Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/221

 Jacques, born 1702; and two daughters in Threadneedle Street, London — Susanne, born 1706, and Marie, born 1708.

(2.) Jean Six married Anne, daughter of Estienne Duthoit, on 17th July 1651. He had two sons, Jacques and Jean. Jacques Six (born 1652), married Marie Le Keux, on 7th December 1676, and had a son, Estienne, who left an only child, Anne. The younger Jean Six (born 1654) married, on 27th January 1676 (n.s.), Marie, daughter of Jean Le Hocq, or Le Houcq. This marriage became a famous event. The High Church party in Canterbury wished the descendants of the refugees to consider themselves English people, and to discontinue resorting to French pasteurs for the solemnization of their marriages. The Anglican Church Consistory were resolved to establish the opinion that such marriages were clandestine marriages. And it so happened that they took hold of the marriage of Jean Six and Marie Le Houcq as a specimen case, assailed it as a clandestine marriage, excommunicated Jean Six and his wife, and suspended from the ministry the officiating pasteur, M. Delon. Upon a petition to the king all this ecclesiastical censure was reversed. The French Church marriages were not again interfered with — a conclusion which became all the more real, when in the course of five years the fresh hordes of fugitives from the persecutions in France, made it evident that refugee life was not yet a thing of the past. The younger Jean Six had three children, who died young or unmarried. The elder Jean Six had been baptized by the pasteur Philippe Delmé in 1619, whose son, Jean Delmé (afterwards a merchant in London), born in 1632, became the companion of his youthful days, and the companions kept up a correspondence through life. When the above-named Mr. John Delmé was seventy-five years of age, he printed his father’s sermons on the Parable of the Sower, with this epistle prefixed:—

“To my much esteemed and dear friend, Mr John Six, in Canterbury.

“Sir, — Our long acquaintance and kind correspondence, both civil and religious, is very challenging, and demands the preserving of it in all offices of reciprocal love. I am much behind-hand, methinks, in the duties of it towards you. What I can’t do at once, I wou’d endeavour to do by little and little, still preferring the best things wherein you most delight. The many precious evidences you have given me, in the matters of God’s glory and Christian edification, make me dedicate to you in the same spirit some Sermons of my dear and much honoured father, of precious memory not only to myself but to you also, who was your faithful pastor. They are concerning the right hearing of God his holy word. I have been too long preparing ’em for the press; but upon our late being together, I thought none could better promote it than yourself by commending it to your numerous offspring, and to others of that Church of which you are a Member and Elder, for the benefit of their precious and immortal souls.

“If I had the whole of these excellent sermons preach’d by my father on this subject to the Walloon Church in Canterbury, the composure wou’d have been longer and better. What is defective can’t be help’d; and wherein my translation is so, I pray you and every one that reads it to bear with me, not imputing to the Author what faults may proceed from my version or from the want of those papers which have been mislaid. If but gleanings do yield so much good, how much more benefit wou’d the whole have produc’d! I desire to be very thankful to God for what there is of it, and that I had an able friend and good hand in the ministry of the Gospel to digest it in order which otherways wou’d never have seen the light. Now committing you and the candid readers to Father, Son, and Spirit, who alone can build us up in faith and holiness, I remain, Sir, Your very affectionate friend and humble servant,

Aug. 2, 1707. .

(3.) Barthelemi Six, the head of the refugee family, married in 1651 Lea Dambrin, and died on 17th January 1698 (n.s.), being within three days of attaining threescore years and ten. His son, Jacques Six, baptized 11th July 1652, married in 1675 Ester de Sedt; he died probably in 1734, his will having been proved on 10th October of that year, and if so, his age was eighty-two. He left two sons, Samuel and Jaques. Samuel, born 1683, married Marie, daughter of “Docteur Deprez,” and had a son, Jaques Deprez Six, unmarried. Jaques (the younger brother of Samuel), born 17th October 1694, married Ester, daughter of Louis Decanfour, and had a son Jaque, born 30th January, baptized 26th February 1731 (n.s.). At this date, although French was still the language of the congregation in the undercroft of the cathedral, and of their registers, the descendants of the very old refugees were English people. And I have no doubt that the last-named infant is James Six, Esq., F.R.S., father of James Six, M.A. (see my Chapter XIII.). 