Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 27 - Debonnaire
Debonnaire.
Jean Debonnaire was a refugee from St. Quentin in or about 1685 in London, as was his grown-up son, Pierre. The father appears in Threadneedle Street on 31st March 1688 as a widower, to be betrothed to Esther L’Epine, also of St. Quentin, whom he marries on April 16. His first wife’s name was Marie de la Cour; she was the mother of the above-named Pierre Debonnaire, a silk-weaver, who married in 1687 in the English Church, Esther Saint-Amand, a native of Paris, daughter of Matthieu St. Amand, silk-weaver, whose Will was proved at London, 18th July 1690. This couple were the parents of Marie, baptized in the beginning of 1688, and Ester in the following December, and of Pierre, baptized 24th May 1691; they had another son, John Debonnaire of Bromley, distiller, who died in 1747; and other two daughters, Esther, wife of Paul Nicholas Savignac, and Elizabeth, wife of Peter Lefebure. Pierre Debonnaire, the refugee, died in 1732. Pierre, born in London, became Peter Debonnaire, merchant in Lawrence Lane, and died 1733, aged forty-one; his widow, Susanne, daughter of John Le Keux and Susanna Didier, died in 1760, aged seventy; their son was John Debonnairc, merchant at Lisbon and in India, who died at the Cape of Good Hope in 1786; their daughters were Susanna, Mrs. Winch; Leah, Mrs. Wagner; and Mary, Mrs. Haggard. The distiller had a son and namesake, John Debonnaire of Bromley, the last male heir of the refugee, who died in 1797, leaving an only daughter, Anne, who was married in 1799 to William Tennant, Esq., Lord of the Manor of Shenston.
John Debonnaire, who died at the Cape (as already stated), was the father of Susannah Sophia Selina Debonnaire, born 1756, died 1815. As the widow of Major John Smith, she was married in 1782 to Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, an East India Director and M.P. for Abingdon, who was created a baronet in 1802. She was the mother of the second, third, and fourth baronets. The third baronet was raised to the peerage as Lord Metcalfe, but died without descendants in 1846. Through the second baronet she was the grandmother of Eliza Debonnaire Metcalfe, who died in 1833, wife of Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, Esq., M.P., afterwards a baronet. A daughter of the late Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, fourth baronet, is the wife of Major Daniel Peploe Peploe, née Eliza Theophila Debonnaire Metcalfe.
Another daughter of John Debonnaire, latterly of the Cape of Good Hope, was Anne, born at Madras on 30th January 1768, married at Calcutta to Colonel the Hon. William Monson, fourth son of the second Lord Monson. The Colonel died in 1807, and she in 1841; they had five sons and three daughters. The eldest son, William John, became in 1841 the sixth and present Lord Monson. His next brother and heir presumptive is the Hon. Debonnaire John Monson, who has a surviving son, Augustus Debonnaire John Monson. The next brother of Lord Monson, Hon. Edmund John Monson, C.B., has had two sons, the second of whom is Edmund St. John Debonnaire John Monson. (See the Debonnaire Pedigree by Henry Wagner, F.S.A.)