with the most lively emotion. His generosity led him into expenses which the profits of his business alone would have ill enabled him to support, but he had a resource in the remittances which he was seldom long without receiving from his father. This resource, however, at last failed. His father died. A distant relation (the next heir), who was a Roman Catholic, took possession of the estate, and my grandfather was reduced to a very scanty income for the subsistence of his large family. Difficulties soon multiplied upon him; bankruptcy and poverty were the consequences. His gentle spirit sank under these calamities, and he died (1733) at the age of forty-nine, of a broken heart.”
His father-in-law, Francis de Monsallier, had four children: Judith, Mrs. Romilly; Lucy, Mrs. Page; Anne Marie Picart, Mrs. De Laferty; and Elizabeth, Mrs. Fludyer. Mr. Romilly himself left four sons: Joseph, Stephen, Isaac, and Peter. Joseph died of grief on account of his father’s death. Stephen was a partner in business with Sir Samuel Fludyer and Sir Thomas Fludyer — so was Isaac. The latter was of scientific tastes; his epitaph in the parish church of St. Pride’s, Fleet Street, tells his story:—
Near this place are deposited the remains of
Mr. Isaac Romilly, F.R.S., obiit 18 Dec. 1759, aetat. 49
(whose affable and humane temper of mind,
joined to his goodness of heart, justly endeared him to all his friends, as did his great ingenuity
and labour in forming his extensive and valuable collection of natural curiosities to the
esteem of the learned),
in the same grave with the remains of Mary, his beloved wife,
whose sudden and unexpected death on 11th Dec. 1759. in the 48th year of her age,
greatly contributed to shorten the thread of his life
for they were an example of conjugal affection.
Isaac’s younger daughter was married to Nathaniel Thomas, B.A. Oxon., the first editor of the St. James’s Chronicle (instituted in 1761), and afterwards proprietor of that newspaper, whose son, Nathaniel Thomas, Secretary to the Embassy to the Court of Delhi, died in India.
The refugee’s fourth son, Peter, a jeweller, was Sir Samuel Romilly’s father. In 1762 the union of the two French churches of Berwick Street and Castle Street is attested by the signatures of Pierre Romily, Isaac Gosset, and Phin. Deseret. Mr. Peter Romilly married Margaret, only daughter of Aimé Garnault, senior, but all his children dying, he removed from London to “the village of Marylebone” where he became the father of three children: Thomas, who married a daughter of Isaac Romilly; Catherine (Mrs. Roget), and Samuel. The mother being a confirmed invalid, her relative, Mrs. Facquier, educated the children. Samuel was born in 1757; in 1798 he married Anne, daughter of Francis Garbett, Esq.; he was knighted in 1806, on becoming his Majesty’s Solicitor-General, and died in 1818 (see chapter xxv.). Sir Samuel left one daughter and six sons; the daughter was Sophie, wife of the Right Hon. Thomas Francis Kennedy of Dunure, and mother of Francis Thomas Romilly Kennedy, Esq. Of the sons, the eldest was William (born 1798, died 1855), the second was Lord Romilly (see chapter xxvi.), the third was Edward Romilly, Esq. (born 1804, died 1877), late Chairman of the Board of Audit, who married Sophia, daughter of Alexander Marcet, M.D.; the fourth was Henry Romilly, Esq. (born 1805, died 1884); the fifth is Charles Romilly, Esq., who married Lady Georgiana Elizabeth Russell, and has had six sons; the youngest, Lieutenant-Colonel Frederic Romilly (born 1810), married Lady Elizabeth Amelia Jane Elliot, and has three sons. The armorial bearings are old French, descriptive of the name, ROC. MIL. LYS.; out of a base of rocks, nine (or an indefinite number of) lilies spring. During the French Revolutionary War, an officer took from the Chateau de Romilly, in Brittany, an oil painting, a portrait of a Catherine de Romilly; he sent it to England for presentation to Sir Samuel Romilly; the features of the face bore a family likeness to ladies of the English branch.
In enumerating the families of the Romilly group, we must first mention Philip Delahaize, of Tottenham High Cross, in the county of Middlesex, Esq., who died in 1769. We perhaps ought to have called the group the Alavoine group; for its roots were Daniel Alavoine (born 1662, died 1729), and Mary Magdalene, his wife, who died in 1741. They were the parents of Marie Alavoine, whom I am about to mention.
Under the heading La Haize, the Messieurs Haag have an article on a Jean de la Haize, appended to which there is this sentence:— “A Norman family of the same name also professed Protestantism; they passed to England at the Revocation.”
