of Christ — and to give with the relief a comfortable word when occasion permits.” There is a very fine and rare engraved portrait of Mr Lamotte by Faithorne.
In 1619 Elie Darande, or D’Arande, appears as minister of the Walloon Church (or God’s house), Southampton. The name being often spelt D’Aranda, it is supposed that he was of Spanish ancestry, and that his parents had fled from Flanders from the Duke of Alva’s persecution. His tongue was French, and he died at Southampton, 13th May 1633. He had married Elizabeth Bonhomme, and had two sons, Elie Paul D’Arande, or (as Calamy styles him), Rev. Elias Paul D’Aranda, who was educated at Oxford, and took the degree of M.A., and Pierre (born 1626, died 1628). The elder son (born 6th January 1625, died 1669) was, in 1648, Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford, and he served successively as a curate in Petworth, Patcham, and Mayfield. But his sympathy with the Nonconformists drove him from such employments in the year 1662, and in 1664 he became minister of the French Church at Canterbury. Calamy says of him, “He was a man of considerable accomplishments, a valuable preacher, and of an agreeable conversation.” His first wife, Esther, had a son, Paul, and a daughter, Elizabeth (born 1664). He married, secondly, in 1666, Frances, daughter of Benjamin Pickering, of West Hoodley, Sussex, and had by her a son, Benjamin (born 1667). The above-named Paul (born 1652, died 1712) was the father of another Paul D’Aranda (born 1686, died 1732); both father and son were Turkey merchants in London. The name has died out, the family being represented collaterally only.
In the year 1589 the signature, “Adrien de Le me,” as a diacre of the French Church was appended to the Norwich Book of Discipline. From this good deacon’s will, written in the French language, it appears that he was born in 1549 at Nomayn (probably Nomeny, fourteen miles north of Nancy), and that the Christian name of his deceased father was Michiel. Adrien de Le mé spent his refugee life in Norwich, where he died in 1603. His will (dated 28th September, proved 9th December), which is printed at the end of my Historical Introduction, implies that his capital amounted to about £250. His wife’s Christian name was Marguerite. His daughter, Marie, wife of Jaques Le Greyn, seems to have been his eldest child; he had another daughter, Annis, and four sons — Pierre, Jaques, Philippe, and Nathanael, the last two being his youngest children. All these children were born before 1595, or before June of that year, when the only extant register of the Norwich French Church begins. (Elisabeth, daughter of Adrien “de le Met,” was baptized in 1596;[1] and, if a child of our Adrien, she must have died in childhood.)
The son Philippe became an eminent man. He must have been born about 1590. He had made up his mind to be a pasteur in 1603, for his father, while bequeathing clothes and furniture to his brothers, left to him his great Bible, Bullinger’s Decades, and Calvin’s Institutes. He passed through his theological course successfully; and at an unknown date, probably 1615, he signed the Book of Discipline as minister of the French Church of Norwich. His good education seems to have rendered his peculiar name, De le mé, displeasing to him. We can fancy the young divine soliloquising thus: du mé would be grammatical, or (if you change the gender) de la mé but de le mé is monstrous. Accordingly, he signed the Discipline, in “a clear, bold hand,” Philippe Delme, ministre. In 1625 (or later) his brother signed as a deacon, “Pierre de me,” and; is also in the baptismal register of Norwich as “Pierre du me.”
As to the pasteur, we at last obtain an authentic date, namely, the day of his marriage in the French Church of Canterbury, 29th December 1616. He is entered in the register as Philippe Delme, native of Norwich, and minister at Norwich, son of the late Adrien. His wife was Elizabeth, daughter of Elias Maurois, of Canterbury. This marriage brought him into affinity with many good French families in that metropolitan centre — the Maurois, the Desbouveries, the Du Quesnes, &c. His eldest son was Elie, or Elias, but he is not registered at Norwich. Mr Delme’s marriage led also to his translation to the French pastorate of Canterbury. His other children were baptized in that church — Elizabeth (1619), Anne (1621), Philippe (1627), Pierre (1630), and Jean (1633). (A daughter Jeanne was not registered at Canterbury.)
His own worth and abilities, however, were greater than any family influence. Again we have occasion to refer to the serviceable biographies by the venerable Samuel Clarke. In one of these, the life of Herbert Palmer, B.D., he found occasion to mention “Master Delme,” “a godly, faithful, prudent, and laborious minister of the French Church in Canterbury.” The occasion was an invitation addressed to Palmer to become the Lord’s Day afternoon lecturer in Alphage Church, Canterbury; this was “about the year 1626.” “Master Delme (says Clarke), with divers others
- ↑ Le 28 Mars 1596, Adrien de le Met presente son fille pour estre baptisez, le nom de Lenfan sera Elisabeth.
