Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 10 - Section VIII
VIII. Rev. Armand de la Chapelle.[1]
Armand Boisbeleau, Seigneur de la Chapelle, was born at Ozillac in 1676, the son of Jean Boisbeleau, Sieur de la Chapelle et d’Ozillac, by his wife, Andrée Le Vallet, widow of Jean Vachon, Sieur de la Berauderie. His father may literally be called venerable, for it appears from the register of Charenton, under the date of his marriage, August 1672, that he was sixty-two years of age. The witnesses of the marriage were his brother, Marc Boisbeleau, Sieur de Montassier, Master of the Falcons (gentilhontmme de la fauconnerie) to the Prince of Condé, and that brother’s son, Marc Boisbeleau, divinity student (afterwards a refugee French pasteur at Amsterdam).
Armand de la Chapelle became a student in the College of Bordeaux. He seems to have lost his father in early boyhood; for it was in the charge of his mother that he came to England as a refugee after the Edict of Revocation. The octogenarian pasteur, Isaac Du Bourdieu, was his grandfather. Under his wing the refugee student studied theology, and made such remarkable progress that at the age of eighteen he was permitted to go forth as a preacher. This was in 1694; the scene of his probationary labours was Ireland, where he remained for two years. In 1696 he returned to England as French pasteur of Wandsworth, and in 1711 he was translated to the charge of the Artillerie French Church of London. Altogether he served the French refugees in England for twenty-nine years with approbation and public reputation. In 1725 he removed to Holland to become the French pastor of the Hague, where he died in 1746 in his seventieth year.
Monsieur de la Chapelle did nothing in the way of authorship in London, except that his name is associated with Michel de la Roche in Literary Journals, which I shall have a future opportunity of describing. In Holland his admiring thoughts seem to have often reverted to England, and he translated two religious books from English into French — namely, in 1728, “Ditton on the Resurrection of Christ,” and, in 1738, “Burnet’s Defence of Natural and Revealed Religion.” It would have been well if he had confined himself to the theological department. But his admiration of “The Tatler” led him to produce a translation of it under the title of “Le Babillard;” and, having a satiric vein, he interpolated an essay of his own composition. This essay, being a veiled attack upon known individuals, was censured by a synod at Rotterdam in 1744, and the author was sentenced to retract the imputations, and to suppress the article. Monsieur de la Chapelle atoned for this indiscretion by preparing and publishing an excellent volume on the necessity for Public Worship. As is well known, the Protestants of France, and notably of Languedoc, had to meet for worship in the open air, and their congregations were named The Churches of the Wilderness (les églises du désert). These congregations were, according to the law of France, illegal and seditious, and accordingly their members often suffered imprisonment and death. The persecuted worshippers were steadfast to their duty, and met all the terrors and threats of the government and of the magistracy with their conscientious demand for liberty to worship God in public assemblies. An anonymous pamphleteer endeavoured to undermine their principles — or rather to diminish the sympathy felt for them — by arguing that public worship is unnecessary for Christians, and that disobedience to the King of France in this matter is therefore indefensible. Our author’s reply was entitled, “La Necessité du Culte Public parmi les Chrétiens etablie et defendue (contre la Lettre de Mr. D.F.L.D.M. sur les assemblées des religionnaires en Languedoc écrite à un gentilhomme protestant de cette province et imprimée en France sous le faux titre de Rotterdam 1745). Par M. Armand de la Chapelle, pasteur de l’église Wallonne de la Haye. La Haye, 1746.” It was translated into Dutch in 1748, and into German in 1749; the German translation reached a third edition.
- ↑ Compiled from Haag’s La France Protestante, second edition.