Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 12 - Section XX
Vaslet.
Louis Vaslet seems, according to his gravestone at Fulham, to have come over to England at the epoch of the Revocation, being then in his twentieth year, and a well educated young man. He is described as Gallus gente, Anglus lege atque animo — a Frenchman by birth, but a naturalized and loyal Englishman. He devoted himself to the teaching profession, perhaps as a schoolmaster, but more probably as a private tutor. Many young English gentlemen were educated by refugee tutors, and were not only taught the French language grammatically, but also learned some other branches from text-books composed in French. Mr. Vaslet spent forty-five years in this serviceable work. London was probably his head-quarters, and it seems to have been only a year or two before his death that he became resident at Fulham, his wife and son dying soon after the change of residence. He died a year after his wife, on 12th June 1731, aged sixty-five, and was buried at Fulham. He had been twice married. His first wife was Mary, daughter of Claud Barachin; she died in London, 10th January 1705 (n.s.), and was buried in the churchyard of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. His second wife was Catharine, daughter of Charles Testard; by her he had a son, Testard Louis Vaslet, who died 21st March 1731 (n.s.), aged twenty-five, and was laid in the grave beside his mother, who had died 29th April 1730, aged fifty-six. Mr. Vaslet left a daughter, Catharine, who was twice married, 1st, to Mr. John Noades; 2dly, to Oliver Edwards, Esq., as whose widow she was buried beside her parents. Owing to some mistake, either of the draughtsman or of the mason employed to execute the epitaph, I cannot state either the year of her death or her age[1].
Perhaps our Louis Vaslet was the translator, editor, and part-author of a book of 300 pages on Roman Antiquities. The learned Cellarius had at his death left in manuscript a Latin book on that subject, which was printed at London in 1711. This work Mr. Vaslet. translated into French, with enlargements bringing it up to date. The title was, “Introduction à la connoissance des Antiquitez Romanics, traduite en partie d’un petit ouvrage latin de Cellarius et en partie tirée des meilleurs auteurs anciens et modernes. Par Louis Vaslet. A la Haye, Chez les frères Vaillant, et N. Prevost. 1723.”
It was common for refugee authors to print their books in Holland — a country where their language was so highly appreciated, and in which several generations of learned printers had resided. It therefore is not improbable that the above is the work of our Louis Vaslet.
- ↑ The gravestone has it “Obiit 10th Sept. 1766, anno aetatis 90,” (so says Faulkner, History of Fulham, p. 110). If she was ninety in 1766, she was born in 1676. If her father was aged sixty-five in 1731 (the year of his death), he was born in 1666, and was a father at the age of ten.