Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/278

   

The ancient surname of this family was Cholar. They reappear as Walloon nobles, Barons de la Prée, and of the household of the Dukes of Hainault, with the surname of Le Carlier. In the days of Duke Alva there were two brothers, the elder of whom, having continued a Roman Catholic, was known as Thomas Le Carlier dit le Remy, Baron de la Prée. In 1572 he left his property to a younger brother, who had become a Protestant, on the condition that he recanted. The seat of the family was in the neighbourhood of Cambray. The Protestant brother, who refused to recant, dropped the prefix Le, and there were Protestant Carliers of Artois and Colliers of Picardy, believed to be of his stock. In the Lansdowne MSS. in the British Museum, there is a census of Foreign Protestants in London, and under date 1567 there is entered a Walloon family residing in Cripplegate : —

“Jehan Collyer; Marie, his mother; Marie, his wife; Jehan, his son; Peter, his son; Abigaill, his daughter,” and four servants.

The official scribes in those days wrote y in preference to i — as Gabryell for Gabriel, Rychard for Richard, &c. It has been ascertained that the younger Jehan married, and had four daughters. Peter, also, has been identified; he was a member of the Grocers’ Company of London, and was buried at Camberwell. Jehan was an arras-weaver, and was in partnership with a Remy (a remarkable fact); and Strype, in his “Annals,” notes a Collyer of Artois and a Remy of Hainault. The next individual who comes to view is Nathaniel Cholier, yeoman of the Fishmongers’ Company, evidently recognized by that intelligent and powerful corporation as of Foreign Protestant descent, and (if so) probably a son, or grandson, of Peter Collyer, of the Lansdowne MS. He seems to have died at a comparatively early age in 1669 (his wife Ruth having survived till 1692), so that we conjecture him to be a grandson of the son Peter, of the Protestant Walloon refugee family of 1567. After Nathaniel Collier, or Cholier, all is clear. The following is an abridged pedigree:— 