appear. Mr Smiles describes his invention for spinning wool and cotton by rollers, of which Sir Richard Arkwright’s spinning machines were practical improvements, or adaptations on a gigantic scale. The Edinburgh Review (April 1865), discussing the law of patents, says, “Upon the principle of the Patent-Law, Arkwright ought never to have had a patent; his spinning-frame was not new, having actually been patented before by Lewis Paul in 1738.” Paul died at Brook Green, Kensington, April 1759.
The surname of Du Pre was introduced by the refugees. A Belfast family is descended from Mark Henry Du Pre, a reed maker, whom Crommelin induced to settle in Lisburn, in order to improve the manufacture, or rather the preparation, of reeds for the looms.
I should mention another industrial item regarding Wandsworth, although its proper place would have been in my Vol. I. “Protestant refugees set up in Wandsworth a manufacture of brass plates for kettles, &c, which they kept a mystery. The houses in which it had been carried on were long afterwards called The Frying Pan Houses.” {Sunday at Home, No. 1295.)
With regard to the manufacture of Gobelin tapestry at Exeter, there is a question as to the Protestant origin of the speculation in England. Jehan Gobelin, inventor of a scarlet dye, established his works in Paris about the year 1450, so that this far-famed tapestry was two centuries old at the period of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It is very likely that the workmen at this late date would, to a large extent, be Huguenots. But the man who enticed some of them into England was a French Capuchin Friar, named Nobert, who came here with the Pope’s blessing, though he afterwards took the name of Monsieur Parisot. He swindled both the English subscribers who enabled him to set up a manufactory at Fulham, and also the French workmen, and absconded. A French Protestant, Jean Ulric Passavant, went to the sale by auction at the Fulham manufactory, and bought the looms and implements for a small sum. The wretched workmen had not dared to return to Paris, which they had left without permission. M. Passavant engaged all the survivors, and set up the looms at Exeter, where there was a French Protestant refugee congregation. I have been unable to give any dates; but I am informed that Passavant was born at Strasburg in 1678, so that his factory cannot have been set up at Exeter before 1700.
Chapter XII.
REFUGEE LITERATI.
Bouhéreau.
Elie Bouhéreau was born at La Rochelle, where his father, Elie Bouhéreau, was pasteur in 1642. He was M.D. of the University of Orange, 29th August 1667, and after taking his degree, he travelled in Italy with his cousin, Elie Richard Bouhéreau. He settled in La Rochelle, and practised medicine, at the same time acting as an elder in his church, and studying various departments of literature. As persecution thickened, he was banished by Lettre de Cachet to Poitiers. Continuing steadfast in the faith, he was debarred from the practice of medicine, but was permitted to reside in Paris, Not many months had elapsed, when an order was served upon him to remove to the extreme confines of Languedoc. He, however, betook himself secretly to La Rochelle, where his wife and children were, and from that famous port they all set sail and arrived safely in England. His father, it is said, came over with him. In the Naturalizations, dated 15th April 1687 (see List xiii.), we find the family, Elias Bouhéreau, Margaret, wife, Elias, Richard, Amator, John, Margaret, Claude, and Magdalen, children.[1]
Elie Bouhéreau was a scholar of no mean reputation. He was an intimate friend of the scholarly secretary of the French Academy, Valentine Conrart (born 1603, died 1675), who may be said to have been the most accomplished and the most universally popular Huguenot of his own or any generation. When the
- ↑ The French Register of Thorney, under date 25th August 1689, mentions Pierre Bouchereau, surgeon and apothecary at Eye, and the baptism of his daughter. (See my Historical Introduction.)
