Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/138

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126
INTRODUCTORY MEMOIRS


and not less so
by an inviolable fidelity in keeping sacred his word.
Universally esteem’d when alive
and lamented when dead.
To his pious Memory
Elizabeth, daughter of Sr. Rd. Shuckburgh,
Warwickshire,
his third wife
out of a dutiful affection erected this Marble Table.
He died the 4th of Feb. mdccvii — Aged ixxv.

The Rev. Peter Waldo, D.D. (who died in 1746), Rector of Aston Clinton, in Buckinghamshire, was a son of Daniel Waldo of Gray’s Inn, elder brother of Sir Edward; Dr Waldo was lineally represented in Harrow till 1790. Peter Waldo, who signed the merchants’ loyal manifesto in 1744, was a son of Samuel (died 1698) a younger brother of Sir Edward; this Peter Waldo (born 1689, died 1762), was an author in defence of the Athanasian Creed, and was the father of another Peter Waldo (born 1723, died 1804), author of a Commentary on the Liturgy of the Church of England; this branch resided at Mitcham in Surrey, and possessed some ancient oak carving, in which is cut out the name “Peter Waldo, 1575” [or, 3?] Sir Timothy Waldo (died 1786), who was knighted 12th April 1769, and was styled “of Clapham, and of Hever Castle, Kent,” was the grandson of Timothy, a brother of Sir Edward; Jane, daughter of Sir Timothy Waldo, and widow of George Medley, Esq., M.P., died without issue on 14th Dec. 1829, in her 92d year; her property was sworn under £180,000. Although there are American Waldos with English descendants, the name of Waldo in connection with the Protestant refugee is preserved by the Sibthorp family only. Isaac Waldo, of London, brother of the first Peter, of Mitcham, had a daughter, Sarah, wife of Humphrey Sibthorp, M.A., M.D,, Fellow of Magdalene College, Oxford, and Sherardian Professor of Botany, to whom she was married on 20th September 1740, and who was succeeded in 1769 by his son Humphrey, who, like his sons, received military rank as an officer in the Royal South Lincolnshire Militia. Colonel Humphrey Sibthorp (born 1744, died 1815), M.P. for Boston, and afterwards for Lincoln, assumed in 1804 the surname and arms of Waldo in grateful remembrance of his kinsman, the second Peter Waldo of Mitcham. His sons were Coningsby Waldo Waldo Sibthorp, Esq. (died 1822), M.P. for Lincoln, and Colonel Charles De Laet Waldo-Sibthorp, “a favourite of the House of Commons for his humour and eccentricities,”[1] who was M.P. for Lincoln for nearly thirty years; the latter was succeeded by his son, Major Gervaise Tottenham Waldo Sibthorp, who died in 1861. A brother of Colonel Charles came into the possession of the Waldo mansion at Mitcham, the Rev. Humphrey Waldo Sibthorp.

If we have been reminded of the Waldensian Church, some refugees carry our thoughts back to the Albigensian. The Portal family is memorialised in my volume second. The Howies in Scotland claim the same antiquity. Their tradition is, that three brothers fled from persecution in France more than six hundred years ago : one settled in Mearns parish, another in Craigie parish, and the third in the parish of Fenwick, and the secluded farmhouse of Lochgoin. Many generations of the refugee’s descendants have occupied that farm, and its farm-house, which has become celebrated through the courage and piety of its inmates. The tenant in 1684 was James Howie, a godly and persecuted Covenanter. The preface to the first edition of “The Scots Worthies” (that prized book of good Presbyterian memoirs) was dated at Lochgoin, July 21, 1775; the conscientious and patriotic author was John Howie (born 1736, died 1793). The eldest son of that excellent writer died a few days before him; another son, Thomas Howie, died in Lochgoin in 1863, aged 86. To the same stock belonged the Rev. Thomas Howie (born 1678, died 1753). There is a tombstone in Annan Old Churchyard (a horizontal slab on supports) which commemorates him and some of his house:—

  1. See The Herald and Genealogist for March 1864.