lowed by many of his flock, who increased the numbers of the London Savoy congregation.
He was chaplain to the three Dukes of Schomberg successively. He was at the old Duke’s side when he fell at the battle of the Boyne. He accompanied Duke Charles to Turin. During the irruption into France, when about two hundred native Protestants left France under the Duke’s protection, Du Bourdieu was the minister before whom they recanted the abjurations of their faith previously extorted from them. At his instigation Dr. Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, espoused the cause of the Waldenses. When the Duke of Schomberg breathed his last at Turin, the good chaplain was with him, and undertook the burial of his honoured remains at Lausanne, and embalmed his heart, which in 1696 he brought to England.
As a resident in England, he avoided domestic politics, and declared his motto to be, Exul! tace. But he wrote, preached, and published much. Before his exile he published a sermon preached at Montpellier, entitled, “The Blessed Virgin’s Opinion regarding what all Generations should say of her;” also a Brief Correspondence with Bishop Bossuet. He wrote the Duke of Schomberg’s manifesto to the French people, on his irruption into France, dated at Embrun, 29th Aug. 1692. At Turin, within the church of the Jesuits, on 20th January 1693, he witnessed the idolatrous worship paid to the Thebean soldiers, Solutor, Adventor, and Octavius, the patron saints of Turin. This was the occasion of his writing and publishing “An Historical Dissertation upon the Thebean Legion, plainly proving it to be Fabulous.” He also published a Funeral Sermon on Queen Mary, entitled, “Sermon prononce la veille des Funerailles de la Reine,” 1695. To him is also attributed the sermon preached at Chelmsford Assizes, published in 1714 (but not having seen it, I can say no more). Neither am I sure whether to attribute to him or to his nephew the anonymous work entitled, “Comparison of the Penal Laws of France against Protestants with those of England against Papists, with an Account of the Persecution of the Protestants abroad, by J.D., a clergyman of the Church of England,” 1717. Dr. John Du Bourdieu died in the parish of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields, London, on the 26th July 1720, aged 78. The Historical Register for 1720 calls him “a celebrated preacher among the French Refugees.”
Dr. Dubourdieu’s two daughters, Anne and Elizabeth, remained in France. He had two sons, Peter and Armand, both clergymen of the Church of England, a grand-daughter, the child of Peter, and a grandson, John (afterwards an English clergyman), son of Armand. Before returning to any of these descendants, I give his Will (it would appear that he was a widower, his wife having died in France).