Towards that rendezvous General Bligh marched on September 8th; he had some skirmishing with French troops on the 9th, but under-rated their numbers. The next morning the French watched our army, which amounted to 6000 men, in the process of re-embarkation, until the rear-guard, numbering 1500, under the command of Major-General Dury, was alone on the shore. These the French attacked, and easily overpowered them, although they made a brave resistance. Dury was shot, and thus died in action on 10th September 1758.
The lamented General was survived by a younger brother, Colonel Theodore Dury, who became a Major-General on 23rd February 1761, and was promoted to be Lieutenant-General on 30th April 1770 along with John Henry Bastide and other Major-Generals. His name is affectionately remembered in the family, but he seems to have left no heirs. Alexander left a son Alexander, an officer in the Grenadier Guards from boyhood; he served in Holland and became Lieutenant-Colonel. He also had a son Alexander, a captain in the Royal Artillery, and another son Francis of the 19th Foot, who was killed in charge of the regimental colours in the American War. Captain Dury, R.A., is the direct ancestor of the present family. His eldest son was Alexander Dury of the 67th Foot, born in April 1820, died in 1843. The younger son (now deceased) was Theodore Henry Dury, Esq., of Bonsai Leys, Derbyshire, formerly of the Madras Army, afterwards of the ioth Hussars, born 3rd October 1822; he had several sons. The eldest, Major Alexander William Dury, born in 1846, late of the 4th King’s Own and 54th Regiments, is temporarily invalided. The youngest, Lieutenant Robert Ashton Theodore Dury, born in 1863, of the Bombay Staff Corps, was killed at the capture of Minhla in Burmah on 17th November 1885; he was the only officer killed, and was at the head of his soldiers.
Chapter XXV.
OFFSPRING OF THE REFUGEES CONNECTED WITH SCIENCE, LAW, THE LEGISLATURE, AND LITERATURE.
Dollond. — Jean Dollond, silk-weaver in Well Street, parish of Stepney, village of Mile End, New Town, near London, appears in the Threadneedle Street register in 1700, as a witness to the baptism of Antoine Cavelier, jun. The sister of the senior Antoine, Susanne Marie Cavelier, was the female witness at that ceremony. She became the wife of Jean Dollond in or before 1704.[1] Their son, Jean, was the celebrated John Dollond, born 10th June 1706. He also became a silk-weaver, and was conscientiously diligent and earnest in his business. Devoting only his leisure hours to study, he became a proficient in mathematics and physics, and in church history and theology, besides attaining to a creditable acquaintance with anatomy and natural history. To assist him in those studies, he courted the learned languages, and mastered Latin and Greek, as well as French, German, and Italian. His industry as a weaver in working hours enabled him to afford a good education to his children. His son, Peter, suggested that he should become an optical instrument maker, and a shop was opened in the name of John Dollond in Vine Court, Spitalfields. Mr. Dollond in course of time devoted himself entirely to the shop, and was thus enabled to enlist his scientific pleasures in the battle of life. He set himself to study the theory of the dispersion of light with a view to the improved construction of telescopes and microscopes. He earned distinction, and is characterised in the Encyclopedia Britannica as “a practical and theoretical optician of the highest celebrity, the discoverer of the laws of the dispersion of light, and the inventor of the achromatic telescope.” As to getting rid of the colours imparted by sunlight to things looked at through a glass lens, Sir Isaac Newton’s experiments had never been completed. Mr. Dollond pursued the investigation. Hitherto every kind of glass had been supposed to be affected alike; but he discovered that a number of different kinds of glass produce a corresponding variety of phenomena. Hence arose his invention of compound object-glasses, which he made according to the theory that the image, afforded by the combined refractions of a convex lens of
- ↑ I observed and noted in the register of Threadneedle Street the baptisms of some of their children, but not of Jean. The reason was, I have grounds for believing, that on the occasion of Jean’s baptism the surname was spelt Dolon.
