No. 58. — 1907.] JOAN GIDEON LOTEN, F.R.S. 



247 



naturalized,* learning to use the English language like his 

 mother tongue, and marrying an English wife. This last fact 

 Mr. van Houten has mentioned above ; and it is recorded in 

 the following notice, which I copy from the Gentleman' [s 

 Magazine for 1765 (vol. xxx. p. 346) :— 



July 4. John Gideon Loten of New Burlington-str. Esq; — ■ 

 to Miss Coates, neice [sic] to the countess of Northington. 



Taking the above with what Mr. van Houten tells us, it 

 seems that Loten was married at Banstead in Surrey (the 

 residence, apparently, of his bride's widowed mother) to Let- 

 tic e Cotes,t whose father, the Rev. Dr. Digby Cotes, J was 

 connected with the peerage ; and further, that Loten had 

 taken a house in New Burlington Street, in the heart of 

 London, as a permanent residence. That this was the case is 

 evident from the following notice of the death of Loten' s widow 

 forty-five years later§ (Gent. Mag. Ixxx. (1810) 672) :— 



June 11. In New Burlington-street, the widow of John Gideon 

 Loten, esq. formerly Governor of Ceylon, and grand-daughter 

 to William Lord Digby. 



That this marriage was childless is certain ; but of Loten's 

 domestic life I know almost nothing. A somewhat cursory 



* Notice how, in the authorities I quote, his name is always given in 

 English form. I cannot help thinking that Loten had some reason 

 other than his love of science that led him to reside in England. The 

 relations of the English and Dutch in the East were at this period 

 somewhat strained (see Willson's Ledger and Sword ii. 140-3) ; and 

 Loten's pro -English likings could hardly have tended to increase the 

 affection of the N. E. I. Co. towards him. 



f Not Letitia, as Mr. van Houten has it. Lettice was a Digby family 

 name. 



J In the notice of his death, 11th January 1745, in the Gent. Mag. xv. 

 52, he is thus described: — " Rev. Dr Digby Coates, rector of Coleshill, 

 Warwickshire, prebendary of Litchfield, and principal of Magdalen 

 Hall, Oxford." For further particulars regarding him, others of the 

 Cotes (or Coates) family, their connection with the Digby family, and 

 Coleshill, see Foster's Alumni Oxonienses, Early Series i. 332, Later 

 Series i. 301; Gent. Mag. lxiii. (1793) 283-4; Dugdale's Antiquities of 

 Warwickshire (1733), 1006-20. 



§ And just over a hundred years after Loten's birth. When the 

 second Mrs. Loten was born, I have not discovered. 



L 36-07 



