Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 1.djvu/353

 Ruvigny was accompanied in this visit by his wife and Mademoiselle de Ciré The latter, during their stay at Southampton House, died of small-pox. Dr. Tillotson thus condoled with Lady Russell:—

“It was a great trouble to me to hear of the sad loss your dear friend sustained during his short stay in England. But, in some circumstances, to die is to live. And that voice from heaven runs much in my mind, which St. John heard in his vision of the last (as I think) and most extreme persecution which should befal the faithful servants of God before the final downfall of Babylon, ‘Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord from henceforth,” meaning that they were happy who were taken away before that terrible and utmost trial of the faith and patience of the saints.”

In a letter to Dr. Fitzwilliam, Lady Russell gives some details:

“A young lady my uncle Ruvigny brought with him falling ill of the small-pox, I first removed my children to Bedford House, then followed myself, for the quieting of my good uncle’s mind, who would have it so. From thence I brought my little tribe down to Woburn. And when I heard how fatal the end was of the young lady’s distemper, I returned myself to Bedford House to take my last leave (for so I take it to be) of as kind a relation and as zealous tender a friend as ever anybody had. To my uncle and aunt their niece was an inexpressible loss; but to herself death was the contrary. As most do, she died as she lived. As her body grew weak her faith and hope grew strong, comforting her comforters, and edifying all about her: even magnifying the goodness of God that she died in a country where she could in peace give up her soul to Him that made it. What a glorious thing, doctor, ’tis to live and die as sure as she did! I heard my uncle and aunt say, that in seven years she had been with them they could never tax her with a failure in her piety or worldly prudence; yet she had been roughly attacked, as the French Gazettes will tell you.”

The young lady’s death, of a disorder so fearfully contagious, precluded the Marquis from soliciting a farewell audience at court, but he wrote a letter in the French language to the king. The date of his return to France is preserved in Lady Russell’s endorsement of a copy of it, “My Uncle Ruvigny’s Letter to the King just before he left England, about September 28, 1685.” From this letter I quote only two sentences:—

“Sire, — As owing to a mournful event I may not present myself before your Majesty, I hope his Majesty will have the kindness to pardon me if I take the liberty of writing to him........ Sire, what I have asked rests solely on the esteem which you have for the memory of a great knight and Grand Treasurer of the late king, your brother. I have asked it again, being persuaded that an act of your clemency in favour of a lady, and a child four years of age, could produce in the feeling of the world, effects, &c, &c”

As to the Protestant churches of France, the remainder of the time between 1682 and the Revocation seems to have been spent in helpless dismay, except one or two despairing struggles, which Ruvigny could not support, foreseeing that many Protestant lives would be lost, and nothing gained. The temples of the Huguenots were being fast demolished, and the King’s information was, that conversions to the Romish persuasion had previously dispersed their congregations. That he might be better informed, many congregations met for public worship upon the ruins of their temples. And a long apologetic letter was written to His Majesty (dated July 1683) beginning thus:— “Sire, Your most humble subjects of the Protestant religion, not having power to resist their consciences, are constrained to assemble together, to call upon the holy name of God and sing His praises, and by this religious service to expose themselves to all the violence and rigours which a too fierce zeal can infuse into the breasts of your officers.” These conventicles were proclaimed to be rebellious, and were visited with military vengeance. In Vivarais and Dauphiny the savage troopers met with armed resistance; and by a lying truce they secured many hapless prisoners, including the Pasteur Isaac Homel (aged seventy-two), who was broken on the wheel on the 16th October 1683. Another delusion in the royal mind was that, though there might be great heat and clamour in the means used by his missionaries, there was little personal cruelty. It is said, that in 1684 a final representation was presented to the king as to the numberless and unparalleled cruelties inflicted by the dragoons and their abettors. This statement refers either to the old Marquis or to his son:— “The last petition presented to the king himself by the Lord Marquis De Ruvigny, the Deputy-General, in March 1684, was couched in the most submissive terms, that would have moved and melted into pity the hardest heart (thousands having seen and read it, for it was afterwards printed), yet they got nothing by it but the hastening of their ruin and destruction.” Wodrow joins the