Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 26 - Pechell
Pechell, Baronet. — The refugee family of De Pechels had existed during a long series of generations at Montauban in Languedoc. Antiquaries have found the name Despesels thrice among the consuls of Montauban in the thirteenth century. That this may have been Des Pechels is rendered probable by the circumstance that Theodore Beza speaks of a notable inhabitant of Montauban whose name, translated into Latin, was Thomas de Piscatoribus. However, this excellent family is content to date from the sixteenth century. Pierre de Pechels, Baron of Boissonade and St. Cran Barré, flourished in 1547. By his wife, Louise de Fumel, he was father of Jean Horace de Pechels, who married, in 1575, Isabeau de Prevost. From father to son the succession went on thus:— Samuel married, in 1614, Rachel de Valette; Jean Horace married, in 1643, Jeanne de la Lauze; and Samuel married La Marquise Thierry de Sabonnieres, and was forty-one years of age in 1685. The latter noble couple were persecuted with the most lamentable and odious extremes of cruelty, of which he himself wrote a graphic narrative, still extant.
Dragoons were quartered on him at Montauban on 26th August 1685. “My house (he writes) was plundered with so much fury, that in a few days I was stripped of all the fortune which it had pleased God to bestow upon me.” The entire gutting of his house was finished on 21st September. “These soldiers went afterwards to plunder my farms; they carried off my cattle, which they sold in the market with as much liberty as if they had been the right owners of them, and often threatened to pull down my house and sell the materials, boasting of the authority given them by those in power.” “The Chevalier Duc and the Intendant and the Bishop vied with each other in forwarding these cruelties.” On the very first day, “I was turned out of doors with my wife, who was ready to lie in, and four little children, without being able to take anything with us but a cradle and some linen for the child that would soon be born. The street being crowded with people who rejoiced to see us thus plundered, we were not able to get beyond the door for some time, whilst the troops diverted themselves by throwing pitchers of water upon us out of the windows.” “On the 14th January 1686, Monsieur Mubasson, the consul, attended by several archers and sergeants, came to the house where our family had taken refuge, and forcibly carried off my youngest sister with great violence, and shut her up in the convent of St. Clair at Montauban, by order of the Intendant. My dear mother was dragged there at the same time. On the next day an exempt and four of his officers came into the room early in the morning to inform me, that they had orders from the Intcndcnt to take me to prison unless I would abjure my religion. I answered concisely, that, by the help of God, I would not change my religion; that I was ready to go wherever my merciful Saviour was pleased to conduct me. I was permitted to pray to God with my wife and five small children, to implore the Divine blessing and assistance for them and for me. I embraced my wife and poor children, and with tears we took a farewell of each other for ever, with a reciprocal resolution never to forsake our faith in Jesus Christ, who made choice of us to suffer for His name’s sake.”
He suffered rigorous imprisonment in various places for eighteen months. On 27th August 1687, being sentenced to transportation, he was shipped off en route for America. Through breaks in the voyage and tempestuous weather, the ship did not reach St. Christopher till 1st February 1688. Monsieur De Pechels’ compagnons de voyage were, besides the officers, crew, and military guards, seventy invalid galley-slaves sent from France to be sold, and fifty-nine prisoners. Of the latter gang he was one. He says, “Our room was under the cook-room of the ship, and so small, that twenty persons would have been straitened for room; and yet we were fifty-nine in it, not being able to stand upright on account of the place being so low, nor to lie down at full length but upon one another. This vile hole was, besides, very dark, having no light except what came in through the hatches, which were sometimes closed. The want of room, by being so much crowded, the ardent heat of the sun, and the continual fire of the cook-room almost stifled us, so that at times we could scarcely breathe, and were often obliged to strip off our shirts, to such an extent did we sweat. A most terrible stench, &c. . . . . This suffocating heat, and the terrible quantity of vermin that devoured us, a constant thirst and bad provisions, were not enough to satisfy our conductors; they often gave us severe blows, and threw water upon us, whenever they saw us praying to or praising God.”
On the 20th February he was landed at Leogane, but was not long quartered there. His religious visits to his fellow exiles, being a solace to them, were a crime for which he was banished to the island of Vacca (or La Vache), where he arrived on 30th May. Though this was a locality more fraught with the horrors of a penal settlement, it had one advantage, namely, the circumstance that English vessels occasionally touched there. In one of these barks he succeeded in making his escape, and landed in Jamaica on 24th August 1688. Being prostrated by fever and its effects, it was not till 1st October that he sailed for England in the Joseph (John Brookes, commander); he was housed in London on the 24th December. He became a lieutenant in Schomberg’s Horse, and sailed for Ireland on 25th August 1689. He survived the trying encampment at Dundalk, and in 1690 retired on a pension. In August 1692 he settled in Dublin for life.
I have reserved his wife’s sufferings for a separate paragraph. When she was ejected from her home, a fine of 400 or 500 livres being the penalty to which any neighbour would be liable for sheltering her, it appeared that the expected infant must be born in the street. The house of her husband’s sister, Madame Darassus, was occupied by the dragoons. But at the critical hour her own sister, Madame Guarrisson, having a temporary respite from the visitation of those physical-force missionaries, managed to admit her, and in a few minutes a daughter was born. The same night both mother and child were driven out by the dragoons into the open air; but at last, on condition of a guard being always beside her, a compassionate Roman Catholic woman was allowed to harbour her. Soon her daughters and her only son were taken away from her to convents. Afterwards she herself would have been imprisoned, but contrived to hide for six months, being aided by some attached dependants of the De Pechels family. Then she planned her flight to Geneva, and succeeded to get possession of her son, Jacob De Pechels. He, though only in his eighth year, was the brave companion of her night marches to Geneva. In this adopted home Madam De Pechels earned her bread by handiwork. She had parted from her husband, when his person was first seized, hardly daring to hope that she would see him again. But now she heard that he was in England; and she and Jacob succeeded in reaching London on the 29th August 1689, four days after her husband’s departure for Ireland. It was not till 4th January 1690 that they were reunited. The two surviving daughters, having been educated as Roman Catholics, obtained the family estates. They both were married: the one became Madame de Cahuzac, and the other Madame de Saint-Sardos, of Castel Sarrazin. They remitted handsome sums of money to their father, by which his exile was alleviated.
The son, Jacob de Pechels (born at Montauban, 2d June 1679), already mentioned, accompanied his parents to Dublin, which city was his home till his death at a good old age. He entered our army; and his name was spelt Pechell in his commission, and in consequence the family took that name. He rose to the rank of Colonel, having seen much service in the wars of Queen Anne’s and George the Second’s reigns. About the period of the Peace of Utrecht he married an heiress in Ireland, Jane Elizabeth Boyd, daughter of John. His sons were Samuel Pechell, Master in Chancery, and Lieut.-Colonel Paul Pechell (of Pagglesham, Essex), who was created a baronet on 1st May 1797, and died in 1803. Sir Paul was the father of the second baronet, Major-General Sir Thomas Brooke Pechell, and grandfather of the third and fourth baronets, Sir Samuel John, and Sir George Richard Brooke Pechell, both Admirals, and for some time Members of the House of Commons. The son of the fourth baronet was Captain William Henry Cecil George Pechell, of the 77th regiment, who was killed in the trenches before Sebastopol on 3rd September 1855. The fifth and present baronet is Sir George Samuel Brooke Pechell, grandson of Augustus Pechell, Receiver-General of the Customs, who was the younger son of the first baronet. The surname of Brooke was derived from the lady of the first baronet, who was the heiress of Pagglesham.
Note.
Jacob de Pechels is always spoken of as “the only son” of the refugee; he was. more correctly, “the only surviving son.” A son, Samuel, was born to the refugee couple in London, on 25th October 1690, and was baptized in Le Temple on the 29th. The parents are designated Mr. Samuel de Peschels de la Boissonade, escuyer, and Madame Marquise de Thierry de la Prille, son épouse. This son, probably, did not long survive.
Some account of the sufferings of Monsieur de Pechels may be found in Benoist’s “Histoire de l’Edit de Nantes,” Livre xxiii., p. 854, and Michelet’s “Histoire de France,” Tome xiii., p. 313 (this volume may be had separately, entitled “Louis XIV. et Revocation de l’Edit de Nantes, par J. Michelet”). M. Raoul de Cazenove wrote “Memoires de Samuel De Pechels: Montauban, 1685, Dublin, 1692.” Published at Toulouse in 1878.