Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 23 - Rev. W. Romaine
Rev. W. Romaine. — The father of Mr. Romaine was a Huguenot refugee who settled in Hartlepool as a merchant and corn-dealer. He was a man of great justice and benevolence. In 1741 when other corn-dealers took advantage of the scarcity, and withheld corn unless a tremendous price was offered, riots took place which were quelled through the conduct of Mr. Romaine in selling to all comers at a fair price. William was bom 25th September 1714. The house in which he was born is still standing within a few yards of the west end of St. Hilda’s Church, Hartlepool, in the High Street, south-west corner of St. Mary’s Street, and is at present used as a butcher’s shop (1876). “In those principles which were through life his shield and buckler, and which he would not have exchanged could the world have been laid at his feet,” old Romaine educated his son. “He was a steady member of the Church of England, a constant attender upon her services, and so exact an observer of the Sabbath-day, that he never suffered any of his family to go out upon it except to church, and spent the remainder of it with them in reading the Scriptures and other devout exercises at home. In this manner he lived to the age of eighty-five, and to the year of our Lord 1757.” William was M.A. of Oxford, and a very learned Hebraist. He had completed four folio volumes, and a seven years’ task, and was on his way to the vessel in which he meant to return home, when he was recognised by a stranger through his personal likeness to his father, and by that gentleman’s advice he applied for the ecclesiastical appointment which established him as a London minister. Accordingly the Gentleman’s Magazine for November 1748 informs us that Mr. Romaine, editor of Calasio’s Dictionary, was chosen Lecturer of the united parishes of St. George’s, Botolph Lane, and St. Botolph’s, Billingsgate. In 1766 he was finally settled as Rector of St. Andrew Wardrobe and St. Ann’s, Blackfriars. To write another detailed memoir of the author of “The Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith,” and of such an eminent and popular clergyman, is unnecessary. It is to be regretted that Haag had not read his Sermons before the University of Oxford (which were worthy of their theme, “The Lord our Righteousness”), instead of characterising them upon hearsay as rigid or austere.
An interesting “Life of Romaine,” by Rev. Thomas Haweis, LL.B. and M.D., rector of All Saints, Aldwinkle, and chaplain to the late Countess of Huntingdon (London, 1797), contains graphic details, some of which I now quote.
“It is now more than forty years since my first acquaintance with Mr. Romaine commenced. . . . His stature was of the middling size, his visage thin and marked; the lines of his face were strong; and, as he advanced in age, deeply furrowed; his eye was quick and keen, yet his aspect benign, and frequently smiling; his manners were plain; I thought his address rather rough than polished; he dressed in a way peculiar to himself; he wore a suit of blue cloth always, a grey wig without powder; his stockings were coarse and blue as his clothes."
“He rose during the last fifty years at five o’clock, breakfasted at six, dined at one on some plain dish, and often (as I have seen) on cold meat and a pudding, drank little or no wine, supped at eight, and retired at nine.”
“His elocution was free and easy; his voice, though not sonorous, clear; and his articulation distinct. His sermons were neither so long, nor delivered with the same exertions, as those of many of his brethren; and I impute to this a measure of his uncommon health, as his bodily health was by this means less impaired. . . . Towards the end of his life I thought his voice somewhat lower, but he was exceedingly well heard to the last — preserved his teeth, spoke as distinctly as ever; his intellect and memory appeared not the least impaired, and except the wrinkles of his face, his body bore no mark of infirmity; he walked faster and more vigorously than I could.”
In his younger days he had been unfriendly to dissenters; but maturer consideration, though it did not change his own opinions, made him respectful to theirs. “Sir,” said he to a dissenting minister of Bristol, “I have been very high-church in the former years of my life, but the Lord has brought me down; and now I can rejoice in, and wish well to, the ministers of my Master, of whatever denomination.”
In the New Annual Register I find a memorandum of a ceremonial which may interest some of my readers:— “May 2nd, 1781. Yesterday was holden at Sion College the anniversary meeting of the London clergy, when a Latin sermon was preached in St. Alphage Church, by their president, the Rev. James Waller, D.D., after which the following gentlemen were elected officers for the year ensuing — the Rev. John Douglas, D.D., president; Peter Whalley, LL.B., and William Romaine, M.A., deans; Thomas Weales, D.D., Samuel Carr, M.A., George Stinton, D.D., and Henry Whitfield, D.D., assistants.”
A portion of his “Essay on Psalmody” is so Huguenot in sentiment that I must quote a few sentences:—
“The Psalms are the Word of God, with which no work of man’s genius can be compared. . . . The hymn-makers thrust out the Psalms to make way for their own compositions. . . . I have heard several of our hymn-singers object to Sternhold and Hopkins; they wonder I make use of this version. . . . The version comes nearer to the original than any I have ever seen, except the Scotch, which I have made use of when it appeared to me better expressed than the English. . . . Here is everything great and nohle and divine, although not in Dr. Watts’ way or style; it is not fine sound like his, and florid verse, as good old Mr. Hall used to call it Watts’ Jingle. I do not match those [metrical] Psalms with what is now admired in poetry, although time was when no less a man than the Rev. T. Bradbury thought so meanly of Watts’ Hymns as commonly to call them Watts’ Whims. And indeed, compared to the Scripture, they are like a little taper to the sun.”
He wrote to the Hon. and Rev. William Bromley Cadogan, July 30, 1784 :—
“We (i.e., himself and Mrs. Romaine, née Price) set out for the North, in all probability for the last time. I have three sisters alive, all in years as well as myself, and we are to have a family meeting to take our leave, final as to this life. It would be too much for my feelings, if I had not all the reason in the world to believe that our next meeting will be in glory. Mr. Whitfield used often to put me in mind how singularly favoured I was; my father, mother, and three sisters were like those blessed people, ‘Martha and her sister, and Lazarus,’ whom ‘Jesus loved.’”
“When,” says his biographer, “the clergy were called upon to collect in their respective parishes for the French emigrants, he was not a whit behind the chiefest of them in this business, for which he had the honour of being noticed in an anonymous pamphlet, as if to relieve the distresses of a Papist were to encourage the errors of Popery.” Thus, to his father’s persecutors William Romaine returned good for evil. “A cheerful old man,” “praising Jesus,” he died on the Lord’s Day, 26th July 1795. Funeral Sermons were preached by Rev. William Goode, Rev. Thomas Wills, and Rev. Charles Edward de Coetlogon.
The Rev. George Townshend Fox, Prebendary of Durham, sympathising with his principles, and admiring his talents, which were an honour to his native county, erected a tablet to Mr. Romaine’s memory, containing an epitaph, and four extracts from his “Treatises on Faith,” in the parish church of Hartlepool in 1876:—
William Romaine
Rector of St. Ann’s, Blackfriars, London.
Born in Hartlepool, 1714.Died in London, 1795.
Sprung from the truly noble blood of a Protestant confessor
who took refuge in this town at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 1685,
he early embraced, by the grace of God, those principles of Scriptural truth for which
is father sacrificed his property and forsook his native land. A Christian of eminent piety, a ripe scholar, and a preacher of peculiar gifts, mighty in the Scriptures, he was honoured of God to become a leading instrument in accomplishing that great revival of evangelical religion in the Church of England, which took place last century.
In addition to his unwearied labours as a minister of the Gospel of Christ, and his faithful proclamation of the distinctive doctrines of grace, he greatly promoted the cause of truth, was the instrument of quickening and deepening vital piety in the hearts of thousands, and has bequeathed a rich legacy to posterity by his admirable Treatise on the Life, Walk, and Triumph of Faith.
After a lapse of 80 years, this Tablet is erected by one who reveres his memory,
loves the Scriptural doctrine which he embraced, and regards his name
as an honour to his native town and county.
I.
“I was even as others once, by nature a child of wrath and an
heir of misery, I was going on in the broad way of destruction, careless and
secure, and I am quite astonished to see the danger I was
in, I tremble to behold the precipice over which I was ready to fall
when Jesus opened mine eyes, and, by the light of his Word
and Spirit, showed me my guilt and danger, and put it
into my heart to (lee from the wrath to come;
O, what a merciful escape!”
II.
“The believer is reconciled to God, being no longer under the
law as a covenant of works but under grace, he loves the law and walks with God
in sweet obedience to it; he sets out and goes on every step in faith,
trusting to the acceptance of his person and his services in the Beloved;
he does not work now in order to be saved, but because he is saved, and
he ascribes all he does to the praise of the glory of free grace;
he works from gratitude—the faith of God’s elect always does—
it never fails to show itself by love.”
III.
“Christ as the believer’s surety has taken his sins upon Himself, and the believer
takes Christ’s righteousness, for Christ makes over all that
He has to the believer, who by faith looks upon it, and
makes use of it as his own, according to that express warrant,
All things are yours and ye are Christ’s.”
IV.
“Christ with bread and water is worth ten thousand worlds. Christ
with pain is better than the highest pleasures of sin. Christ
with all outward sufferings is matter of present and eternal joy.
Surely, these are the only happy people!
Reader, art thou one of them?”
The following epitaph is in the church of St. Anne’s, Blackfriars:—
In a vault beneath lies the mortal part of
The Rev. William Romaine, A.M.
Thirty years Rector of these United Parishes,
and forty-six years Lecturer of St. Dunstan’s-in-the West.
Raised up of God for an important work in His Church,
a scholar of extensive learning, a Christian of eminent piety,
a preacher of peculiar gifts and animation,
consecrating all his talents to the investigation of Sacred Truth,
during a ministry of mere than half a century,
he lived, conversed, and wrote, only to exalt the Saviour.
Mighty in the Scriptures, he ably defended, with eloquence and zeal, the
equal perfections of the Triune Jehovah, exhibited in man’s redemption,
The Father’s everlasting love,
the Atonement, Righteousness, and compleat Salvation of the Son,
the regenerating influence of the Eternal Spirit,
with the operations and enjoyments of a purifying faith.
When displaying these essential Doctrines of the Gospel
with a simplicity and fervour rarely united,
his enlivened countenance expressed the joy of his soul.
God owned the Truth,
and multitudes, raised from guilt and ruin to the hope of endless felicity,
became seals to his ministry,
the blessings and ornaments of society.
Having manifested the purity of his principles in his life
to the age of 81, July 26, 1795,
he departed in the Triumph of Faith, and entered into Glory.
The grateful inhabitants of these parishes, with other witnesses of these facts,
erected this monument.