Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/337

 

first member of the House of Ruvigny known to English society was Rachel, daughter of Daniel de Massue, Seigneur de Ruvigny (in Champagné), and grand-daughter of Nicolas de Massue, Seigneur de Renneval (in Picardy.) She was born in Paris in 1603, and was presented for baptism at Charenton by the Duchesse de Sully and her son. In 1634, being the widow of a gentleman of La Perche, Elysée de Beaujeu, Sieur de la Maisonfort, she won the heart and hand of an English nobleman, Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, whose landed property was in the County of Southampton, now called Hampshire. In the Parish Register of Titchfield the following entry was made:— “August, 1634, Maried, the right honorable the Earle of Southton, in France, ye 18t day of this month.” The young countess was a zealous believer in the Protestant religion, and a lady of great personal attractions and moral excellence. The Earl had sown his wild oats on the turf. A letter dated March 20 (1634), reports, “The Earl of Southampton (they say) has lost a great deal of money lately at the horse race at Newmarket; he has license to travel for three years, and has gone in all haste to France.” His exemplary life after this catastrophe was, in all probability, largely due to the influence of the good countess. We may say that if he had not married la belle et vertueuse Huguenotte (as Rachel de Ruvigny was called), he himself would not have been immortalized in history as “the wise and virtuous Earl of Southampton.” In Evans’ Catalogue of Engraved Portraits, the following picture is included:— “Rachel Frances de Ruvigny, Countess of Southampton, whole length, in the clouds, leaning on a sphere, skull under her feet, folio, fine, painted by Vandyke, engraved by Ardell.”

The Countess died in 1637, leaving two daughters. Elizabeth became the first wife of Edward Noel, afterwards Earl of Gainsborough. The younger daughter, Rachel, married, first, Francis, LordVaughan, and secondly, The Honourable William Russell. The latter couple were styled Lady Vaughan and Mr. Russell— until, through the death of an elder brother, William became Lord Russell and heir-apparent of the Earl of Bedford. Every one has heard of Rachel, Lady Russell, widow of the patriot and martyr, William Lord Russell.

As Lord Southampton was married a second and a third time, it might have been thought that his intimacy with the Ruvigny family cooled down to the intercourse of mere acquaintanceship. But such was not the case. The children of his first wife were his heiresses — their only surviving half-sister being, in right of her mother, rich and independent. A great man with Elizabeth and Rachel was their mother’s brother, Henri, Marquis de Ruvigny. He is the person whom Lady Russell, in her celebrated letters, calls “my Uncle Ruvigny,” and whom she characterizes as having been “as kind a relation, and as zealous tender a friend as ever any body had.”

This Henri de Massue, Seigneur de Ruvigny, was the Countess of Southampton’s only brother. The registry of his birth has not been found. As he lived to have a son who was styled Le Sieur de La Caillemotte, it is conjectured that he was the child of his father’s second wife, and that he must have been born in 1610. However, his niece, Rachel, believed his age in 1685 to be “several years past fourscore;” and when he died in 1689 it was said of him by Pastor Du Bosc, that he had passed far beyond the boundary of human life which the Ninetieth Psalm assigns to the most vigorous. He was an active public man to the last, so that it was not any symptom of dotage that occasioned the mistake regarding his age, if it was a mistake. And it is quite possible that La Dame de La Caillemotte, though only his step-mother, settled upon him the estate, to which her own honorary title belonged. My opinion is that the old Seigneur’s first wife, whose maiden name was Madelaine Pinot, was the mother of both Rachel and Henri, Henri being the eldest child and born about 1600. 