Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

208 DESAGULIERS
DES
of service he did many things for the benefit
of the Craft - among others, initiating that
scheme of cfiarity which was subsequently
developed in what is now known in the
Grand Lodge of England as the Fund of Benevolence
.
After this, Dr . Desaguliers passed over to
the Continent, and resided for a few years in
Holland. In 1731 he was at The Hague, and
presided as Worshipful Master of a Lodge
organized under a special dispensation for the
purpose of initiating and passing the Duke of
Lorraine, who was subsequently Grand Duke
of Tuscany, and then Emperor of Germany .
The Duke was, during the same year, made a
Master Mason in England .
On his return to England, Desaguliers was
considered from his position in Masonry, as
the most fitting person to confer the degrees
on the Prince of Wales, who was accordingly
entered, passed, and raised in an occasional.
Lodge, held on two occasions at
Kew, over which Dr . Desaguliers presided as
Master .
Dr . Desaguliers was very attentive to his
Masonic duties, and punctual in his attendance
on the communications of the Grand
Lodge. His last recorded appearance by
name is on the 8th of February, 1742, but a
few years before his death .
Of Desaguliers' Masonic and personal character,
Dr . Oliver gives, from tradition, the following
description :
"There were many traits in his character
that redound to his immortal praise . He was
a grave man in private life, almost approaching
to austerity ; but he could relax in the private
recesses of a Tyled Lodge, and in company
with brothers and fellows, where the ties
of social intercourse are not particularly
stringent . He considered the proceedings of
the Lodge as strictly confidential ; and being
persuaded that his brothers by initiation
actually occupied the same position as
brothers by blood, he was undiagu~sedly free
and fam iliar in the mutual interchange of unrestrained
courtesy. In the Lodge he was
jocose and free-hearted, sang his song, and had
no objection to his share of the bottle, although
one of the most learned and distin
ished men of his day ." (Revelations of
a quare, p . 10.)
In 1713, Desaguliers had married a daughter
of William Pudsey, Esq., by whom he had
two sons-Alexander, who was a clergyman=
and Thomas who went into the army, and
became a co'onel of artillery and an equerry
to George III.
The latter days of Dr . Desaguliers are said
to have been clouded with sorrow and poverty .
De Feller, in the Biographic Universelle, says
that he became insane, dressing sometimes as
a harlequin, and sometimes as a clown, and
that in one of these fits of insanity he died .
And Cawthorn, in a poem entitled The Vanity
of Human Enjoyments, intimates, in the following
lines, that Desaguliers was in very
necessitous circumstances at the time of his
death :
"How poor, neglected Desaguliers fell!
How he who taught two gracious kings to view
All Boyle ennobled and all Bacon knew,
Died in a cell, without a friend to save,
Without a guinea, and without a grave."
But the accounts of the French biographer
and the English poet are most probably both
apocryphal, or, at least, much exaggerated ;
for Nichols, who knew him personally, and has
given a fine portrait of him in the ninth
volume of his Literary Anecdotes, says that he
died on the 29th of February, 1744, at the
Bedford Coffee House, and was buried in the
Savoy .
To few Masons of the present day, except
to those who have made Freemasonry a subject
of especial study, is the name of Desaguhers
very familiar. But it is well they should
know that to him, perhaps, more than to any
other man, are we indebted for the present
existence of Freemasonry as a living mstitution,
for it was his learning and social position
that gave a standing to the Institution, which
brought to its support noblemen and men of
influence, so that the insignificant assemblage
of four London Lodges at the Apple-Tree
Tavern has expanded into an association
which now overshadows the entire civilized
world . And the moving spirit of all this was
John Theophilus Desaguliers .
Desert . The outer court of a tent in the
Order of Ishmael, or of Esau and Reconciliation
.
Des Etangs, Nicholas Charles. A Masonic
reformer, who was born at Allichamps,
in France, on the 7th of September, 1766, and
died at Paris on the 6th of May, 1847 . He
was initiated, in 1797, into Masonry in the
Lodge 1'Heureuse Rencontre . He subsequently
removed to Paris, where, in 1822 he
became the Master of the Lodge of Trmosophs,
which position he held for nine years .
Thinking that the ceremonies of the Masonic
system in France did not respond to the digmty
of the Institution, but were gradually
being diverted from its original design, he determined
to commence a reform in the recognized
dogmas, legends, and symbols, which he
proposed to present in new forms more in accord
with the manners of the present age .
There was, therefore, very little of conservation
in the system of Des Etangs . It was,
however, adopted for a time by many of the
Parisian Lodges, and Des Etangs was loaded
with honors. His Rite embraced five degrees,
viz ., 1, 2, 3, the Symbolic degrees ; 4,
the Rose Croix rectified ; 5, the Grand Elect
Knight Kadosh . He gave to his system the
title of "Masonry Restored to its True Principles,"
and fully developed it in his work entitled
Veritable Lien des Peuples, which was
first published in 1823 . Des Etangs also published
in 1825 a very able reply to the calumnies
of the Abbt Barruel, under the title of
La Franc-Magonnerie justifee de toute les
calomnies repandues contre elks . In the system
of Des Etangs, the Builder of the Temple
is supposed to symbolize the Good Genius of
Humanity destroyed by Ignorance, False-