Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 11 - Section I
Chapter XI.
CROMMELIN, PORTAL, COURTAULD, AND THE INDUSTRIAL REFUGEES.
I. Crommelin.
“History and chronology,” says an eloquent Irish writer, “more frequently record those events that tend to the glory rather than to the prosperity of nations. Thus in the various tables of remarkable occurrences, the establishment of our great staple, the Linen Manufacture, is omitted The individual who, in establishing the Linen Manufacture in Ireland, contributed so much to its prosperity, deserves to be memorized amongst our most illustrious countrymen, whether statesmen, legislators, or warriors. The name of this person, now so little known, was Louis Crommelin.”
The Crommelins were a Protestant family in the Province of Picardy.[1] Their residence, and the seat of their manufactures, which brought them great wealth, was Armandcourt, near St. Quentin. They became refugees in Holland. Their founder was Armand Crommelin of Courtray, the father of five sons, Peter of Cambray (died 1609), Joshua of Haarlem (whose six sons left no male descendants), Adrien of Rouen (whose last male representative was a grandson Francis, son of James), Martin (who died in England, unmarried), and John, the ancestor of the British refugees. He not only kept up the family name, but also brought the blood of the noblesse into the family, by his marriage. He married, on the 17th Dec. 1595, Marie, daughter of Jacques de Semery, Seigneur de Camas; the Princess Catharine of France was present at the marriage, and the royal castle of Follembray was granted for the ceremony. John Crommelin had fifteen children, of whom two daughters and three sons survived. The daughters were Mary, wife of Peter Lombard of London, and Catherine, wife of Abraham Desdeuxvilles of London. The sons were Peter, John, and Adrien. Peter Crommelin (born 1596, died about 1680) married Marie Desormeaux of Cambray, and left seven children, one of whom, Samuel, by his wife, Madelaine Testart, had twenty-two or twenty-three children, the eldest daughter among these being named Anne. John Crommelin (born 19th March 1603) was the direct ancestor of our refugees. We pass from him in the meantime, to mention his younger brother Adrien, who married at Charenton, on the 11th August 1641, Susanne Doublet. He had two daughters, Marie and Jeanne; the former was married (in 1667 or 1668) to Jean Pigou of Amiens; she with her husband and family lived in that town till the Revocation, when they took refuge in England. Anselm Frederick Pigou, their son, married, in 1709, his cousin Catherine, daughter of John Camin. Jeanne Crommelin was married at Paris, about 1669, to Francis Ammonnet; this couple escaped into England with great wealth in 1681; the husband died, and their wealth was dissipated partly through the speculative mania of her second husband, James Dufay. We now return to John Crommelin.
John Crommelin married, in 1623, Rachel, daughter of Guilleaume Tacquelet of Castalet, and had fifteen children,[2] of whom I now mention only Anne, and Louis, the eldest son. Anne (born 1636) was married to Isaac Cousin of Meaux; both became refugees at Lisburn. Louis (born 1625, died 1669) married Marie, daughter of Jean Mettayer, one of the pasteurs of Haucourt, and their son was the great Louis Crommelin, the refugee, of whom at present we note only the fact, that he married his cousin, already named as one of the twenty-two or twenty-three brothers and sisters, Anne Crommelin of Haarlem. [One of Anne’s brothers, named Alexander, after a sojourn at Hamburg, settled in Lisburn. And a sister, Jeanne, was married there to Louis Mangin.]
Other children of John Crommelin and Rachel Tacquelet are worthy of some notice. William (born 25th April 1645) settled in Ireland. Jacob (born 26th May 1642) married Elizabeth Testart in 1663; he had a daughter, Marianne (who married James Courtonne of Alencon, refugee in London), and a son, Daniel, who in 1693 became a tutor in England to Mr. Vernon’s son, and having remained with him for three or four years, settled in Ireland without a profession. Daniel (born 28th December 1647), who married Anne Testart in 1674, was a refugee, first in England, finally in New York. Mary (born 5th March 1627) was married to Daniel de la Chambre of Haarlem, from whom descended John de la Chambre, refugee in London, the husband of a Miss Laurent. Catherine (born 20th June 1632) was married to Francis De Coninck of Antwerp; her daughter, Catherine, was the wife of John Camin of Rouen, and the mother of Captain Camin in the British army, and of Mrs Anselm Pigou (above-mentioned); her son, Frederick Coninck, married, in England, Mary Camin, daughter of Louis Camin of Abbeville. Rachel (born 21st July 1634) became, in 1656, the second wife of Pierre Testard, merchant in Saint-Quentin; her daughter, Susan, was married in 1686 to Daniel Robethon, a French refugee; and another daughter, Anne, was married in 1681 to Jean Benezet. [P. Testard married a third wife, Anne Baulier, and her daughter Marianne was married, first, to Francois Ribot (drowned in the passage from London to Rotterdam); secondly, to Monsieur de Rapin.]
Louis Crommelin, the distinguished refugee, had two sisters, Mary and Jane. Mary was married, first, to Isaac Testard of Blois, a refugee in London, and, secondly, to Major de la Cherois. Jane was married to Abraham Gillot of Alencon; this couple at the Revocation took refuge in Amsterdam, and ultimately settled at Lisburn. The brother of Louis was Samuel Louis Crommelin; he with Judith Truffet his wife resided at Saint-Quentin till the Revocation, when they retired to Amsterdam. He, being left a widower, came to Lisburn with his sons, and there married a second wife, Louise Adelaide, sister of Major-General Belcastel. The eldest son of Samuel-Louis married his first cousin, daughter of the above-named Abraham Gillot, and the second son, Daniel, married also a first cousin, daughter of the above-named Isaac Testard.
The patrimony of Louis Crommelin (as of each of his brothers) was £10,000. In my memoir of the Earl of Galway, I have narrated the establishment of the linen-trade in Ireland by Act of Parliament, under his Excellency’s government. The next step was to appoint a competent national manager and overseer. King William III. invited from Holland Louis Crommelin, and the Royal invitation was accepted; this was in the year 1698. Crommelin’s children were a daughter and a son. His son, also named Louis, was at this date only fifteen years of age, but evidently was well endowed with hereditary ability. The father and son came over to Ireland to select a place of settlement, and he chose as his headquarters the small town in the county of Antrim, then called Lisnagarvey, but afterwards Lisburn. He obtained a Royal Patent, dated 14th February 1699 (i.e., 1700 new style), as to which a Report was presented to the English House of Commons by the Commissioners of Trade, 26th May 1700:—
“His Majesty having referred to our consideration some proposals made by Mr Crommelin, a French refugee, long experienced in the linen manufacture, for the more effectual establishment and improvement of that manufacture in Ireland, we humbly offered our opinion that his Majesty would be pleased to allow £800 per annum for ten years, to pay the interest at eight per cent. of £10,000 advanced by said Crommelin and his friends for the setting on foot of that manufacture; the said £800 to be received and issued out by trustees appointed by his Majesty to inspect the employing of the said £10,000. And his Majesty having been pleased to give directions accordingly, the said Crommelin is lately gone to Ireland in order to put his proposals into execution.”
From the Patent it appears that in addition to the £800 per centage, there was a pension of £200 a-year to Crommelin, £40 annually to each of three assistants, and a salary of £60 for a French minister. A linen-factory was built at Lisburn, at the foot of a bridge which crossed the river Laggan; the water-course remained till the beginning of this century, and the French church is now the court-house of Lisburn.[3] Crommelin “brought from Holland 1000 looms and spinning-wheels of an improved construction, and invited a number of families (in general Huguenot refugees, like himself), who gladly complied, and soon founded quite a colony among themselves.” While Crommelin did his part, King William’s Patent being not formally completed at that Sovereign’s untimely death, was, after two years and a quarter, held to be non-existent. Queen Anne’s government issued a new Patent, which did indeed retain the same grand total of £1180 per annum, but redistributed it so that it might provide the premiums for workmen, enacted in Lord Galway’s Act. By this arrangement, Crommelin’s personal share was reduced to £400 per annum, and the limitation of ten years was extended to the total £1180.
Besides his personal venture, Crommelin also had to devote himself to the National office of Overseer of the Royal Linen Manufacture of Ireland. His formal appointment took place in the end of 1703, after a representation as to his claims by the Irish Parliament. His private affairs he entrusted entirely to his son, that he himself might (to use his own words) “mind the public,” and “continue his care in promoting the good of the kingdom.” That his office under Government gave him a variety of occupation may be gathered from the contents of a book which he published in 1705, “An Essay towards the Improving of the Hempen and Flaxen Manufactures in the Kingdom of Ireland.” This book contained six chapters: I. Preparing ground, sowing, weeding, pulling, watering, and grassing flax. II. Dressing flax. III. Hemp. IV. Spinning and spinning-wheels. V. Preparing yarn and looms. VI. Bleaching utensils and bleaching. In these departments he found prevailing ignorance, and a want of anxiety, patience, perseverance, and zeal among the Irish employés. He had to direct the selection or reclamation of soil for the crop; to instruct them in the choice of seed, and in pulling flax and watering it in season and with judgment; to prevent their drying flax by fire-heat; to watch the reeling of yarn, so that an honest article, both as to quantity and quality, might be supplied to the dealers, &c. He had built a bleachery at Hilden, near Lisburn; so that, after describing to his readers his machinery and processes, he says, “They who are disposed to erect one of these bleacheries, may, with much greater satisfaction, come and view one small bleachery at Lisburn, which may serve as a model.” Crommelin was highly eulogised in the Parliament of Ireland in 1707 and 1709.
In the year 1711 he had to consider that his Patent was about to expire. His thoughts had also a more affecting and disconsolate element in them, arising from the death of his son. Louis Crommelin, jun., died on the ist July 1711, as we learn from his tombstone in the wall of Lisburn churchyard:
Six foot opposite lyes the body of Louis Crommelin, born at
St. Quentin in France, only son to Louis Crommelin and Anne Crommelin,
Director of the Linen Manufactory, who died beloved of all,
aged 28 years, 1 July, 1711.
Luge, Viator!
et, ut ille dum vita manebat,
suspice coelum, despice mundum, respice finem.
Crommelin was obliged to rouse himself from his grief, and to memorialise the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Ormond. He represented the necessity for renewing the Patent. He also petitioned for a pension of £500 a-year to enable him to retain his office of Overseer, because “having lost his only son, who managed all his affairs,” he could not afford to employ another manager of his business, unless he was thus securely provided for. Whether Crommelin’s petition succeeded to its full extent, we are not informed. But one result of it was that, on the 13th October 1711, the Duke of Ormond constituted a Government Board for the Linen Manufacture, and this Board reported favourably as to Crommelin’s public projects. When, in 1716, Lord Galway was again the acting-Viceroy, Warburton, Whitelaw, and Walsh’s History of Dublin informs us, that his Lordship gave all the encouragement in his power to the Trustees of the Linen and Hempen Manufacture, and empowered them to use his name with the Lord Mayor that their hemp and flax seed, lying in the Custom-house, might be deposited in the House of Industry. Lord Galway also gave the Trustees an apartment in Dublin Castle for the transaction of their business. In 1717 a petition was presented to the House of Commons from Louis Crommelin, gentleman, “proposing, upon a suitable encouragement, to set up and carry on the hempen manufacture of sail-cloth, in such part of the kingdom as the House thinks proper.” Louis Crommelin’s petition was successful. The House of Commons referred it to the Committee appointed to inspect the state of the linen manufacture, and on December 10 their Report was to the effect that Louis Crommelin should, under the directions of the Trustees, be employed in making settlements for the manufacture of hempen sail-cloth, and that £1000 a-year, for two years, should be voted to the Trustees for the project. This was done; two manufactories were set up at Rathkeale and Cork, another at Waterford, another at Rathbridge in Kildare. In 1719 duties were imposed to furnish revenues for promoting the linen manufactures in the south, namely, 12d. per lb. on tea, 3d. per lb. on coffee and chocolate. On 8th December 1725 favourable reports were presented to Parliament. After Crommelin’s death the southern manufactures languished, though the north continued to progress. — (Ulster Journal, Vol. IV., p. 207.)
Nothing more is recorded of Louis Crommelin, except the fact of his death in 1727. His daughter, Magdalen, Madame de Bernieres, wife of Captain Jean Antoine de Bernieres, of Alencon, survived him; her son died at Lisburn in July 1711, aged twenty-eight or thirty.
The male line of the Crommelins was kept up by his brother Samuel-Louis, of whose descendants my Chapter on Families will speak. The Ulster Journal mentions a third brother, William Crommelin, who had the linen manufactory at Kilkenny, where he married Miss Butler, “one of the Ormond family,” but his son and heir, Louis, died unmarried; his other child was a daughter, Marianne.
We return to Louis Crommelin’s cousin and brother-in-law, Alexander Crommelin; he married Mademoiselle Madeleine de La Valade, but his son and heir, Charles, died unmarried; his daughter, Madeleine, was the wife of Archdeacon Hutchinson. Alexander’s sister, Jeanne (as already noted), was the wife of Louis Mangin, and probably the mother of a Captain Paul Mangin, whom the Ulster Journal has memorialised by printing a letter from him, addressed thus:—
By Portpatrick.
To Doctor Joshua Pilot,
In the Honble. Colonel Battereau’s Regt,
Inverness,
Scotland.
“Dublin, 28th of June 1746. — I have a nephew named Alexander Crommelin, who served his apprenticeship to a surgeon in Lisburn, in the North of Ireland, and since has been at Edinburgh two years, attending the colleges and hospitals; he arrived from Scotland about four days ago, and was there all the time of the troubles, and attended the wounded. He is a sober youth, and has taken much pains to perfect himself as to surgery and physic. As he designs to enter as a surgeon in the army in time, he would fain begin by being surgeon’s-mate, which he would immediately purchase. I am thinking that he could not be better off than with you, if you wanted such, and would be glad if he was to serve under you; if he can’t have that happiness, I shall be much obliged to you to inquire for one in some other regiment, and to acquaint me how much is desired for it; the price of it is ready to be paid at sight. He was offered one when in Edinburgh, in Brigadier Bleith’s [Blyth’s?] Regt., when the college was sitting, but at that time would not accept of it, till the college was up.”
- ↑ My pedigree may be called the French Refugee Crommelin pedigree. Traced to its remote origin, the family is Dutch, and may be instructively studied in the Genealogie van het geslacht Crommelin, published at Rotterdam in 1879; it contains all the French branches, and has been helpful to me.
- ↑ Jacob (born 26th May 1642), the author of the old pedigree, was the tenth child.
- ↑ Throughout this memoir I am greatly indebted to the article on Lisburn and its Huguenots by Dr Purdon in the Ulster Journal of Archæology.