Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/526

 

portion of this volume has been occupied with refugees who settled in Ireland, many of whom founded families whose members have been known as benefactors, and have been held in general esteem. The Papers printed in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology have been often quoted as informative and authoritative. One of the authors of those papers summarised his articles in a pamphlet already mentioned; I mean Dr. Purdon. He gave the following supplementary information:—

The Innishannon settlement was originated for the encouragement of the silk manufacture. Thirty families of silk-workers, along with their pastor, Mr. Cortez, were settled there. All that now remains are the trunks of a few mulberry trees, that part of the place where they lived being called the Colony, also a book of the pastor’s sermons, and his watch, having a dial-plate in raised characters, so as to enable him to tell by touch the hour, when preaching and praying to his flock in France, assembled “in dens and caves of the earth.”

Belfast was the refuge of French Protestants connected with Schomberg’s army. It was known as a refuge before the Revocation era. Monsuer Le Burt had settled there in olden times — ancestor of the late highly respected Dr. Byrt. The Le Burts had the armorial bearings of De Penice, a general killed by their ancestor in single combat.

In Bandon there was Lieutenant-Colonel Chartres, descended from a Bourbon, His representative in Belfast has the Bourbon crest, but the name is now Charters. In Killeshandra there was Dr. Lanauze, who was called “the good physician.” The Dundalk settlement was not begun till 1737 by M. de Joncourt; the settlers manufactured cambric, and a memento of their existence is a locality called Cambric Hill At Kilkenny, colonised with linen manufacturers in the Revocation times, a very small bleach-green is shown as their monument. At Tallow, near Cork, there is still a family called Arnauld.

At page 13 of his pamphlet Dr. Purdon says: — “Wicklow received several families as settlers, among whom I cite the name of Le Febure, whose descendant is now well known to some of us (1869)” — the allusion is to Irish Christians interested in Sunday Schools. Since the death of that eminently good Le Febure I have been furnished with the following particulars:—

The Sunday School Society for Ireland published “A Tribute of Regard to the Memory of the late Mr. William Le Febure.” He died at Edermine Rectory on the 31st May 1873, aged seventy-one. Having paid annual visits throughout the United Kingdom for many years, he was well known and universally beloved. The evidence of his Huguenot descent, besides tradition, consists of three French seals, two of which have armorial bearings which maybe described thus:— (1.) On a cartouche (or oval escutcheon) a cross pattée fitchée within an orle of nine stars (or mullets); crest (on a helmet with mantling, surmounted by a coronet) a pheon, or arrow-head. (2.) Crest and coronet, as in number 1.

The Ulster Journal welcomed information from all parts of Ireland; and it has been matter for regret that no volunteer author or essayist contributed an article on Huguenot Refugees in Dublin. Although as to that hospitable city we have no such discourse in print, yet we have sermons in stones — monuments with epitaphs, at least such as time and tempest have not corroded away. I venture, without her permission, to name Miss Frances Layard, who has searched for every obtainable Huguenot reminiscence in Dublin with praiseworthy zeal and no inconsiderable success. Many of her collections have been generously sent to me. Extracts from Registers of Marriages, Baptisms, and Deaths (which my readers have in their Chronological places in my Historical Introduction, Section ix.), I owe to Miss