Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/280

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
264
french protestant exiles.

nated the Gentlemen of the Chapel Royal.[1] Mr. Stephen Crispin, student of Christ Church, Oxford, was sworn into the place of a Gentleman of His Majesty’s “Chappell Royall,” the 13th day of May 1673. “And upon the first day of November 1675, the said Mr. Stephen Crespion was sworn Confessor to his Majesty’s household.” His name appears in the lists of the “Gentlemen of the Chappell” present at the coronation of James II. on 23d April 1685, and of William and Mary on 11th April 1689. Other honours had been bestowed on him; he became a prebendary of Bristol, 3d August 1683; and he had a patent as a sacrist of Westminster Abbey, dated 25th July 1683; and on 16th January 1684 (n.s.) he appears as Chaunter of that Abbey. His sympathy, learned at Oxford, with the party of the Non-Jurors, had been restrained at the Revolution; but it burst forth in 1697, when the Jacobites refused to sign the bond of association in defence of William III. Accordingly, we read, “1697. April 1st, Mr. Daniel Williams was sworn Gentleman of the Chapel Royal in ordinary, and admitted into the full pay of £73 per annum in the place of Mr. Stephen Crespion, whose place became vacant upon his refusal to sign the association.”[2] On the occasion of the first vacancy in the reign of Queen Anne, he was again a Gentleman of the Chapel, by a verbal order from the Bishop of London (Compton), and was sworn into a full place on 8th May 1702. Mr. Crespion did not live to imperil his interests with Anti-Hanoverian scruples; for he died at the age of sixty-two, on the 25th November 1711, and was buried in Westminster Abbey on December 2. He had been twice married.

Dallen.

This surname occurs among the members of the French Church of Norwich as early as 1602, in which year a daughter of Martin Dallen was baptized. The name, Dallain, which appears among refugees naturalized in 1682, is not the same, because its true spelling seems to have been D’Allain. There was a felt-maker in Edinburgh, Thomas Dallin, in 1705, in a factory presided over by a French refugee; the burial of Dallin’s child is in the record of Greyfriars’ Churchyard. It is in the latter form that the name survived. The Annual Register for 1880 notes the death, on 11th November, at the age of forty, of Thomas Francis Dallin, Public Orator of the University of Oxford since 1877, Fellow and Tutor of Queen’s College, and one of the secretaries of the Oxford University Commission.

Delafaye.

The first refugee of this surname was a French pasteur at the epoch of the St. Bartholomew Massacre. Like others of his countrymen, he presented petitions for relief, or employment, addressed to English Christians in the Latin language. The charitable Mr. Robert Nowell has this entry in his account-book, or spending-of-the money;”—

To maister Dallyfayus, a larned frenche preacher, the xvjth of februarye Ao 1573. .......XXs.

Perhaps he returned to France; for Monsieur De la Faye, pasteur of the Church of Paris, sat as Moderator of the National Synod of the French Church assembled at Figeac, on 2d August 1579.

The name occurs among the later refugees. Louis De la Faye and Charles, his son, were naturalized at Westminster on 21st January 1685. Charles Delafaye, Esq., was secretary to the Chief Governors of Ireland in 1715 and 1716. He was after- wards in the public service in England. When the King paid visits to Hanover, he left a board of regents in charge, called "Lords Justices;" Mr. Delafaye was their secretary in 1719 and 1723. On 5th April 1724 he was appointed an Under-Secretary of State, under the Duke of Newcastle; according to Beatson’s Political Index, he was an Under-Secretary of State from 1717 to the death of George I.

Delaune.

The Irish Delaunes seem to have been descendants of the venerable pastor and physician, the refugee in London. Military service in Ireland led to their settlement in that country. A daughter of Richard Boyle, Archbishop of Tuam from 1638 to 1645, was married to Colonel Henry Delaune, and their son, Rev. Michael Delaune, M.A., born in London, became Archdeacon of Dublin on 26th February 1671, and dying on 3d November 1675, was buried in St. Patrick’s Cathedral; his will was

  1. See the Old Cheque-Book of the Chapel Royal, printed for the Camden Society in 1872, under the editorship of Edward F. Rimbault, LL.D. In plain English, the gentlemen were chaplains.
  2. William III. was most tolerant, and did not disturb Crespion in his privileges in Bristol or in Westminster Abbey.