Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/317

 Prebendary of Ely and Vicar of East Tuddenham, Norfolk. This reverend gentleman lived a bachelor, and left the bulk of his fortune to the Hon. Charles Townshend.

Another refugee son of the great Du Quesne was styled Le Comte Du Quesne; he died at St. Domingo.  

Among the Directors of the French Hospital of London was Guy de Vicouse, Baron de la Court, Governor from 1722 to 1728. He was a subscriber to the first edition of Rapin’s History; and Rapin’s biographer states that his French title was Baron Vicose de la Cour, and that he was a descendant of Raymond de Vicose, Councillor and Secretary of State to Henri IV, who fought so bravely at the Battle of Ivry, that the king gave him his famous white plume, now represented in the family armorial bearings. This name often re-appeared in the persons of spiritual heroes who were rewarded for their attachment to the Protestant faith by imprisonment and exile. According to Haag, the comrade of Henri IV. was Savignac Vicose, General of his Commissariat and Secretary of his Finances, and Governor of the Castle of St. Maixent. Another De Vicose was beheaded by the Parliament of Toulouse in 1628, he having persuaded the citizens of Montauban to declare in favour of the Due de Rohan in the last civil war. The refugee baron kept the dragoons at bay, sword in hand, and succeeded in escaping to England. His sister, then aged thirty-five, was in 1686 imprisoned in the Convent of Castel-Larvazin. Another Guy Vicouse, probably his son, became a Director of the French Hospital on 5th July 1732.  

The surname of Boileau is of great antiquity, and achieved celebrity in the person of Etienne Boileau, Grand Prevôt of Paris in 1258; his great-grandson was ennobled by Charles V. of France in 1371; and from him descended the family of Boileau de Castelnau-Mauvissiere which has long been extinct. (One of that family was an envoy from Charles IX. to the Scottish Court, and is in our State-papers styled Monsieur Castelnau, Sieur de Mauvissiere; this seigneurie of Castelnau was in the Pyrenees.)

The ancestor of our honoured refugees was created in or rather before 1538, Seigneur de Castelnau, his seigneurie being near Nismes. At this date neither the surname of Boileau nor the territorial designation of Castelnau were uncommon. The new edition of Haag’s La France Protestante introduces us to this nobleman, Jean Boileau, first Seigneur de Castelnau, Treasurer of the Court-Seneschal of Nismes, the first of his family who embraced the reformed faith. His ancestry is not recorded, but the date of his being ennobled is satisfactorily ancient. This Seigneur married, on 6th February 1538, Anne de Montcalm, and died in 1562. His eldest son, Jean Boileau, second Seigneur de Castelnau, married — 1st, on 15th July 1571, Honorade, daughter of Robert Blanc, Sieur de la Rouviere; and 2dly, on 15th October 1576, Rose, daughter of Nicolas de Calviere, Sieur de Saint-Colme. In 1600 he was deputed by the inhabitants of Nismes to represent them at an assembly at Montpellier for maturing the inauguration of the observance of the Edict of Nantes. In 1605 he was first Consul of Nismes, and Syndic of the Diocese; he died on 10th May 1618. The third Seigneur was his eldest son Nicolas, born 21st December 1578; in his youth he had travelled in Italy, Germany, Holland, and England. At the date of his father’s death, he was forty years of age, and had acquired great reputation at the bar. His wife’s maiden name was Anne de Calviere de Boucoiran. The year of his death was 1657.

The son and successor of the learned Seigneur was Jaques Boileau, fourth Seigneur de Castelnau, born 15th January 1626; a Councillor of Nismes in 1652. He married, in 1660, Francoise Vignoles (daughter of Jaques de Vignoles and Louise de Baschi), and had twenty-two children. He was a nobleman of great piety, and a staunch Protestant, and stood firm at the mournful and terrible crisis of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The consequence was, that he was torn from his family on 12th January 1687, and immured in the Castle of Pierre-Cise (or Pierre-Eccise), where he suffered an unbroken imprisonment of ten years and a half. He died a martyr, although he did not actually draw his last breath in the prison. Being prostrated by paralysis, he obtained leave to try the baths of Balaruc, and died at St. Jean-de-Vedas near Montpellier, on 11th July 1697, in his seventy-second