1789; her father died in 1800; Mr. Shaw Lefevre died in 1823, and his sons have made the double surname eminent. The head of the family is the Right Hon. Charles Shaw Lefevre, Viscount Eversley (so created in 1857, on his retirement from the dignified office of Speaker of the House of Commons), who has entered upon his ninety-third year. His next brother was no less distinguished — namely, Right Hon. Sir John George Shaw Lefevre, father of Right Hon. George John Shaw Lefevre, the apparent male heir of the family. Sir John (born in 1797) was senior Wrangler at Cambridge in 1818, and Fellow of Trinity College; he was K.C.B., D.C.L., and F.R.S.; he had been M.P., and in various offices, and was Clerk of the Parliaments from 1856 to 1875; he died on 20th August 1879, aged eighty-two. Motto: sans changer.
12. Sophia Portal, daughter of William Portal, Esq. of Laverstoke, and heiress of his large personal property, was a truly illustrious descendant of the Huguenots. Her pedigree is in another chapter; but here I note that a daughter of the refugee, Henri Portal, named Charlotte, was married on 16th August 1755 to John Slade, Esq. of Maunsel, Somerset, one of the Commissioners of the Victualling Board; her son, John Slade, was created a baronet in 1831; her daughter, Sophia Slade, was married in 1799 to her cousin, William Portal, who was the squire of Laverstoke from 1 801 to 1846. Sophia Portal was his only child; but Laverstoke passed to her uncle John, and she was, after her father’s death, Miss Portal of Russell Square, London. Until her lamented death, on 13th November 1875, she administered her large fortune with the greatest energy, liberality, and judgment, conducting a large correspondence, and holding interviews with leading philanthropists in a manner worthy of a minister of state. It was she who established the Wandsworth Reformatory for Boys, which was afterwards transferred to the Government. She established and maintained at her own cost, first at Eastbourne, and afterwards at Little Hampton, a Convalescent Home for London City Missionaries and similar invalided or overworked Christian labourers. In or about 1850 she purchased the lease of Portman Chapel in Baker Street, of which the Rev. Canon Reeve was incumbent, in order to secure the continuance of his ministry. And almost to the last day of her life she taught a weekly Bible-class of young shop-women. She was (says the Record newspaper) “peculiarly simple and unpretending in her dress and manners, spending large sums on others, and little on herself. . . . In the true spirit of her noble forefathers, who surrendered everything rather than the truth, she was strongly opposed to every form of superstition and priest-craft, and deplored their progress in the Established Church; she was of that Catholic spirit that could rejoice in good done, or godliness advanced, whether under the agency of a Bishop or a Presbyterian, a Baptist or a Wesleyan. She died at the age of seventy five, having dispensed her bounties for nearly thirty years, and left £5000 to the British and Foreign Bible Society, besides large legacies to the Church [of England] Missionary Society, the London City Mission, the Society for Promoting Female Education in the East, the Christian College at Beyrout,” &c, &c.
13. May we allude to the fact, that there is noble Huguenot blood in our Royal Family? — Alexandre d’Esmiers, Marquis d’Olbreuse, a Huguenot nobleman of Poitou, was an exile in Holland. George William, Duke of Zell, married his only child, Eleonore, Marquise d’Olbreuse, and had issue an only child, Her Serene Highness, Sophia Dorothea, Consort of George Lewis, Electoral Prince of Hanover, and mother of King George the Second. The generous deeds of the Olbreuse Family illumine the pages of Jean Migault, filled with the Malheurs d’une Famille Protestante de Poitou.
II. Officers.
1. Old Schomberg wrote to King William in January 1690:— “If your Majesty gives Hewet’s regiment to Mr. Beyerley, it would be desirable that you would put a good lieutenant-colonel under him. Several suitable persons might be found among the French officers; but I never of my own accord put any French among the English, unless they desire it.” (Despatch, No. 16.)
2. Jean La Borde, a military officer, fought at the battle of the Boyne. His wife was of the family of La Motte Graindor, which possessed a beautiful property in Languedoc. This young lady, during her earliest years, witnessed the relentless persecution which her family and relations had to endure, and which she often narrated to her own descendants. “A young girl, her cousin, they tied by the heels to a cart, and then they drew on the horse through the streets until her brains were
