Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/144

 

I. § 1. (pp. 82 to 107). The First Duke of Schomberg was Frederic Armand de Schomberg, Comte de Schomberg, in the Palatinate. He became Due de Schomberg in France. And on becoming a Protestant refugee in England, he was created Duke of Schomberg by William and Mary. It was erroneously supposed that he was eighty years of age in 1688, and hence the date of his birth has been misstated. “The Letters of George Lord Carew (1615-17),” printed by the Camden Society, prove that our hero’s father, John Mainhardt, Comte de Schomberg, married in 1615, Anne (daughter of Lord Dudley), who in December of the same year died in childbed, having given birth to Frederic Armand. Lord Carew writes in August 16 16, “Monsier Schomberge, husband to my wife [a term of endearment] Anne Dudleye is dead.” Thus Frederic was left an orphan; and thus he became a protegé of the Elector and Electress, through whom he came under the fostering care of the Prince of Orange. On the death of William II., the Prince of Orange, he settled in France and was transferred into the French army. In 1660 he was allowed to enter the army of the Queen Regent of Portugal, and took the leading part in defeating the Spanish Invasion, the decisive action being the Battle of Montesclaros in 1665. Peace, however, was not finally ratified till 1668, in which year he returned to France. He had married in Holland his cousin Johanna Elizabetha de Schomberg, by whom he had five sons, of whom the eldest settled in Germany; two died before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes; the other two were refugees, viz., Mainhardt and Charles. Having been for many years a widower, he married, secondly, in 1669, at Charenton, Susanne D’Aumale, daughter of Le Sieur d’Haucourt. In 1673 he was invited to England to take the command of our army; he came over, but did not remain. In 1674 he again served in the French army, and was made a Marshal of France on 30th July, 1675.

Page 93. — His active service in the French army terminated with the Peace of Nimeguen in 1679. He now resided in Paris. In 1683 Bishop Burnet was there introduced to him by the Marquis de Ruvigny, uncle to Rachael, Lady Russell. In 1684 Schomberg received the command of 25,000 men to fight in Germany, but war was averted. In the summer of 1685 he was foreboding the desolations of the Church.

The true dates of his mother’s and father’s deaths expose the wrong habit of historians of old in concocting history out of conjectures and probabilities. The received opinion was that Anne, Countess of Schomberg, accompanied the Elector and Electress into Holland as a