IV. Rev. Benjamin Daillon.
The Rev. Benjamin Daillon, or De Daillon, is said to have been a scion of the noble house of Le Lude, which at a subsequent date became a ducal family (see Anselme). The Right Hon. James Daillon, Count Du Lude, who has the doubtful honour of having been kept before the eye of posterity by an engraved portrait, was probably the younger brother. This possible brother, or probable cousin espoused the Jacobite side of British politics, and put himself forward in an irritating style when the good Queen Mary was at the head of affairs, and when the fortunes of her absent lord had assumed a rather cloudy aspect. On the 20th August 1693, he preached a sermon in St. Matthew’s Church, London, on the text, “My kingdom is not of this world,” which offended the royal and munificent benefactress of the Huguenot refugees, a feeling in which the king seems to have shared. In Anthony Wood’s diary, there is this entry, — “1694, Feb. 20, Mr. Daillon, a French minister, who had been committed prisoner for preaching treason in St. Matthew’s Church in Friday Street, was found by the jury not guilty, and so acquitted.” He had perhaps saved himself by an enigmatical style, and his imprisonment had been a more than sufficient punishment. In 1724 he accomplished the more respectable achievement of completing the ninetieth year of his age, in memory of which his portrait (painted by J. Fry, and engraved by P. Pelham) was published, the substratum of engraved description calling him “a confessor,” which he may have been in France, but in Fngland certainly was not, if he claimed the honour of martyrdom only as one “who was tried for high treason for preaching an orthodox sermon in ye city of London on ye 36th verse of the 18th Chap, of St. John’s gospel on ye 20th day of August 1693.” It would appear that James Daillon was born in 1634.
Benjamin De Daillon, escuyer, sieur de la Levrice, was born in 1630. His epitaph seems to point to Brittany as the native province of the noble family from which he sprang. He was pasteur of the Church of La Rochefoucauld in Angoumois. He was also an author. Three small publications of his were printed[1] (Amsterdam, 1687), one of which is a sermon entitled, “La Revolte de la Foi, ou les Doctrines des Demons,” a sermon preached before a Provincial Synod on the 1st September 1668; another is a letter to the Faithful in the provinces of Angoumois, Xaintonge, and Aunix; and the other tractate is an Examination of the oppression inflicted upon Protestants in France. On the last topic, he could speak and write feelingly, because he had been a sufferer from French lawyers and in French prisons.
The Curé and Carmelite Monks of the country town of La Rochefoucauld made several attempts to suppress the Huguenot Temple. At length they appealed to the criminal courts, and produced title-deeds, either forged altogether, or fraudulently interpolated, setting forth that the site of the temple was the property of the monastery. They then swore that the clock had been taken from their chapel, and that Daillon had placed it above the cross. They also complained that the building was too near them, and occasioned distraction to the Catholic worshippers. Daillon met the charges and refuted them, both by vocal pleading and in a written remonstrance; but in vain. Le Lieutenant Criminel ordered him to discontinue the ministerial office, suppressed the consistory of La Rochefoucauld, and interdicted for ever the exercise of the Pretended Reformed Religion in that town. He commanded that the temple be demolished within one month, by the members of the congregation, or, in case of their failing to give obedience, to be pulled down at their expense. Further, he sentenced Benjamin de Daillon to be banished from the Province of Angoumois for nine years, and fined him and his elders 3000 livres (£120). Being probably unable to pay the fine, or for conscientiously disregarding some other parts of the sentence, Daillon was for a long time shut up in various prisons. In April 1685 he was a prisoner in the Conciergerie of Paris. Before the end of the reign of James II., he, with his wife, née Pauline Nicolas, was a refugee in London.
By letters patent under the Great Seal 4 James II. (1688) Benjamin de Daillon, John Louis Malide, Samuel Mettayer, Simon Canole, Henry Gervais, Timothy Baignoux, Charles Peter Souchet, William Bardon, John Forent, and Barthelemy Balaguier, and their successors, ministers of the French congregation of Protestant strangers, were formed into a corporation with permanent succession and liberty to exercise the functions of the ministry according to their manner accustomed, with power to purchase land, to build churches, and, in case of death or removal of any of the ministers, to choose other persons to succeed in the office of ministers. The Anglican Liturgy had formerly been urgently prescribed to refugee ministers. By
- ↑ Baynes’s “Witnesses in Sackcloth,” p. 223.
