nection of these relations with the Court of King James perplexed the De Roves; and requiting the royal hospitality, they stood by the King as long as possible, although the refugees generally were not pleased with them on that account. Comte De Roye, however, refused to command King James’s army.
As soon as she arrived, the Comtesse was made a Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen; but her title not being British, the question arose whether the queen might kiss her as a female member of our nobility. Henry Savile wrote from Whitehall, April 1686, “The Countess de Roye is come, but it is decided against her that the Queen shall not salute her, which you may suppose is no great affliction to the Lady above-mentioned.” This interesting question could not rest, as we find from the Ellis correspondence; a letter, dated London 23d July 1687, reports, “The reason why the Comte de Roye is made an Irish Baron was, that his lady might, with the less difficulty, it is supposed, wait on the Queen’s Majesty, and have the honour to be saluted by her, which otherwise she could not have pretended to.” Although no patent of nobility was ever given to Comte de Roye under the Great Seal of Ireland, yet there is evidence for the fact that he received the King’s Letter to be the Earl of Lifford, and that he bore that title for life as a courtesy title, as was usual in similar cases when some obstacle prevented the Royal Grant from passing under the Great Seal.
“On the 20th October 1688,” says Oldmixon, “a proclamation was published giving directions to watch the coast, and oti the appearance of the enemy to drive all horses, oxen and cattle for draught, twenty miles from their place of landing, which is said to have been done by advice of the Count De Roye, whose conduct at the Revolution has been much condemned.” “The King’s journey to Salisbury was hastened by the advice of the Count De Roye, whose officiousness in this business gave great occasion of scandal to the French Protestants.” “The King sent the letter for the Earl of Feversham about disbanding the army to the Countess De Roye, the Earl’s sister, to be conveyed to him, and it was the last order he gave.”
The Count’s health declined, and he went to Bath “to drink the waters” in the spring of 1690. There he died on the 9th June of that year, aged fifty-seven. Du Bosc’s biographer speaks of the pasteur as deeply affected at the news of the death of Monsieur le Comte de Roye. “He was satisfied as to his piety as well as to that of his countess and daughters; and he long regretted that good nobleman, whom he esteemed even more for his probity and candour, than for all the other qualities which caused him to be regarded as one of the worthy captains of the age.”
The Comte de Roye was buried in the Cathedral of Bath, and Misson[1] copied the epitaph on his tombstone before 1698:—
Fredericus de Roye de la Rochefoucault,
Comes de Roye, de Rouci, et Liffort,
Nobilis Ordinis Elephantini Eques,
Natalibus, Opibus, Gloriâ Militari, et (quod majus est) Fide erga Religionem inclytus,
Decessit die 9 Junii 1690, AEtatis 57.
A letter from Johnstone to Leibnitz, dated Berlin, June 17-27, 1690, “begins (says Kemble, p. 57) with a discourse which passed between the Elector and Mr. Johnston concerning the Count De Roy, who died at the Bath, and so there can be no use of it now.”
His widow survived for about a quarter of a century; she died in London on the 14th January 1715, aged eighty-two. His refugee daughters were his eighth and ninth children, Charlotte and Henrietta. The former was in March 1724 made governess to Prince William [afterwards Duke of Cumberland], and to his sister, Princess Mary. Henrietta became the second wife of the Earl of Strafford. The first Earl, who was executed on Tower Hill, left a son, William Wentworth (born 8th June 1626), who lived in obscurity until the restoration of Charles II. He was made a Privy Councillor, and Knight of the Garter, by King Charles, and restored to all his father’s honours; his first wife, Henrietta Maria, daughter of Edward, Earl of Derby, and widow of Richard Lord Molyneux, died childless, 27th December 1685. He married, secondly, Henrietta de Roye de la Rochfoucauld, and left her a widow in 1695, and childless also.
The refugee descendants of the Comte De Roye lived to a great age. The first death was on the 11th November 1732, when Henrietta, Countess Dowager of Strafford died. They seem to have had a predilection for the ancestral title of De Roucy — which, however, the scribes at Doctors’ Commons mis-spelt, making it De Roussy, as may be seen in the letters of administration granted to the Countess’s brother and sister, who exhibited an inventory of her property in May 1733. The
- ↑ Misson’s Observations, Article Bath.
