Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/169

 

(1). Denis Papin (p. 83), after leaving France, lived for some time in London, and was made F.R.S., in 1681.

(2). Abraham De Moivre (pp. 83-87), was born at Vitry in 1667, and was completing a first-rate academic education in 1685, when the Revocation Edict came out, and he was imprisoned in a monastery. He was set at liberty in r688, and came to London as an exile. He began his refugee life as a teacher of mathematics, but he soon rose to be a chosen associate of Halley and Sir Isaac Newton, and was made F.R.S. in 1697. He is the author of “The Doctrine of Chances,” and similar works, upon which modern Life Assurance Tables of Rates have been founded. He died in 1754, in his 88th year.

The complete title of his “Miscellanea Analytica,” is as follows:— Miscellanea Analytica de Seriebus et Quadraturis — accessere varia: considerationes de methodis comparationum, combinationum et differentiarum, solutiones difficiliorum aliquot problematum ad sortem spectantium, itcmque constructiones faciles orbium planetarum, unâ cum determinatione maximarum et minimarum mutationum qua; in motibus corporum ccelestium occurrunt. Londini, Excudebant J. Tonson et J. Watts, 1730.

The Dedication, which is “spectatissimo viro Martino Folkes armigero,” mentions that the principal contents of the book had been submitted to, and approved by Newton (14th January 1723), Professor D. Sanderson and Rev. D. Colson; and that the theorem concerning the section of an angle had been read to the Royal Society, 15th Nov. 1722.

(3). Rev. David Durand (pp. 87, 88), son of Pasteur Jean Durand of Sommiéres, was a refugee in Holland till 1711, when he removed to London.

A valued associate of learned men, and an industrious and succesful author, David Durand was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He occupied himself much with Pliny’s Natural History, editing and annotating selected portions on painting, and on gold and silver, as well as the Preface to that curious and voluminous work, which Pliny addressed to the Emperor Titus. The Philosophical Writings of Cicero were his next study in the classical field, as appears from Haag’s list of his publications. He gave to the world an elaborate History of the Sixteenth Century, and two volumes in continuation of Rapin’s History of England. He also published biographical works on Mahomet, Lucilio Vanini, and the French Pastor Ostervald. To simplify the acquisition of the F'rench and English languages by learners, was an object to which he devoted much attention; but to give the names of the books which he wrote for that end is unnecessary. He lived to an honourable old age; he died in 1763, aged 83.

(4.) Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers (pp. 89-94), son of Pasteur Jean Desaguliers, by Marguerite Thomas La Chapelle (born 1683, died 1744), was a celebrated lecturer on natural philosophy, having kings, ambassadors, nobles, and senators among his pupils. His third son, Lieut.-General Thomas Desaguliers, left a daughter, Anne, wife of Robert Shuttleworth. Anne left sons, of whom the second was Robert Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe, whose heiress, Janet, is the wife of Sir J. P. Kay Shuttleworth, Bart. I should have mentioned above that Desaguliers became F.R.S. in 1714, and D.C.L. of Oxford in 1718.

(5.) Pierre Des Maizeaux (pp. 94-96), son of Pasteur Louis Des Maizeaux and Madelaine Dumonteil, was educated in Switzerland, where his parents were refugees, and on completing his course at the Academy of Geneva, came to London in 1699. He was tutor to several young men of rank. Through recommending himself to St Evremond, he obtained a general