Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 10 - Section XIV
XIV. Pasteur Sanxay.
M. Sanxay, pasteur of St. Jean d’Angely, became a refugee in England in 1686, along with his wife and children. There is a copper-plate portrait of him, from a drawing executed when he was nineteen years of age. His father was a merchant at Taillebourg, in Saintonge, where he built a very fine house; and the refugee was the younger of two sons. He was sent for an academic course of humanities to the Jesuits’ College at Bourdeaux, where he won the prize for eloquence; and both the certificate and the handsome volume presented to him were preserved. The Jesuits having set their hearts upon his entering their Society, his father removed him from their college and sent him to London to learn English. He had not been in that city for quite two years, when both his father and his brother died. He returned to France, and went to the Protestant College of Saumur. There he finished his humanities under the famous Professor Tanneguy Le Fevre, and finally took his Degree of Master of Arts, the diploma of which is an heirloom. On the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, he was ordered by the authorities to shut up his church and to desist from preaching. On the apostolic plea that we ought to obey God rather than men, he continued to preach in his church at St. Jean d’Angely. He was arrested, and dragoons were quartered on his house; he himself was conveyed to the prison of La Rochelle, where he was confined for six months. He was released in consequence of an order of the Court, sent through the Duc de Boufflers, Governor of Guienne, requiring M. Sanxay to quit France within fifteen days, on the pain of being sent to the galleys.
M. Sanxay resolved to go to England, and spent his days of grace in disposing of some of his effects, and removing his furniture from St. Jean d’Angely to La Rochelle. At that port, the last day of grace having arrived, he found no ship sailing for England, and had to embark in a ship for Holland. However a providential storm drove them into Plymouth harbour, and he and his wife and three children took a house in that town. In a coffee-house he met Mr. Jonkin, a Cornish squire. The conversation turned upon the Protestant refugees from France, who had come in such numbers as to attract universal notice and commiseration. M. Sanxay gave Mr. Jonkin a faithful narrative of the persecution, and of his own sufferings; and that gentleman said to him that he could give him a house and a good salary, though he could not undertake for his wife and children. The result was that M. Sanxay went to Cornwall as the tutor of Mr. Jonkin’s young family, five sons and a daughter.
Huguenot refugees arrived at Exeter in great numbers. The Bishop of Exeter (Lamplugh) sent for their principal man and asked if a clergyman had come with them. He replied in the negative; but having heard of M. Sanxay, and being informed as to his place of residence in Cornwall, he mentioned him to the Bishop. The refugee pasteur accordingly received a letter from the Episcopal palace, exhorting him to come to Exeter and feed a Huguenot flock that was without a shepherd; the Bishop also offered him the use of one of his churches, and promised to obtain him a pension from the English Government. Such an offer meeting with a suitable response in the pasteur’s heart, Mr. Jonkin not only released him from his engagement, but also sent all his children to board with him in Exeter. The Bishop gave him the church of St. Olave as his place of worship. There M. Sanxay ministered for six or seven years till the day of his death, which was sudden, and suspected to have been occasioned by poison introduced into a cup of coffee by a French spy. He left a daughter, Claudia, whom the Bishop Trelawny adopted, also two sons, Rev. Daniel Sanxay, Rector of Sutton, and James Sanxay, who left on record the information furnished to me. These surviving children are said to have been all born in England, the refugee children having died at very early ages. James Sanxay, on mentioning the refugee pasteur’s death, said, “I was then between three and four years old, so that I cannot remember him.” The Rector of Sutton had a son, and James had a daughter, Claudia. This is all I can glean as to direct descendants; the surname is preserved in the person of a collateral descendant, the Rev. Arthur Henry Sanxay Barwell, M.A., Rector of Clapham, near Worthing.