to emigrate to Guernsey. If the tradition be true that the infant boy was brought away from France concealed in a barrel, the reason must have been that the authorities had decided to detain him with a view to his being educated as a Roman Catholic. In the Rev. William Douglas’s Album there is the following autograph:—
Quiconque Espere au Dieu Vivant Jamais Ne Perira.
Pour la continuation de vostre amitié j’ay escrit
cecy Le 2030 April 1688.
DESAGULIERS.
In the same Album this memorandum occurs:—
“Jevous supplie très-humblemcnt d’avoir la bonté de s’informer de Mademlle. Desaguliers, aupres de Monsr. Troussaye, Marchant à Londres.
de ma part.”
In 1692 the family removed to England, and in that year the father was ordained by the Bishop of London (Dr Henry Compton), receiving from him both deacon’s and priest’s orders on the same day, the 28th November. He was then offered and accepted the pastorate of the Swallow Street French Church. This he resigned, and founded an academy in London. His object probably included a plan for educating his son publicly, and yet under his own eye.
Of young Desaguliers the English Cyclopaedia says, “His early education he owed to the instructions of his father, who appears to have been a very respectable scholar and sound divine.” When his school education was completed, he acted as his father’s assistant in the academy, which, on the reverend exile’s lamented death, was discontinued. This is the statement of the Biographia Britannica. But John Theophilus Desaguliers can have discharged the duties of an usher for only a very short time. The family Bible says that the father died on the 6th February 1699, aged fifty-four years and six months. And even if we suppose that, according to the new style, the year was 1700, the son had not then completed his seventeenth year. We now call the young man by his surname, Desaguliers. He matriculated as a student of Christ Church in the University of Oxford, where he took the degree of B.A. His chosen profession was the ministry of the Church of England, and he received deacon’s orders from Bishop Compton on June 14th, 1710.
There was an ingenious German residing and lecturing in Oxford during and before Desaguliers’ university career, of whom the young graduate writes:— “Dr. John Keill was the first who publicly taught natural philosophy by experiment in a mathematical manner. He laid down very simple propositions, which he proved by experiments, and from those he deduced others more compound, which he still confirmed by experiments; till he had instructed his auditors in the laws of motion, principles of hydrostatics and optics, and some of the chief propositions of Sir Isaac Newton concerning light and colours. He began these discourses in Oxford about the year 1704 or 1705, and introduced the love of the Newtonian philosophy.”
Dr. Keill consented to accompany the expatriated Protestants of the Palatinate to their emigration field in New England, and went with them as their treasurer in 1710. Desaguliers removed to Hart Hall (one of the numerous colleges of Oxford), and took Dr Keill’s place. He adopted his predecessor’s method, adding mechanics to the course — “which ever since that time I have endeavoured to improve, by the addition of new propositions and experiments, and by altering and changing my machines, as I found things might be made more intelligible to such of my auditors as were not acquainted with mathematics, or more satisfactory to such as were.” These lectures were triumphantly successful.
On the 3d of May 1712 he took the degree of M.A. His fame as a lecturer evoked very pressing invitations from London, which he was the more willing to accept, having on the 14th October 1712 in the Church of Shadwell, been united in marriage to Joanna, daughter of William Pudsey, Esq. He removed to the metropolis in 1713, having his residence and lecture-room in Channel Row, Westminster. On the 29th July 1714 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. Sir Isaac Newton admired his style of performing experiments, and the Royal Society appointed him their demonstrator with a fixed salary. Newton’s theory on light
