Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/130

 De Villiers also wrote a book on the Rights of Princes. He incurred Camden’s displeasure by opposing an English alliance, and preferring an alliance between the Netherlands and France — in this he followed the views of his great master, the lamented Coligny. He can hardly be condemned for disliking the Earl of Leicester’s administration. Some of the Earl’s soldiers captured him on the road between Westhoven and Flushing. “Allow me,” said De Villiers, “a short time in Midelburg for necessary business before you take me to Flushing.” “Oh, certainly,” said Colonel Russell. The gates of Midelburg opened to the prisoner — a prisoner no longer, for the magistrates of the town took him under their protection. The King of Navarre had invited him to his household and council, but as Prince Maurice, on becoming Governor of the States, asked him to remain at his posts, he would not remove. In 1588 Du Plessis Mornay wrote to the French ambassador, “You do well in keeping a strict correspondence with Monsieur de Villiers; you know how I have always lauded (and that not sparingly) the talents God has given him; and I find it easy to love a man whom I honour.” (See Gerdesii Scrinium, tom iv. pars i.)  

The Pasteur Robert Le Macon, Sieur de la Fontaine, was born in 1535. He was a Protestant minister of Orleans on 25th April 1562, when the National Synod of the Reformed Church met in that city. The Synod chose Antoine de Chandieu (known as Sadeel) to be their president, and Robert Le Maçon, Sieur de la Fontaine, to be one of the scribes, or Clerks of Synod. In Orleans he had the Pasteur Beaumont as his colleague, and at the end of 1562 he obtained as a friend and neighbour the Hebrew professor, Matthieu Beroald. He was a sponsor at the baptism of a daughter of the latter on 12th March 1569. What was known among the Huguenots as the third civil war broke out in 1568, and the fury of the Romanists was specially felt at Orleans, so that about that time the Protestant congregation was scattered and the pasteurs fled. Monsieur de la Fontaine eventually came to London, and officiated in the French Church in Threadneedle Street. The year on which his services are first recorded is (according to Burn) 1574. The Church in France still considered Orleans to be under their care, and his pastoral tie to be enduring. A National Synod assembled at St. Foy in February 1578. To this Synod a petition was presented from “the brethren of the French Church of London, in the kingdom of England,” praying that Messieurs de Villiers, minister of the church of Rouen, and De la Fontaine, minister of the church of Orleans, might be given to them as their pastors. The Synod granted this request to the extent that these ministers should be lent to the London brethren to re-organise their congregation, and that thereafter they should return to their flocks in France.

In the beginning of 1588 our Queen was disposed to enter into a treaty of peace with Spain. At this time De Villiers was chaplain to Prince Maurice, Governor of the States. The Protestants of the Netherlands were filled with consternation at a report that Elizabeth wished them to be content with liberty of conscience, and not to demand the toleration of their public worship. Three pastors came to London on an embassy, and brought a letter of introduction from De Villiers to his former colleague. De la Fontaine received them on the 24th June, and told them his belief that if a good peace could be made with Spain, little care would be taken of religion. He warned them that the Lords of the Queen’s Council would by no means suffer ministers to meddle with State affairs and with the civil government. “You must excuse yourselves,” said he, “by saying, We are here as clergymen only, and concern ourselves with nothing but religion.”

We pass on to the year 1596, which was an eventful one for De la Fontaine. On Sunday, 19th May, he hired a boat to carry him to his lodging beyond London Bridge. While on the river the boat was unaccountably swept into the current under an arch of the bridge, and he himself was caught up by the water-wheel. Yet he escaped not only death but injury of any kind. He publicly gave thanks at the next meeting for worship in his church, preaching a sermon on Psalm xxxiv., which was printed. In a prefatory account of this thanksgiving sermon he announced that he was 61 years of age. (This enabled us to give 1535 as the year of his birth.) In the month of June following, a petition from London having been presented to the National Synod of Saumur, requesting that Monsieur de la Fontaine might remain (he himself, by letter, joining in the request), the Synod resolved to comply with the petition, always reserving the right which the churches in France have to him; and the Orleans congregation consented on condition that Monsieur Du Moulin, senior, should be settled over them. 