Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 23 - Dean Vignoles
Dean Vignoles. — The Dean (as recorded in chapter xx.) was the eldest son of Rev. John Vignoles; both father and son kept up the succession of Huguenot refugee pasteurs in Ireland. The salary of a French Church minister of Dundalk was retained in the Irish estimates till the Dean’s death, in memory perhaps of the Duke of Schomberg’s Irish campaign. The French Church of Portarlington, after the Portarlington estate had been taken away from the Earl of Galway, became a French Conformist Church, the English Liturgy translated into French being used in public worship. The Rev. John Vignoles was in 1793 appointed its minister, and resided in the service of the congregation till 1817; he was also the French non-resident minister of Dundalk, which sinecure he resigned in 1813.
His son, Rev. Charles Augustus Vignoles was born in 1789; he became B.A. of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1810, M.A., B.D., and D.D. in 1831. On the resignation of his father, the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland presented him to the French Protestant Church of Dundalk, or rather to its annual salary of £50. In 1817 he succeeded his father in the French Church of Portarlington, where he took up his residence, and was the last minister who read the liturgy in the French language. (The church has been kept open to the present day as St. Paul’s, Portarlington.) He was subsequently Rector of Newtown, in the diocese of Meath. In 1828 he was made Dean of the Chapel-Royal in Dublin Castle by the Marquis of Anglesey, Lord-Lieutenant, which dignified office he enjoyed till 1843, when he was made Dean of Ossory. His official residence, or deanery, was in Kilkenny. Dean Vignoles died in 1877, in his eighty-ninth year, and was buried in the Cathedral Yard of St. Canice, Kilkenny. The following inscription is on his tomb:—
The Very Rev. Charles Vignoles, D.D.,
appointed Dean of Ossory, May 1843.
Born 25th July 1789.
Died 12th October 1877.
Rev. xiv. 13.