on the death of Baron Hervart. He is styled in the list of Governors, Jean Robethon, Conseillier Privé; he had been made a Director on the previous 5th of July. He did not long enjoy these tokens of esteem and affection, as he died in the following year.
In the Historical Register this obituary notice occurs:— “1722, April 14. Died, John Robethon, Esq., Domestic Secretary and Councillor to his Majesty as Elector of Hanover. He had served King William III. in the office of Secretary of State for the Principality of Orange.”
He had made his will on the 19th February (1722), and it was proved on the 22d of April by James Robethon, his cousin and executor, and the guardian of George Robethon, his son. The will expresses laudable care for the comfort of his widow and the education of his boy, and very fully explains his wish that in the event of either his wife or his son being his last representative, one half of his property should go to his brother in France, whose remittance, already mentioned, was an act of integrity and affection, and whose own property was much deteriorated through the misfortunes of the French nation. The religious phraseology of the will is strongly Trinitarian, and the entire composition and concoction is creditable to the head and heart of John Robethon.
His son’s full name was George William Frederick de Robethon; his Will was dated at Luneburg, 25th May 1739, and revoked three Wi'ls previously made in England, Holland, and Germany. His brother-in-law, Lieutenant Charles Theodore de Maxwell, proved his Will at London on 12th December 1739. George Robethon was probably aged about thirty.
As to James Robethon, he died in September 1738, “at his house in Warwick Court, near Charing Cross,” aged upwards of eighty. In 1750, his representatives were two unmarried daughters, Susanna and Elizabeth.[1] It is of one of these ladies that the Gentleman’s Magazine records:— “1762, July 5. Died, Mrs. Robethon, one of the Bedchamber, belonging to the Princess Amelia; she had been forty years in the service of the Royal Family.” James Robethon’s nephew, the above named George, left £300 to Elizabeth, whom in 1739 he described as “Cousin Elizabeth, who lives at Court with the Princess.”
II. Peter Falaiseau, Esq.
Pierre Falaiseau, ecuyer, was the son of Messire Jacques Falaiseau, ecuyer, and Dame Anne Louard. As “Peter Falaiseau, gentleman,” he was naturalized in England on the 15th November 1681 (see List Second)[2] The next year he removed to Brandenburg. The Court of Berlin appreciated his talents, and the Elector Frederick William took him into his service as a diplomatist. In consequence of this Monsieur De Falaiseau soon returned to London as the ambassador from the Elector to the English Court. The correspondence between the two Courts was conducted in a controversial and animated style, which the Royal Stuarts provoked. The Elector afterwards sent him as his envoy to Sweden, then to Denmark, where he represented the Court of Berlin from 1692 to 1698. His last diplomatic residence was in Spain; but this embassy he resigned on some grounds of personal discontent, and again took up his abode in England, where he died. This is the outline of his life, which it would be foreign to my plan to fill up, except by detailing a very few incidents in its course.
After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a personal friend, though entrusted with a hostile mission, visited Berlin. This was the Seigneur de Rébénac, Francois Du Pas, second son of Isaac Marquis De Feuquières. He was sent by Louis XIV. “to remonstrate with the Elector upon the countenance given in Brandenburg to the expatriated Huguenots.” Falaiseau wrote to him confidentially with a view to rescuing some of his French property. The Minister of State in Berlin, with whom Falaiseau as an ambassador officially corresponded, and whose friendship he enjoyed, was Paul von Fuchs. With him Rébénac promised to concert some scheme, as appears from the following letter:—
