Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/513

 terrible quantity of vermin that devoured us, a constant thirst and bad provisions, were not enough to satisfy our conductors; they often gave us severe blows, and threw water upon us, whenever they saw us praying to or praising God.”

On the 20th February he was landed at Leogane, but was not long quartered there. His religious visits to his fellow exiles, being a solace to them, were a crime for which he was banished to the island of Vacca (or La Vache), where he arrived on 30th May. Though this was a locality more fraught with the horrors of a penal settlement, it had one advantage, namely, the circumstance that English vessels occasionally touched there. In one of these barks he succeeded in making his escape, and landed in Jamaica on 24th August 1688. Being prostrated by fever and its effects, it was not till 1st October that he sailed for England in the Joseph (John Brookes, commander); he was housed in London on the 24th December. He became a lieutenant in Schomberg’s Horse, and sailed for Ireland on 25th August 1689. He survived the trying encampment at Dundalk, and in 1690 retired on a pension. In August 1692 he settled in Dublin for life.

I have reserved his wife’s sufferings for a separate paragraph. When she was ejected from her home, a fine of 400 or 500 livres being the penalty to which any neighbour would be liable for sheltering her, it appeared that the expected infant must be born in the street. The house of her husband’s sister, Madame Darassus, was occupied by the dragoons. But at the critical hour her own sister, Madame Guarrisson, having a temporary respite from the visitation of those physical-force missionaries, managed to admit her, and in a few minutes a daughter was born. The same night both mother and child were driven out by the dragoons into the open air; but at last, on condition of a guard being always beside her, a compassionate Roman Catholic woman was allowed to harbour her. Soon her daughters and her only son were taken away from her to convents. Afterwards she herself would have been imprisoned, but contrived to hide for six months, being aided by some attached dependants of the De Pechels family. Then she planned her flight to Geneva, and succeeded to get possession of her son, Jacob De Pechels. He, though only in his eighth year, was the brave companion of her night marches to Geneva. In this adopted home Madam De Pechels earned her bread by handiwork. She had parted from her husband, when his person was first seized, hardly daring to hope that she would see him again. But now she heard that he was in England; and she and Jacob succeeded in reaching London on the 29th August 1689, four days after her husband’s departure for Ireland. It was not till 4th January 1690 that they were reunited. The two surviving daughters, having been educated as Roman Catholics, obtained the family estates. They both were married: the one became Madame de Cahuzac, and the other Madame de Saint-Sardos, of Castel Sarrazin. They remitted handsome sums of money to their father, by which his exile was alleviated.

The son, Jacob de Pechels (born at Montauban, 2d June 1679), already mentioned, accompanied his parents to Dublin, which city was his home till his death at a good old age. He entered our army; and his name was spelt Pechell in his commission, and in consequence the family took that name. He rose to the rank of Colonel, having seen much service in the wars of Queen Anne’s and George the Second’s reigns. About the period of the Peace of Utrecht he married an heiress in Ireland, Jane Elizabeth Boyd, daughter of John. His sons were Samuel Pechell, Master in Chancery, and Lieut.-Colonel Paul Pechell (of Pagglesham, Essex), who was created a baronet on 1st May 1797, and died in 1803. Sir Paul was the father of the second baronet, Major-General Sir Thomas Brooke Pechell, and grandfather of the third and fourth baronets, Sir Samuel John, and Sir George Richard Brooke Pechell, both Admirals, and for some time Members of the House of Commons. The son of the fourth baronet was Captain William Henry Cecil George Pechell, of the 77th regiment, who was killed in the trenches before Sebastopol on 3rd September 1855. The fifth and present baronet is Sir George Samuel Brooke Pechell, grandson of Augustus Pechell, Receiver-General of the Customs, who was the younger son of the first baronet. The surname of Brooke was derived from the lady of the first baronet, who was the heiress of Pagglesham.

Jacob de Pechels is always spoken of as “the only son” of the refugee; he was. more correctly, “the only surviving son.” A son, Samuel, was born to the refugee couple in London, on 25th October 1690, and was baptized in Le Temple on the 29th. The parents are designated Mr. Samuel de Peschels de la Boissonade, escuyer, and Madame Marquise de Thierry de la Prille, son épouse. This son, probably, did not long survive. 