Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/517

 aged forty-one; his widow, Susanne, daughter of John Le Keux and Susanna Didier, died in 1760, aged seventy; their son was John Debonnairc, merchant at Lisbon and in India, who died at the Cape of Good Hope in 1786; their daughters were Susanna, Mrs. Winch; Leah, Mrs. Wagner; and Mary, Mrs. Haggard. The distiller had a son and namesake, John Debonnaire of Bromley, the last male heir of the refugee, who died in 1797, leaving an only daughter, Anne, who was married in 1799 to William Tennant, Esq., Lord of the Manor of Shenston.

John Debonnaire, who died at the Cape (as already stated), was the father of Susannah Sophia Selina Debonnaire, born 1756, died 1815. As the widow of Major John Smith, she was married in 1782 to Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, an East India Director and M.P. for Abingdon, who was created a baronet in 1802. She was the mother of the second, third, and fourth baronets. The third baronet was raised to the peerage as Lord Metcalfe, but died without descendants in 1846. Through the second baronet she was the grandmother of Eliza Debonnaire Metcalfe, who died in 1833, wife of Peter Hesketh Fleetwood, Esq., M.P., afterwards a baronet. A daughter of the late Sir Thomas Theophilus Metcalfe, fourth baronet, is the wife of Major Daniel Peploe Peploe, née Eliza Theophila Debonnaire Metcalfe.

Another daughter of John Debonnaire, latterly of the Cape of Good Hope, was Anne, born at Madras on 30th January 1768, married at Calcutta to Colonel the Hon. William Monson, fourth son of the second Lord Monson. The Colonel died in 1807, and she in 1841; they had five sons and three daughters. The eldest son, William John, became in 1841 the sixth and present Lord Monson. His next brother and heir presumptive is the Hon. Debonnaire John Monson, who has a surviving son, Augustus Debonnaire John Monson. The next brother of Lord Monson, Hon. Edmund John Monson, C.B., has had two sons, the second of whom is Edmund St. John Debonnaire John Monson. (See the Debonnaire Pedigree by Henry Wagner, F.S.A.)  

In the Aufrère MSS. I find James Olliviers Deslauriers, who, dying in 1723, left £1000 to each of his nieces, Elizabeth Hersant (wife of Jacob Godard) and Mary Hersant; their mother, Mrs. Mary Hersant, a widow, was the testator’s sister and residuary legatee. He left £15 to each godson or god-daughter, being Protestant reformed, found in England at the time of his decease. To his brother, David Deslauriers, and wife, he left £50 a year, the principal to revert to his two nieces; and the interest of £200 to his sister Sarah, wife of John Martin. His other legacies were £50 to poor French refugees, £50 to apprentice poor French orphans, or children of French Protestant refugees, £50 to the poor of Leicester Fields French Church, and 50 guineas in gold to Rev. Israel Antoine Aufrère, with a request to him to act as executor.  

The family of Durand, in the island of Guernsey, bear the arms of Brueyx in addition to Durand, on account of their descent from a gallant and reverend refugee who married a Brueyx heiress. Francois Guillaume Durand, son of Jean Durand, a Protestant gentleman of Montpellier, was born nth Sept. 1649. Having studied at Geneva, he became pasteur of Genouillac about 1673. In 1689 he married the heiress of Baron Brueyx de Fontcouverte, a nobleman of the diocese of Usez. At the date of the Revocation he had became a refugee at Schaffhausen, his family remaining in France. His zeal for religious liberty led him to join the army of the allies in Piedmont, and in 1691 he was appointed chaplain of Aubussargues’ regiment, under the name of Monsieur Durand de Fontcouverte. He had previously been successful in recruiting the regiments of Loches and Balthasar [Balthazar?], and had even accepted a commission as captain in Balthazar’s Dragoons, but he returned to his spiritual office by the advice of the pasteurs of Geneva. After the peace of Ryswick he settled at Nimeguen. His son, Francois, appears at Nimeguen in 1722. Francois Durand was educated a Romanist; in 1700 he began to practise as an advocate at Montpellier, and in 1701 he married Marguerite d’Audifut. In July 1705 he obtained a passport without difficulty; but in Holland he adopted the religion of his ancestors. He was living in 1750, aged probably about sixty-six. He had a son, Francois Guillaume Esaie Durand, who was admitted as a Proposant in May 1738 by the Synod of Breda, but settled in England in 1743 as minister of the Dutch Church at Norwich. He