Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 13 - Section XII
Auriol.
The Auriol family is French, though its remote ancestry was Spanish. Its seat was in the province of Languedoc. It holds a conspicuous place among the noblesse, and boasts intermarriages with the most noble families. Members of the house have held the first offices of state, others have served with distinction in the army. Pierre Auriol in the year 1477 was Lord High Chancellor of France under Louis XL In the reign of Louis XIV. they possessed the title of Baron de Toutens; and being Protestants, several of the name became refugees in England.
The pedigree of the refugee family begins with Jean d’Auriol, Baron de Toutens, Sieur de Roumens, d’Alquier, &c, of Languedoc, and his wife Marie de Nogué. They were the grand-parents of the refugees, whose father was Elisée d’Auriol, Seigneur de Toutens, Roumens, Salasses, &c. He continued a Protestant, but did not leave France at the Revocation epoch; his children, seven sons and two daughters, were many of them unborn at that time. All accurate information regarding children and grandchildren I owe to Mr. Wagner, who (it is hoped) will print the pedigree. I give some fragmentary notices:—
(1.) The second son, John Auriol, was a merchant of St. Anne’s, Westminster; his will was dated 5th February, proved 13th December 1739.
(2.) The third son, Jean Louis Auriol, born 24th October 1684, died at Geneva 24th January 1750. He had married Olympe, daughter and heir of General Bonnefons. James Auriol, merchant in London, who removed to Lisbon to join the house of Pratviel, was his son; during the memorable earthquake he was in Lisbon and lost much property; but there he married his wife, Miss Charlotte Russell, an English lady. He had three daughters and three sons, who were educated in England. The daughters were Sophia, Mrs. Prinsep; Amelia, Mrs. Edward Auriol Drummond; and Charlotte Louise, Mrs. Dashwood. The sons obtained appointments in India; they were James-Peter, John Louis, and Charles, who became a General in our army. James-Peter Auriol, Esq., was elected a Director of the French Hospital in 1780, married in 1788 Emmeline, daughter of the late Richard Jelf, and had a daughter, Eliza, and three sons, George, Charles-James, and Edward. The last was the Rev. Edward Auriol, M.A., Prebendary of St. Paul’s, Rector of St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, in London, a venerated clergyman, ready for every good work, a worthy successor of his dignified predecessors, the prebendaries John Rogers and John Bradford. His only son, Edward, was drowned in Lake Leman in 1849, aged eighteen. He himself died on 10th August 18S0, aged seventy-five.
(3.) The fourth son, Elisha Auriol, married Marguerite, daughter of Le Marquis de Fesquet, Seigneur de la Baume; he died in Old Broad Street, London, on 25th January 1778, aged eighty-six. He had five children, of whom Elizabeth was married in 1756 to William De Vismes, and her daughter, Elizabeth, was the first wife of Dean Drummond.
(4.) The fifth son, Peter Auriol, a successful London merchant, who died in 1754, left two daughters, of whom the younger, Elizabeth, died unmarried in 1799 in Queen Street, Westminster. He himself is remembered as the father of Henrietta Auriol, the ancestress of the Earls of Kinnoull, whose marriage was thus recorded in the Gentleman’s Magazine: — “Married, 31st Jan. 1749, the Right Rev. Robert Drummond, Bishop of St. Asaph, to the eldest daughter of Mr. Auriol, merchant in Coleman Street, £30,000.” This prelate was by birth the Hon. Robert Hay, second son of George Henry, 7th Earl of Kinnoull. He assumed the name of Drummond in 1739, on succeeding to the estates (not to the title) of the first Viscount of Strathallan, his maternal great-grandfather. He rapidly rose in the Church, becoming a Prebendary of Westminster in 1743, Bishop of St. Asaph in 1748, Bishop of Salisbury in 1761, and in the same year Archbishop of York. He was born 10th November 1711, and died 10th December 1776. He was a very distinguished man; but this memoir principally concerns his wife and her children by him. There were six sons, and the father (says a family manuscript) “chose to have all his children christened with the name of Auriol, well aware of the rank of the Auriol family as certainly no disparagement to his own.”
“It is remarkable,” says the editor of the Scottish Nation, “that three of the six sons of this eminent prelate came to untimely deaths. Peter Auriol Hay Drummond, the third son, Lieut.-Colonel of the 5th Regiment of West York Militia, died in 1799 (aged forty-five), in consequence of a fall down the staircase of his house. John Auriol Hay Drummond, the fourth son, Commander R.N., was lost in the Beaver (prize) off St. Lucia in a hurricane in 1780, aged twenty-four; and the youngest son, aged forty-six, Rev. George William Auriol Hay Drummond, editor of his father’s sermons, was drowned while on a voyage from Bideford (in Devonshire) to Greenock, the ship having been cast away in a storm on the night of 6th December 1807.”
Besides these, in 1766, the Hon. Mrs. Drummond lost her eldest child, Abigail, a beautiful girl, aged sixteen, for whom Mason wrote the following epitaph, which, slightly abridged, is printed in that poet’s works:—
“Hence, stoic apathy! to breast of stone.
A Christian sage with dignity can weep:
See mitred Drummond heave the heartfelt groan,
Where cold the ashes of his daughter sleep.
Where sleeps what once was beauty, once was grace,
Grace that, with tenderness and sense, combined
To form that harmony of soul and face
Where beauty shines, the mirror of the mind.
Such was the maid that, in the morn of youth,
In virgin innocence, in nature’s pride,
Blest with each art that owes its charm to truth,
Sank in her father’s fond embrace, and died.
He weeps; oh! venerate the holy tear.
Faith lends her aid to ease affliction’s load;
The parent mourns his child upon the bier;
The Christian yields an angel to his God.”
The Scots Magazine, vol. xxxv., contains the following Inscription on Miss Drummond’s Monument (it is in the church near the Archbishop’s country-seat, Brodsworth, in Yorkshire):—
To Abigail Drummond, daughter of Robert, Archbishop of York, who lived, alas! only sixteen years, this last duty is paid by her afflicted parents:
Here sleeps what once was beauty, once was grace,
Grace that with tenderness and sense combin’d
To form that harmony of soul and face,
Where beauty shines, the mirror of the mind.
Such was the maid who in the bloom of youth,
In virgin innocence, in nature’s pride,
Bless’d with each art that owes its charm to truth,
Sank in her father’s fond embrace — and died.
He weeps! O venerate the holy tear;
Faith lends her aid to bear affliction’s load;
The father mourns his child upon her bier,
The Christian yields an angel to his God.
How soon, alas, their bosoms bleed again!
See Charlotte in the dawn of life expire!
Another daughter lost renews their pain,
Another angel joins the heavenly choir.
With softest smiles of tenderness and love
She late could soothe a father’s manly breast,
And all a mother’s tender softness move;
Then smil’d a fond farewell! and dropp’d to rest.
Escap’d from present ills, from future care,
And many a pang that meets us here below,
She’s called thus early to yon brighter sphere —
With native sweetness smiles a cherub now.
The eldest son became the 9th Earl of Kinnoull, Lord Lyon King-of-Arms of Scotland, and President of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (born 1751, succeeded 1787, died 1804). The second son, Thomas, died in 1773, aged twenty-one, and, like the third and fourth sons, left no descendants. The fifth son, Edward (of whom hereafter), had many children. The youngest, already noticed, had a son, Robert William, Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, who died in 1861, aged seventy-five. Besides editing in 1803 the Archbishop’s Sermons, the Rev. George Auriol Hay Drummond wrote a prefatory memoir, and published in 1802 a volume of “Verses, Social and Domestic.” In the former he tells us that his mother “died in 1773, and her Lord never recovered her loss.”
From Dame Henrietta Auriol or Drummond (as Scotch law would designate her) descended three principal families:—
1st. The Earls of Kinnoull, through her eldest son Robert Auriol, the 9th Earl.
2nd. The inheritors of the estates of Cromlix and Innerpeffray, destined for the second sons of the Earls of Kinnoull, who assume the name, style, and arms of Drummond of Cromlix.
3d. The descendants of the Archbishop’s fourth son, the Rev. Edward Auriol Hay Drummond, D.D. (born 1758, died 1829), Dean of Bocking, Prebendary of York and Southwell, Rector of Hadleigh, and chaplain to the King. By his marriages he extended his connection with the Huguenot Refugees; he married first in 1782 Elizabeth, daughter of William, Count De Vismes (she died in 1790), and secondly, his mother’s cousin Amelia, daughter of James Auriol and aunt of the Rev. Edward Auriol. By his second wife Dean Drummond left two daughters: Amelia Auriol married in 1812 to Rev. George Wilkins, D.D., and Charlotte Auriol, wife of the Rev. Thomas Jones. His daughter, by his first wife, was Henrietta Auriol, who was married in 1831 to the Rev. Morgan Watkins, and died in 1832. The Dean’s only son was a military officer; the Strathallan estates having passed to a younger generation, he returned to the surname of Hay; his name was Edward William Auriol Drummond Hay (born 1785, died 1845); he was Consul-General for Morocco, and left six sons and four daughters — the youngest daughter, Henrietta Auriol Drummond Hay, was married in 1851 to Henry Chandos Pole, Esq. The sons are (1), Sir Edward Hay Drummond Hay, Governor of St. Helena and other colonies from 1839 to 1862 [he died on 24th January 1884, aged sixty-eight]; (2), John Hay Drummond Hay, K.C.B., Her Majesty’s Ambassador at the Court of Morocco; (3), Colonel Thomas Robert Hay Drummond Hay, late in command of the 78th Highlanders; (4), George William Drummond Hay, Esq.; (5), Francis Ringler Drummond Hay, Esq., Consul-General at Tripoli; (6), James De Vismes Drummond Hay, Esq., C.B., Consul at Valparaiso.