Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 23 - Rev. Dr. Beaufort
Rev. Dr. Beaufort. — Daniel Augustus Beaufort, born in 1738, was the only son of Daniel Cornelius de Beaufort, Provost of Tuam (see chapter xviii.). He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and ultimately received the degree of LL.D. Dr. Beaufort was during nearly sixty years a beneficed clergyman of the Church of Ireland, having been Rector of Navan, County Meath, and Vicar of Collon, County Louth. His name was widely known as the author of “The Civil and Ecclesiastical Map of Ireland.” He published a long description of this map in a royal quarto volume entitled, “Memoir of a Map of Ireland, illustrating the topography of that kingdom. London, 1792.” Among the subscribers were Rev. Arthur Champagne, Dean of Clonmacnois; Sir Charles Des Voeux, Bart, M.P.; Rev. Francis Despard; Rev. Philip Duval, D.D., Canon of Windsor, F.R.S.; Maximilian Faviere, Esq.; Rev. John Kenny, Vicar-General of Cork; Rev. Francis Kenny; John Ladeveze, Esq.; Rev. Philip Lefanu, D.D., M.R.I. A.; Lieutenant-Colonel Anthony Lefroy, M.R.I.A.; Rev. John Letablcre; Peter Maturin, Esq.; Major John Mercier; Rev. John Vignoles. The map was altogether a new one, introducing innumerable corrections in the longitudes, and in the laying down of the coasts, harbours, and places; scale, six miles to an inch. The author employed two summers in visiting the different counties, particularly the remote parts; and of the fifty-six Round Towers then standing in Ireland, he saw thirty-five. He died in 1821, aged eighty-three, at his vicarage at Collon. An obituary notice appeared in the Gentleman’s Magazine, vol. 91, from which I extract the following particulars and an estimate of his character:—
“Of late years he rebuilt the churches in both of his parishes of Collon and Navan, which edifices remain monuments of his zeal and of his architectural taste. The church of Collon is built on the model of King’s College, Cambridge; it surprises and delights the English traveller, and may well gratify, as it does, the national pride of the sister country. Dr. Beaufort was one of those who first proposed a Royal Irish Academy, and actively assisted in the formation and in the regulation of that Institution, of which he was one of the earliest members. To the establishment and improvements of the Sunday Schools in Dublin, he contributed essentially by his personal exertions and constant attendance; and he was one of the original founders of the admirable Association for the Encouragement of Virtue. He possessed an extraordinary variety of information which was never suffered to lie idle, nor produced for parade; it was circulated in the most liberal and agreeable manner by his conversation, and ever ready and ever useful to his friends and country on all public or private occasions. During his long life he did little for himself, much for others — nothing for money, scarcely anything for fame — much for his country, more for virtue and religion. In disturbed times, and in a country where political and religious dissensions have unhappily prevailed, he was eminently serviceable, combining, as he did, judicious loyalty with the virtues of a Christian and of a Protestant clergyman, and with the talents and manners of an accomplished gentleman. Dr. Beaufort’s peculiarly conciliating politeness increased the power and effect of his benevolence, not only upon the highest but upon the lowest class of his friends, acquaintances, and parishioners. He lived to be an example of uncommon intellectual vigour in advanced age. When he was nearly eighty-three, in the last year of his life, he was occupied in preparing from a large mass of materials an improved edition of the Memoir accompanying his Map. His sight was so acute that he could, at that age, superintend the most delicate revisions of his Map. His grateful parishioners propose to erect a monument to his memory.”