three other daughters were detained by Rapine, but sustained all their sufferings with a masculine and heroic courage, till such time as the Lord, having tried their patience and found them faithful, did even wonderfully, beyond their hopes and expectations, work out their deliverance. For the French king issued out an order that they should be set at liberty and conducted in safety unto Geneva. And those six who had been carried to America were taken by the English, who, compassionating their many and heavy trials, did free them of their bonds and sufferings, and brought them over unto London. Two of Monsieur Castelfranc’s sons were slain in the wars of Flanders, in the service of King William. The third is yet alive. Their poor afflicted father, passing from London into Holland, was taken captive by a ship of Algiers, where he finished his life as became a most sincere Christian in that miserable slavery.”
The noble and venerable refugee had two sisters, daughters of his reverend father by Marguerite Chamier. Of these, one was married to a Monsieur Testas; their son, Aaron Testas, was a reformed pastor of Poitiers, and afterwards a minister of the City of London French Church. The other was married to a Monsieur Bondet, and was the mother of the Rev. Mr. Bondet, minister of New Rochelle, in New England, a pastor concerning whom Quick writes thus:— “This gentleman preachcth in three languages unto three several nations, English, French, and Indians; he espoused a most virtuous lady of a ducal family in France.”
A surviving son of the Lord of Castelfranc was Le Sieur Gedeon de Castelfranc. He was a Cornet in Miremont’s Dragoons, and, like his brothers, served in Flanders. He retired on half-pay and settled at Portarlington. His name appears in the register of the French church of that town.
Pynyot de la Largère.
Messire Samuel Pynyot, escuyer, Sieur de la Largère, was a noble refugee whose name I observe in the Register of Le Temple, London, on 7th August 1690. His wife’s maiden name was Henriette Marie Chataguer. On the evening of that day their son Henry was baptized, being presented by Messire Henry Massue De Ruvigny.
He signed his Will at London, 11th April 1699, in presence of Lewis Barrand de La Noue, Lewis Poyrand, and Lewis Duplessy. The will was proved on the 2Sth June following, by Renatus Poyrand, Sieur Desclouseaux, the executor. The testator styles himself “a gentleman of Poitou, refugeed for the cause of the gospel.” His directions are addressed to his wife, Mary Henrietta Chataygner (or Chatagner), Lady de la Largère. “First, I pray her, after God hath taken my soul to Him, to cause my body to be interred, without any funeral pomp, which I prohibit and forbid, but with the most ordinary manner that may be such as ’tis convenient for a Christian refugeed for the cause of the Gospel, which I always professed through the grace of God.” “She shall take care like a good mother of my three children which are here now, and give them share of my property, equally as much as she can, as well for their subsistence, as of the principal that may be remaining to her at the time of her decease. And in case God should grant grace to my children who are in France, or to one of them, to depart from thence to come in these countries for to give glory to God, and not otherwise, my will and mind is that whatsoever they may bring be joined to what may remain to my wife, for to be shared by equal portion between all my children who shall be found refugeed for the cause of the Gospel.” (This, like the larger number of the refugees’wills, is translated from the French by John James Benard, N.P.)
Henry Pynyot de la Largère was about nine years old when his father died, and his godfather, Lord Galway, seems to have allowed him £20 per annum. This was the annuity that he left him in 1720, “if he shall not have attained the age of 25”; [his age was 30].
From an article in La France Protestante, I conjecture that the Cramahé and De la Largère families were related. The following is the Messieurs Haag’s account, condensed into small space:— “Cramahé was the surname of a noble Protestant family of La Rochelle. In 1685, there were three brothers, Cramahé, De l’Isle, and Des Roches. The first reached England in 1685, and the second soon after. The third was apprehended in France, was imprisoned for twenty-seven months, and then banished. In 1743, the Cramahé estate was possessed by Pinyot de la Largère.”
