“I was delighted to hear that you had made your debut in the pulpit, and trust and pray that you may be kept firm to the anchorage you have taken — Christ and Him crucified, the power of God unto salvation. Yes, this is the weapon for slaying Satan; this is the practical, efficient, influential truth for bringing souls to God, whilst your great orators are spending rheir breath in vain, and scattering their tropes and figures, sowing the wind, and consequently only reaping the whirlwind.” “I would give you one caution, that is, to avoid making up a sermon of a collection of observations, having no beginning, no middle, no end — no premises, no conclusion — which might stop anywhere, and might be shaken in a hat, and drawn out as good a sermon as in the order in which it was composed. The first thing is to consider what conclusion you wish to establish; and then, when you lay before your congregation the point or points you mean to establish, go regularly through your reasoning to establish the conclusion. And, if the subject should lead in the discussion to any collateral remark, come back again to your road, and mark that you do so Examine well the literal meaning of your text; it is dangerous not to hold to the latter as the foundation, before you proceed to the spiritual import or application of language.”
In 1876 Mr. Jeffry Lefroy was made Dean of Dromore, in succession to Dean Bagot. Dean Lefroy continued to reside at Aghaderg Glebe, where he closed his useful but uneventful life, at the age of seventy-six, on 10th December 1885.
IX. Rev. Canon Trench, LL.M.
A younger brother of the first Lord Ashtown was styled William Trench, Esq., of Cangort Park near Roscrea. He married, on 18th June 1798, Sarah Elizabeth Frances Henrietta Ricarda, only daughter of Hon. Robert Moore, and grand-daughter of the fifth Earl of Drogheda. Their eldest son was the Rev. Frederick Fitzwilliam Trench, born 11th March 1779, who married, on 16th February 1835, Louisa Alice, daughter of Colonel the Right Hon. Robert Ward, and grand-daughter of the first Viscount Bangor. The eldest son of this marriage was Rev. William Robert Trench, born 9th October 1838. He was educated at Cambridge, and has taken the degree of LL.M. He was ordained by the Bishop of Chester, deacon 1870, priest 1871. He is Curate of All-Saints, Notting Hill, London, and shares with other clergymen the cure of 16,000 souls. He was made an Honorary Canon of Liverpool in 1880. He married, 18th January 1877, Edith Anna Hamilton, daughter of Charles Langton, Esq., and has a son, Frederic Charles, born 25th November 1877.
X. Rev. Joseph Sortain, B.A.
This eminent minister of the Countess of Huntingdon’s congregation in Brighton loved to speak of his Huguenot ancestry, but of the period of their settlement in England he has not informed us, the only indication being that his forefathers (spiritual certainly, and personal too, perhaps) were victims of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Therefore I place him in my Volume First. The second edition of Haag indicates that the true spelling of the name is Certain — which chronicles a refugee of that name, aged seventy-seven, relieved in London after 1685, and Gabrielle Certain, a native of Limousin, aged nineteen, daughter of Pierre, and a refugee in 1726 in the Canton de Vaud.
The family appeared in England as early as 1604 in London, in the parish of St. Mary Aldermary; the registrar seems to have been told to spell the name like the English adjective certain, which he did according to his idea; and so we find, on 26th August 1604, the baptism of Robert, son of John Serten. But twelve years thereafter the register describes a house in the parish as “Mr. Sertain’s, in Tornbase Lane.” In St. Antholin’s, another London parish, we find, on 1st October 1617, the marriage of another John Sertaine. Returning to St. Mary Aldermary’s, we read under the date 17th July 1618 the burial of the wife of John Sartayne, who remarried on 23d January 1620 (n.s.) as John Sartaine, and was buried on the 6th January following as “John Sartane,” who “dwelt in the Back Lane.” A posthumous daughter of “John Sartayne,” named Hester, was baptized on 8th April 1621, but she died, and was buried on 23d February 1623 (n.s.) as “Hester, daughter of Mists. Sertayne, dwelling in the Back Lane.” The last entry is the burial of a daughter by his first marriage, “1625, Aug. 11. Ann, dau. of John Sartaine.” Thus, as we have seen the name D’Ambrin anglicized by successive steps into Dombrain, Certain became Serten, and finally Sortain. I can quote no intermediate registrations until we come to 1809 at Clifton, where are recorded the baptisms of the two children of Samuel Sortain and Elizabeth, his wife — Joseph, born 20th July 1809, and Mary Ann, born 15th March 1811.
