Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 13 - Section VI
Montolieu De Saint-Hippolite.
The family of Montolieu de Saint-Hippolite was a branch of the Barons de Montolieu of Marseilles (see Moreri). Illustrious as it was in the world, it is more distinguished as having contributed many soldiers and martyrs to the Huguenot cause. Guillaume de Montolieu, Seigneur de Saint-Hippolite, was killed at the Battle of Dreux in 1562. Of his four sons, three were killed in action — Jacques at St. Denis in 1567, and Francois and Hippolite at Moncontour in 1569. Antoine was severely wounded at the siege of Rouen in 1592, but lived till 1615. The latter married Susanne Dupuy, and was the father of Jean, killed at the siege of Montpellier in 1622, and of Claude, who married Catherine de Saurin, whose son Pierre, the father of the refugees, was married to Jeanne de Froment, daughter of Nicolas de Froment and Marie Du Roure. The refugees were Louis (who retired to Brandenburg), and David, Sieur de Saint-Hippolite, who came to England with the Prince of Orange. David Montolieu, who was born in 1668, was in several actions in Flanders under King William III. In the reign of Queen Anne he was ordered to Piedmont, where he assisted in the intrepid and brilliant defence of Verrue against the French besiegers, by which the Duke of Savoy and Marshal Staremberg obtained such renown. Verrue fell on the 9th April 1705, “with great decency and with immortal honour to those brave men who had defended it almost six months;” so writes the Right Hon. Richard Hill (page 529). Next came the siege of Chivas, which little fortress held out till the 29th July, having been besieged for six weeks, when it surrendered “with great honour.” This expenditure of time saved Turin. I find the name of Monsieur de Saint-Hippolite, in print, associated with the Waldenses, whom the French had unsuccessfully solicited to be neutral. On the 20th June 1704, the French made a successful raid into the valleys of St. Martin and St. Germans. The inhabitants of the latter valley, however, rallied, Monsieur de Saint-Hippolite taking the command on the 30th June, and on the next day defeating the French at Angrogna, and expelling them from all the valleys except St. Martin, which capitulated. Altogether his valour and good conduct were conspicuous, and Monsieur Staremberg recommended him to the Emperor Joseph. The Emperor satisfied himself of the antiquity and nobility of the family of the Sieur de Saint-Hippolite, and gave him a patent of nobility as Baron of Saint-Hippolite, in the German Empire, dated at Vienna, 14th February 1706.
Two of his commissions from the Duke of Savoy (Vittorio Amedeo) lie before me. The first, dated at Turin, 3d May 1709, states that the “Sr. David Montolieu di St. Ippolite,” had been Lieutenant-Colonel in the Regiment of Meyrol, and Adjutant-General of the camp near his Royal Highness’ person, and was now promoted to the rank of Colonel. The second, dated at Nizza, 30th November 1713, signed by the same Prince as King of Sicily, commends the conduct of the Sigr. David Montolieu di St. Hippolite as Adjutant-General and Colonel of infantry during the late war, specifying his services at the sieges of Verrua, Civasso, and Torino, and concludes by promoting him to the rank of Generale di Battaglia. [I may here observe that his title is variously spelt; in English legal documents it is Saint-Hippolite; he himself, in military phonographic style, made one word of it, “Saintipolite.”]
Of the same year, though of earlier date, is Mr. Hill’s certificate, which (I believe) was never printed before:—
This is to certifye that in the year 1703 I was comanded by the Queen to carry into Piedmont as many french protestant officers as I could find in Hollande or in germany, because at that time the enemyes had seazed and made prisoners allmost all ye D. of Savoye’s troops.
In obedience to these comands I carried allmost a 100 good officers into the service of his R.H. upon the promises and assurances wch I gave them by her Majtys. expres comands, signifiyed to me by a Secretaire of State, that all ye services wch should be performed by them dureing ye war in Piedmont should be accounted for to them by ye Queen at ye time of a peace, as if they had been performed more imediately to her majesty in her own troops.
Amongst these officers Monsr. David de Montolieu de St. Hippolyte had ye honour and good fortune to distinguish himself very much, being made adjutant Generall at the first, by his dilligence and activity, by his courage and capacity, he acquired the esteem and confidence of his R.H. who employed and trusted him in a particular manner dureing ye famous seiges of Verrue, Chivas, and Turin in both which Monsr. de St. Hippolite acquired a great and a just reputation.
To the truth of this I have set my hand and seal at London 7bre 5th 1713.
The gallant Baron spent the rest of his life in England, where (says the Scots Magazine) “he with tranquillity attained a great age under the shade of the laurels he gathered in his youth.” It was, however, at the age of forty-five that he left Piedmont, and came back among us, being recognised as a colonel in our army. He had, after the Peace of Ryswick, what is called “a pension,” probably a lieutenant-colonel’s half-pay, and which was continued, as appears from a letter to Mr. Hill from Mr. Edward Southwell, dated Dublin, 3d March 1704-5:—
“We drink his Royal Highness’s health every day; we extol his great and noble defence of Verrue, and wish him succours due to such zeal for the common cause. As to your friend, Monsieur St. Hippolyte, you may let him know that all his clearings of his pension are paid to Midsummer last, and, for particular favour, the two-thirds thereof for subsistence to the first of last month.”
His pension now rose to the amount of a colonel’s half-pay, £223, 11s. 3d. In 1714, within St. Martin’s Lane French Church, in the City of London, he married Mary, daughter of Anthony Molinier, and one son, Louis Charles (born 1719), and two daughters, Elizabeth (1715), and Susanne Marie (1717), were born to him. [The son was born within the parish of St. Mary, Aldermary; and on the presentation of a certificate of Henri Chatelain, pasteur of St. Martin-Organ, his baptism was inserted in the parish register.] The gallant Baron became a Brigadier 22d April 1727, Major-General 13th November 1735, and Lieutenant-General 2d July 1739. In 1744 he wrote a letter on behalf of the King to the City of London French Church, desiring to ascertain “the number of French Protestants willing to take up arms in case His Majesty required their services at this conjuncture.” I have found the minute of the General Assembly of the French Churches of London.[1] The Assembly met on the 7th March 1844, Rev. J. J. Majendie being in the moderator’s chair. The Baron de Saint Hippolite’s letter was read and engrossed in the minutes. A committee was appointed to ascertain the number of volunteers that the French refugees could muster for military service, and to collect their names. The committee-men were Monsieur Dalbiac, Captain de Merargues, and Mr. Pravan (formerly a captain of militia), for the City and Spitalfields; and Messrs. de St. Maurice, De Foissac, and Soulegre, for Westminster. On the 13th of April, they reported that more than 800 names had been received in Spitalfields, and about the same number for Westminster; the latter list including a number of officers and housekeepers. An autograph note, preserved in the British Museum, shows that the Baron had submitted to a literary friend for revision his Memorial to the French Churches:—
“A Monsieur, Monsieur Des Maizeaux à Marie-la-Bonne.”
“Monsieur, Je vous remercie de la bonte que vous avez eu de corriger le mémoire que je vous avois donné. Agréez, Monsieur, que je vous prie de boire à ma santé avec la demy Guinée çi-incluse, étant avec une parfaite estime, Monsieur, Votre très humble et très obeissant serviteur,
“Albemarle Street, le 23 Janvier 1743-4.”
The Baron was promoted to the rank of General of Foot on the 9th of March, in the last year of his life. He died 9th June 1761 , “at his house in Surrey,” aged ninety-three, and was buried in the Wandsworth Cemetery, which is still called “the French burial ground.” In his will, he left “the house in Albemarle Street” to his widow; £100 to the French Hospital, of which he had been a director from its establishment in 1718; he directed that the allowance which he had regularly given to his youngest brother, Aimard Montolicu, residing at Berlin, should be continued [this brother’s name is mentioned by Moreri, who styles him “Aymard de Montolieu, Conseiller de Cour et d’Ambassade de S. M. Prussienne.”] The Baron also left £1500 to his only surviving daughter, Elizabeth, wife of “the Reverend and Honourable” Gideon Murray, D.D., Prebendary of Durham (third son of Alexander, fourth Lord Elibank), to whom she had been married in 1746. In 1778 Prebendary Murray died, leaving two sons, Alexander and David; the former had married, 20th April 1776, his first cousin, Mary Clara Montolieu, daughter of Colonel Louis Charles Montolieu.
The Baron’s son, Louis Charles, entered the army. By his marriage, he allied himself with the family of Leheup, of which four members appear in the journals as public servants, named Isaac, Michael, Matthew, and Peter; of these, Isaac twice represented boroughs in Cornwall in Parliament, and was Minister-Plenipotentiary to the Diet of Ratisbon in 1726. On the 26th July 1750, Captain Montolieu, only son of Lieutenant-General Baron St. Hippolite, married Elizabeth, daughter of Peter Leheup, Esq. of St. James’ Place, London; the marriage was performed in the French Church in the Savoy. He rose to be Colonel in the Horse Guards. He established a bank in London, afterwards known as Hammersley’s Bank. He died on 13th February 1776, and was buried in the Huguenot Cemetery at Wandsworth, where his sister, Susanne Marie, who died at the age of twenty-five, had been laid in 1743, as well as the Baron, his father, in 1761. He himself, as declared in the Wandsworth register, claimed to have succeeded his father as second Baron.
Colonel Montolieu left several daughters. I have already named Mary Clara, wife of Alexander Murray, who in 1785 succeeded to the Peerage as the seventh Lord Elibank; she died on the 19th January 1802, leaving three sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Alexander, eighth Lord Elibank (born 1780, died 1830), had six sons and seven daughters; the third son being the Hon. Thomas Montolieu Murray (born 1811, died 1852), and the eldest son, Alexander Oliphant Murray, the ninth Lord Elibank, father of Oliphant Montolieu Fox Murray, tenth Lord Elibank. The two latter represent both the son and daughter of the old Baron de Saint Hippolite; the daughter being further represented by the branch of the family founded by her younger son, David Murray, Esq. (died 1794), father of the Rev. David Murray, Rector of Brampton-Brian, who married in 1828 Frances, daughter of John Portal, Esq. of Freefolk.
Colonel Montolieu had other daughters. On 16th December 1780, Ann, his third daughter, was married to Sir James Bland Burges, Bart.; she died on 25th October 1810; her eldest son was Sir Charles Montolieu Lamb, Bart, (born 1785, died 1860), who, by his marriage with the Dowager Lady Montgomerie, became step-father to the thirteenth Earl of Eglinton: hence Montolieu was introduced among the Christian names of the Earl’s descendants.
On 27th May 1783, another daughter of Colonel Montolieu was married to Wriothesley Digby, Esq. (born 1749, died 1827), son of the Hon. Wriothesley Digby, LL.D., and grandson of William, fifth Lord Digby.
In 1826 another daughter, Julia (being the widow of Captain William Wilbraham. R.N.), was married to Lieut. -General Sir Henry Edward Bouverie; she had a daughter, Henrietta, wife of Hugh Montolieu Hammersley, and a son, Captain Henry Montolieu Bouverie, of the Coldstream Guards.
*⁎* The brother of the old Baron, Louis Montolieu, being a refugee in Brandenburg, is memorialised in the seventh and ninth volumes of Erman and Reclam. In 1693 he was a Captain in the regiment of the Marquis de Varennes. He also was created a Baron in 1706, and became General de Bataille in the kingdom of Sicily; he became Major-General in Prussia, and received pensions from Prussia, Sardinia, and Great Britain; he died in Berlin; his eldest daughter was married to Lieut-Colonel Beville (father of Lieut-General Beville); the second daughter was married to Lieut.-General de Forgade; his eldest son, after spending his active life in Wurtemberg, retired to Lausanne. This son is mentioned in the diary of James Hutton, in connection with the visit of that zealous Christian layman to Lausanne in 1756; he is styled “Baron de Montaulieu, of the House of St. Hippolyte, in France, who speaks English, and has a pension and ordre from Wurtemberg, and also a pension from Prussia, and is beau-frère of the Prussian General Forçade.” At that time France was supplied with Protestant pastors by the “Languedoc Theological Seminary,” established at Lausanne. Hutton was there on a visit to urge the Professors to promote evangelic doctrines. The substance of his representation to them was, that the French Reformed Church was a martyr church, whose members had suffered the flames, the gallows, the sword, the dagger, the hatchet, the rack, precipitation from rocks, and drowning, &c, for forty years before they took up arms; and on this account he honoured her, but felt anxious that she should not permit herself to be led aside, by merely moral sermons, from the profitable and thankful contemplation of the sufferings of Christ for sinners.
| David Montolieu, Baron de Saint-Hippolite. born 1668, died 1761 |
= | Mary Molinier. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Louis Charles, born 1719, died 1776. |
= | Elizabeth, dau. of Peter Leheup, Esq. |
Elizabeth | = | Hon. and Rev. Gideon Murray, Prebendary of Durham. | |||||||||||||||
| Mary Clara, married to Alexander, 7th Lord Elibank, great-grandfather of Montolieu Fox Murray, 10th Lord Elibank. |
A daughter, married to Wriothesley Digby, Esq. |
Ann, married to Sir James Bland Lamb, Bart. (formerly Burgess.) |
Julia, married to Sir H. Bouverie. |
Elizabeth, married to the 8th Lord Cranstoun, Captain, R.N. |
Alexander, 7th Lord Elibank, married his cousin, Mary Clara, already mentioned. | |||||||||||||||
| Sir Charles Montolieu Lamb, Bart., married to the Dowager Lady Montgomerie. [These baronets quarter the arms of Montolieu.] |
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- ↑ Burn’s MSS.