Andrew Michael Ramsay

[3][4] As a youth Ramsay was attracted to the mysticism of quietism as practised in the circle of George Garden at Rosehearty, centred on the teachings of Antoinette Bourignon in a community along the lines of a similar one in Rijnsburg led by Pierre Poiret, where people from different religious persuasions and social castes lived together.

He remained in his household for several years and became steady friends with the Marquis de Fénelon, a young relative of the archbishop and an ardent pupil of Mme Guyon.

Although Ramsay himself was converted to Catholicism by Fénelon, conversion was not deemed an option by Mme Guyon, who strongly advised the community around her to stick to the principles of their proper faith while meditating on Pure Love.

Association with Fénelon, who as preceptor of the grandsons of Louis XIV had retained huge influence at Court, caused Ramsay to be remarked by the nobility, in particular by the Comte de Sassenage, whose son he tutored from 1718 till 1722.

By then Ramsay was already well acquainted with Cardinal Fleury, who after the death of the Regent Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1723) was to be the power of state behind Louis XV.

During this period he was an active member of the Club de l'Entresol, an early modern think tank in Paris, in the company of such luminaries as Rene-Louis Argenson, Lord Bolingbroke and Montesquieu.

The influential Mémoires de Trévoux published several of his tracts – in 1732, his introduction to the mathematical work of Edmund Stone – and remained favourable throughout to his philosophical contributions.

This work supported the restoration of James Francis Edward Stuart to the British throne, and the removal of the House of Commons in favour of an aristocratic senate advising the king.

A number of its key ideas are repeated both in the Life of Fénelon and The Travels of Cyrus, although Ramsay was later to embrace the necessity of the king's rule through Parliament in his Plan of Education for a Young Prince (1732).

The Travels of Cyrus not only proved to be one of the best selling works of the eighteenth century, Ramsay also promulgated the view that Britain should create a world trading empire and become the 'Capital of the Universe'.

Ramsay returned to France in 1730 and, following the death of the Duc de Sully, passed into the service of the Comte d'Évreux (the original patron of the Elysée Palace), a prominent member of the family of la Tour d'Auvergne and Bouillon which had ties of marriage with the Jacobite Court, through Charlotte, the elder sister of Queen Clementina (Maria Klementyna Sobieska), and bonds of loyal friendship to the circle around Fénelon, through the Cardinal de Bouillon.

Ramsay lived until 1743 under the benevolent protection of the house of Bouillon, in St. Germain-en Laye, writing and studying, but above all preparing his magnum opus: Philosophical Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion, edited after his death (1748–49) by his wife and friends.

In 1736 Ramsay pronounced in Paris a public speech which defined the four qualities to become a French Freemason: philanthropy, moral values, secrecy, and empathy for sciences and fine arts.