the death of his son. Louis Crommelin, jun., died on the ist July 1711, as we learn from his tombstone in the wall of Lisburn churchyard:
Six foot opposite lyes the body of Louis Crommelin, born at
St. Quentin in France, only son to Louis Crommelin and Anne Crommelin,
Director of the Linen Manufactory, who died beloved of all,
aged 28 years, 1 July, 1711.
Luge, Viator!
et, ut ille dum vita manebat,
suspice coelum, despice mundum, respice finem.
Crommelin was obliged to rouse himself from his grief, and to memorialise the Lord-Lieutenant, the Duke of Ormond. He represented the necessity for renewing the Patent. He also petitioned for a pension of £500 a-year to enable him to retain his office of Overseer, because “having lost his only son, who managed all his affairs,” he could not afford to employ another manager of his business, unless he was thus securely provided for. Whether Crommelin’s petition succeeded to its full extent, we are not informed. But one result of it was that, on the 13th October 1711, the Duke of Ormond constituted a Government Board for the Linen Manufacture, and this Board reported favourably as to Crommelin’s public projects. When, in 1716, Lord Galway was again the acting-Viceroy, Warburton, Whitelaw, and Walsh’s History of Dublin informs us, that his Lordship gave all the encouragement in his power to the Trustees of the Linen and Hempen Manufacture, and empowered them to use his name with the Lord Mayor that their hemp and flax seed, lying in the Custom-house, might be deposited in the House of Industry. Lord Galway also gave the Trustees an apartment in Dublin Castle for the transaction of their business. In 1717 a petition was presented to the House of Commons from Louis Crommelin, gentleman, “proposing, upon a suitable encouragement, to set up and carry on the hempen manufacture of sail-cloth, in such part of the kingdom as the House thinks proper.” Louis Crommelin’s petition was successful. The House of Commons referred it to the Committee appointed to inspect the state of the linen manufacture, and on December 10 their Report was to the effect that Louis Crommelin should, under the directions of the Trustees, be employed in making settlements for the manufacture of hempen sail-cloth, and that £1000 a-year, for two years, should be voted to the Trustees for the project. This was done; two manufactories were set up at Rathkeale and Cork, another at Waterford, another at Rathbridge in Kildare. In 1719 duties were imposed to furnish revenues for promoting the linen manufactures in the south, namely, 12d. per lb. on tea, 3d. per lb. on coffee and chocolate. On 8th December 1725 favourable reports were presented to Parliament. After Crommelin’s death the southern manufactures languished, though the north continued to progress. — (Ulster Journal, Vol. IV., p. 207.)
Nothing more is recorded of Louis Crommelin, except the fact of his death in 1727. His daughter, Magdalen, Madame de Bernieres, wife of Captain Jean Antoine de Bernieres, of Alencon, survived him; her son died at Lisburn in July 1711, aged twenty-eight or thirty.
The male line of the Crommelins was kept up by his brother Samuel-Louis, of whose descendants my Chapter on Families will speak. The Ulster Journal mentions a third brother, William Crommelin, who had the linen manufactory at Kilkenny, where he married Miss Butler, “one of the Ormond family,” but his son and heir, Louis, died unmarried; his other child was a daughter, Marianne.
We return to Louis Crommelin’s cousin and brother-in-law, Alexander Crommelin; he married Mademoiselle Madeleine de La Valade, but his son and heir, Charles, died unmarried; his daughter, Madeleine, was the wife of Archdeacon Hutchinson. Alexander’s sister, Jeanne (as already noted), was the wife of Louis Mangin, and probably the mother of a Captain Paul Mangin, whom the Ulster Journal has memorialised by printing a letter from him, addressed thus:—
By Portpatrick.
To Doctor Joshua Pilot,
In the Honble. Colonel Battereau’s Regt,
Inverness,
Scotland.
