He was a widower; and his sons, having homes of their own, may not have been present when he expired, through not getting a timely summons. But that he received a decent funeral is certain. Nichols’ “Literary Anecdotes” chronicle the following facts:— “That he died in his lodgings in the Bedford Coffee House, Covent Garden, on 29th February 1744 (n.s.), and that he was buried in the Savoy on March 6.”
The Gentleman’s Magazine says, “Died, 29th February 1744, Dr. Desaguliers, a gentleman universally known and esteemed.” His eldest son, Rev. John Theophilus, published the translation of Gravesande’s Mathematical Elements of Natural Philosophy, which he had left ready for the press; he was a beneficed clergyman in Suffolk, and survived only till 1751. The second, John Isaac, died in infancy. And the third, Thomas, was Colonel of the Royal Regiment of Artillery from 1762 to 1771; he became a Major-General in the army, 25th May 1772, and Lieutenant-General on the 29th August 1777; he was also an Equerry to King George III; he died in March 1780, aged fifty-nine. This gallant officer’s wife was Mary, daughter of Job Blackwood, Fsq., of Charlton, Kent, and on the mother’s side a grand-daughter of Sir Cloudesley Shovel. Their second daughter, Anne Desaguliers (born 1748, died 1801), was married to Robert Shuttleworth, Esq.; and from her the French Bible (printed in 1669), with the entries by the Pasteur and by his son, Dr. Desaguliers, has descended to the family of Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe Hall. To the handsome volumes of the Chetham Society on that family, my readers have been indebted for the extracts from the fly-leaves of the Bible. The second son of Robert and Anne was Robert Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe (born 1784, died 1816). His heiress, Janet, was married in 1842 to J. P. Kay, Esq., afterwards Sir James Phillips Kay Shuttleworth, Baronet (so created 22d December 1849), who died in 1877, in his seventy-third year. [The elder daughter of Major-General Desaguliers was Mary Catherine, Lady Cotterel (died 27th July 1814); her first husband, to whom she was married on 6th September 1765, was Thomas Cartwright, Esq., of Aynhoe (born 1736, died 1772), whose family have produced many Members of Parliament for Northamptonshire, namely (exclusive of her husband’s ancestors) her only son Ralph William Cartwright, M.P., and her great-grandson Fairfax William Cartwright, M.P. Her eldest grandson was Sir Thomas Cartwright, G.C.H., father of William Cornwallis Cartwright of Aynhoe, and of Thomas Robert Brook Leslie-Melville Cartwright of Melvilie House, Fife.]
IV. Peter Des Maizeaux, F.R.S.
Materials for a memoir of Pierre Des Maizeaux are to be found in the ten volumes of manuscripts, entitled, “Letters to Monsieur Des Maizeaux,” belonging to the Bibliotheca Birchiana, in the British Museum. The first eight volumes contain his literary and miscellaneous correspondence, autograph letters arranged according to the alphabetical order of the writers’ surnames. The tenth volume contains all his loose papers, chiefly notes jotted from books at the time of reading them. In the ninth volume are the letters from his father and mother to him, and certificates and documents of a personal nature.
Pierre Des Maizeaux was born in 1673. His father was Mr. Louis Des Maizeaux, Pasteur of Paillat in Auvergne; his mother’s maiden name was Madelaine Dumonteil. The family became refugees in Switzerland, the father settling as the pastor of Avenche in the Canton of Berne. Pierre obtained a certificate from Berne on the 9th May 1695, stating that in that town he had been for five years a teacher of youth, and a student of divinity of great promise. This he presented to the Professors at Geneva, under whose tuition he remained for nearly four years, his farewell certificate being dated 3d April 1699.
Peter Des Maizeaux, on removing from Geneva, made his way to London, and there he spent the remainder of his life. He did not proceed to ordination to the ministry, but sought and obtained employment as a tutor. He had several pupils of high rank, of whom the most noted and the most attentive was George Parker, whose father rose to be Lord Chancellor, and Earl of Macclesfield, and who himself succeeded to that Earldom in 1732, and was distinguished as a scholar. Des Maizeaux is chiefly known and remembered as one of those men of letters, some orthodox, some heterodox, who clustered round the Seigneur de St Evremond, and were virtually a literary club. “On his arrival in England,” says Weiss, “and admission to the intimacy of St. Evremond, Des Maizeaux persuaded the illustrious old man to revise with him the originals of his works, in order to put an end to the unprincipled use made of his name by authors and publishers. He gathered from
