There is some confusion with regard to the church preferment which fell in the doctor's way. According to Lysons, he was appointed by the Duke of Chandos to the benefice of Whitchurch-otherwise termed Stanmore Parva-in 1714, but Nichols says he was presented by the same patron, in the same year, to the living of Edgeware.2 It is not easy to reconcile the discrepancy, and the description of a lodge-warranted April 25, 1722-in the Engraved Lists for 1723, 1725, and 1729, viz., The Duke of Chandos's Arms, at Edgeworth, tends to increase rather than diminish the difficulty of the task. In 1718 he accumulated the degrees of bachelor and doctor of Laws, and about the same period was presented—through the influence of the Earl of Sunderland—to a small living in Norfolk, the revenue of which, however, only amounted to £70 per annum. This benefice he afterwards exchanged for a crown living in Essex, to which he was nominated by George II. He was likewise appointed chaplain to Frederick, Prince of Wales, an office which he had already held in the household of the Duke of Chandos, and was destined to fill still later (1738) in Bowles (now the 12th) Regiment of Dragoons. When Channel Row, where he had lived for some years,3 was taken down to make way for the new bridge at Westminster, Dr Desaguliers removed to lodgings over the Great Piazza in Covent Garden, where he carried on his lectures till his death, which took place on February 29, 1744.4 He was buried March 6 in the Chapel Royal of the Savoy. In personal attractions the doctor was singularly deficient, being short and thick-set, his figure ill-shaped, his features irregular, and extremely near-sighted. In the early part of his life he lived very abstemiously, but in his later years was censured for an indulgence in eating to excess, both in the quantity and quality of his diet. The following anecdote is recorded of his respect for the clerical character. Being invited to an illustrious company, one of whom, an officer, addicted to swearing in his discourse, at the period of every oath asked Dr Desaguliers' pardon; the doctor bore this levity for some time with great patience, but at length silenced the swearer with the following rebuke: “Sir, you have taken some pains to render me ridiculous, if possible, by your pointed apologies; now, sir, I am to tell you, that if God Almighty does not hear you, I assure you I will never tell him.”5 He left three sons-Alexander, the eldest, who was bred to the Church and had a living in Norfolk, where he died in 1751; John Theophilus, to whom the doctor bequeathed all that he died possessed of; and Thomas, also named in the testator's will as "being sufficiently provided for "-for a time equerry to George III.—who attained the rank of LieutenantGeneral, and died March 1, 1780, aged seventy-seven. Lieutenant-General Desaguliers served in the Royal Artillery-in which regiment his memory is still fondly cherished as that of one of its brightest ornaments-for a period of 1 The Environs of London, 1800-11, vol. iii., p. 674. 2 Literary Anecdotes, vol. vi., p. 81. 3 It is given as his address in a scarce pamphlet cited by Mr Weld in his "History of the Royal Society," 1848 (vol. i., p. 424), entitled, "A List of the Royal Society of London, with the places of Abode of most of its Members, etc., London, 1718." Cf. ante, p. 279, note 3. 4" London, March 1.-Yesterday died at his lodgings in the Bedford Coffee House in Covent Garden, Dr Desaguliers, a gentleman universally known and esteem'd" (General Evening Post, No. 1620, from Tuesday, February 28, to Thursday, March 1, 1744), 5 Literary Anecdotes, loc. cit. fifty-seven years, during which he was employed on many active and arduous services, including the battle of Fontenoy and the sieges of Louisbourg and Belleisle.1 The last named is the only one of Desaguliers' sons whom we know to have been a Freemason. He was probably a member of the Lodge at the "Horn," and as we learn from the "Constitutions" of 1738, was -like Jacob Lamball-among the "few brethren" by whom the author of that work "was kindly encouraged while the Book was in the Press." 2 In the pamphlet from which I have already quoted,3 Dr Desaguliers is mentioned as being (in 1718) specially learned in natural philosophy, mathematics, geometry, and optics, but the bent of his genius must have been subsequently applied to the science of gunnery, for in the same work which is so eulogistic of the son, we find the father thus referred to, in connection with a visit paid to Woolwich by George III. and his consort during the peace of 1763-71. "It was on this occasion that their Majesties saw many curious firings; among the rest a large iron cannon, fired by a lock like a common gun; a heavy 12-pounder fired twenty-three times a minute, and spunged every time by a new and wonderful contrivance, said to be the invention of Dr Desaguliers, with other astonishing improvements of the like kind." It is possible that the extraordinary prevalence of Masonic lodges in the Royal Artillery, during the last half of the eighteenth century, may have been due, in some degree, to the influence and example of the younger Desaguliers, but considerations of this nature lie beyond the scope of our immediate subject, which is restricted to a brief memoir of his father. The latter days of Dr Desaguliers are said to have been clouded with sorrow and poverty. De Feller, in the "Biographie Universelle," says that he attired himself sometimes as a harlequin, and sometimes as a clown, and that in one of these fits of insanity he died—whilst Cawthorne, in a poem entitled "The Vanity of Human Enjoyments," laments his fate in these lines : permit the weeping muse to tell How poor neglected DESAGULIERS fell! How he who taught two gracious kings to view All Boyle ennobled, and all Bacon knew, Died in a cell, without a friend to save, But as Mackey justly observes,5 the accounts of the French biographer and the English poet are most probably both apocryphal, or, at least, much exaggerated. Desaguliers was present in Grand Lodge on February 8, 1742, and his will-apparently dictated by himself—is dated November 29, 1743.6 He certainly did not die "in a cell," but in the Bedford Coffee House. 1 At the former he had the honour of supporting the gallant General Wolfe, and of the latter Captain Duncan observes: "It was suitable that the man who commanded the siege-train on this occasion, should be one eminent afterwards in the scientific as well as the military world: a Fellow of the Royal Society, as well as a practical soldier: a fit predecessor to the many who have since distinguished the Regiment by their learning-Brigadier Desaguliers" (History of the Royal Regiment of Artillery, vol. i., 1872, p. 228). 2 P. 229. 3 Ante, p. 349, note 3. 4 Duncan, op. cit., vol. i., p. 244. Encyclopædia of Freemasonry, p. 216. Mackey, however, who relies on Nichols (Literary Anecdotes, vol. vi., p. 81), is inaccurate in his statement that the latter was personally acquainted with Desaguliers, Nichols having been born in 1745, whereas Desaguliers died in 1744. Proved March 1, 1744, by his son John Theophilus, the sole executor. His interment in the Savoy also negatives the supposition that he was "without a grave," whilst the terms of his will, which express a desire to "settle what it has pleased God to bless him with, before he departs," are altogether inconsistent with the idea of his having been. reduced to such a state of abject penury, as Cawthorne's poem would lead us to believe. Moreover, passing over John Theophilus, of whose circumstances we know nothing, is it conceivable that either Alexander, the eldest son, then a beneficed clergyman, or Thomas, then a captain in the artillery, would have left their father to starve in his lodgings, and have even grudged the expense of laying him in the grave? These inaccuracies, however, are of slight consequence, as compared with those in which the historians of the Craft have freely indulged. Mackey styles Desaguliers "the Father of Modern Speculative Masonry," and expresses a belief "that to him, perhaps, more than to any other man, are we indebted for the present existence of Freemasonry as a living institution." It was Desaguliers, he considers, "who, by his energy and enthusiasm, infused a spirit of zeal into his contemporaries, which culminated in the Revival of the year 1717." Findel and others express themselves in very similar terms, and to the origin of this hallucination of our literati, which has been already noticed, it will be unnecessary to do more than refer.1 The more the testimonies are multiplied, the stronger is always the conviction, though it frequently happens that the original evidence is of a very slender character, and that writers have only copied one from another, or, what is worse, have added to the original without any new authority. Thus, Dr Oliver, in his "Revelations of a Square," which in one part of his Encyclopædia 2 Mackey describes as "a sort of Masonic romance, detailing in a fictitious form many of the usages of the last centuries, with anecdotes of the principal Masons of that period"—in another, he diligently transcribes from, as affording a description of Desaguliers' Masonic and personal character, derived from "tradition." 3 If time brings new materials to light, if facts and dates confute the historians of the Craft, we may, indeed, lose our history; but it is impossible to adhere to our historians— that is, unless we believe that antiquity consecrates darkness, and that a lie becomes venerable from its age. There is no evidence to justify a belief that Desaguliers took any active part in, or was even initiated into Freemasonry, prior to the year 1719, when, as the narrative of Dr Anderson informs us, he was elected Grand Master, with Anthony Sayer as his Senior Grand Warden. In 1723, or possibly 1722-for the events which occurred about this period are very unsatisfactorily attested-he was appointed Deputy Grand Master by the Duke of Wharton, and reappointed to the same office six months later by the Earl of Dalkeith; also again by Lord Paisley in 1725. According to the Register of Grand Lodge, Desaguliers was a member of the Lodge at the "Horn," Westminster (Original No. 4), in 1725; but his name is not shown as a member of any Lodge in 1723. Still, there can hardly be a doubt that he hailed from the Lodge in question in both of these years. The earliest minute book of the Grand Lodge of England 1 Ante, p. 287. P. 546. P. 216. |