Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/522

 officer in King William’s army and behaved with considerable courage.” [Query, Lalemant? or L’Allemagne?]  

The surname of Mercier often occurs in memoirs. Jean Le Mercier, known to the learned as Joannes Mercerus, was a famous Hebrew scholar and critic; though a layman of good family, born at Usez in Languedoc. He married one of the Morell family, a native of Embrun, and died in the prime of life in the year 1570, leaving a worthy son Josias Le Mercier, whom Colomiés honours as the father-in-law of Claudius Salmasius (see Gallia Orientalis by Colomiés). In or about 1685 refugees from Saumur came to London, named Le Mercier. In 1691 Martha, daughter of René Bertheau, D.D., and sister of Rev. Charles Bertheau, was married in London to Lieutenant Claude Mercier, and left a son. There were Huguenot refugees of the name in Prussia, and one of the family removed to England — viz., Philip Mercier, born at Berlin in 1689, a painter praised by Horace Walpole, his departments of the art being portraits, and interiors of houses. After acquiring a considerable reputation in Germany, he accepted an invitation from Frederick Prince of Wales, and continued to reside in England till his death on 18th July 1760 (see Haag). Louis Mercier became pastor of the City of London French Church, in 1784; his death is recorded in the New Annual Register for 1811:— Died, “July 18, Rev. Lewis Mercier, pastor of a French Church in London, and a very eloquent preacher.” Some of the refugees of the Revocation period bore the title of Le Mercier de la Perrière; they came from Alençon.  

Pierre Mignard, a soldier in the French army, had two sons who became celebrated painters, (1) Pierre Mignard, surnamed the Roman; (2) Nicolas Mignard, called Mignard of Avignon, who died at Paris in 1668. Two of the sons of the latter came to England, and are reckoned among French Protestants, viz.:—

 

At a village in Champagne (says Mr. Smiles), during a dreadful day of persecution, when blood was streaming in the streets, two soldiers entered the house of a Protestant, and after killing some of the inmates, one of them, seeing an infant in a cradle, rushed at it with his drawn sword and stabbed it, but not fatally. The child was snatched up and saved by a bystander, who exclaimed, “At least the babe is not a Protestant.” The child proved to be a boy, and was given to a Protestant woman to nurse, who had a male child of her own at the breast. The boys, Daniel Morell and Stephen Conté, grew up together. When old enough they emigrated into Holland together, entered the army of the Prince of Orange, accompanied him to England, and fought in Ireland together. There they settled and married, and Morell’s son married Conté’s daughter. Such were the ancestors of the Morell family, which has produced so many distinguished ministers of religion and men of science in England. 