an Eloge on the far-famed exile was drawn up by Grandjean de Fouchy, and inserted in the “Recueil de l’Academie des Sciences.”
De Moivre received honours, but no emoluments. He earned a precarious support by working out calculations on probabilities at play and on contingencies of various kinds, and he took fees from his employers. He was one of the attractions for an evening’s lounge in the coffee-house; and without doubt many of the eminent frequenters of this place of literary resort commiserated his straitened circumstances, and were glad to furnish him with work suited to his talents and tastes. At the age of eighty-seven he was left almost alone in the world, and was dependent on the fees above-mentioned. He continued in the possession of his faculties almost to the last. During the last month of his life he lost his sight and hearing, and during a visitation of lethargy, he slept his last sleep; thus he passed away in his eighty-eighth year.
The best monument to Abraham De Moivre is the honourable mention made of him by Sir John Leslie, in his dissertation prefixed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The pre-eminent Scottish mathematician testifies that “De Moivre, a French refugee,” was “a man of learning and profound science;” “his analytical discoveries extended his fame, and his good conduct earned him respect.”[1]
II. — Rev. David Durand, F.R.S.
David Durand was born at Sommières in 1680. Though only five years of age at the date of the Revocation, he was educated till the age of fifteen under the eye of his reverend father, and he had been five years in the ministry before his mother’s death, so that he breathed as Huguenot an atmosphere as any of the refugees.
His father, the Pasteur Jean Durand, was a native of Montpellier. His charge was the congregation of Sommières, from whence he retired to Switzerland, and died at Neufchatel in 1695. His widow, who had managed the arduous deed of transplanting the children (four in number), out of France, survived till 1707. She died at Les Brenets, of which place her eldest son, Jean Antoine Durand, was pastor. [David Henry Durand, the son of Jean Antione, must be mentioned, partly as a meritorious scion of the family, and partly that he may not be confounded with his uncle David. [David Henry (born 1731, died 1808) was pastor of the City of London French Church; and his sermons, which were published in 1815, are pronounced to be clear, convincing, and energetic.]
Our David Durand was educated for the French Reformed Ministry. His theological studies were carried on at Basle, and at the age of twenty-two, that is, in 1702, he was admitted to the ministry there. Soon afterwards he was appointed Chaplain of a French Refugee corps in Dutch pay, and followed the regiment to Spain. There, when one day he was taking a walk, a band of peasants waylaid him, seized him as a heretic, and were on the point of putting him to death, having prepared fiendish tortures, when the Duke of Berwick came up and rescued him; but though he gave his life back to him, that Anglo-French Romanist General refused him liberty. Durand was made a prisoner, but managed in course of time to escape from durance, and fled to Geneva. Thence he betook himself to Rotterdam, where the erudite Bayle admitted him to his friendship. In 1711 he came to London where he spent the remainder of his life. He was minister of the French Church, first in Martin’s Lane, and latterly in the Savoy.
A valued associate of learned men, and an industrious and successful author, David Durand was made a Fellow of the Royal Society. He occupied himself much with Pliny’s Natural History and the Philosophical Writings of Cicero. 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 wrote biographies of Mahomet, Lucilio Vanini, and the French Pastor Ostervald. To simplify the acquisition of the French 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 eighty-three.
To the above particulars, selected from Haag’s article, it should be added that Monsieur Durand, after having preached in the Walloon Church of Rotterdam in 1710 for nearly the whole of that year, received an invitation to settle in Amsterdam as pastor of a congregation there. He applied to the consistory for a ministerial
- ↑ There is no known link of the De Moivre family with this century except one in the Gomm Pedigree. Daniel De Moivre, junr., son of the refugee Daniel, married Marianne Jaquin, and left a daughter, Anne De Moivre, who died in 1814. [Marianne, having become a widow, re-married in 1737 with William Gomm, ancestor of Field-Marshal Sir William Maynard Gomm.]
