Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 17 - Section I
Chapter XVII.
GROUPS OF REFUGEES — (1.) LADIES. (2.) OFFICERS. (3.) CLERGY. (4.) MEDICAL MEN. (5.) MERCHANTS.
I. Ladies.[1]
1. Mademoiselle Guichard was the governess in the Chateau of St. Jean de Gardonenque, to the family of the Marquis de Montvaillant, in the year 1689. The castle was used as a prison, and in that year one of the prisoners was a Huguenot preacher, Monsieur Roman, described as a proposant or divinity student. One day she heard that the following morning was appointed for his execution. She planned his rescue and attempted it at midnight. “It required (says a narrator) that she should be assured that the guards slept; then she had to find means to open the prison door; to disengage the prisoner’s bands; to conduct him to a room in the castle in which was a window looking towards the outer side of the walls; that he should descend from thence to a wall of great height.” Mademoiselle Guichard accomplished her heroic enterprise, and no suspicion fell upon her. But finding that the Marquis, who had once been a Protestant, was suspected and was in danger of prosecution, she volunteered a confession. For her offence against the sanguinary laws of France, she was publicly whipped by the executioners, and was for some years imprisoned in Sommières. In 1696 she set out for England by the circuitous route of Switzerland, Germany, and Holland. In Switzerland she met Roman, who had the opportunity of personally offering his assurances of gratitude and sympathy. She was living in London in 1700. (See Baynes’s Life of Brousson, p. 347.)
2. Henri de Dibon was a Huguenot refugee in England; he had one son, Henri, who married, but died (as did his wife) in his father’s life-time. The younger Henri’s only child, Margaret, was thus the good refugee’s sole representative. Margaret de Dibon married a clergyman, and was in her turn represented by an only child — namely, a daughter, Anne, afterwards Mrs. Faber, mother of the uncommonly erudite, valuable, and valiant religious author, Rev. George Stanley Faber, B.D. (born 1773, died 1851 ). Within the old French Bible handed down to him by his maternal ancestors (and now the property of Charles Waring Faber, Esq., barrister-at-law), the Rev. G. S. Faber wrote, in 1834, what follows:—
“This Bible once belonged to M. de Dibon, a Huguenot gentleman, whose family estate and residence were situated in the Isle of France. At the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in the year 1685, M. de Dibon was arrested by order of Louis XIV.; and on his firm refusal to abandon the religion of his ancestors, his whole property was confiscated, and he himself was thrown into prison. Before the arrival of the dragoons at his residence, he had time sufficient to bury this his Family Bible within a chest in his garden. Here he left it, in hopes of some day recovering what he esteemed his best treasure. While in confinement, he was frequently tortured by the application of fire to wreaths of straw, which were fastened round his legs; but through the grace of God, he was enabled to persevere in making a good confession. This particular torture was specially resorted to, in consequence of his being a sufferer from the gout. He at length effected his escape; but, ere he quitted his native land for ever, he had the resolution to re-visit the estate of his forefathers, now no longer his, for the purpose of recovering his Bible. This he accomplished; and with the Word of God in his hand, an impoverished exile, he finally reached England in the reign of William III. of glorious memory. It was the will of heaven that he should survive his only son and daughter-in-law, who left behind them an only child, Margaret, born a.d. 1720. In consequence of the early death of both her parents, Margaret de Dibon received her education from her pious grandfather and grandmother, who, having sacrificed everything for their religion, were thence proportionately anxious to inculcate its great saving truths on the mind of their grand-daughter. Nor was their labour useless; for, through many trials and privations, Margaret ever showed herself the faithful descendant of a faithful ancestry. At the age of twenty-four years, in the year 1744, she became the wife of the Rev. David Traviss, only son of William Traviss, Esq., of Darton, in the County of York, Vicar of Snape, &c. The offspring of this marriage was — 1st, Anne, born a.d. 1745, and married a.d. 1772, to the Rev. Thomas Faber, A.M., Vicar of Calverley;” [2nd, Caroline, Mrs. Buck; 3rd, William (died without issue)].
3. Jane Guill was a daughter and co-heir of Monsieur George Guill, a French Protestant, proprietor of “noble estate in Tours in France.” Her family became refugees in Britain, and she was married, first, to Mr. Francis Barckstead, and secondly, in 1701, to the Rev. Daniel Williams, D.D. The father wrote a memorandum within his family Bible as follows:—
“On Thursday, 11th October 1685 (French style), we set out from Tours, and came to Paris on Monday, the 15th of the said month. On the 17th came out the king of France his declaration to drive out the Protestants, who had notice in Paris in four days, which day falling on the 21st, was just the day whereon our places in the waggon for Calais were retained; and the day before I was warned by letters from Tours by several friends, that upon false accusations I was sought out by the Intendant and other magistrates, and that they had written to the Chancellor of France to send after me and arrest me. But it pleased God that, immediately after his signing and sealing the declaration for the annulling of the Edict of Nantes, he fell sick, and died while we were on our journey; so I have extraordinary occasion to take notice of God’s providence towards me and mine in such eminent dangers, out of which He hath miraculously saved us,”
A sister was married to Rev. Joseph Stennett, another learned and patriotic Dissenting divine. Mr. Baynes possessed a manuscript which belonged to Stennett, described as “Reflexions on the Cruel Persecution which the Reformed Church of France now undergoes, and on the conduct and acts of the Assembly of the clergy of that kingdom. Translated out of French, 4to., 1685.” Mr. Godfrey Holden Pike, in his “Ancient Meeting Houses” (p. 177), states that Monsieur Guill left property in France to the value of £12,000. Louis XIV. promised Lord Preston that the estate should be restored, and signed a document to that effect; but the promise was not kept.
4 Mary Roussel (born 15th August 1666) was the great-grand-daughter of one of the two Roussels, the bosom friends of Farel, the Reformer. Her father, Lawrence Roussel of Pont-Audemer, was arrested in 1684 as he meditated flight, and he died a prisoner for the Protestant faith in his own house in 1691. Her mother, with two boys, reached Calais in safety, en route for England. Mary’s duty was to follow with her brothers, Stephen and Francis, aged eight and four. Having dressed herself as a peasant-girl, she placed them in two panniers which were swung over the back of a donkey, covering them with vegetables and fruit; she put a basket containing poultry on the donkey’s back. The little ones were charged neither to speak nor to move, whatever might happen on the road. A servant, dressed as a farmer, rode on horseback, moving in advance as if unknown to the girl. They travelled by night; but as time was precious, the latter part of the journey had to be taken by day-light. Suddenly a party of dragoons came in sight; they rode up, fixed their eyes upon her, and then on the panniers. “What is in those baskets?” they cried. Before she could give an answer, one of them drew his sword, and thrust it into the pannier where the younger boy was hid. No cry was heard, not a movement was made; the soldiers concluded that all was right, and galloped off. As soon as they were out of sight the sister knocked off the inanimate contents of the pannier, the little boy lifted up his arms towards her, and she saw he was covered with blood from a severe cut on one of them. He had understood that if he cried, his own life and the lives of his brother and sister would be lost, and he bravely bore the pain and was silent. She bound up the wound and nursed him on the road with the fondest care, and had the joy of finding that his life was spared, though he carried a scar from the wound all his days. The party reached Calais, and the family crossed to England. The two elder boys were Isaac and Lawrence; and they, with Stephen and Francis, were educated in England. Isaac left two married daughers. Lawrence, after a chequered life in America as a slave, and then as a proprietor, was a London physician, and had a daughter, Bridget, who married her cousin Isaac, son of Francis. Francis, “the wounded Huguenot boy,” married Esther Heusse, a refugee from Quilleboeuf, and had eight children; from two of his daughters, Elizabeth, wife of Peter Beuzeville, and Mary Ann, wife of Thomas Meredith, the collateral representatives of the Roussels descend. One of these was Esther Beuzeville (born 1786, died 1851); she wrote the account of Mary Roussels flight in “Historical Tales for Young Protestants,” edited by Mr. Crosse for the Religious Tract Society; she was a daughter of Peter Beuzeville, son of the aforesaid Peter and Elizabeth, and was married to the Rev. James Philip Hewlett of Oxford. Her son, the Rev. James Philip Hewlett of London, has with admirable industry and accuracy compiled a genealogy of the Roussels, showing their relation to the families of Beuzeville, Meredith, Byles, Jolit, and others; to this genealogy, a copy of which Mr. Hewlett presented to me, I owe the above details. Mary Roussel the intrepid refugee was never married; a husband worthy of her would have been a prodigy of worth. [The elder Rev J. P. Hewlett died in 1820, aged thirty-nine; a volume of excellent sermons by him was printed in 1821; among the subscribers are P. Levesque, Esq. (10 copies), Mr. Barbet, Mrs. and Miss Beuzeville, Messrs J.C., H.N., and J.B. Byles and Miss Byles, James Guillemard, Esq., Mrs. Jolit, Mr. Samuel Jolit, Mrs. Saubergue.]
5. René de Saint-Leger, Sieur d’ Orignac, son of Le Sieur de Boisrond, was a Huguenot; the Revocation dispersed his family. His wife and daughter were refugees in England; the latter was imprisoned in France, and was conveyed to one convent after another from 1685 to 1688, until, proving “obstinate,” she was banished.
6. Lady Douglas, at the time of the Revocation, had completed her first year of married life in France; her maiden name was Anne De Bey de Batilly, and she had brought to her husband an estate in Alsace. From a state paper Sir John Dalrymple gives the following extract; it occurs in a letter to the Earl of Sunderland, dated 19th December 1685, from our ambassador at Paris, Sir William Trumball:—
“I acquainted Mons. De Croissy with Sir William Douglas’s petition for leave for his wife and child to go into England with him. But this he told me plainly the king had refused; for although the husband, being not naturalized, might go if he pleased, yet the wife and child were subjects of France, and should not have that permission. It happened that at the same time I requested leave for one Mrs. Wilkins to sell her estate at Rouen and to return to her husband in England, whose case was this: Humphrey Wilkins had for many years been a merchant in Rouen, but falling into troubles, his wife obtained a sentence of separation de habitation et des biens from him, and so he went to London. Monsieur De Croissy told me that the king would not grant her any leave as she desired, but because her husband had been naturalized he looked upon her as his subject. So that in the case of Sir William Douglas they separate man and wife, and in the other, they join them that were separated by the sentence of their own judges.”
During the Williamite war the estate was forfeited, and after the peace of Ryswick a petition for its restoration was transmitted. Our ambassador reported on 12th December 1699, “I have mentioned the case of Sir William Douglas, and have obtained as much as could be desired, it being a matter triable at law, so it is recommended by the king’s order to the chief president of Alsace, with which Sir William Douglas is well satisfied.” The following epitaph is on a tablet in St. James’ Church, Westminster:—
“Near this place lies the body of Lady Anne de Bey of Batilly, daughter of the Right Hon. Anthony de Bey, Lord Baron of Batilly (Major-General to Louis XIII. and Louis XIV., Kings of France, Governor of the town and citadel of New Chateau in Loraine), and of the Lady Susanne de Pas, the daughter of the Marquis of Feuquière, who was made Marshal of France the day he died. This illustrious person was famous for her piety, charity, virtue, and goodness, and was married to Sir William Douglas, Major-General of Her Majesty’s forces, by whom she had four children, Charles only surviving, now Colonel of Her Majesty’s forces. She died the 20th of March 1709.”
7. Magdalen Lefebvre in October 1685 was a very little girl, “a child of old age,” daughter of a farmer-proprietor in Normandy, and of an invalid mother. A writer in Household Words, vol. viii., gives a beautiful narrative of her parting from her parents, and her being shipped off to Jersey with a great chest of clothes hastily but abundantly collected. From one of her brothers descended a Duke of Dantzic. She herself is represented by English descendants, one of whom was the lady who told the story to the writer. That lady, as an orphan child, had lived in London with two maiden aunts, who always spoke French, thinking English a foreign language, and often reminded their niece that she was a little French girl, bound to be polite, gentle and considerate, to curtsey on entering or leaving a room, to stand until her elders gave her leave to sit down. Upstairs was the very chest with which Magdalen Lefebvre was sent off from France. Out of Magdalen’s trousseau the little Spitalfields girl was dressed. When she shrank from putting on so peculiar a frock, with such a quiet pattern, she was told, “You ought to be proud of wearing a French print, there are none like it in England.” They were surrounded by families like their own. Some correspondence had been kept up with the unseen and distant relations in France (third or fourth cousins perhaps); but it languished and ceased. Yet there remained characteristic relics from Normandy and Languedoc, a sword, wielded by some great-grandfather, a gold whistle that had summoned household servants and out-of-door labourers when bells were unknown; bibles with silver clasps and corners; strangely-wrought silver spoons, the handle enclosing the bowl; a travelling case with coat-of-arms engraved in gold, containing a gold knife, spoon, and fork, and a crystal goblet. Many such relics still tell of the affluence and refinement which the refugees left behind for religion’s sake. (The above facts and phraseology are from Household Words.)
8. A Huguenot wife reached England. The husband, who had taken a different road to avoid suspicion, was captured and consigned to a French prison. His cell had an iron floor, which was heated from beneath till it was red hot, whenever the attempt to torture him out of his religion was resorted to. He became a cripple, and was at last let out, to go about the town on crutches. He had no means of corresponding with his wife, and knew not whether she was safe, or even alive. But at last he found his way to London, and startled the passengers by enquiring if they knew where Louise his wife was. Some one at length thought of directing him to a coffee house near Soho Square, kept by a French refugee, and resorted to by Huguenots; but even there he could get no information. A pedlar, overhearing all that was said in the coffee-room, silently resolved to enquire for the poor stranger’s wife in every town where French settlers were to be found. At length, at Canterbury, his enquiries made a noise, and Louise, who was there, and living by needle-work, lost no time in starting for London. Reduced to the lowest poverty, and utterly despairing of seeing her again, the poor man was found. It may well be supposed that Louise rejoiced, though tears flowed fast at the tokens of agonizing and protracted suffering visible on the long-lost companion of her youth. At Canterbury she affectionately and thankfully nursed him, and maintained him for the remainder of his life. (Crosse’s Historical Tales.)
9. The wife of Réné Buhner, a Huguenot refugee, residing at the Priory House in Lambeg, has a name in Irish Protestant history. In 1690, as William III. was passing their house on his way to the army, his carriage broke down, and the Huguenot husband helped to repair it. The only reward he requested was that the great and generous chief of European Protestants would deign to kiss him, to which the king assented, adding, “And thy wife too,” and suited the action to the word. They left descendants in Lisburn, whose representatives spell their name “Boomer,” and keep up the Christian name “Rainey,” or “Renny.” The following is from Dr. Purdon’s Huguenot Lecture:—
At Lambeg, René Bulmer, his wife, and other refugees, met William III. on his route to the Boyne. René requested permission to detail his grievances to the king, which request his Majesty kindly granted. He then requested permission to salute the king’s cheek, which was also granted, and then King William jumped off his horse, saying, “and thy wife also,” and she being a very pretty woman, the king kissed her, as the old chronicle says, “right heartilie.”
10. In the Irish Pension List of 1722 are the names of three ladies, each in receipt of two shillings per day, Elizabeth de St. Lis de Heucourt, Urania de St. Lis de Heucourt, and Magdalena de St. Lis de Heucourt; they were probably daughters of a Protestant nobleman of Normandy, the Marquis de Heucourt, mentioned as a Royal Commissioner by Du Bosc.
“I believe,” said the Rev. Philip Skelton, “you will be as much pleased as I was with the behaviour of a French Gentlewoman, brought from Bordeaux to Portsmouth by a sea captain of my acquaintance. This excellent woman, having found means to turn her fortune (which was considerable) into jewels, was in the night conveyed on board the ship of my friend, with all she was worth in a small casket. Never was the mind of a human creature so racked with fears and anxieties till the ship was under sail. But she no sooner saw herself disengaged from the country which she loved best, and where she had left all her relations, than her spirits began to rise and discover that kind of joy which others, after a long absence, testify on their approach to the place of their nativity. This pleasing sensation gave signs of gradual increase, as she drew nearer and nearer to the place she had chosen for her banishment. The moment she landed she threw herself on her face among the mud, and (without the least regard either to the foulness of the spot, or the remarks of those who saw her), kissing the ground, and grappling it with her fingers, she blessed the land of liberty and cried, ‘Have I at last attained my wishes? Yes, gracious God! (raising herself to her knees, and spreading her hands to heaven) I thank Thee for this deliverance from a tyranny exercised over my conscience, and for placing me where thou alone art to reign over it by thy word, till I shall lay down my head on this beloved earth.’”[2]
11. 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 or 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), who has entered upon his ninety-third year. His next brother was no less distinguished — namely, Right Hon. Sir John George Shaw Lefevre, father of Right Hon. George John Shaw Lefevre, 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 was K.C.B., D.C.L., and F.R.S.; he had been M.P., and in various offices, and was Clerk of the Parliaments from 1856 to 1875; he died on 20th August 1879, aged eighty-two. Motto: sans changer.
12. Sophia Portal, daughter of William Portal, Esq. of Laverstoke, and heiress of his large personal property, was a truly illustrious descendant of the Huguenots. Her pedigree is in another chapter; but here I note that a daughter of the refugee, Henri Portal, named Charlotte, was married on 16th August 1755 to John Slade, Esq. of Maunsel, Somerset, one of the Commissioners of the Victualling Board; her son, John Slade, was created a baronet in 1831; her daughter, Sophia Slade, was married in 1799 to her cousin, William Portal, who was the squire of Laverstoke from 1 801 to 1846. Sophia Portal was his only child; but Laverstoke passed to her uncle John, and she was, after her father’s death, Miss Portal of Russell Square, London. Until her lamented death, on 13th November 1875, she administered her large fortune with the greatest energy, liberality, and judgment, conducting a large correspondence, and holding interviews with leading philanthropists in a manner worthy of a minister of state. It was she who established the Wandsworth Reformatory for Boys, which was afterwards transferred to the Government. She established and maintained at her own cost, first at Eastbourne, and afterwards at Little Hampton, a Convalescent Home for London City Missionaries and similar invalided or overworked Christian labourers. In or about 1850 she purchased the lease of Portman Chapel in Baker Street, of which the Rev. Canon Reeve was incumbent, in order to secure the continuance of his ministry. And almost to the last day of her life she taught a weekly Bible-class of young shop-women. She was (says the Record newspaper) “peculiarly simple and unpretending in her dress and manners, spending large sums on others, and little on herself. . . . In the true spirit of her noble forefathers, who surrendered everything rather than the truth, she was strongly opposed to every form of superstition and priest-craft, and deplored their progress in the Established Church; she was of that Catholic spirit that could rejoice in good done, or godliness advanced, whether under the agency of a Bishop or a Presbyterian, a Baptist or a Wesleyan. She died at the age of seventy five, having dispensed her bounties for nearly thirty years, and left £5000 to the British and Foreign Bible Society, besides large legacies to the Church [of England] Missionary Society, the London City Mission, the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East, the Christian College at Beyrout,” &c, &c.
13. May we allude to the fact, that there is noble Huguenot blood in our Royal Family? — Alexandre d’Esmiers, Marquis d’Olbreuse, a Huguenot nobleman of Poitou, was an exile in Holland. George William, Duke of Zell, married his only child, Eleonore, Marquise d’Olbreuse, and had issue an only child, Her Serene Highness, Sophia Dorothea, Consort of George Lewis, Electoral Prince of Hanover, and mother of King George the Second. The generous deeds of the Olbreuse Family illumine the pages of Jean Migault, filled with the Malheurs d’une Famille Protestante de Poitou.
- ↑ This group includes worthy female descendants of refugees.
- ↑ Mr. Skelton printed a sermon, from which I quote more than once, to incite our hospitality towards French Protestant refugees who arrived in 1751, exiles in the reign of Louis XV. The Rev. Philip Skelton (born 1707, died 1787) was an Irish clergyman and able Divine; he was an admired pulpit orator, and his sermons and other pieces were printed, and till several volumes; the sermon on the refugees was not pleached, but was printed from Mr Skelton’s manuscript.