Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 20 - Aufrère
Aufrère. — This family descended from the Rev. Israel Antoine Aufrère (see chap, xvi.). The honourable and reverend gentleman was, in France, entitled to the territorial title of Le Marquis de Corville; but when he became a refugee, he relinquished it altogether. His spendthrift brother, Noel Daniel Aufrère, still kept his courtesy title of Chevalier de Corville; but he squandered his share of the paternal inheritance, and did not found an English family. By his wife, Sarah Amsincq, the reverend refugee had two sons and three daughters. His eldest daughter and child, Jeanne (born in 1701), was married to Rev. Dr. Regis; Magdalene (born 1703, died 1729) was the wife of Samuel Grove, Esq., barrister-at-law, appointed to Antigua; Marianne (born 1707) was married, about 1730, to Philip Du Val, one of the Court physicians. George René Aufrère, Esq., who was born in 1715, and died at Chelsea in January 1801, was the youngest child of the Rev. Israel Antoine Aufrère. He married, in 1746, a cousin of the Earl of Exeter, Miss Arabella Bate of Foston Hall, Derbyshire. He was M.P. for Stamford, and left an only child, Sophia (who died in 1786, before the elevation of her husband, Charles Anderson Pelham, Esq., to the peerage, with the title of Baron Yarborough).[1]
The Aufrère line was continued by Rev. Anthony Aufrère, the eldest son of the refugee, born 25th June 1704. He was a scholar of Westminster, and a gentleman-commoner of Oriel College, Oxford, where he took the degrees of B.A. and M.A. He was ordained a clergyman of the Church of England in 1728, and was presented to the Rectory of Heigham, near Norwich, by Archbishop Wake of Canterbury. He was twice married; 1st (soon after his becoming a Rector), to Marianne de Gastine, daughter of a French refugee officer, a major in the Dutch service at the time; 2nd, in 1740, to a widow lady, Mrs. Mary Smith, heiress of Giles Cutting, Esq.; her married life was also brief, but she left her wealth to her widowed husband, who survived her for nearly thirty years, or until 22nd May 1781, when he died at Norwich, in his seventy-seventh year. His only surviving child and heir was the son of his first wife.
Anthony Aufrère, Esq. of Hoveton, who was born February 1730, and died at Hoveton, 11th September 1814, in his eighty-fifth year, is remarkable as the father of fifteen children—seven sons and eight daughters. He entered the married state on the 19th February 1756. His widow, Anna, daughter of John Norris, Esq. of Witton and Witchingham, Fellow (1728) of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, by Anna, daughter of Thomas Carthew of Benacre, in Suffolk, Esq., died at Hoveton 11th September 1814, in her eighty-second year. I cannot follow the fortunes of their large family, having space to mention only Lieutenant Charles Gastine Aufrère, R.N., who perished, in his twenty-ninth year, on the 9th October 1799, on board H.M.’s frigate, Lutine, off the coast of Holland; Rev. Philip Duval Aufrère (born 1776, died 1848), Rector of Bawdeswell, Norfolk; Rev. George John Aufrère (died 30th January 1853, aged eighty-three), Rector of Ridlington and East Ruston, Norfolk; and the eldest son, Anthony.
Anthony Aufrère, Esq. of Foulsham, Norfolk (born 1757, died, at Pisa, 1833), married in 1791, Marianne, daughter of General James Lockhart of Lee and Carnwath, Count of the German Empire (she died on 14th September 1850). This Mr. Aufrère edited “The Lockhart Papers,” which were published in two quarto volumes in 1817. He had made his debut in the literary world in 1795 as the translator of “Salis’s Travels in various Provinces of Naples;” he also (in 1795) translated from the German, and published, “A Warning to Britons against French Perfidy.” He left one son and one daughter.
George Anthony Aufrère, Esq. of Foulslam Old Hall, and of Bowness, the last of the family, was born 18th June 1794, and married, on the 3rd September 1828, Caroline, second daughter of John Michael Wehrtmann, Esq., of Hamburg and of Osterrade in the Duchy of Holstein. The heirs of Mr. Aufrère’s deceased sister, Louisa Anna Matilda, wife of George Barclay, Esq., of New York, are the children of her only child, Antonia Matilda, wife of R. Rives, barrister of New York, formerly an attaché to the American Embassy in London, the eldest son being George Lockhart Rives, born ist May 1849. [Mrs. Barclay died at New York, 13th February 1868, and her husband in 1869.] Mr. Aufrère died at his residence, Burnside, on 6th May 1881, aged eighty-six, and left no heirs.
- ↑ Lord Yarborough (who died in 1823) is the ancestor of the Earls of Yarborough. In 1808 he sold to Government the house at Chelsea, which, with a collection of pictures, &c, he had inherited from his father-in-law, George Aufrère, Esq. The house became a part of Chelsea Hospital. [The following notice appeared in the Scots Magazine:— Died, 1st September 1804, Mrs. Aufrère, mother-in-law of Lord Yarborough. By the death of this venerable old lady his lordship will come into possession of £50,000 ready money, and one of the finest collections of paintings in this country. The late Sir Joshua Reynolds frequently said that it contained a greater variety of pieces by first masters of the Italian, Dutch, French, and Flemish schools than any other private collection in England, and estimated it at £200,000 value. It is supposed that the deceased, in conformity with her promises frequently repeated, has besides left a legacy of £10,000 to each of his lordship’s six daughters. His lordship’s two sons, it is also supposed, will enjoy £20,000 each besides the Chelsea estate.