The Revocation-Edict was registered on the 22d October 1685. The same day the King declared to the Deputy-General that he revoked his office, and prohibited his speaking to him on the affairs of the Reformed for the future. (Benoist’s Hist, de l’Edit de Nantes, Vol. V., Corrections et Additions.)
Page 141. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, falsified Lady Russell’s belief that she had taken her last leave of her uncle in September. She writes, 15th January 1686, “My uncle and his wife are permitted to come out of France.” Their safe arrival is inferred from her letter of 23d March. “I was at Greenwich yesterday to see my old uncle Ruvigny.” He was probably in his 86th year. At Greenwich for more than three years Le Marquis and La Marquise enjoyed the happiest kind of celebrity as benefactors of their refugee countrymen who continually flocked into England.
Ruvigny’s worldly circumstances were such that there was no opportunity for his receiving any panegyric in the English parliament. His panegyric came from his old master. Louis XIV. did not confiscate any portion of liis great property. He offered liberty of worship to him and his household, and assured him of continued favour as a great nobleman at the court of Versailles. But the warm-hearted old man could not bear to be an eye-witness of the ruin of his brethren — a feeling at which Louis did not take offence. He was therefore allowed to retire to England with his family, and to retain his wealth, taking with him whatever he pleased, and leaving investments, deposits, and stewards in France, ad libitum. The absence of speeches in our Parliamentary history is compensated by the eulogium of Lord Macaulay, who from St. Simon, Dumont de Bostaquet and other authorities, has collected facts and framed a conscientious verdict. The historian represents Ruvigny as quitting a splendid court for a modest dwelling at Greenwich. “That dwelling,” says Macaulay, “was the resort of all that was most distinguished among his fellow exiles. His abilities, his experience, and his munificent kindness, made him the undoubted chief of the refugees.”
His English relations and other admirers were also frequent visitors. His neighbour, the accomplished John Evelyn, became an intimate friend. Evelyn’s diary contains the following entries:— “1685, August 8. I went to visit the Marquess Ruvigny, now my neighbour at Greenwich, retired from the persecution in France. He was the Deputy of all the Protestants in that kingdom [to the French king], and several times ambassador at this and other courts — a person of great learning and experience.” “1687, 24th April. At Greenwich at the close of the Church Service there was a French Sermon preached, after the use of the English liturgy translated into French, to a congregation of about a hundred French refugees, of whom Monsieur Ruvigny was chief, and had obtained the use of the church after the parish service was ended.” The Diarist gives us also a glimpse of the fine old gentleman’s bearing in general society, in a letter to Pepys, dated 4th October, 1689, “The late Earl of St. Albans took extraordinary care at Paris that his nephew should learn by heart all the forms of encounter and court addresses, as upon occasion of giving or taking the wall, sitting down, entering in, or going out of the door, taking leave at parting, l’entretien de la ruelle, à la cavalière among the ladies, &c. — in all which never was person more adroit than my late neighbour, the Marquis de Ruvigny.”
Bishop Burnet was an old friend; and probably at this date they had some of the conversations of which Burnet has made use in the History of His own Time.
Dumont de Bostaquet, a French officer who came with King William, gives us some idea of the last months of the veteran refugee, who seems to have been always shewing hospitality, hastening on errands of mercy, and scattering his wealth among the other refugees. He was admitted to the presence of a king, on whom he might lavish his instinctive devotion to monarchy. If not a regular Privy Councillor, he was nevertheless taken into King William’s intimate counsels. War in Europe and also in Ireland being inevitable, though he was too old to receive a general’s commission, he took the chief responsibility of enrolling the refugees in regiments. “Four regiments,” says Macaulay, “one of cavalry and three of infantry, were formed out of the French refugees, many of whom had borne arms with credit. No person did more to promote the raising of these regiments than the Marquis of Ruvigny.”
