Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/523

 

The following refugees from Normandy are named in Waddington’s “Protestantisme en Normandie”:— M. de Monceau, of the parish of Méhoudin, in the election of Falaise.

M. François Bunel de Boiscarré, of the election of Pont-Audemer.

Suzanne Beloncle, wife of a Protestant condemned to the galleys, named Daniel Caron, of Bolbec, became a member of the City of London French Church, 5th March 1687. At the same time, Jacques Bourdon, Jean Renaud, Jaques Salingue, Suzanne Bourdon, of Bolbec, were admitted.

Daniel Caron himself was admitted on 2nd May 1693, when he declared that, having unhappily signed an abjuration, he had attempted to escape from France, and for that attempt he had been sentenced; but that in course of time he was set at liberty through the influence of his friends.

There were refugees from Havre, having the names of Lunel, Reauté, Godin, and Mouchel. M. Waddington says (p. 17):— “A Mutual Aid Society, called La Societé Normande, was founded in London in 1703, and still subsists (in 1855). We observe in its last report the names of Gosselin, Ferry, Levasseur, Mousset, de Boos, Le Brument, Frigont, Geaussent, Durand, Levesque, Rondeau, Hautot, Lesage.”  

Aaron Pain of Dieppe, with his third son, Gabriel, escaped to Rye in Sussex. His wife, Rachel, followed, disguised in sailor’s clothes. They had previously, without suspicion, sent their daughter, Rachel, to Rye to learn English. Their infant, David, only a year old, was brought to the fort of the town gate of Dieppe. The river flowed below it. On the other side a sailor was waiting, by appointment. There was a space below the gate, and the child was passed through to him, and was safely carried over to Rye. The family removed to London, where their name was spelt. In Crosse’s “Historical Tales” (also in “Household Words”) there is a similar anecdote. The scene is the gate of a town at nightfall. A Huguenot husband and wife, who are known to the guard, have the gate opened for them, and are allowed to pass out — any suspicion of their intention to leave France being neutralised by the fact that the mother is not carrying her child. But before knocking at the door of the guard-house they had brought the child, who was sleeping under the influence of an opiate, and laid him in the centre of the well-worn causeway. They had packed him up in a bundle tied with a string, and the long end of the string had been dropped at the hollow space right below the gate. Having been let out themselves, and being locked out, they drew their precious bundle through the opening; and both parents and child had a safe journey to England.  

I meet with this surname among the burials at St. Michael’s, Cornhill, London. David Pratviel, described as a lodger, was laid in “the new vault” in that church on 12th February 1747 (n.s.). The name occurs in connection with James Auriol, merchant, who removed from London to Lisbon to join the mercantile house of Pratviel. In reprinting the following note, I leave the date of 1755 as I find it, as it may allude to another David:— The Pratviels were French Protestant exiles, said to have taken refuge on an island in the Mediterranean, but residing in Lisbon in 1727, the first year of the publication of the Factory Register. David Pratviel in his Will, dated at Lisbon in 1742, and proved in London in 1759, names as his executor, “my cousin and partner Mr. Peter Auriol, merchant, at present in London.” Sarah Pratviel (daughter of David, who visited London in 1755) was married to Sir Charles Asgill, Bart., and was the mother of General Sir Charles Asgill, Bart., at whose death, in 1823, that baronetcy expired. Her daughter, Amelia, was the wife of Robert Colvile, Esq. (died in 1796), whose eldest son, Sir Charles Henry Colville (died in 1833), who married Hariot Anne, daughter of Thomas Porter Bonnel, Esq., and was the father of Charles Robert Colvile, Esq. of Lullington, late M.P. for South Derbyshire.  

Thomas de Rouffignac and Marie de la Motte, his wife, were Huguenots residing in Rochefoucauld, where their son Jacob was born in or about 1640. Jacob was called to the ministry in 1661, and was a refugee in England; he and his sons,