Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 18 - Section XII
XII. Beaufort.
Francois de Beaufort was a Huguenot refugee in Wesel, where his son, Daniel Cornelius, was born in 1700. There were two other sons, General Alexander Beaufort of the Prussian army, and Louis of Maestricht, author of “La Decadence de l’Empire Romaine,” and “Les Incertitudes de l’Histoire.” Daniel was educated at the University of Utrecht. He came to England under the patronage of George II., and became minister of Barnet, near London. About 1743 he went to Dublin as Chaplain to the Duke of Devonshire, Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. He was appointed to the provostship of Tuam — an ecclesiastical preferment which he exchanged for the Rectory of Navan, in the county of Meath. He resigned Navan in favour of his son in 1775, and became Rector of Clonenagh, in the diocese of Leighlin. Although he was so completely at home in his adopted country, he had a Huguenot heart, and married in 1738, in the French Church of St. Martin Orgars, Esther Gougeon, and was the father of Rev. Daniel Augustus Beaufort, LL.D., and grandfather of Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, K.C.B., of whom future chapters will speak.
The Rev. Daniel Beaufort died at Clonenagh in 1788. He was the author of “A Short Account of the Doctrines and Practices of the Church of Rome, divested of all controversy, and humbly recommended to the perusal of all good Catholics as well as Protestants.” This clever and witty brochure displays acquaintance with books, some of which may have belonged to his ancestors. He writes:—
“I have a book entitled, Taxe de la Chancellerie Romaine, in Latin and French, printed at Leyden, in the year 1607, from the original published at Paris, 1520, with privilege and with the arms of the Pope and the King of France in the frontispiece, wherein all sins, even the most horrid crimes, are taxed as they may be bought off with money. This book throws so much scandal on the church of Rome that they have suppressed it, and it has now become very scarce, yet it has been reprinted in London in French, 1701, 8vo. 158 pp.”
He alludes to his own travels, and mentions the heads treasured up at Cologne as the heads of “the wise men from the east” (Matth. ii. 1). He says:—
“The Church of Rome has determined these wise men to have been three in number; she has raised them to the rank of kings, and given to them the names of Gaspard, Melchior, and Balthasar; you may buy there bits of paper as amulets or preservatives, with an inscription ‘that these papers have touched the heads of the three kings, and are a preservative against the many diseases therein specified, and also to travellers against all dangers and accidents on the road.’ I procured one out of curiosity for a small piece of money, and carried it along with me; I crossed two seas, ran over a great tract of land, and got safe home without any accident (if by virtue of the amulet, I am much obliged to Gaspard, Melchior, and Halthasar).”