 were each at £1.11s.6d, and those of 1763, £1.15s. 31 Voltaire, Voltaire’s Correspondence, Theodore Besterman (ed.), 107 vols (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1953–65) VII, 418 (Letter 1563: Voltaire to Nicolas Claude Thieriot, 24 October 1738). 32 William L. Stone, The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart., 2 vols (Albany: J. Munsell, 1865), I, 546. 33 I. Bernard Cohen, Franklin and Newton (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1956). 34 Unpublished talk by Dr Margaret Jacob at International Conference on the History of Freemasonry, Edinburgh, May 2007. See also Cohen (1956), 243. 35 Anderson’s Institution, the forerunner of Strathclyde University, was established in 1797 as a School of Science for the People, thanks to a legacy from John Anderson (1726–96). Anderson himself had given courses of experimental philosophy with demonstrations similar to those of Desaguliers and his followers. 36 Glasgow Herald, 16 October 1826. 37 BL, Add MS 4432, fol. 75: Remarks upon M. Triewald’s Attempt to give an Account of the Reasons of Some Electrical Phœnomena, by Dr Desaguliers, Feb 27 1729. 38 Jean Torlais, L’Abbé Nollet, 1700–1770, et la physique expérimentale au XVIIIe siécle, (Paris: Université de Paris, 1959). 39 Joseph Priestley, The History and Present State of Electricity, with Original Experiments, 2nd edn (London: Dodsley, Johnson, Payne and Cadell, 1769). 40 J. L. Heilbron, Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries: A Study of Early Modern Physics (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1979) 41 The French philosopher Montesquieu, who had become a member of masonic

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Lodge No. 4 when in London in 1730, and who had met Desaguliers in 1735 at the inauguration of the lodge at the Hôtel de Bussy in Paris, was for many years President of the Bordeaux Academy of Sciences. 42 Eudosia, lines 622–6. 43 Duncan Dowson, History of Tribology, 2nd edn (Bury St Edmunds: Professional Engineering Publishing, 1998), 165–70; Andreas Plössl and Gertud Kräuter, ‘Wafer Direct Bonding: Tailoring Adhesion Between Brittle Materials’, Materials Science and Engineeering, R25 (1999), 1–88 (3). 44 Nicholas J. Wade, ‘Jean Théophile Desaguliers (1683–1744) and Eighteenth Century Vision Research’, British Journal of Psychology, 91 (2000), 275–85. 45 Charles M. Tipton, Exercise Physiology: People and Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 24, 25, 67.

Notes to Chapter 9: Poems, Plays and Pictures: a more Personal Perspective   1 The Earl of Ilay (1682–1761) was a prominent Scottish Whig politician who had a strong interest in mathematics and experimental philosophy; he owned private laboratories and an important library in his London home. Desaguliers indicated in the dedication that he had always been well received by the Earl.   2 James A. Robinson, ‘Newtonianism and the Constitution’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, 1 (1957), 252–66; Michael Foley, Laws, Men and Machines: Modern American Government and the Appeal of Newtonian Mechanics (London: Routledge, 1990).  3 Desaguliers’s birth date, in the new-style Gregorian calendar, was 12 March 1683, but, according to his adjustment, in the old-style Julian Calendar this would have been 1 March. Strictly speaking, a difference of only 10 days applied between the calendars before 1700, but Desaguliers used the post-1700 difference of 11 days.   4 There was a vice-principal of Hart Hall called Samuel Davies; who is said to have written occasional verse: Sidney Graves Hamilton, Hertford College (London: Robinson, 1903), 50–1 and footnote.  5 The manuscript was bought by Pennsylvania State University Library and it has carefully been studied, and the text printed: David J. Twombly, ‘Newtonian Schemes: An Unknown Poetic Satire from 1728’, British Journal for EighteenthCentury Studies 28 (2005), 251–72. The provenance of the manuscript cannot be traced.   6 Pierre Boutin, Jean-Théophile Desaguliers: un Huguenot, philosophe et juriste, en politique: traduction et commentaires de ‘The Newtonian System of the World: the Best Model of Government’ (Paris: H. Champion, 1999).   7 Voluntarism is a philosophical doctrine which regards will to be the fundamental

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power in an individual or in the universe. Desaguliers’s contribution to the Constitutions is alleged to reflect his political and social views.   8 David Denby, review of Jean-Théophile Desaguliers: un Huguenot, philosophe et juriste, en politique, Modern Language Review, 97 (2002), 709–10.   9 Ruth Whelan, review of Jean-Théophile Desaguliers: un Huguenot, philosophe et juriste, en politique, French Studies, 54 (2000), 512–13. 10 Owen Ruffhead, The Life of Alexander Pope, Esq. Compiled from Original Manuscripts; with a Critical Essay on his Writings and Genius (London: for C. Bathurst and others, 1769), 261. 11 Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Add. B.105. The attached note explains that the verse was received by Mr Brace in about 1725, on the day after he had offered overnight shelter from the rain to Desaguliers and his friend. The full text of the poem and annotations are given in Appendix 2. 12 BL, Add MS 32556, fols 190–3. The recipient of the letter has been indexed by the British Library as ‘Cox Macro’; he was a clergyman, antiquary and art collector who lived mainly in Suffolk. (See ODNB, Macro, Cox (bap. 1683, d. 1767).) However, as it is unlikely that he visited Greenwich, and he would not have been addressed as ‘Captain’, it seems doubtful whether this is correct. Cox Macro had a brother, Captain Thomas Macro, who was an Ensign in the Coldstream Guards and a Captain in General Columbine’s Regiment. See Margaret G. Aldred, ‘The Macro Family of Little Haugh’, Notes and Queries, 200 (1955), 188–91 (189). Captain Macro subscribed to several works on topography and antiquities, and also to a volume containing children’s plays. He is likely to have been Desaguliers’s correspondent. 13 Prince William, son of George II and later Duke of Cumberland, was born in 1721. Nothing further has been found about his governess, Mrs Smith. The full text of the poem is given in Appendix 2. 14 BL, Add MS 38175, fol. 215. 15 Barry Hoffbrand, ‘John Misaubin, Hogarth’s Quack: A Case for Rehabilitation’, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 94 (2001), 143–7. John Misaubin senior performed ‘A New Comical, Operatical, Sermonical Farce’ as part of the entertainment at Vanbrugh Castle. 16 See Appendix 2. 17 Nathaniel Blackerby, whose son was one of the young actors, was, like Desaguliers, an active member of Masonic Lodge No. 4 and of Grand Lodge. Others members of No. 4 were the brothers William and John Cowper who were probably related to ‘Miss Cowper’ who spoke the Epilogue in one production. The Duke of Richmond (father of Lady Caroline Lennox) also served as Master of the same lodge, emphasizing the strong masonic connections between the families of the children involved.

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18 Conduitt married Catherine Barton, niece of Sir Isaac Newton whom he succeeded as Master of the Mint. 19 London Evening Post, 27 April 1732 20 Elizabeth Einberg: private communication. 21 Desrochers was a prolific engraver (born Lyon, 1668, died Paris, 1741), who produced hundreds of images, mainly of eminent French men and women. It is probable that many of his engravings of contemporary subjects were taken from life. 22 The painting is not currently on public view but hangs in a private office at the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. A close examination failed to shed further light on its authenticity. 23 John Baptist Grano, Handel’s Trumpeter: The Diary of John Grano, John Ginger (ed.) (New York: Pendragon Press, 1998) 24 For a description of Reigate Priory, the home of Sir Humphrey Parsons, see : . 25 Charles Henry Gordon Lennox, A Duke and his Friends: The Life and Letters of the Second Duke of Richmond, (ed.) the Earl of March, 2 vols (London: Hutchinson, 1911), I, 295–6. 26 John Byrom, ‘The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom’ Richard Parkinson (ed.), Remains Historical and Literary Connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1855). 27 Four Douglas brothers were Fellows of the Royal Society; three were renowned physicians and the fourth was a military man. 28 Henry Gore was a ‘Teacher of the Mathematicks in Manchester’ and published Elements of Solid Geometry, Algebraically Demonstrated, in London in 1733. 29 Byrom wrote an epilogue to Hurlothrumbo, or the Supernatural, a play written by Mr Samuel Johnson (c.1690–1773), a dancing master of Cheshire. It was published in John Byrom, Miscellaneous Poems (Manchester: J. Harrop, 1773), 215–18, where the footnote explains that it was written with the friendly intention of pointing out the extravagance and absurdity of the play, but was taken by Mr Johnson as a compliment. 30 This was almost certainly Zachariah Williams (c.1670–1755). He developed a method using magnetic variation that he hoped would solve the longitude problem, and although never an FRS demonstrated a magnetic globe before the Royal Society. He was friendly with Desaguliers’s one-time lodger Stephen Gray and, like Gray, lived in the Charterhouse. He and his blind poet daughter Anna Williams were helped by Dr Samuel Johnson (1704–84), the lexicographer (not to be confused with the playwright of the same name mentioned above in footnote 29). 31 Byrom’s shorthand manual was published much later; it has been suggested

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that he was reluctant to go to press earlier as the shorthand was used as a code amongst those plotting a Jacobite rebellion. 32 See, for example, Country Journal or the Craftsman, 15 July 1738, 23 September 1738, 17 March 1739; London Evening Post, 23 November 1738, 10 May 1739; Daily Gazetteer, 10 January 1739. 33 London Evening Post, 31 May 1739; London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 1 June 1739; Country Journal or the Craftsman, 2 June 1739.

Notes to Chapter 10: The House in Channel Row: Family, Lodgers, Health and Descendants  1 ‘Home and Farm Accounts of the Shuttleworths of Gawthorpe Hall’, John Harland (ed.), Remains Historical and Literary Connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester, Vol. 41 (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1856), 276–8; Henry Wagner, ‘Descendants of Jean Desaguliers’, The Genealogist, 5 (1881), 117–19. The bible is not now at Gawthorpe Hall and was probably removed with other Shuttleworth papers when the Hall passed to the National Trust in 1970. It has not, however, been found in Lord Shuttleworth’s Library at Leck Hall, Lancashire.   2 Kerry Osbourne, History of Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School (Sutton Coldfield: privately printed, 1990), 18–22. Desaguliers’s patron, John Wilkins, also served as a trustee with members of the Pudsey family.  3 Guildhall Library: Marriage Allegation 10091/48 fol. 517. The document, in standard form, states that John Theophilus Desagutiors [sic] of Harthall Oxford was a Clerk aged 29 years, and Joane [sic] Pudsey of the parish of St Clement Danes, Middlesex was 20 years or thereabouts [she was in fact older] and had the consent of Anne Pudsey, Widow (her father being dead).  4 See, for example, Daily Courant, 25 May 1713; Post Man and the Historical Account, 10 December 1715 and 30 October 1718; Daily Courant, 15 November 1720.   5 City of Westminster Archives: Rate Books E330–E363. In 1715 ‘Mr Desaguliers’ paid £30-7-6; in 1735 ‘Dr Jno Theophilus Desaguliers’ paid £24-9-0; in 1741 his entry is crossed out and several nearby houses are empty.   6 Desaguliers undoubtedly leased the property, but the name of the landlord and the rent paid are not known.  7 Post Man and the Historical Account, 28 February 1716.  8 Evening Post, 1 March 1720.   9 John Harris, William Talman, Maverick Architect (London: Allen & Unwin, 1982). 10 There are indications that there was another branch of the family in London. In 1734, J. H. Desaguliers published privately, in London, a book of tables for

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the use of merchant jewellers, written in English and French. And a marriage licence dated 1735 names Elizabeth Desaguliers who was to marry Lewis Neau, watchmaker, in the French chapel at St Mary-le-Bow. No connection between these people and John Theophilus Desaguliers has been found, though there is a possibility that they have links to cousins who are known to have settled in the Netherlands. 11 Daily Post, 4 January 1731. 12 Richard Cosin, Regni Angliæ sub imperio serenissimæ piæ & potentissimæ Reginæ Elizabethæ religio et gubernatio ecclesiastica, corrected and augmented by John Cosin (London: T. Wood, 1729). 13 London Evening Post, 23 November 1738. 14 R. A. Davenport, Lives of Individuals who Raised Themselves from Poverty to Eminence or Fortune (London: T. Tegg, 1841), 28–44. 15 See Chapter 6, p. 139. 16 London Daily Post and General Advertiser, 17 August 1738. 17 David C. Leonard, ‘Harvard’s First Science Professor: A Sketch of Isaac Greenwood’s Life and Work’, Harvard Library Bulletin, XXIX (1981), 135–68 (144–6); Clifford Kenyon Shipton, New England Life in the Eighteenth Century: Representative Biographies from Sibley’s Harvard Graduates. Volume 6: The Classes of 1713–21 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 471–82; Raymond Phineas Stearns, Science in the British Colonies of America (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1970), 446–55. 18 RS: Classified Papers, 18ii, fol. 14. 19 Alexander Geekie was also a freemason who served as Master of his lodge (Cardigan Head in Charing Cross) in 1723. In 1737 he was listed as ‘Surgeon, late of Pall Mall’, among those imprisoned in the Fleet Prison for insolvency (London Gazette, 2 August 1737). 20 Theophilus Lobb, A Treatise on Dissolvents of the Stone; and on Curing the Stone and Gout by Aliment (London: for James Buckland, 1739), 312–34. 21 The General Evening Post for 28 February 1744 stated that it occurred ‘Yesterday’, which would have been Monday 27 February, while the Penny London Morning Advertiser for 29 February reported that ‘Wednesday [Dr Desaguliers] died at his lodgings’, which is the day the copy was issued. 22 Penny London Morning Advertiser, 7 March 1744; Daily Post, 7 March 1744. 23 City of Westminster Archives, Ac 2599, Savoy Chapel Registers. Desaguliers was buried ‘in ye Body of ye Chapel’; this was a rare location, mentioned only about once a year. A letter from the Duchy of Lancaster Office in 1931 regretted that it was ‘unable to trace the exact burial place of John Theophilus Desaguliers except that it was under the Aisle of the Savoy Chapel and not under any of the pew spaces’: Duncan Campbell Lee, Desaguliers of No.4 and his Services to

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Freemasonry (London: privately printed, 1931), 28 (footnote). The Savoy Chapel was destroyed by fire end essentially rebuilt in the mid-nineteenth century. For the history and an illustrated description of the original Savoy Chapel see: Francis Grose, The Antiquities of England and Wales, 8 vols (London: S. Hooper, 1773), VIII, 110–14. For the Huguenot connections see: Robin D. Gwynn, The Huguenots of London (Brighton: Alpha Press, 1998), 13. 24 James Cawthorn, Poems by the Rev. Mr Cawthorn (London: by W. Woodfall, 1751), 172–87 (180). 25 The National Archives, RG4/4396: Register of Baptisms at the Foundling Hospital 1741–57. 26 Guildhall Library, MSS 10326/40. The bundle contains the younger John Theophilus Desaguliers’s reference, ordination papers and recommendation from his father. 27 There is a brief entry in The Record of Old Westminsters, I, 262, omitting the usual biographical details, for ‘Edward Desaguliers’ who was admitted aged 8 in February 1729 and left in 1733. It is known that there are inaccuracies in the lists and the age would be correct for Thomas Desaguliers. It is possible that this was the same boy, misnamed, who left before completing the normal curriculum. 28 Francesco Algarotti, Letters from Count Algarotti to Lord Harvey and the Marquis Scipio Maffei upon Russia &c., trans. from the Italian (London: Johnson and Payne: 1769), 2–3. 29 For example: Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser, 20 July 1775; Morning Post and Daily Advertiser, 14 November 1776; London Chronicle, 11 October 1777; Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser, 12 November 1777 and 10 April 1779. 30 St James Chronicle or the British Evening Post, 2 December 1775. 31 F. J. Scrase, ‘Some Reminiscences of Kew Observatory in the Twenties’, Meteorological Magazine, 98 (1969), 180–6 (181). 32 London Evening Post, 21 September 1773. 33 BL, Add MSS 23669, fol. 59. 34 In 1730 George Rainsford was listed as a member of the lodge that met at the Swan in Long Acre. 35 General Advertiser, April 28 1749; Old England, April 29 1749. 36 Jenny Uglow, Hogarth: A Life and a World (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), 362. Mary Blackwood is portrayed as a girl in a portrait by Allan Ramsay, with her brothers and older half-brother, Thomas Mansel. The notes from the Tate Gallery, which owns the painting, suggest that she was partially sighted. 37 The portrait, in an oval frame which may indicate that it was painted after the sitter’s death, was prominently displayed at an exhibition of Old Masters in 1891 (Pall Mall Gazette, 3 January 1891; The Graphic, 24 January 1891).

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38 Jessie Dobson, Some of John Hunter’s Patients: Arnott Demonstration delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on 23 June 1965, 129–30. http:// www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2312184/ Some post-mortem specimens of thickened arteries from Thomas Desaguliers are retained in the Royal College’s Hunterian Museum. 39 The Cuckold’s Chronicle; Being Select Trials for Adultery, Incest, Imbecillity, Ravishment, &c., 2 vols (London: for H. Lemoin, 1793), I, 311–13. 40 Journals of the House of Commons. From November the 26th 1778 to August the 24th 1780 (London: 1781?), 25 and 487. 41 Contemporary correspondence concerning the bells, and other similar cases, was published and discussed in E. H. Fairbrother, ‘Captured Church Bells: The Perquisites of the Artillery Commanding Officer on the Spot’, Notes and Queries, 155 (1928), 203–4. 42 The two plaques with Latin inscriptions were recently still in situ at Aynho House. 43 W. K. Hayman, ‘Obituary: Mary Lucy Cartwright’, Bulletin of the London Mathematical Society, 34 (2002), 91–107; Obituary, The Times, 7 April, 1998; James Tattersall, Shawnee McMurren and Mary L. Cartwright, ‘An Interview with Dame Mary L. Cartwright, DBE, FRS’ The College Mathematics Journal, 32 (2001), 242–54. 44 William Scudder Stryker, The Battles of Trenton and Princeton (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1898), 292. Perpetuated and undoubtedly fanciful stories that Frederick Desaguliers was killed and scalped by the Iroquois Indians, either at Bunker Hill or in Canada in 1775, appear to derive originally from Henry Wagner (1881). 45 Robert E. Schofield, Mechanism and Materialism: British Natural Philosophy in an Age of Reason (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970), 81.

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Bibliography

Manuscript Sources Archives municipales de La Rochelle Registers of Protestant Temple of La Rochelle Papers of Jean-Baptiste-Ernest Jourdan (Desaguliers family history) Archives Nationales, Paris Carton TT259 (Huguenot refugee records) Bodleian Library Oxford Rawlinson MS J f3, fols 29–34) (J. T. Desaguliers biographical notes) MS Add c 272 (Unnamed lecture notebook) MS Add B105 (English Poems 18th Century) British Library Add MS 4007 fol. 669 (Desaguliers correspondence to Sir Isaac Newton) Add MS 4432 fol. 75 ( Desaguliers on Triewald’s Electrical Experiments) Add MS 4436 fols 1–10 (Desaguliers on Measure of Force on Bodies) Add MS 23669, fol. 59 (Rainsford letter from Thomas Desaguliers) Add MS 24399 fol. 44 (Warrant for Desaguliers’s appointment as Chaplain to Frederick, Prince of Wales) Add Ms 32556 fols 190–93 (Letter and poems addressed to Capt. Macro) Add MS 35401 fol. 38 (Letter from Daniel Wray re Erasmus King) Add MS 38175 fol. 215 (Poem in Papers of Sir Kenelm Digby, etc.) Add MS 61999 (Diary of the Rev. Henry Brydges) Sloane MS 4049 fols 68; 215 (Correspondence to Sir Hans Sloane) Lansdowne MS 1056 fol. 47 (Concerning Water Supply Scheme) Cambridge University Library MS 0 XIV 278 (3ix, 3x) (Desaguliers correspondence to John Keill) Christ Church College Library, Oxford Entry registers Document 17OT/6 (Collections 1699–1771; books read by undergraduates) City of Westminster Archives Registers of St Margaret’s Church, Westminster

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300 Bibliogr aphy Registers of the Savoy Chapel (Ac 2599) Registers of St Anne’s Church, Soho Rate Books E312–329 Duchy of Cornwall Office, London Household Accounts of Frederick, Prince of Wales Freemasons’ Hall, London, Library and Museum File of miscellaneous material on Desaguliers MS HC 8/F/3–4 (Letters from Thomas Hill to the Duke of Richmond) MS HC 8/F/5 (Letter from Montesquieu to the Duke of Richmond) Guildhall Library, London MS 9535/3, fol. 33 (Ordination record of Jean Desaguliers) MS 10326/7 (Letter concerning Desaguliers’s ecclesiastical preferment) MS 10326/40 (Assorted ordination papers and related letters) PB Closed Access, A3.5 No. 3 in 3 (Plans for water supply scheme) Marriage Allegations 10091 48/517 and 9/14 Hertfordshire Record Office DE/P/F203 D24 (Correspondence addressed to Lady Cowper) Huntington Library, California Stowe MS ST 26 (James Brydges’s Journal) Stowe MS ST 59 (Strangers who dined at Cannons) Stowe MS ST 57 (Outbooks of the Duke of Chandos) Lincolnshire Archives MS 451/4, p. 9 (Spalding Sewers) London Metropolitan Archives Registers of St Pauls Church, Shadwell Royal Society London Journal Book Copy (Records of Meetings) Account Books AB/1/1/3–10 Early Letters EL D2/73 and 75 (by J. T. Desaguliers) Early Letters EL G1/58 (by Stephen Gray) Early Letters EL M2/75 (by Eustachio Manfredi) Classified Papers, 3(ii)/14 (Remarks on Attempts at Perpetual Motion) Classified Papers, 4(1)/66. (Description of Aurora Borealis) Classified Papers, 6/64 (Description of Quicksilver engine) Register Book Original, 20/22 (Paper on Le Roy’s Horizontal Dial) Smeaton Drawings JS/6/121 (Lincolnshire Drains) Spalding Gentlemen’s Society MS MBI fol. 100 (Fenland drainage) MS MBI fols 189a and b (Desaguliers’s admittance to Society)

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Bibliogr aphy

301

The National Archives PROB 11/ 511 (Will of William Pudsey of Kidlington, 1709) PROB 11/577 (Will of William Talman, 1720) PROB 11/655 (Will of Anne Pudsey, 1732) PROB 11/ 732 (Will of John Theophilus Desaguliers, 1744) PROB 11/ 1063 (Will of Thomas Desaguliers, 1780) RG 4/4396 (Register of Baptisms at the Foundling Hospital, 1741-57) SP 84/314 fols 188–87 (Correspondence of Charles Holzendorf) E133 105/74,75 (Roberts and Wisdish vs Desaguliers) University of York, Borthwick Institute of Archives Yarborough Muniment MS YM/VAN/13 (Playbill for children’s performance) West Sussex Record Office Goodwood MS 2233 (Petitions to the 2nd Duke of Richmond for the erection of new masonic lodges, 1724–25) Goodwood MS 2234 (Documents concerning freemasonry, including letter from J. T. Desaguliers to the Duke of Richmond, 1725)

Newspapers and Periodicals Newspapers, many quite short-lived, were largely consulted using the online Burney Collection; individual issue dates are given in the endnotes.

London publications Country Journal or the Craftsman Daily Advertiser Daily Courant Daily Gazetteer Daily Journal Daily Post Englishman Evening Post Flying Post General Advertiser General Evening Post Gentleman’s Magazine Guardian Ladies’ Diary

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302 Bibliogr aphy London Chronicle London Courant London Daily Post and General Advertiser London Evening Post London Gazette London Spy Revived Middlesex Journal and Evening Advertiser Morning Chronicle and London Advertiser Old England Old Whig or the Consistent Protestant Pall Mall Gazette Penny London Morning Advertiser Post Boy Post Man and the Historical Account Public Ledger or the Daily Register of Commerce and Industry Spectator St James’s Chronicle or the British Evening Post St James’s Evening Post Tatler The Graphic The Times The Universal Spy, or the Royal Oak Journal Reviv’d Town Talk Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer Weekly Journal or Saturday’s Post Whitehall Evening Post

Provincial and foreign publications Amsterdamse Courant Atchison [Kansas] Champion Boston [Massachusetts] Evening Post Glasgow Herald Gloucester Journal Newcastle Courant Pennsylvania Gazette

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Bibliogr aphy

303

Primary Printed Sources Algarotti, Francesco, Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy Explain’d for the use of the Ladies (London: for E. Cave, 1739) —Letters from Count Algarotti to Lord Hervey and the Marquis Scipio Maffei, Containing the State of the Trade, Marine, Revenues, and Forces of the Russian Empire. Translated from the Italian (Johnson & Payne: London, 1769) Alingham, William, Geometry Epitomiz’d (London: by J. M. and B. B. for the author, 1695) —A Short Account of the Nature and Use of Maps (London: for B. Barker, 1703) Anderson, James, The Constitutions of the Freemasons Containing the History, Charges, Regulations &c. of that most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity (London: for J. Senex and J. Hooke, 1723) —Royal Genealogies: Or, the Genealogical Tables of Emperors, Kings, and Princes, from Adam to these Times, etc (London: for the author, 1732) —The New Book of Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons (London: for C. Ward and R. Chandler, 1738) Anon, Estats de la distribution du reliqua de la Bénéficience de 1707, et de la Bénéficience de 1708, accordée par la Reine aux pauvres protestants françois refugiez en Angleterre (London: Paul Valliant, 1709) Anon [‘A Free Mason’], The Free Masons: An Hudibrastick Poem Illustrating the Whole History of the Ancient Free Masons, from the Building of the Tower of Babel to this Time (London: for A. Moore, 1723) Anon, The York Buildings Dragons: Or a Full and True Account of a most Horrid and Barbarous Murder, Intended to be Committed on the 14th of Febr. Next (being Valentine’s Day), 2nd edn (London: for J. Roberts, 1726) Anon [‘A Lady’], Poems on several Occasions, by a Lady (London: for J. Roberts, 1728) Anon [‘A Free Mason’], The Perjur’d Freemason Detected; and Yet the Honour and Antiquity of the Society of Free Masons Preserv’d and Defended (London: for T. Warner, 1730) Anon, A Curious Collection of the most Celebrated Songs in Honour of Masonry (London: for B. Creake and B. Cole, 1731) Anon, List of Regular Lodges According to their Seniority and Constitution, A (London: engraved and printed by J. Pine, 1735) Anon, The Cuckold’s Chronicle: Being Select Trials for Adultery, Incest, Imbecility, Ravishment, &c., 2 vols (London: for H. Lemoin, 1793) Anon, The Secret History of the Free-Masons, being an Accidental Discovery of the Ceremonies made use of in the several Lodges (London: for Sam Briscoe, J. Jackson and J. Weekes, n. d.) Arcère, Louis E., Histoire de la Ville de La Rochelle, et du Pays d’Aulnis (La Rochelle: [n. pub.], 1756)

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304 Bibliogr aphy Baker, Samuel, A Catalogue of the Entire and Valuable Library of the Late Martin Folkes, Esq., President of the Royal Society (London: 1756) Barba, Alvaro Alonso, The Art of Metals, Edward Montagu, Earl of Sandwich (trans.) (London: for S. Mearne, 1674) Beighton, Henry (ed.), The Ladies Diary: or, the Woman’s Almanack, for the Year of our Lord 1726 (London: for A. Wilde, 1726) Bélidor, Bernard F. de, Architecture hydraulique, ou l’art de conduire, d’élever et de ménager les eaux pour les différents besoins de la vie, 4 vols (Paris: 1737–53) Bielfeld, Jacob F. von, Letters of Baron Bielfeld, William Hooper (trans.), 4 vols (London: Robinson and Roberts; Richardson and Urquart, 1768–1770) Blair, Patrick, Botanick Essays (London: for W. and J. Innys, 1720) Board of Ordnance, A Description of the Machine for the Fireworks, with all its Ornaments, and a Detail of the Manner in which they are to be Exhibited in St James’s Park, Thursday April 27 1749 (London: W. Bowyer, 1749) Boswell, John, A Method of Study: Or, an Useful Library (London: for the author, 1738) Bradley, Richard, New Improvements of Planting and Gardening, both Philosophical and Practical, 5th edn (London: for W. Mears, 1726) —A Philosophical Account of the Works of Nature as Founded upon a Plan of the Late Mr Addison (London: for James Hodges, 1739) Butler, Samuel, Hudibras (London: for D. Browne and others, 1726) Byrom, John, Miscellaneous Poems (Manchester: J. Harrop, 1773) —‘The Private Journal and Literary Remains of John Byrom’ (I, i and ii) Richard Parkinson (ed.), Remains Historical and Literary Connected with the Palatine Counties of Lancaster and Chester, Vols 32 and 34 (Manchester: Chetham Society, 1854–55) Carey, Henry, Poems on Several Occasions, 3rd edn (London: for E. Say, 1729) Carter, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Carter 1717–1806: An Edition of some Unpublished Letters, by Gwen Hampshire (ed.) (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2005) Cawthorn, James, Poems by the Rev. Mr Cawthorn (London: by W. Woodfall, 1751) Cock, Mr [Christopher], A Catalogue of all the Genuine Collection of Pictures of His Grace James Duke of Chandos, Lately Deceas’d (London: 1747) —A Catalogue of all the Genuine Household Furniture &c. of His Grace James Duke of Chandos, Deceas’d, at His Late Seat Call’d Cannons, Near Edgware, in Middlesex (London: 1747) —A Catalogue of all the Materials of the Dwelling-house, Out-houses, &c. of His Grace James Duke of Chandos, Deceas’d, at his late Seat call’d Cannons, near Edgware in Middlesex… which will be sold by auction, by Mr. Cock, on Tuesday, the 16th of June 1747, and the eleven following days (at Cannons aforesaid) (London: 1747) Cosin, Richard, Regni Angliæ Sub Imperio Serendissimæ Piæ & Potentissimæ Reginæ Elizabethæ Religio et Gubernatio Ecclesiastica (London: T. Wood, 1729)

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305

Coustos, John, The Sufferings of John Coustos for Freemasonry and for His Refusing to Turn Roman Catholic in the Inquisition at Lisbon (London: for the author by W. Strahan, 1746) Cowley, John, The Sailor’s Companion and Merchantman’s Convoy (London: for T. Cooper, 1740) —A New Sett of Pocket Mapps of all the Counties of England and Wales (London: for R. Dodsley and M. Cooper, 1745) d’Alembert, Jean le R., Traité de dynamique (Paris: David, 1743) Dalton, John, A Descriptive Poem Addressed to Two Ladies at their Return from Viewing the Mines Near Whitehaven (London: for Rivington and Dodsley, 1755) Defoe, Daniel, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, P. N. Furbank and W. R. Owens (eds) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) Desaguliers, J. H., Jewellers Accounts made Easy: Consisting of 175 Tables for the use of all Merchant Jewellers, Diamond-Cutters, Gold and Silver-Smiths (London: privately printed, 1734) Desaguliers, J. T., ‘An Account of some Experiments of Light and Colours, formerly made by Sir Isaac Newton, and Mentioned in His Opticks, lately Repeated before the Royal Society’, PT, 29 (1714–1716), 433–47 —‘A Plain and Easy Experiment to Confirm Sir Isaac Newton’s Doctrine of the Different Refrangibility of the Rays of Light.’, PT, 29 (1714–1716), 448–52 —‘Some Instances of the very Great and Speedy Vegetation of Turnips’, PT, 30 (1717–1719), 974–5 —‘An Account of an Experiment to Prove an Interspers’d Vacuum; Or to Shew that all Places are Not Equally Full’, PT, 30 (1717–19), 717–20 —‘An Account of Experiments made on 27 April 1719 to Find how Much Resistance of Air Retards Falling Bodies; and, further Account of Experiments made on 27 April Last’ PT, 30 (1717–19), 1071–78 —‘An Account of an Optical Experiment made before the Royal Society on Thursday Dec. 6th and Repeated on the 13th, 1722’, PT, 32 (1722–23), 206–8 —‘An Attempt to Account for the Rising and Falling of the Water in some Ponds Near the Sea, Or Ebbing and Flowing Rivers… ’, PT, 33 (1724), 132–5 —‘A Dissertation Concerning the Figure of the Earth, Parts 1, 2 and 3; and, an Experiment to Illustrate what has been Said Concerning the Figure of the Earth’, PT, 33 (1724–25), 201–22, 239–55, 277–304 and 344–5 —‘An Account of Several Experiments Concerning the Running of Water in Pipes, as it is Retarded and Intermixed with Air’, PT, 34 (1726), 77–82 —‘An Account of a Book Entitl’d Vegetable Staticks […] by Stephen Hales BD, FRS’, PT, 34 (1726–1727), 264–91 —‘The Conclusion of Dr Desaguliers’s Account of Mr Hales’s Vegetable Staticks’, PT, 34 (1726–1727), 323–31

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306 Bibliogr aphy —‘An Attempt to Shew how Damps Or Foul Air may be Drawn Out of any Sort of Mines, &c. by an Engine’, PT, 35 (1727), 353–6 —‘Some Observations on the Crane, with Improvements on that Machine: Shewn the Society in Models, but here Exemplified by Figures’, PT, 36 (1729–1730), 194–203 —‘An Account of some Electrical Experiments made at His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales House at Cliefden on Tuesday the 15th April 1738’, PT, 41 (1739), 209–10 —‘Some Thoughts and Experiments Concerning Electricity’, PT, 41 (1739), 186–193 —Leçons Physico-Mechaniques, (Londres: pour l’auteur, 1717) —Physico-Mechanical Lectures: Or, an Account of what is Explain’d and Demonstrated in the Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, Given by J. T. Desaguliers. (London: for the author, 1717) —A Sermon Preach’d before the King, at Hampton-Court: On Sunday, Sept. 29th, 1717 (London: William Taylor, 1717) —Lectures in Experimental Philosophy: Prov’d by Mechanicks (London: for Mears, Creake and Sackfield, 1719) —A System of Experimental Philosophy: Prov’d by Mechanicks (London: for Creake, Sackfield and Mears, 1719) —A Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy / Cours de Philosophie Mécanique et Experimentale ([n.p.]:[n.pub.], 1723) —The Newtonian System of the World, the Best Model of Government: An Allegorical Poem. with a Plain and Intelligible Account of the System of the World, by Way of Annotations… to which is Added, Cambria’s Complaint Against the Intercalary Day in the Leap-Year (Westminster: by A. Campbell for J. Roberts, 1728) —A Course of Experimental Philosophy Volume I (London: for J. Senex and others, 1734) —A Dissertation Concerning Electricity (London: W. Innys and T. Longman, 1742) —A Course of Experimental Philosophy Volume II (London: for W. Innys and others, 1744) —A Course of Experimental Philosophy Volume I, 2nd edn (London: for W. Innys and others, 1745) —Cours de Physique Expérimentale, R. P. Pezenas (trans.), 2 vols (Paris: Rollin and Jombert, 1751) —De Natuurkunde uit Ondervindingen opgemaakt. Uit het Engels vertaald door Een Liefhebber der Natuurkunde, 3 vols (Amsterdam: Isaac Tirion, 1751) —A Course of Experimental Philosophy, 3rd edn, 2 vols (London: for A. Millar, 1763) Desaguliers, John T., Daniel Niblett and William Vreem, Heating by Steam for various Manufacturing Processes, Patent Application No. 430 (London: 1720)

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307

Donnelly, Dominick, The Case of Dominick Donnelly, Gentleman. Humbly Offer’d to the Consideration of the Honourable House of Commons (London: [n. pub.], 1716) Ferguson, James, Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton’s Principles, and made Easy to those who have not Studied Mathematics (London: for the author, 1756) —Lectures on Select Subjects in Mechanics, Pneumatics, Hydrostatics and Optics (London: for A. Millar, 1760) —The Use of a New Orrery Made and Described by James Ferguson (London: for the author, 1746) Franklin, Benjamin, Account of the New-Invented Pennsylvanian Fire-Places (Philadelphia: privately printed, 1744) Gauger, Nicolas, Fires Improv’d: Being a New Method of Building Chimneys so as to Prevent their Smoaking: Made English and Improved, by J. T. Desaguliers, MA, FRS (London: for J. Senex and E. Curll, 1715) —Fires Improved: Or, A New Method of Building Chimnies. so as to Prevent their Smoking, J. T. Desaguliers (trans.), 2nd edn (London: for J. Senex and E. Curll, 1736) Gordon, George, A Compleat Discovery of a Method of Observing the Longitude at Sea (London: for the author, 1724) —An Introduction to Geography, Astronomy and Dialling (London: for J. Senex and others, 1726) Grano, John B., Handel’s Trumpeter: The Diary of John Grano, John Ginger (ed.) (New York: Pendragon Press, 1998) Gravesande, Willem Jakob Storm ’s, Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy Confirmed by Experiments, Or, an Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy, J. T. Desaguliers (trans.), (London: for J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1720); 2nd edn, 1721; 6th edn, 2 vols (London: for W. Innys and others, 1747) —Mathematical Elements of Physicks, Prov’d by Experiments: Being an Introduction to Sir Isaac Newton’s Philosophy. Revised and Corrected by Dr. John Keill (London: for G. Strahan, A. Bettesworth, W. Lewis, W. Mears and T. Woodward, 1720) Gregory, David, Dr. Gregory’s Elements of Catoptrics and Dioptrics. Translated by William Browne, M.D. to which is Added an Appendix by J. T. Desaguliers, LL.D., F.R.S., 2nd edn (London: for E. Curll, 1735) Hales, Stephen, Vegetable Staticks: or an Account of some Statical Experiments on the Sap in Vegetables: Being an Essay Towards a Natural History of Vegetation (London: for Innys and Woodward, 1727) —A Description of Ventilators: Whereby Great Quantities of Fresh Air may with Ease be Conveyed into Mines, Goals [Sic], Hospitals, Work-Houses, and Ships, in Exchange for their Noxious Air (London: for Innys, Manby and Woodward, 1743) Harris, John, Lexicon Technicum; Or, an Universal English Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, 2nd edn (London: for Dan. Brown and others, 1708)

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308 Bibliogr aphy Harris, John and J. T. Desaguliers, ‘An Account of some Experiments tried with Mons. Villette’s Burning Concave, in June 1718’, PT, 30 (1717–19), 976–8 Hauksbee, Francis, Physico-mechanical Experiments on various Subjects, 2nd edn (London: for J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1709) House of Commons Journal, 10 Geo I (1723) House of Commons Journal, 9 Geo II (1736) House of Lords Journal, 5 Geo I (1718) Keill, John, Introductio Ad Veram Physicam: Seu Lectiones Physicæ Habitæ in Schola Naturalis Philosophiæ Academiæ Oxoniensis (Oxford: for Thomas Bennett, London, 1702) —Introductio Ad Veram Astronomiam: Seu Lectiones Astronomicæ Habitæ in Schola Astronomica Academiæ Oxoniensis, 2nd edn (London: for Strahan & Mears, 1721) —An Introduction to the True Astronomy Or Astronomical Lectures Read in the Astronomical School of the University of Oxford (London: for B. Lintot, 1721) —Introductiones Ad Veram Physicam et Veram Astronomiam. Quibus Accedunt Trigonometria. De Viribus Centralibus. De Legibus Attractionis (Lugduni Batavorum: Verbeek, 1725) —An Introduction to Natural Philosophy: Or, Philosophical Lectures Read in the University of Oxford Anno Dom. 1700, 2nd edn (London: for J. Senex, 1726) King, Erasmus, A Catalogue of the Experiments Made by Mr King, in His Course of Natural Philosophy (London: [n. pub.], 1741?) Labelye, Charles, A Description of Westminster Bridge. to which are Added an Account of the Methods made use of in Laying the Foundations of its Piers (London: by W. Strahan for the author, 1751) La Chapelle, Vincent, The Modern Cook 3 vols (London: for the author, 1733) Larroque, Matthieu de, Conformity of the Ecclesiastical Discipline of the Reformed Churches of France with that of the Primitive Christians, Joseph Walker (trans.) (London: for Tho. Cockerill, 1691) Lee, Nathaniel, Sophonisba, Or Hannibal’s Overthrow. A Tragedy (London: for a Society of Stationers, 1710) Lennox, Charles H. G., A Duke and his Friends. The Life and Letters of the Second Duke of Richmond, the Earl of March (ed.), 2 vols (London: Hutchinson, 1911) Lobb, Theophilus, A Treatise on Dissolvents of the Stone; and on Curing the Stone and Gout by Aliment (London: for James Buckland, 1739) Loftt, Capel, Eudosia: Or a Poem on the Universe (London: for W. Richardson and C. Dilly, 1781) M. G., Mercurius Oxoniensis, Or the Oxford Intelligencer, for the Year of our Lord 1707 (London: for Egbert Sanger, 1707) Macky, John, A Journey through England. In Familiar Letters from a Gentleman Here, to his Friend Abroad. Volume II (London: for J. Pemberton, 1722)

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309

Mariotte, Edmé, The Motion of Water and Other Fluids: Being a Treatise of Hydrostaticks, by J. T. Desaguliers (trans.) (London: for J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1718) Martin, Benjamin, A Course of Lectures in Natural and Experimental Philosophy, Geography and Astronomy (Reading: by Newbery and Micklewright and others, 1743) Mather, Cotton, The Christian Philosopher: A Collection of the Best Discoveries in Nature, with Religious Improvements (London: Matthews, 1721) Montesquieu, ‘Une Correspondance Inédite de Montesquieu’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France, A82, N2 (1982) Muller, John, A Treatise of Artillery, 2nd edn (London: John Millan, 1768) Newton, Isaac, Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (London: for the Royal Society, 1687); 3rd edn (London: Innys, 1726) —Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflexions, Refractions, Inflexions and Colours of Light (London: for Sam. Smith and Benj. Walford, 1704); 3rd edn (London: for W. and J. Innys, 1721) —Traité d’Optique, Pierre Coste (trans.), 2nd edn, 2 vols (Amsterdam: P. Humbert, 1720) —The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, Andrew Motte (trans.), 2 vols (London: Benjamin Motte, 1729) Nieuwentyt, Bernard, The Religious Philosopher: Or, the Right use of Contemplating the Works of the Creator, trans. by John Chamberlayne (London: for J. Senex and W. Taylor, 1718) O’Day, Rosemary (ed.), Cassandra Brydges, Duchess of Chandos, 1670–1735: Life and Letters (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2007). Ozanam, Jacques, Recreations Mathematical and Physical, done into English (London: 1708, for R. Borswick and others) —A Treatise of Fortification, Containing the Ancient and Modern Method of the Construction and Defense of Places, done into English and Amended… by J. T. Desaguliers… with an Appendix, Concerning that Manner of Fortifying which is Truly Mr. Vauban’s. (Oxford: for J. Nicholson, 1711) —Cursus Mathematicus: Or A Compleat Course of the Mathematicks, done into English by several Hands, 5 vols (London: for J. Nicholson, 1712) —A Treatise of Gnomonicks, Or Dialling. done into English and Amended in Several Places by J. T. Desaguliers (Oxford: by L. Lichfield, for John Nicholson, 1712) Perceval, John, Diary of John Perceval, afterwards First Earl of Egmont, R. A. Roberts (ed.), 3 vols (London: Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1920–23) Pitcairn, Archibald, The Works of Dr. Archibald Pitcairn. Wherein are Discovered, the True Foundation and Principles of the Art of Physic. Done from the Latin Original (London: for E. Curll, J. Pemberton and W. Taylor, 1715)

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322 Bibliogr aphy Paper read at the International Conference for the History of Freemasonry, Edinburgh, May 2007 Stimson, Dorothy, Scientists and Amateurs: A History of the Royal Society (London: Sigma Books, 1949) Stokes, John, ‘Life of John Theophilus Desaguliers’, AQC, 38 (1925), 285–307 Stolper, E. E., ‘The Initiation of the Duke of Lorraine’, AQC, 95 (1982), 170–79 Stone, William L., The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart, 2 vols (Albany: J. Munsell, 1865) Straus, Ralph, The Unspeakable Curll (London: Chapman & Hall, 1927) Stryker, William S., The Battles of Trenton and Princeton (Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 1898) Tattersall, James, Shawnee McMurren and Mary L. Cartwright, ‘An Interview with Dame Mary L. Cartwright, DBE, FRS’, The College Mathematics Journal, 32 (2001), 242–54 Taylor, E. G. R., The Mathematical Practitioners of Hanoverian England, 1714–1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966) —The Mathematical Practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967) Thomson, Thomas, History of the Royal Society, from its Institution to the End of the Eighteenth Century (London: Baldwin, 1812) Tipton, Charles M., Exercise Physiology: People and Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Tomlinson, Charles, A Rudimentary Treatise on Warming and Ventilation: Being a Concise Exposition of the General Principles of the Art of Warming and Ventilating Domestic and Public Buildings, Mines, Lighthouses, Ships &c. (London: John Weale Architectural Library, 1850) Torlais, Jean,Un Rochelais grand-maître de la franc-maçonnerie et physicien au XVIIIe siècle: Le Révérend J.-T. Désaguliers (La Rochelle: F. Pijollet, 1937) —L’Abbé Nollet, 1700–1770, et la physique expérimentale au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Université de Paris, 1959) Turner, A. J., ‘Julien Le Roy’s Improved Horizontal Sundial’, Antiquarian Horology, 17 (1988), 463–6 Twombly, David J., ‘Newtonian Schemes: An Unknown Poetic Satire from 1728’, British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 28 (2005), 251–72 Tyrrell, Mary, The Man who Flattened the Earth: Maupertuis and the Sciences of the Enlightenment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002) Uglow, Jenny, Hogarth: A Life and a World (London: Faber & Faber, 1997) van Reijn, Johan, ‘John Theophilus Desaguliers, 1683–1983’, Thoth, 5 (1983), 167–204 Venn, John, Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Biographical List of all Known Students,

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Internet Sources

Limited Access Websites Burney Collection of 17th and 18th Century Newspapers http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/news/newspdigproj/burney/index.html Early English Books Online (EEBO) http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home Eighteenth Century Collection Online (ECCO) http://gale.cengage.co.uk/product-highlights/history/eighteenth-century-collectionsonline.aspx Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/findhelprestype/news/newspdigproj/database/index.html Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com Oxford English Dictionary http://www.oed.com

Free Access Websites Anderson’s Institution, Glasgow http://www.gashe.ac.uk:443/isaar/C0798.html Annals of Dunfermline http://www.electricscotland.com/history/dunfermline/chap8part3.htm Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, August 1730 http://tinyurl.com/cw4vge Church of England Clergy Database http://www.theclergydatabase.org.uk In Memoriam: Les Membres de l’Académie des sciences depuis sa création (en 1666) http://tinyurl.com/dkjp95 Letters to J. T. Desaguliers: Extracts from the Outbooks of the Duke of Chandos http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~ucypanp/desaguliersletters.htm Masonic History of Strong Man Lodge No. 45 http://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/masonic_lodge.html http://www.philbrick2255.org.uk/pdf/strongman.pdf Masonry with a Message and a Mission http://internet.lodge.org.uk/library/research/hull-lecture.PDF

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Newton Project http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk Office Holders in the Household of Frederick Prince of Wales 1729–51 http://www.history.ac.uk/office/fred.html Office Holders in Modern Britain – Court Officers 1660–1837 http://tinyurl.com/mpu88n Pile Drivers Past and Present http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/sphaera/index.htm?issue10/articl4 Reigate Priory http://reigatepriorymuseum.org.uk/priory.html Robert Boyle http://www.bbk.ac.uk/boyle Royal Society Biographies of Past Fellows http://royalsociety.org/Catalogues Royal Society Copley Medal Winners 1799–1731 http://tinyurl.com/yb9wfs6 Royal Society: Crane Court http://royalsociety.org/about-us/history/crane-court Royal Society: History of the Royal Society http://royalsociety.org/History-of-the-Royal-Society Some of John Hunter’s Patients http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2312184/ The Centre for Research into Freemasonry: Masonic Bibliography http://tinyurl.com/c27zqc The Centre for Research into Freemasonry: The Working Papers of Andrew Prescott http://tinyurl.com/dfq6vz The Church of Great Witley and its History http://www.greatwitleychurch.org.uk The Church of St Lawrence, Stanmore and its History http://www.little-stanmore.org Thomas Wright of Derby www.imaginingstaffordshire.org.uk/shug/documents/SHUGIMST8Wright.pdf

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Index

References to illustrations are in bold. * indicates 127 people who were Fellows of the Royal Society. † indicates 85 men known to have been Freemasons. Ackworth, Sir Jacob (c.1668–1749), surveyor to the navy 145 African Company, The 172 † Albemarle, 2nd Earl of (1702–54), army officer 220 * Algarotti, Francesco (1712–64), writer 69, 70, 241, 242 Alingham, William (d.1710), mathematician 227–8 Allen, Ralph (1693–1764), entrepreneur of Bath 43, 70, 133, 178 American colonies 7, 36, 63, 87, 98, 133, 194, 204, 235, 246–7 † Anderson, James (c.1679–1739), clergyman and writer 5, 85–7, 89–94, 103–4, 107–8, 124, 178, 207, 278 * Anderson, John (1726–96), lecturer 290 anti-masonic propaganda 93–7, 99–100, 199 *† Arbuthnot, John (1667–1735), physician 162 *† Ashmole, Elias (1617–92), antiquary 81, 83 Aubigny, Duke of Lennox, Charles Aubigny, France 106–7, 279

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Aurora Borealis 65, 161 automatons 50, 123 * Baddam, Benjamin (c.1693–1740), printer 36 Barba, Alvaro Alonso (1569–1662), priest and metallurgist 174–5, 287 Barclay, David, instrument maker 44, 232 Barker, Dr., metallurgist? 174–5 Barton, Catherine 293 Bath 42–4, 50, 70, 88, 102–3, 133, 164, 209–11, 237, 241, 259, 275, 279, 282 Baxter, Dr G., chaplain at Cannons 165 Beaumont, Sir George 144 Bedford Coffee House 36, 38–40, 179, 237–40 * Beighton, Henry (1687–1743), surveyor 72, 127, 129–30, 134–5, 191, 193 * Bélidor, Bernard Forest de (1698–1761), hydraulic engineer 133, 136, 191 Bielfeld, Baron Jacob Friedrich von (1717– 70), correspondent 39, 40, 269, 289 Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School, Sutton Coldfield 17–18, 153, 225–6, 266, 294 † Blackerby, Nathaniel 292 Blackwood, Mary (c.1723–50) 244, 296 Bordeaux, Academy of Science 80, 107, 197–8, 291 † Boswell, John (1698–1757), clergyman 184 Boutin, Pierre, author 207–8 Bowyer, William, millers’ representative 137

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328 Index * Boyle, Robert (1627–91), experimental philosopher 27–8, 57, 59, 63, 149, 198, 238, 267 Brace, John Thurloe 178, 208–9, 255–8, 292 * Bradley, Richard (c.1688–1732), horticulturalist 117, 144, 163–4, 280, 287 Bridger, Richard, instrument maker 268 Bridgham, Norfolk 49 Briscoe Pamphlet, The 94–5 Broughton, Mick, clergyman and correspondent 107, 220 * Brouncker, William, Viscount (1620–84) 57 Brydges, Cassandra, Duchess of Chandos (1670–1735) 156, 161–2, 215 † Brydges, Henry, Marquis of Carnarvon (later 2nd Duke of Chandos) (1708–71) 109, 162, 169, 176 Brydges, Henry, Rev. Dr (d.1728) 162–3, 169 * Brydges, James, Lord Carnarvon and 1st Duke of Chandos (1674–1744) 5, 156, 161, 178, 215, 285–6 building and garden works 131, 134, 143, 156, 158, 162, 164 see also Cannons business interests 136, 138, 140, 151, 157, 172–5, 287 Desaguliers his chaplain and minister 20, 49–50, 158, 168–72, 175 family 120, 176, 230, 287 letters to Desaguliers 163–75, 287 mausoleum 159, 160 not a freemason 109, 176 patronage of Desaguliers 5–7, 22, 118, 125, 155, 157, 162 at the Royal Society 156–7, 167 Brydges, John, Marquis of Carnarvon (1703–27) 162, 176, 230 Brydges, Lydia, Duchess of Chandos, née Vanhatten, formerly Davell 156 Brydges, Mary (d.1712), née Lake 156 Brydges, William, of Tyberton, Herefordshire 286

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*† Buccleuch, Francis, 2nd Duke of, (c.1694– 1751) 79–80, 90, 99, 275 Buddle, John (1743–1806), coal viewer 128 * Buffon, Georges-Louis de (1707–85), naturalist and writer 191 * Busby, John, opportunist 149 Butler, Samuel (c.1613–80), poet 51, 207 *† Byrom, John (1692–1763), diarist 78, 209, 221–2, 288 Calley, John, glazier and assistant to Newcomen 126 *† Calvert, Charles, 5th Baron Baltimore (1699–1751), politician and naval officer 241 Cambria’s Complaint, poem 206, 237 Cambridge 23, 25, 36, 42, 167, 176, 183, 209, 227, 246, 283 Campbell, Archibald, Lord Ilay and 3rd Duke of Argyll (1682–1761), politician and amateur scientist 140, 155, 204, 230 Campbell, John, 2nd Duke of Argyll (1680– 1743), Lord Provost of Edinburgh 140 Cannons, near Edgware, Middlesex 6–7, 109, 140, 156–8, 229, 286 building and decoration 158, 160 chimneys and fireplaces 143, 164 demolition and auctions 157, 167, 286 Desaguliers at 140, 161–3, 169, 175 gardens and water features 67, 119, 134, 141, 158–9, 163–5 household 158, 165 music at 158–9, 167, 286 science at 161, 167, 174 visitors’ impressions of 160–2, 174 † Carey, Henry (1687–1743), songwriter 94 Carnarvon, Lord see Brydges, James; Brydges, Henry; Brydges, John *† Carpenter, George, 2nd Baron Killaghy (1657–1732), army officer 72, 79 Carter, Elizabeth (1717–1806), poet and writer 37–8, 72 Cartesian ideas 2–3, 21, 179, 185–6, 193, 205, 249, 272

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Index

* Cartwright, Dame Mary Lucy (1900–98), mathematician 246 Cartwright, Mary Catherine, née Desaguliers see Cotterell Cartwright, Thomas (1736–72), of Aynho 246 Cartwright, William 246 * Cassini, Jacques (1677–1756), astronomer 68–9 Cavendish Square, London 136, 162, 173 Cawthorn, James (1719–61), poet 238 * Chamberlayne, John (1669–1723), translator 201 Chandos, Duke of see Brydges, James Channel Row, Westminster 223, 227–9, 228, 239 Desaguliers’s house 7, 23, 37–8, 83, 120, 137, 139, 146, 177, 209, 225, 227, 230–3, 237, 241 a lecture and demonstration venue 30, 33–4, 66, 132, 222 lodgers in Channel Row 64, 194, 232–5 † Chesterfield, 4th Earl of, (1694–1773), ambassador 47, 89, 103 children’s performances 211–14 † Chocke, Alexander 231 * Cholmondeley, George, 2nd Earl of (c.1666–1733) 72, 154, 231 Cholmondeley, Hugh, 1st Earl (c.1662–1725) 154 Christ Church, Oxford 18–23, 72, 84, 114, 153, 240, 266 Cibber, Colley (1671–1757), actor and theatre manager 178 † Cibber, Theophilus (1703–66), actor 213 *† Clare, Martin (c.1690–1751), mathematician and schoolmaster 223 Clifton, Theodosia, Countess of, (d.1722) 230 Cliveden, mansion of Frederick, Prince of Wales 45, 197 † Cobham, Lord (1675–1749) 42, 102 Cock, Christopher (d.1748), auctioneer 286 Cockburn, John (1652–1729), vicar of Northolt 169

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coffee houses 1, 25–8, 51, 82, 88, 139, 156, 226 see also Bedford; Marine; Prince Eugene’s Head; Slaughter’s Cohen, I. Bernard (1914–2003), science historian 194, 290 cometarium 189 Comiston Aqueduct, near Edinburgh 141, 284 Compton, Henry (1632–1713), Bishop of London 12–13, 19 * Conduitt, John (1688–1737), politician 213–14, 293 Constitutions of the Freemasons 85–7, 86, 85–8, 90–2, 94–5, 101, 103, 108, 207, 244, 292 Copley Medal 65, 78, 271–2 * Copley, Sir Godfrey (c.1653–1709), politician 66, 272 Coram, Thomas (c.1668–1751), philanthropist 239 Cornwallis, Cassandra 230 Cornwallis, Lettice 112 * Coste, Pierre (1668–1747), translator 208 * Cotes, Roger (1682–1716), mathematician 25 Cotterell, Mary Catherine (c.1746–1814), née Desaguliers, formerly Cartwright 244, 246 Cotterell, Sir Stephen 246 Course of Experimental Philosophy 177–200 dedications and prefaces 179–184 French and Dutch versions 181–2 illustrations 189–91, 190, 192, 193 subscribers 183 † Coustos, John (1703–46) 107, 279 Cowley, John, geographer 145–6 Cowley Stream, Uxbridge 136–7 Cowper, Lady Mary (1685–1724), diarist 36–7, 269 Cowper, Miss, child actress 213, 259, 292 * Cowper, William (1665–1723) Lord High Chancellor 49, 269 † Cowper, William (d.1740), Clerk of the Parliaments 231, 269

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330 Index Crane Court, home of the Royal Society 31, 58, 58–9, 64, 71, 75, 78, 226, 272 Cratfield, Suffolk 240 Creake and Sackfield, publishers 35, 119 Curll, Edmund (1683–1747), publisher and bookseller 115–18, 280 Czar Peter of Russia 131 * d’Alembert, Jean Le Rond (1717–1783), mathematician 183 Dalkeith, Duchess of 231 Dalkeith, Earl of see Duke of Buccleuch Dalton, John (1709–63), poet 131 *† Darwin, Erasmus (1731–1801), physician and poet 282 Davell, Lady Lydia see Brydges Davy (or Davies), Samuel, vice-principal of Hart Hall 206, 291 Dawson, Paul, student 34–5, 119 *† de la Faye, Charles 231 de la Faye, Madame 231 Defoe, Daniel (c.1660–1731), writer 160 deism / deists 3, 110–11, 201, 214 † Demainbray, Stephen (1710–82), lecturer 50, 52–3, 232, 243 Desaguliers, Anne (1748–1801) see Shuttleworth Desaguliers, Elizabeth 295 Desaguliers, Elizabeth (b. & d.1727) 230–1 Desaguliers, Frederick (1749–75) 244, 246–7, 297 Desaguliers, Henry or Henri 11, 264 Desaguliers, J. H., author 294 Desaguliers, Jacques (b.1610) 10–11 Desaguliers, Jean (1644–99) 11–16, 30, 87, 109, 247, 264–5 Desaguliers, Joana, (b. c.1741), foundling 239 Desaguliers, Joanna (1722–5)) 230–1, 235 Desaguliers, Joanna (c.1686–1753), née Pudsey 23, 166, 225–6, 230–2, 239, 241 Desaguliers, John Isaac (b. & d.1719) 230 *† Desaguliers, John Theophilus (1683–1744) passim

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advertisements for lectures 28–32, 34–5, 38–9, 43, 46 in Bath 42, 70, 88, 102–3, 209–10, 237 birth and baptism 13–15 at Bishop Vesey’s Grammar School 17–18 in Cambridge 42 at Cannons 161–3 correspondence from Duke of Chandos 163–75 Course of Experimental Philosophy 177–200 death and burial 237–8 Dissertation concerning Electricity 195–9 early education 15 ecclesiastical career and religious views 19–20, 22, 33, 48–50, 106, 111, 157–8, 168–9, 200–1, 214 in Edinburgh 140–1, 100–2 family 226, 230–2, 235 in France 104–7 and freemasonry 83–111 gout 43, 74–6, 138, 166, 220, 235–7 and heating and ventilation 142–5, 284 home in Channel Row 227–30 lectures before George I 33, 48, 65–6 likened to a wizard 37, 51, 207, 211, 223 marriage 225–6 move to London 25, 28 at Oxford University 18–23 patrons 153–6 poetry 203–11 portraits xv, 215, 216–18 and the Royal Society 59–79 at the Royal Society 59–79 and steam engines 18, 67, 79, 107, 125–32, 130, 138, 153, 157, 167, 191, 282 translations 113–23 visits to Netherlands 46–8, 75, 103, 173, 181, 270 and water supply 134–41 and Westminster Bridge 146–8 Desaguliers, John Theophilus (1715–16) 226 Desaguliers, John Theophilus jr. (1718–51),

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Index

clergyman 72, 184, 213, 230–1, 235, 239–41 Desaguliers, Marguerite (1640–1722), née Thomas de la Chapelle 12–17, 231 Desaguliers, Mary Catherine (c.1746–1814) see Cotterell Desaguliers, Sara, aunt 231, 264–5 Desaguliers, Sarah Jane (1724–6) 230–1 *† Desaguliers, Thomas (1721–80), army officer 7, 51, 72, 101–3, 213, 230–1, 235, 239, 241–6, 296–7 Descartes, René (1596–1650), mathematician and philosopher 2–3, 179, 185, 272 Desrochers, Etienne Jehandier (1668–1741), engraver xvi, 215, 293 Dickinson, Henry D. (1870–1952), historian of technology 128–9, 199 Dodwell, Mr and Mrs 245 Donnelly, Dominick, hydraulic engineer 134 du Bois, Isabelle, cousin 230 du Bois, Nicolas (1665–1735), architect 117 * du Fay, Charles (1698–1739), experimental philosopher 79, 133, 196, 198–9 Dudley, Rev. 245 Duprat, Pierre, Protestant minister 12, 15, 265 Edgeworth, Maria (1768–1849), educationalist 199 Edinburgh 20, 53, 100–1, 140–1 Edwards, William, potter of Monmouth 135 electricity 7, 32, 38, 59, 64–5, 72, 79, 195–9, 271 empiricism 180, 247 * Fahrenheit, Daniel (1686–1736), physicist 72 Farquharson, James, secretary to Duke of Chandos 170, 287 Faudrié, Moïse, clergyman 13 Ferguson Astronomical Clock 53, 54 * Ferguson, James (1710–76), instrument maker and lecturer 50, 53–5 Fermor family 213

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fireworks 44–5, 114, 169, 219, 232, 244, 247 * Flamsteed, John (1646–1719), astronomer 27, 64 Fleetwood, William (1656–1723), Bishop of Ely 49 Foley, Lord, ironmaster of Witley Court 160 *† Folkes, Martin (1690–1754), natural philosopher 66, 67, 78, 91, 93, 178–9, 215, 239 *† Franklin, Benjamin (1706–90), writer, experimental philosopher and politician 53–5, 194, 198, 235 *† Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales (1707–51) 5, 43, 45–6, 50–1, 100, 102, 176, 179, 197, 215, 241, 279 freemasons 2, 5, 47, 51, 67, 82–109, 115, 133, 176, 188, 213–14, 220–1, 223, 230, 234, 244, 269, 276–7, 287, 289, 295 Freind, Dr Robert (c.1666–1751), headmaster 169 French steam engines 132–3 Frye, Thomas (1712–62), artist 215, 217 Gauger, Nicolas (1680–1730), writer on chimneys 64, 115–16, 142, 154 Desaguliers’s translation: Fires Improv’d 64, 115–17, 142–3, 154 Gawthorpe Hall, Lancashire 225, 246, 264, 294 *† Geekie, Alexander, surgeon 235, 295 Ghirardo (or Ghiraldo), violinist 167 Gibbons, Grinling (1648–1721), woodcarver 158 Gibson, Edmund (c.1669–1748), Bishop of London 240 † Gordon, George, mathematician 107, 139, 233–4 Gormogons 93–4 *† Graham, George (c.1673–1751), watchmaker 40, 54, 67, 78, 189, 200, 233, 269 Grand Lodge and its Grand Masters, Deputy Grand Master and Grand Wardens 1–2, 7,

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332 Index 29, 57, 66, 72, 78, 81–99, 101–9, 163, 176, 213, 237, 239, 269, 275, 279, 292 † Grano, John (c.1692-c1748), trumpeter 219 * Gravesande, Willem Jakob Storm ’s (1688– 1742), natural philosopher 22, 38, 46, 62, 63, 186, 196 works on Newtonian physics and their translations 119–22, 182, 184, 191, 194, 240, 281 * Gray, Stephen (c.1666–1736), experimental philosopher 64–5, 195–8, 233, 293 Great Witley Church, Worcestershire 160, 286 Greenwood, Isaac (1702–45), Harvard professor 38, 194, 234–5 * Gregory, David (1659–1708), mathematician 20–2, 25, 118 Griff, Warwickshire 18, 129, 130, 282 Grundy, John (c.1696–1748), land surveyor 79–80, 178 Guernsey 13, 15, 75, 231, 265, 276 Guiton, Jean (1585–1654), mayor of La Rochelle 10–11 † Hadley, Benjamin 103 Hague, The 46–7, 103, 174 * Hales, Stephen (1677–1761), clergyman and natural philosopher 4, 51, 71, 142, 144, 178, 191, 242 Halket, Sir Peter, Provost of Dunfermline 101 * Halley, Edmund (1656–1742), astronomer 2, 16, 22, 58–9, 67, 71, 148, 206, 238 Hampton Court 33, 37, 48, 65, 137 Handel, George Frideric (1685–1759), composer 6, 158–9, 219, 244, 286 *† Hare, Henry, 3rd Baron Coleraine (1693– 1749), antiquary 72 * Harris, John (c.1666–1719), scientific writer 27, 68, 131, 267, 273 Hart Hall, Oxford 21–3, 28, 114, 124, 129, 206–7, 225–6, 266, 291 Haskins, Joshua, inventor 132 * Hauksbee, Francis (c.1660–1713),

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instrument maker and lecturer 29, 32, 59, 65, 72, 195, 198, 226–7 Hauksbee, Francis, the younger (1688–1763), lecturer 31, 75–6, 274 Hawksbee, Mary 226 Heilbron, J.L. (b.1934), science historian 198–9, 274 * Herbert, Henry, 9th Earl of Pembroke (c.1689–1750), commissioner for Westminster Bridge 147, 178, 215, 220 † Hervey, Lord John (1696–1743), writer and courtier 102, 214, 215, 241 *† Hill, Thomas (c.1683–1758), poet and public servant 106, 213 * Hodgson, James (1672–1755), mathematician 27, 148 † Hogarth, William (1697–1764), artist 94, 214 Gormogons 93 The Hervey Conversation Piece 214–18 Illustrations to Hudibras 51, 270 The Indian Emperor or the Conquest of Mexico 213–14 Mrs Desaguliers 244, 296 The Sleeping Congregation 214 Holland see Netherlands Hollis, Thomas (1659–1731), merchant 234 † Holzendorf, Charles, secretary 47, 103 * Hooke, Robert (1635–1703), natural philosopher 58 † Horsey, Samuel (d. c.1738), manager 138, 172, 188, 287, 289 Hôtel de Bussy, Paris 104, 106–7, 133, 291 Houdini, Harry (1874–1926), escapologist 188, 289 Houghton Hall 104 House of Commons, ventilation 143–5 House of Lords, ventilation 143 Hudibras 51, 207, 270 Hudson, Dr., clergyman 171–2 Huguenots 1, 8, 10, 12–13, 15–16, 48, 52, 87, 92, 97, 107–8, 133, 146, 148, 153, 207, 225, 231–2, 238, 265, 296

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*† Hunter, John (1728–93), physician 245, 297 * Hunter, William (1718–83), physician 36, 245, 269 * Huygens, Christiaan (1629–95), mathematician 180, 288 Hysing, Hans (1678–1753), artist 215, 216 Ilay, Lord see Campbell, Archibald Innys, W., bookseller 178 Irwin, Lady Anne, lady-in-waiting 45 Islington 16–17, 135, 187 Islington, French School 16, 28–30, 253 Johnson, Maurice (1688–1755), antiquary and lawyer 79, 275 Johnson, Samuel (1704–84), lexicographer 293 Johnson, Samuel (c.1690–1773), dancing master and playwright 293 Johnson, William (1715–74), colonial officer 194 Jones, Richard, ‘Gun Jones’, inventor 132, 282, 284 Kay-Shuttleworth, James Phillips (1804–77) 246 * Keill, John (1671–1721), mathematician and Newtonian lecturer 2, 20–3, 25, 31–2, 34–5, 59, 63, 70, 119–22, 157, 161–2, 180, 265 Kew 45–6, 50–1, 76, 100, 107, 243 * King George I (1660–1727) 33, 49, 63, 65, 156, 158, 176, 178–9 * King George II (1683–1760) 33, 45, 100, 102, 158, 169, 178–9, 203, 205–6, 244, 292 * King George III (1738–1820) 7, 53, 242–3 † King, Erasmus (d.1760), lecturer 50–2, 241–2 Kinsale (naval ship) 145 Krighout, Jacobus, natural philosopher and translator 181

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333

† La Chapelle, Vincent, cook and writer 103 La Rochelle, France 6, 9–13, 14, 19, 30, 114, 225, 231, 264 † Labelye, Charles (c.1705–81), engineer 107, 133–4, 146–8, 183, 220, 234, 279 Ladies’ Diary Prize Ænigma 126–8 Lake, Mary see Brydges † Lamball, Jacob, carpenter and masonic Grand Warden 108 * Leibniz, Gottfried (1646–1716), mathematician and philosopher 2, 22, 70, 121, 156, 272, 288 Leigh, Dr Theophilus 173, 287 *† Lennox, Charles, 2nd Duke of Richmond and Duke of Aubigny (1701–50) 91, 99, 104, 105, 106–7, 110, 213, 220–1, 239, 279, 292 Lennox, Lady Caroline (1723–74) 213, 292 Lichfield, Leonard (d.1744), printer 114–15 Lippe, Countess de 231 Lisbon, Portugal 107 Little Tower Street Academy 31, 35–6, 241 * Lobb, Theophilus (1678–1763), physician 235–7 * Locke, John (1632–1704), philosopher 180, 288 Lofft, Capel(1751–1824), poet 199 London Bridge Waterworks 135, 139 * Long, Roger (1680–1770), astronomer and sphere maker 72, 167 Longman, Thomas (1699–1755), bookseller and publisher 178 *† Lorraine, Francis, Duke of (1708–65) 47, 103–4 Lorraine, Leopold, Duke of 233 Lortie, André, Protestant minister 265 * Lowthorp, John (1659–1724), librarian and engineer 134, 161, 282, 286 Macclesfield, 1st Earl of see Parker *† Machin, John (c.1686–1751), secretary to Royal Society 76, 188 Machine de Marly 104, 136, 191 Macky, John (d.1726), writer 160

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334 Index * Maclaurin, Colin (1698–1746), mathematician 183 Macro, Captain Thomas, soldier and antiquary 210–11, 292 Madrid, Spain 88, 91, 107, 133, 234, 279 * Mairan, d’Ortous de (1678–1771), physicist 68, 273 Maisonneuve, Jacques de, spice merchant 48 Malpas, Lord 154, 231 Manby, Richard, bookseller 178 * Manfredi, Eustachio (1674–1739), mathematician 69–70 Mansel, Elizabeth 208, 257–8 Maria Theresa of Austria, Duchess of Lorraine (1717–80) 104 Marine Coffee House 27 Mariotte, Edmé (1620–84), French physicist 61, 119, 141 Desaguliers’s translation: Treatise of Hydrostaticks 118–19, 134, 155 Marlborough, Duke of 52, 90, 154, 156, 176 * Marsigli, Count Luigi Ferdinando (1658– 1730), scholar and soldier 70 Masonic Charity 36, 97–8, 109, 276 Masonic Lodges see also Grand Lodge Aberdeen, Scotland 87 Appletree Tavern, Covent Garden 84 Au Louis d’Argent, Paris 106 Aubigny Lodge, France 106–7, 279 Bear and Harrow, Butcher’s Row 94, 107 Bear Inn, Bath 102–3 Bedford Head, Covent Garden 66 Cardigan Head, Charing Cross 295 Crown Alehouse, Drury Lane 84 Devil Tavern, Temple Bar 109 Duke of Chandos Arms, Edgworth 109 early American Lodges 98 French Lodges in London 53, 87, 92, 107, 279 Golden Spikes, Hampstead 99 Goose and Gridiron, St Paul’s Churchyard 83, 108 Hand and Appletree, Little Queen Street 94

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Hôtel de Bussy, Paris 104–6, 133 Lisbon Lodges 107 Madrid Lodge 107, 133, 234 Maid’s Head Tavern, Norwich 66, 93 Mary’s Chapel Lodge, Edinburgh 100–1, 141, 278 Occasional Lodge at Houghton Hall 104 Occasional Lodge at Kew 51, 100 Occasional Lodge at Thames Ditton 107, 220 Occasional Lodge at the Hague 103 Old King’s Arms Lodge 280 Pine’s list of 88, 107 Quatuor Coronati Lodge 275 Queen’s Head Tavern, Bath 88, 102, 184 Rotterdam, early lodge in 103 Rummer and Grapes, or Horn Tavern, Westminster, or Lodge No. 4 (now Royal Somerset House and Inverness Lodge) 83–4, 106–7, 227, 230–1, 269, 276 Rummer Tavern, Bristol 103, Strong Man Lodge, City of London 188 Swan Tavern, Long Acre 221 University Lodge, Butcher’s Row 107 Masonic procedure 83, 88–9, 92–3, 95, 101 * Mather, Cotton (1663–1728), Puritan writer 63, 234 * Maupertuis, Pierre-Louis de (1698–1759), mathematician 273 McCulloch, Kenneth, instrument maker 53, 55 Mears, William, bookseller 35, 119–22 * Menzicoff, Prince Alexander de 61 Middleton, Conyers (1683–1750), clergyman 215 † Misaubin, John (1673–1734), physician and freemason 213, 292 * Montagu, Edward, 1st Earl of Sandwich 175 *† Montagu, John, 2nd Duke of (1690–1749) 85, 86, 89–90, 107–8, 110, 178, 213, 220, 239 *† Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat (1689– 1755) 106–7, 279, 290

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335

*† Moray, Robert (c.1608–73), politician 57, 82 Morley, George (1598–1684), Bishop of Winchester 13 Morphew, John, bookseller 114–15 * Mortimer, Cromwell (c.1693–1752), secretary to Royal Society 73, 75–6 Muller, John (1699–1784), professor of fortification and artillery 243 Murray, James (1690–1764), ‘Lord Tullibardin’, 2nd Duke of Atholl 289 Murray, William (1689–1746), Marquis of Tullibardin, Jacobite 289 * Musschenbroek, Petrus van (1692–1761), scientist 46, 181–2, 198 Mutchell, Aaron, pipe and pot maker 135 Mynde, James (c.1707–71), engraver 191, 193

70, 110–11, 118–19, 155, 175, 181, 183, 193–4, 234, 241, 273 Principia and Opticks 1–2, 20, 27, 58, 60–1, 67, 180, 185, 195, 197, 206–7 Newton, Richard (1676–1753), educationalist 22, 207, 240 Newtonian System, The, poem by Desaguliers 6, 32, 154, 178, 203–6, 230 Satirical response to 206–7 Modern French response to 207–8 Niblett, David, coppersmith 148, 164 Nichols, John (1745–1826) writer and publisher 5, 214 Nicholson, John, publisher 114–15 Nieuwentyt, Bernard (1654–1718), theologian and philosopher 200, 208 * Nollet, Abbé Jean Antoine (1700–70), clergyman and physicist 38, 196

† Nash, Richard (Beau Nash) (1674–1761), socialite 42, 102 Neau, Lewis, watchmaker 295 Netherlands 2, 46–8, 63, 103, 119, 173, 181–2, 191, 196, 264–5, 270, 295 New River Company 136, 139 *† Newcastle, Duke of (Thomas PelhamHolles) (1693–1768) 104 Newcomen steam engine 18, 129, 130, 132, 137–40, 153, 157, 233, 283 Newcomen, Thomas (1663–1729), inventor of steam engine 126–8, 284 Newdigate, Sir Richard (1644–1710), landowner 282 Newsham, Richard, inventor of fire engine 133 * Newton, Isaac (1642–1727), natural philosopher and mathematician 1–4, 7, 21–2, 57–61, 64–7, 72, 74, 79, 109, 122, 154, 163, 166, 178, 213, 230, 263, 272, 293 Newtonian ideas and Newtonianism 1–4, 7, 20–2, 27, 31–2, 46, 50, 55, 63, 68–70, 77–8, 110, 161, 180, 185–7, 200, 204–5, 247, 286, 288 Newtonians 2, 20–2, 25, 38, 43, 61, 63,

† Oliver, George (1782–1867), masonic writer 108 * Oliver, William (1695–1764), physician 43 Orreries 45, 53, 55, 189, 233, 269 Osborn, John, bookseller 178 Ozanam, Jacques (1690–1717), French writer on mathematics and fortifications Desaguliers’s translations 113–15, 153

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*† Paisley, Lord, James Hamilton (1686– 1744) 92, 110 * Papin, Denis (1647–1712), inventor 126 Parent, Antoine (1666–1716), mathematician 283 *† Parker, Thomas, 1st Earl of Macclesfield, (1667–1732), Lord High Chancellor 122, 230 † Parsons, Humphrey (c.1676–1741), alderman and brewer 219, 293 patents 126, 128, 148–50, 233 Paulson, Ronald (b.1930), Hogarth scholar 214 † Payne, George (1685–1757) 29, 84–5, 88–9, 108, 253 Payne, Thomas (1689–1744), clergyman 84

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336 Index Pelham, Peter (c.1695–1751), engraver 215 Pelling, John (b.1670), clergyman 19–20, 266 * Pemberton, Henry (1694–1771), mathematician 194 Pembroke, 9th Earl see Herbert Pembroke, Countess of 239 * Pepusch, Johann Christoph (1667–1752), musician 6, 158 * Perceval, John, 1st Earl of Egmont (1683–1748), diarist 36, 98, 77, 278 Perkins, Daniel, clergyman 171–2, 238 Peterborough Gentlemen’s Society 80 Peters, Francis, legal steward to Duke of Chandos 170, 172, 287 Pezenas, L’Esprit (1692–1776), Jesuit astronomer and translator 181, 288 † Pine, John (1690–1756), engraver 88, 107 Pitcairn, Archibald (1652–1713), physician 118 planetarium 7, 34, 40, 41, 43, 45, 71–2, 189, 269 † Pope, Alexander (1688–1744), poet 79, 116, 161, 208 Portugal 107, 124, 279 Price, John, architect 158 Price, Joshua (c.1672–1722), glass enameller 158 * Price, Richard (1723–91), politician 150 Prichard, Samuel, masonic exposer 95, 108 * Priestley, Joseph (1733–1804), scientist and dissenter 198 Prince Eugene’s Head Coffee House Lodge 103 * Prince William IV of Orange (1711–51) 44, 71, 103 * Prince William, later Duke of Cumberland (1721–65) 43, 210, 213, 292 Pringle, John, physician 187, 289 Pudsey, Anne 225, 231, 294 Pudsey, George, of Yarnton 225 Pudsey, Joanna see Desaguliers Pudsey, Jone (Joan or Jane) 226

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Pudsey, Sir George, Recorder of Oxford 225 Pudsey, William 225–6, 231 Queen Anne (1665–1714) 5, 21, 25, 156, 176, 229 Queen Caroline (Caroline of Ansbach) (1683–1737) 33, 45–6, 76, 100, 178, 203–4, 206 Queen Charlotte (1744–1818) 243 Queen’s Head Tavern, Bath 42, 88, 102 *† Rainsford, Charles (1728–1809), army officer 243–4, 296 Ramsay, Allan (1684–1758), poet 101–2, 124 Ramsay, Allan (1713–84), artist 296 Reid, Thomas (1710–96), philosopher 150, 285 Richardson, Jonathan, the elder (1667–1745), portrait painter 215, 218 Richmond, 2nd Duke of see Lennox, Charles Richmond, Duchess of 213, 231 Rizzetti, Giovanni (1675–1751), natural philosopher 69 Rotterdam 46–7, 103 † Roubiliac, Louis Francois (1702–62), sculptor 107 Rowley, John (c.1668–1728), instrument maker 186, 189, 233 Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris 2, 61, 68, 79, 119, 123, 150 Royal Society, London 1, 4–7, 26–8, 46, 55, 58, 78, 109–10, 125–6, 167, 191, 193, 199, 221, 234–7, 246, 274, 293 approves CEP 177, 179 Desaguliers’s work for 60–78, 92, 113, 132, 135, 138, 143–5, 161, 187, 189, 207, 235, 237, 266–7 early days of 57–9, 81–2 Journal Book Copy 60, 272 letter from Desaguliers 73 Philosophical Transactions of 17, 57, 113, 178, 182, 191, 195, 282 and Thomas Desaguliers 241–2, 244

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Ruffhead, Owen (c.1723–69), biographer 208 Rummer and Grapes Tavern, Channel Row 83–4, 227 Rummer Tavern, Bristol 103 *† Rutty, William (1687–1730), physician 178 Salkeld, Henry, physician and Jacobite 221–2 Sanders (or Saunders), William, schoolmaster 17–18, 225 * Sarmento, Jacob de Castro (1692–1762), physician and writer 43 Saumarez, Henry de, inventor 75 Savery steam engine 126, 129, 131–2, 137, 282 * Savery, Thomas (1650–1715), inventor of steam engine 126–9 Savoy Chapel 238, 295–6 † Sayer, Anthony (c.1672–1742) 84, 98, 108, 276 Scaddon, R., engraver 215, 217 † Scarlet, Edward, optician 30, 167, 287 Schaw, William (c.1714–57), physician 72 Scheutzer, John Gaspar (1702–29), secretary 69, 74, 274 † Segalas, Israel, gunsmith 92 *† Senex, John (1648–1740), publisher and map maker 115, 117–22, 124, 177–8 Senex, Mary, book- and map-seller 122, 178 Sewell, George (c.1687–1726), physician 118 Shovel, Sir Cloudsley (1650–1707), Admiral 244 Shuttleworth, Anne (1748–1801), née Desaguliers 244, 246 Shuttleworth family 225, 246, 264, 294 Shuttleworth, Lord (1948– ), Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire 246, 294 * Shuttleworth, Robert (1744–1816), of Gawthorpe Hall 246 Silburghe, Baron 173 Simmons, Elizabeth, widow of house builder 222–3 Simpson, William, clergyman 226, 231

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337

Slaughter’s Coffee House 42, 74 * Sloane, Sir Hans (1660–1753), physician and collector 66, 69, 71, 74, 76, 78–9, 178, 194, 274 smallpox 118, 176, 235 Smith, Mrs Amanda, governess 43, 210, 258, 292 * Smith, Robert (c.1689–1768), mathematician and writer 182–3, 288 * Somerset, Edward, 2nd Marquis of Worcester (d.1667), inventor 126–8, 131, 282 Sophonisba, a play 211, 212, 213, 259 Sorocold, George (c.1668–1738), hydraulic engineer 135 † Sorrell, Francis 91 Sorrell, Mrs 231 Spalding Gentlemen’s Society 79–80, 275 *† St Albans, 1st Duke of (1670–1726) 102 St Andrew’s Church, Holborn 226 St Anne’s Church, Soho 30, 239 *† St John, Henry, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678–1751), politician 220 St Katherine’s Collegiate Church, near Tower of London 49 St Lawrence Church (Whitchurch), Little Stanmore 49, 158–9, 159, 163, 168–72, 175, 232, 238, 286–87 St Margaret’s Church, Westminster 17, 101, 227, 230–1, 227, 238 St Mary’s Church, Bridgham, Norfolk 49 St Mary’s Church, Cratfield, Suffolk 240 St Paul’s Cathedral 67, 266 St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden 84, 238 St Paul’s Church, Shadwell 226 St Peter’s Church, Little Warley, Essex 49, 240 *† Stanhope, Charles (1673–1760), politician 220 † Stanhope, John 103 Steele, Sir Richard (1672–1729), writer 34–6, 101, 116–17, 215 * Stirling, James (1692–1770), mathematician 36 strong men 187–8

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338 Index *† Stuart, Alexander (c.1673–1742), physician 187, 226, 236, 289 *† Stukeley, William (1687–1765), antiquary and writer 79–80, 236 Swallow Street Church 15–16, 86–7 Swift, Jonathan (1667–1745), writer 205, 227 Switzer, Stephen (1682–1745), gardener and hydraulic engineer 135 Talman, William (1650–1719), architect 158, 229 *† Taylor, Brook (1685–1731), mathematician 61, 178 Taylor, John (1703–72), oculist 42, 209 † Taylor, Joseph 230 Taylor, Will, publisher 118–20, 177 † Theobald, Lewis (1688–1744), playwright 99, 278 Thomas de la Chapelle, Jean 265 Thomas de la Chapelle, Marguerite see Desaguliers, Marguerite * Thompson, Peter (1698–1770), book collector 36 Thomson, James (1700–48), poet 36, 45, 211 *† Thornhill, James (1676–1734), artist 94, 214 Tilney, Lord, of Wanstead House 134 * Tilson, George (c.1672–1738), secretary of state 47 Tirion, Isaak (1705–65), publisher 48, 182 Tookey, James, engraver 215, 216 Topham, Thomas (c.1710–49), strong man 187–88 * Triewald, Martin (1691–1747), Swedish engineer 38, 75, 129, 191, 196–7 Tullibardin, Marquis of see Murray 187, 289 turnips, growth of 17, 266 * Ure, Andrew (1778–1857), industrialist 195 Vanbrugh Castle 211, 213, 292 Vanbrugh, Charles (1720–54) 211 Vanbrugh, John (1664–1726), architect 211

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Vandergucht family, engravers 189–90, 289 Vauban (1633–1707) French military engineer 114 Vaucanson, Jacques de (1709–82), automaton maker 50, 123 Vauloüé, James, watchmaker and inventor of pile driver 148 Vayringe, Phillipe (1684–1745), watchmaker and lecturer 233 vis-viva controversy 70, 182–3, 189, 200, 288 *† Voltaire (1694–1778), writer and philosopher 2, 69, 108, 191, 193–4, 273 Vream, William, instrument maker 32, 36, 63–4, 115, 132, 143, 148, 164, 268 † Waldegrave, James, 1st Earl (1684–1741) 106 Walls, William 101 * Walpole, Horace (Horatio) (1717–97), writer 104, 178, 214 † Walpole, Sir Robert (1676–1745), Prime Minister 5, 100, 104, 214, 233 Watkins, Colonel, Master of Household at Cannons 165 *† Watt, James (1736–1819), inventor 128 Watts, Thomas (d.1742), schoolmaster 31, 35–6 Webb, John Richmond (1667–1724), army officer 114, 153–4 † Webber, Bob 107, 220–1 Westminster Bridge 7, 37, 107, 125, 133, 146–8, 183, 220, 228, 228, 234, 239 Westminster Infirmary 98, 236 Westminster School 31, 52, 169, 176, 232–3, 240–1, 258, 296 † Wharton, Philip, Duke of (1698–1731) 85–6, 86, 90–3, 163, 178 Whattley, Kembel, carpenter 145 * Wheler, Granville (1701–70), experimental philosopher 65, 196–8 * Whiston, William (1667–1752), natural

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philosopher and clergyman 25, 31, 59, 120, 189, 227 Wilkins, Francis Willoughby (c.1690–1711) 18–19, 153, 266 * Wilkins, John (1614–72), theologian and natural philosopher 57 Wilkins, John (d.1725), mine proprietor 6, 18–22, 125, 129, 153, 157, 294 Williams, Zachariah (c.1670–1755), experimental philosopher 222, 293 Willoughby, Cassandra see Brydges, Cassandra, Duchess of Chandos * Willoughby, Francis (1635–72), naturalist 161 * Wilson, Benjamin (c.1721–88), painter and scientist 55, 271 Woodward, T., bookseller 119–22 Worcester, 2nd Marquis of see Somerset, Edward

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339

Worster, Benjamin (d.1726), schoolmaster 31, 35–6 * Wray, Daniel (1701–83), antiquarian 51, 270 *† Wren, Sir Christopher (1632–1723), architect 57, 82, 108, 143 † Wright, Thomas, of Durham (1711–86), astronomer and gardener 37–8, 72, 269 Yarborough, Miss 213 York Buildings Company 136–40, 157, 172, 175, 287, 289 York Buildings Dragons, pamphlet 138–40, 233, 283 York Buildings engine 135, 138, 173, 283 * Yorke, Philip, 1st Earl of Hardwick (1690– 1764) 51 Younger, Mrs, actress 99

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