Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/218

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FRENCH PROTESTANT EXILES

adopted country: it was with his own purse, and with their charitable contributions that, in the month of May following the mournful year of separations, he made his way to France. When, after much suspense, and in the providential absence of her taskmaster, he found his daughter, whom he would not have recognised if he had not have overheard her voice as she prayed to God for deliverance, her state of exhaustion was such, that each hour of her land-journey threatened to be her last, and the sea air imparted no considerable benefit. On her arrival at home, after kissing her mother, she fainted away, and being carried to bed she lay in a most precarious state for many weeks. When she rose, it was found that her spine was hopelessly distorted. Health, however, was restored to her; and she lived till she had all but completed her hundredth year. She was the companion and counsellor of her brothers and sisters, especially of Jean De L’Orme, who lived unmarried in memory of his deceased affiancée, Adele de la Chesnaye.

(17.) Helena Lefevre was, in 1789, the heiress of a Huguenot refugee family. Her ancestors appear to have been a different family from Magdalen Lefebvre. From the history of the latter, we learn that her father, Isaac Lefebvre, died of fatigue, cold, and grief, on his return home after having seen her embarked for Jersey; he was, however, represented in modern times by the Duke of Dantzic, one of Napoleon’s Marshals. In Waddington’s Protestantisme en Normandie, p. 14, an Isaac Lefebvre is mentioned, who was imprisoned in a convent of the Cordeliers; this may be the Isaac who died in one of the French Galleys in 1702, after eighteen years’ captivity. Helena’s father was John Lefevre, Esq. of Heckfield Place, in Hampshire, son of Isaac. Isaac’s elder brother, Lieut-Colonel John Lefevre, served in our army under Marlborough. John and Isaac were sons of Pierre, and grandsons of Isaac of Rouen, who suffered deeply in the French Persecutions, Pierre Lefevre having been kept in prison for thirty years, and thereafter put to death. Helena was married to Charles Shaw, Esq. M.P. for Reading, barrister-at-law, and he in honour of this good alliance assumed the additional surname of Lefevre in 1789; her father died in 1800; Mr Shaw Lefevre died in 1823, and his sons have made the double surname eminent. The head of the family is the Right Hon. Charles Shaw Lefevre, Viscount Eversley (so created in 1857, on his retirement from the dignified office of Speaker of the House of Commons). His next brother is no less distinguished, namely, Right Hon. Sir John George Shaw Lefevre, father of George John Shaw Lefevre, Esq., M.P. for Reading, the apparent male heir of the family. Sir John (born in 1797) was senior Wrangler at Cambridge in 1818, and Fellow of Trinity College; he is K.C.B., D.C.L., and F.R.S.; he has been M.P., and in various offices, and is now Clerk of the Parliaments.

(18.) Madame France died at Dublin in 1734; Monsieur France, her husband, had died in Carolina in 1689, the year after the death of his brother, Jacob France. Eighteen years of her widowhood were solaced by her son, Aveneau France, who died in 1706. (Bayne’s Witnesses in Sackcloth, p. 224).

Group Second. Officers (pp. 232-236). At the beginning of this section, there is a quotation from Schomberg’s Despatches. The next paragraph begins the names.

(1.) Jean De la Borde (p. 232), was married to Anne La Motte Graindor; he had a son, Jean; his daughter, Anne, was married to Isaac Cassel, and her son, Abel Cassel, was represented until recently.

(2.) Captain Réné De la Fausille (p. 232), was represented by Major-General Lafausille, his son, who died in 1763, leaving one child, Anne, Mrs Torriano.

(3.) Major Issac Cuissy Mollien (p. 232) died in 1698.

(4.) Captain Louis Geneste (pp. 232-3), Sieur de Pelras de Cajare, was well represented. [The Rev. Hugh A. Stowell informs me that it is a mistake to credit the Stowells with Geneste blood, though they have repeatedly been in affinity with members and connections of the Geneste family.

My reverend correspondent’s eminent father was the late Rev. Hugh Stowell, Canon of