Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 17 - Section III
III. Clergy.
1. From a French manuscript list preserved in our Public Record Office, the names of the pasteurs in need of assistance from the Royal Bounty Fund in the year 1695 can be given, and their ages in that year:— Messieurs Desers (84), Chenevix (76), Misson (76), Malide (66), Le Sauvage (66), Miteau (68), Vchard (63), Boissatran (63), De Santé (62), Fontaine (61), De Guillem (60), Vernoux (60), Soulignac (60), Astruc (60), Dejoux, sen. (58), Chaineau (58), Hanus (58), Souchet (58), Tirel (58), Motte (58), Desqueirac (58), Tons (55), Ticier (55), Bardon (55), Baron (55), Benecfa (55), Lalo (55), Marchant (55), Blanc (55), Severin (55), Fleury (55), Brocas (55), Bernardeau (52), Gommarc, sen. (52), Thibaud (52), Rouffignac (51), Dupuy (51), Romans (51), Couyer (51), Aubin (51), D'huisseau (51), Joseph Blanc (50), Gommarc, jun. (50), Foran (50), Molinier (50), Laplace (50), Delbeque (50), Majou (50), Courdill (50), Tinel (50), Desaiguilliers (50), Campredon (48), Campredon, of Dover (—), Richard (47), __combes (47), Camou (46), La Motthe (47), Raoux (46), Boudet (48), Cairon (45), Sylvius (45), Le Grand (55), Lagarde (48), Chabbert (43), Laborie (40), Boursicot (50), Fournes (50), Duval (40), De Mazas (40), Belvais (60), Fontaine (45), Charpentier (32), Pujolas (32), Bassel (32), Rivière (37), Dejoux, jun. 32), De la Roque Boyer (24). (Treasury Papers, vol. xxxv.)
2. There were two French Churches in Dublin, namely, in Lucy Lane and Peter Street, until 1707. At the latter date the congregations united, and met in Peter Street. The names of the ministers were Joseph Lagacherie, 1692; Robert Balaguier, 1693; John Darassus, 1695; John Guillcbert, 1701; Henri De Rochblave, 1703; _____ Pons; John De Durand; Paul de St. Ferreol, 1716; Paul de la Douespe, 1717; Gaspard Caillard, 1720; Jacob Pallard, 1724; Vinchon Desvoeux, 1735; Louis Ostervald, 1735; Jacques Pelletreau, 1741; Pierre Samuel Hobler, 1742; Isaac Subremont, 1760; Louis Campredon, 1760; Francis Bessonet, 1765; Francis Campredon, 1781. [Two small Episcopal societies, known as St. Patrick’s and St. Mary’s, united in a congregation which assembled within St. Patrick’s Cathedral; they considered themselves conformists, and therefore churchmen; and ludicrously called their own countrymen, who were true to the French forms of worship, dissenters and enemies.]
3. Anthony-a-Wood’s Fasti of Oxford University informs us that in “1685, September 9, James Le Prez, lately one of the Professors of Divinity In the University of Saumur, and warden of the college there before it was suppressed, was created D.D. by virtue of the Chancellor’s letters sent in his behalf. This learned theologist was one of those eminent divines that were forced to leave their native country upon account of religion by the present King of France; and his worth and eminence being well known to the Marquis of Ruvigny, he was by that most noble person recommended to the Chancellor of the University.”
“1686-87, March 8. James D’Allemagne, a French minister of the Protestant Church, lately retired in England upon account of religion, was created D.D. without the paying of fees.” He was naturalised at Westminster, 15th April 1687. [In the Camden Society volume of Lists of Foreign Protestants, a line was accidentally omitted in the process of copying, so that this divine’s name was mixed up with another surname whose Christian name had dropped out; and he accordingly appears in the index to that volume as “D’Allemagne Demay.” Of course this is a mistake; see my List XIII.]
4. The Rev. Daniel Amiand was a native of Mornac in Saintonge, who studied for the ministry at Geneva, entering its college in 1672. He became the pasteur of Marans, in the Province of Aunis, not far from the place of his birth. He was in the habit of reading after sermon the long prière ecclesiastique, containing detailed intercessions for all men. One paragraph is —
Singulièrement nous te recommandons tous nos pauvres frères qui sont dispersez sous la tyrannie de l’Antechrist, estans destituez de la pasture de vie, et privez de la liberté de pouvoir invoquer publiquement ton S. Nom — mesme qui sont detenus prisonniers ou persecutez par les ennemis de ton Evangile — Qu’il te plaise, ô Père de grace, les fortifier par la vertu de ton Esprit, tellement qu'ils ne defaillent jamais, mais qu’ils persistent constamment en ta saincte vocation, les secourir et les assister comme tu connois qu’il en est besoin, les consoler en leurs afflictions, les maintenir en ta garde contre la rage des loups, et les augmenter en tous les dons de ton Esprit, afin qu’ils te glorifient tant en la vie qu’en la mort.
In 1684 he was arrested on a formal accusation that he, the pasteur Amiand, on a specified Sabbath in a prayer, had publicly called Louis XIV. a wolf, and applied to the Holy Father, the Pope, the name of Antichrist. When he understood the mysterious accusation, he surrendered his person to the officers of the law, and was imprisoned at La Rochelle, where he was solemnly tried and sentenced to be interdicted from exercising the pastorate, and to be banished from the province. He took refuge in England, and was naturalized during the last days of James II. (see List XVI.) William and Mary presented him in December 1690 to the Rectory of Holdenby in Northamptonshire. On 21st November 1718 he was collated a Canon of Peterborough Cathedral; in the lists he is styled, “Daniel Amyand, Rector of Holdenby in this diocese, a French refugee.” He described himself as " passed four score " when he wrote his Will on 12th December 1729; he died in 1730. An oak screen in the parish church is a visible memento of the Rev. Canon Amiand at Holdenby. He lived unmarried, but his brother Isaac founded an English family.
5. Monsieur L’Alouel, pasteur of La Moussaye, became a refugee in England in 1686. Before he could embark at Dieppe, he was arrested as a fugitive, and imprisoned until it should be proved that he was a pasteur; and during the process of examination and investigation all his money was lost. Some of the refugees were too infirm to endure the voyage to England; Monsieur Faget, pasteur of Sauveterre, in Beam, died in the passage; he was buried in the country which he had sought as a refuge. — (Benoist, tome 5, pp. 934-5-6.) But though I have had to chronicle the death of the last-named pasteur, I can record the marriage of L’Alouel, “Pierre Lalouel, ministre” on 22nd October 1691 married Marthe Du Rouillé, in London, within the French Church in the Savoy.
6. The Rev. Anthoine Ligonler de Bonneval was pasteur of Sablayrolles until 1681, in which year he was appointed to the pastorate of Pont de Camarès. In 1685 his public worship being interdicted, and being himself apprehensive of personal arrest, he received a consistorial certificate, dated 12th September, and quitted France. He became a military chaplain in Britain, and retired with a pension of 3s. 4d. a-day to Portarlington in 1702, where he accepted the incumbency of the French church under episcopal jurisdiction, and its endowment of £40 per annum; he resided there till his death, 16th September 1733. His sister Anne Marie was married in 1737 to Jacques Louis de Vignoles. He himself married Judith Julie de Bostaquet (see Chapter II.), and left a daughter, Ann Mary, who died young. He left £20 to the poor of his church.
7. Antoine Pérès was a native of Montauban, who in 1649 began to study theology in Geneva. In 1661 he was made Professor of the Oriental Languages in the Protestant University of his native town, and afterwards was transferred to the chair of Systematic Theology. In 1684 the University of Montauban was suppressed; the professors were imprisoned, and were not set at liberty until October 1685, when they were banished. Pérès shared their vicissitudes. Quick says of him, “This very learned and godly divine died in my neighbourhood in 1686 here, in King Street, near Bunhil-fields,” [London]. One of his daughters, Marie, was married to Jeremie Vialas, lieutenant of infantry, nephew of the pasteur Noe Vialas. Feeling herself, after the death of her father, “a stranger in a strange land,” she named her first child Marie Gershomith; the baptism was in Threadneedle Street on 1st June 1687, Rev. John Quick being one of the witnesses. Two of her children were baptised in Le Temple — viz., Pauline, born 1690, and Noe, born 1692. Elizabeth Pérès, another daughter of the refugee, was married in 1692 to Joseph Lamotte. Perhaps Denys Pérès was the refugee professor’s son; his child Olivier, named after Olivier Migault, was baptised on 22nd April 1705.
8. César Pégorier, a theological student at Geneva in 1666, was a native of Roujan in Languedoc. He became pasteur of Senitot in Normandy. Through the pressure of persecution he left his charge and came to England, with a certificate of honour from the Synod of Quevilly. He was the minister of the French churches, styled the Artillery and the Tabernacle in London, and was the author of three publications: — (1.) “Exposition de la Religion Chrétienne” [in dialogues], Utrecht, 1714. (2.) “Systeme de la Religion Protestante,” containing 700 quarto pages, London, 1718. (3.) “Maximes de la Religion Chrétienne” [a controversial work], London, 1722. In 1728 his daughter, Madelaine, was married to Jean Sauvage in Rider’s Court French Church. The Rev. Daniel Caisar Pégorier, who was born in 1696, was probably this good refugee’s son.
9. The Rev. James Sartre (naturalised in 1685 as James Sartres, clerk, and called by Anthony-a-Wood Jacobus Sartroeus), was a native of Montpellier, and M.A. of Puylaurens. He was ordained by the Bishop of London on 1st August 1684, incorporated as M.A. at Oxford on 14th May 1688, and installed a Prebendary of Westminster on the 17th; he carried St. Edward’s staff in the procession at the Coronation of William and Mary, 11th April 1689. On the 5th July 1704, at Bromley in Kent, he married Dorothy, daughter of the Rev. Lancelot Addison, D.D., Dean of Lichfield, and sister of the Right Hon. Joseph Addison. He died 3rd September 1713, and was buried in Westminster Abbey; Mrs. Sartre remarried with Daniel Combes, Esq. (Col. Chester’s MSS.)
10. Ezechiel Barbauld was in 1704 a pasteur of the City of London French Church; Pierre Barbauld was pasteur of La Nouvelle Patente in Spitalfields in 1709, and of La Patente in Soho in 1720. Whether either of these was the French refugee who, “when he was a boy, was carried on board a ship inclosed in a cask and conveyed to England,” I am not informed. The boy refugee was surnamed Barbauld, and he lived to be the father of the Rev. Theophilus Lewis Barbauld, whom George II. presented on 22nd June 1744 to the rectory of St. Vedast in London; the rector’s son was the Rev. Rochemont Barbauld, a dissenter, whose wife, Anna Laetitia Aikin, made his own surname celebrated: he left no descendants. Mrs Barbauld, being an English authoress, should not have a place in this work, but a few of her sentences illustrative of its subject must be quoted. As to French Protestant preaching at Geneva, she writes in 1785 —
“As soon as the text is named, the minister puts on his hat, in which he is followed by all the congregation, except those whose hats and heads have never any connection (for you well know that to put his hat upon his head is the last use a well-dressed Frenchman would think of putting it to). At proper periods of the discourse the minister stops short, and turns his back upon you, in order to blow his nose, which is a signal for all the congregation to do the same; and a glorious concert it is, for the weather is already severe, and people have got colds. I am told, too, that he takes this time to refresh his memory by peeping at his sermon, which lies behind him in the pulpit.”
With regard to the Protestant congregation at Marseilles:
“The minister is an agreeable and literary man; his wife has been six years in England, and speaks English well. Her family fled there from persecution; for her grandfather (who was a minister), as he came out from a church where he was officiating, was seized by the soldiers. His son, who had fled along with the crowd, and gained an eminence at some distance, seeing they had laid hold on his father, came and offered himself in his stead, and in his stead was sent to the galleys, where he continued seven years. L’Honnête Criminel is founded on this fact.”
[L’Honnête Criminel was written by Fenouillot de Falbaire. The fact on which it is founded, is the filial devotion of Jean Fabre (born at Nismes 1729). Although the self-devoted substitute of his father, he was awarded no mild sentence, but was sent to the galleys for life on March 11, 1756. M. de Mirepoix, minister of marine, obtained his release on May 22, 1762, after six years’ servitude. See Freville’s Beaux Exemples, Paris, 1817.]
11. Rev. Philippe Jouneau was descended from a very good family in the Isle of Rhé, near La Rochelle. He came over to England in 1685 a refugee from the persecution, and was in 1693 appointed minister of the Eglise de Hungerford, in Hungerford Market, London, and afterwards officiated in the French Churches of Berwick Street, Soho, and St Martin Orgars. The Marchioness of Halifax selected him at a later date for the post of tutor to her grandson, the Hon. Philip Dormer Stanhope, afterwards Earl of Chesterfield, who was born on 22nd September 1694; and the branches in which he grounded the future statesman were history, philosophy, and the languages. His pupil afterwards corresponded with him, and six of his letters have been printed, the last, from Paris, concludes with practical proof that he had learnt the French language tolerably well —
“Je ne vous dirai pas mes sentimens des François, parceque je suis fort souvent pris pour un; et plus d’un Francois m’a fait le plus grand compliment qu’ils croyent pouvoir faire a personne qui est, Monsieur, vous êtes tout comme nous. Je vous dirai seulement que je suis insolent; que je parle beaucoup — bien haut et d’un ton de maitre; que je chante et que je danse en marchant; et enfin que je fais une depense furieuse en poudre, plumets, gands blancs, &c.”
This nobleman, who was the patron of Bishop Chenevix, employed another minister of Berwick Street French Church, Samuel Coderc, to be his son’s tutor, Michael Maittaire being his Latin master. Rev. Samuel Coderc married Francis Mary, daughter of Colonel Savary, on 21st December 1729, in the Castle Street French Church, to which the Berwick Street congregation had been united.
12. Rev. John Cherpentier ministered to a conformist congregation in Canterbury from 1710 to 1716 in opposition to the recognised refugee congregation in the Undercroft of the Cathedral. There is a minute-book with a few registrations of baptisms solemnised in the “Malthouse Chapel, Canterbury.” Under date 4th August 1710, when he appeared as a candidate, there is a minute to the following effect:—
“Rev. John Cherpentier states that he hath been a minister of the Gospel and exercised his ministry with edification and approbation for twenty-five years — that his family hath suffered very much for the Protestant religion, especially his father, who was put to death by the dragoons, and died as a martyr in the year 1683.”
13. Rev. Henri D’Aubigny, presiding in La Charenton French Church, Newport Market, London, as its minister, the consistory did, on 21st July 1701, associate with him in the ministry, the Rev. Louis de Lescur de La Prade, who was formally received on August 11, and on 8th September it was agreed to erect a tablet containing the Ten Commandments. M. D’Aubigny had opened the church on the previous 13th April.
14. Pascal Du Casse is described in 1705 as a young clergyman who had been chaplain to Colonel Ecklin’s regiment and in possession of a living near London of £80 per annum. Mr. Aug. Laspois, minister of the French Church of St. Patrick’s, Dublin, writes disparagingly of his preaching, and calls him levis armaturae miles. But Dean Abbadie took him by the hand and obtained his appointment to be collegiate minister of the French Church of St. Mary’s, Dublin, promising to preach for him once a month. This was in 1705, his Irish stipend being only £40; but he must have had higher hopes, which were realised when his place of worship was shut up. For in 1722 the University of Dublin conferred on him the degrees of B.D. and D.D. A royal patent, dated 5th May 1724, made Paschal Ducasse, D.D., Dean of Ferns and Leighlin, and another patent, dated 29th February 1728 (n.s.), made him Dean of Clogher. He died on 8th January 1730. (See the Second Report of the Irish Historical MSS. Commission 1871, Appendix, p. 243, col. 2.)
15. The name of Monsieur Roussel, as a French pasteur in Dublin, in and about 1685, occurs in the registers. There were two pasteurs of that name who escaped from France, brothers, and one of them had been sentenced to be broken upon the wheel for conducting public worship for his own congregation on the ruins of their temple. It is well known that though King James ran away from Great Britain, he, with the help of Louis XIV., made a stand in Ireland. And it was said that he had promised the French King that, as King of Ireland, he would give up M. Roussel to undergo the barbarous execution to which he was doomed by French law.
16. Pierre Brocas de Hondesplens was the pasteur of Castel-jaloux. He and his son John were naturalized at Westminster in 1696 (see List xxi.). When Queen Anne sent the Marquis de Miremont to negotiate for the liberty of the French Protestants at the congress of Utrecht, this pasteur was sent as his co-adjutor by the refugees of London.
17. Charles Theophile Mutel was one of several refugee pasteurs naturalized on the same day as the last mentioned. But I have found nothing as to his antecedents, and only one thing as to his refugee life, namely, that he was the translator of J. F. Ostervald’s anonymous work,“ Traité des sources de la corruption qui regne aujourdhui parmi les Chrétiens,” 1st edition about 1699; 9th edition, 1709. The first edition of the English translation was published in 1700, and the second, corrected in 1702, both by Ri. Chiswell at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul’s Churchyard. I have the third edition, entitled, “A Treatise concerning the causes of the present corruption of Christians, and the remedies thereof. The third edition, corrected, London, printed for D. Midwinter at the Three Crowns, and B. Cowse at the Rose and Crown in St. Paul’s Churchyard, 1711.” The Dedicatory Epistle is to the Right Reverend Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum, and is signed Charles Mutel; probably it was written for the first edition in 1700. From it, it appears that Bishop Burnet had befriended him and had given him some post in the church. I extract a few sentences:—
“My Lord, — The treatise I now humbly offer to your Lordship in English has met with a very great and general applause in French; a second edition of it was desired in less than two months after the first, and it is already translated into more languages than one. Your Lordship thought fit that so valuable a work should be put into English. You were pleased, my Lord, to commit this translation to my care. . . . And now, my Lord, I do gladly embrace this opportunity to make a publick acknowledgment of the extraordinary obligations your Lordship has laid upon me. A post in the service of the Church is not the greatest favour I have received at your hands. I reckon myself much more beholden to your Lordship for the benefit of your example and instructions which I have enjoyed several years in your family.”
19. Rev. Stephen Lyon, or Lion, was born in Rouen in 1674. His monument states that “he left Rouen under the guardianship of his mother, for the Protestant religion there persecuted.” He matriculated at Oxford from Oriel College, 14th June 1692, aged eighteen, as “pleb. fil.,” his father’s name being J. Lion. He took his B.A. degree as of All Souls College, 13th February 1695-6; M.A., 21st February 1703-4. He was for nearly forty years minister of Spalding in Lincolnshire. There his daughters Mary and Susannah, who died young, were buried; also his wife, who died 16th April 1747, aged seventy-three, (Grace, daughter of George Lynn, Esq. of Southwick, in Northamptonshire); and the Rev. Stephen Lyon himself, who died 4th February 1748, (n.s.), aged seventy-four. Ezekiel Lion, M.A. of the University of Bordeaux, was incorporated at Oxford, 16th May 1704. — (Colonel Chester’s MSS.)
20. The Rev. Henry Pujolas was minister of the French church of Parson Drove in 1692; on 5th December 1691 he married Anne Richer, and died in 1749. Dcnys Pujolas was an ensign in the Guards in 1704. John Pujolas died in London before 1762, and was the father of Henry Pujolas, Esq., Richmond Herald, who died in 1764, aged thirty-one. Benjamin Pujolas, surveyor to the Westminster Insurance Office, died in 1776.
21. The Rev. Daniel Lompard, D.D., rector of Lanteglos and Advent in Cornwall, formerly chaplain to the Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover, was the elder son of a French Refugee pasteur. The refugee family appears among our Naturalisations (see List xiv.) of 5th January 1688: John Lombard (clerk), Frances, his wife, and Daniel and Philip, their sons. The father was minister successively of Martin’s Lane, Le Quarré, and Hungerford French churches in London, and died in 1721. Daniel was Fellow of St. John’s College, Oxford, and became M.A. by diploma dated 7th April 1701 — then proceeded to B.D. on 25th April 1708, and to D.D. on 23rd April 1714. He is said to have been an extraordinary linguist. He died on 31st December 1746, having just completed his able and concise “History of Persecutions.” In this book, which is still celebrated, he betrays his noble birth by dwelling upon the sufferings of the Protestants of France.
22. The Rev. Stephen Abel Laval was in 1737 pasteur of the united chapels of Castle Street and Berwick Street in London. At that period of his life he brought out his elaborate History of the Reformed Church of France, in six volumes, with an appendix. The preface apologises for his English, as written by a Frenchman. He was proud of his connection with the Drelincourts. Charlotte Susanne, daughter of the deceased Pasteur Laurent Drelincourt, eldest brother of the Dean of Armagh, was married in the London French Church in the Savoy, in 1690, to John Barbot, author of Voyages to Guinea, in Churchill’s collection; Charlotte Barbot, her daughter, was Laval’s wife, and had to him two children, Daniel and Charlotte Elizabeth.
Among the subscribers to his history, the following names are interesting:—
Colonel Addée, Mr. Albert, Captain Arabin,[1] Rev. Mr. Aufrère, Mr. James Baignoux, Rev. Mr. Barbauld, Mr. Bardin of Chelsea, Rev. Mr. Battaile, Mr. Paul Bauvais, Rev. Mr. Bernard, F.R.S., Mr. De la Bertouche, Mr. Binet, Mr. Bion, Brigadier de Bommarel, ____ Bonet, Esq,, Rev. Mr. Bourdillon, Rev. Mr. Boyer, Mrs. Brunet, Captain Bruneval, Mr. Cabibel, sen., Mr. Cautier, ____ Casa-major, Brigadier Cavalier, Mr. Chamier, Mr. Francis Chassereau, Mr. John Chatin, Mr. Chattie, Lady Colladon, Rev. Mr. Ste. Colombe, Mr. Commarques, M.D., Rev. Mr. Comarques, Mr. Dalteyrac of Bristol, Mr. Darien of Wandsworth, ____ De Crepini, Esq., Captain Theophilus Des Brisay, Madam Drelincourt, Miss Drelincourt, Rev. Mr. Droz, Rev. Mr. Durand, F.R.S., Rev. Mr. Simon Durand, Rev. Mr. Duval, Colonel De Veil, Rev. Mr. Eynard, Mr. Farette, Claud Fonnereau, Esq., Rev. Mr. Fouace, Captain Des Fourneaux, Peter Gaussen, Esq., Daniel Goizin, Esq., Major De ]ean, five copies, Mr. Johannot, Mr. Isaac Lacan, James La Touche, Esq., La Roche, Esq., Henry St. Leger of Trunkwell, Esq., Gideon Leglise, Esq., Rev. Mr. Lestableres, Mr. Joseph Lycett. Captain De la Maindrie, ____ De Mazères, Esq., ____ Miré, Esq., Rev. Mr. De Missy, Charles De Montaulieu, Esq., Madam de Montigny (deceased), Mr. James Moetiens, James Molinier, Esq., Captain Philip Moreau, ____ De Morin, Esq., Miss De Morin, Motte and Bathurst, booksellers, fourteen copies, Rev. Mr. De Muysson, James Mundy, Esq., Rev. Mr. Pellisier, T.J.C.D., Mr. Peloquin of Bristol, Rev. Mr. Pignot, Mr. Samuel Piguenit, Rev. Mr. Prelleur, Mr. Prevot, Rev. Mr. Pordage, Alexander Primerose, Esq., Sir John Le Quesne, knight and alderman, Mrs. Ravenel, Rev. Dr. Reynell, Chancellor of Bristol, ____ Reille, Esq., Captain Ribot, ____ Robeton, Esq., Mr. Isaac Roberdeau, Mr. René Roulleau, Mr. Peter Ruffe, Rev. Mr. Saurin, Dean of Ardagh, Colonel De Soulegres, Mr. Tanqueray, Lewis De Thuder, Esq., Mr. Samuel Torin, Mr. Vareilles of Dublin, Alderman Simon Vashon of Waterford, Philip De Vismes, Esq., De Vermenoux, Esq.
- ↑ “Alexandre Arabin, jeuue homme de Wands-worth,” was received into the communion of the French Church of Norwich in 1722. — Burn, p. 118. On 7th March 1785 at 8 p.m.. the house of Colonel Arabin in Gresse Street was entered by five robbers, who carried off property valued at £2000.