Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 15 - Section V

by David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

Layout 2

V. Rambouillet.

The Rambouillets were falconers to the Kings of France. The first Marquis de Rambouillet was in the royal carriage with Henri IV. when that prince was assassinated. From him descended a noble refugee, Nicholas, Marquis de Rambouillet, chevalier, Seigneur de la Sablière, who married Henriette Louise de Cheusse. He himself, with his wife and family, fled from France on the Revocation, and took refuge in Copenhagen. He became a Councillor of State of the King of Denmark. In 1714 he came to England with King George I., and did not remove till his death (date unknown); the Marchioness survived till 1735. The Marquis’s shield was “azure, three partridges proper, picking an ear of corn or.” But he had an allegorical seal engraved in memory of the determination of himself and his lady to seek refuge in a Protestant country; the device was, two doves perched on a tree and ready for flight, and the motto was “idem velle, idem nolle!” He had also another seal representing a crown of glory in the sky held out in prospect over a stormy sea.

Anthony Gideon de Rambouillet, his eldest son, died at the Hague, unmarried. He also had an emblematical seal, surmounted by a coronet, with the initials A.G.R., and having as the device a bird escaped from a net leaving several feathers behind, the motto being “Les pertes ne sont rien quand on sorte d’esclavage.” His nephew, Major Henry Boisragon administered to his Dutch Will in February 175 1, the Boisragons of that generation being the children of his only sister, Marie Henriette. The old refugees had another son Charles William de Rambouillet, Lieutenant-Colonel in the Guards; he married, at Fulham, 16th June 1730, Anne, daughter and co-heir of Francis du Pratt du Clareau of La Rochelle; by this marriage he became connected with the refugee family of Masères, thus:—

Francis du Pratt du Clareau.

Anne

=

Rambouillet.

Magdalene

=

Masères.

The only child who married was

Francis, Baron Masères.

Elizabeth

=

Rev. John Whitaker, A.M.

George Whitaker of Penbury, died in 1846.

$\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,}$

=

$\scriptstyle {\left\{{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right.}$

Philadelphia Walter, died in 1834.

Elizabeth Whitaker, died at Hastings in 1848, unmarried.

A third co-heir was Margaret du Pratt du Clareau.