monuments it contains of wealthy Barnstaple merchants.
A tall, good tower to Holy Trinity helps greatly to give dignity to an otherwise unattractive town, made pre-eminently so by the unsightliness of the ranges of suburban residences that line the roads out of it.
But Barnstaple is important as having given shelter to a number of refugees at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and their descendants still live in the town, though under names that have become much altered. Among these refugees was the family of St. Michel, and Samuel Pepys married one of the daughters. The St. Michels were of good family, of Anjou, but a son having taken up with Huguenot religious notions, was disinherited, and came to England. There he married the daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill, and had a son and daughter. He returned to France, but was in very indigent circumstances, and during an absence from home his children were removed to an Ursuline convent. St. Michel, however, recovered them and fled with them and his wife to England, and arrived at Barnstaple, but settled near Bideford. How Samuel Pepys met Elizabeth St. Michel we do not know. He was married to her before the justice of peace on December 1st, 1655, but as he always observed October 10th as his wedding day it is probable that he, like many another, had been secretly married by a priest of the Church of England, and merely conformed to the law afterwards on December 1st. She was fifteen only when Pepys married her, and the young couple
