The Great Fire of London broke out on 2nd September 1666, and continued during four days and four nights. The French Church in Threadneedle Street was destroyed. The Dutch refused to contribute to the building of a new church. The re-building was accomplished by the French congregation alone, by means of collections and subscriptions, amounting to £3300. The new French Church in Threadneedle Street was consecrated on 22nd August 1669, and kept its doors open for public worship and ordinances for about a century and three quarters.
New streets required to be constructed, and the French Church must be pulled down. In April 1840 the city of London bought it; a jury valued the leasehold interest at £2000, and the freehold at 1977, the congregation retaining the carving and the interior fittings. The pasteur, Paul Charles Baup, preached the last sermon within the venerated building in the year 1842. A new church was built in St. Martin’s-le- Grand, and was consecrated by the pasteurs, Francois Martin and W. G. Daugars. on 19th March 1843. A proposal had been made in the consistory that the Bishop of London (Dr. C. J. Blomfield) should be asked to consecrate the new French Church. But a majority decided that the consecration should be conducted according to the ceremonies of the Reformed Church of France, “grounding their opinion (says Mr. Burn) upon the Presbyterian principle,” and considering that “the spirit of freedom and religious liberty, which their fathers had transmitted to them,” were opposed to Episcopal consecration. The pasteurs, in a suitable letter, invited the bishop to be present at their church’s consecration. “His lordship in his reply assured the consistory of his good wishes, and of the pleasure the invitation had given him; but being about to leave London on account of his health, he found it impossible to be present on the occasion personally, though he promised to be so with his prayers.”
V. Denis Papin.[1]
Denis Papin, born at Blois in 1647, was the son of Denis Papin, receiver-general of taxes, and an ancien. He had an uncle, a medical practitioner, Nicolas Papin, whose proficiency in scientific studies occasioned Denis’s resolution to study medicine. He was educated at the Protestant Academy of Angers, and passed for his medical degree in 1669, but owing probably to the hardships to which Huguenots were exposed, he could meet the fees with only a promise to pay. It was to science (not to medicine) that his heart was devoted.[2] In 1671 we find him at Paris, as assistant to Huygens, the experimental philosopher. He was installed as a scientific worker in the French Academy. His experiments were directed to the atmospheric air, its weight, and the power of a vacuum; he printed a pamphlet on those experiments and their results in 1674, under the title of Expériences du vuide. Failing to obtain encouragement from the great Colbert, and feeling acutely his temporal disabilities as a Protestant in France, he emigrated to London in the year 1675.
Through the assistance of the Hon. Robert Boyle, he obtained scientific employment from the Royal Society, and added to his investigations the powers of steam. His remuneration was small, but he was more than consoled by receiving the title of Fellow 6f the Royal Society (F.R.S.) in the year 1681. At this period he invented what is known in English as Papin’s Digester, and in French as la marmite de Papin, a boiler with a safety-valve (the very first safety-valve), through which all indigestible matter was removed from bones, &c, and a mass of digestible food was collected together. Of this invention which came into general use, he published descriptions in 1681 and 1687.
In April 1682, Papin accepted an invitation from the Chevalier Sarotti, founder of the Venetian Academy of Natural Science, and he resided in Venice for about two years. Of this sojourn he gives an account in the Amsterdam edition of “La manière d’amollir les os et de faire cuire toutes sortes de viandes en peu de temps et à peu de frais, avec un description de la machine dont il faut se servir à cet effet.”
The success of this invention, and also his departure for Venice, are recorded in a lively manner by John Evelyn in his diary, thus:—
“1682. 12 April. — I went this afternoone with severall of the Royal Society to a supper, which was all dress’d, both fish and flesh, in Monsieur Papin’s Digestors, by which the hardest bones of beefe itselfe and mutton were made as soft as cheese without water or other liquor, and with lesse than 8 ounces of coales, producing an incredible quantity of gravy; and, for close of all, a jelly made of the bones of beef, the best for clearness and good relish, and the most delicious, that I had ever seene or tasted. We eat pike and other fish bones, and all without impediment; but nothing excelled the pigeons, which tasted just as if bak’d in a pie, all these being
