a delightful person, as well as a most admirable and faithful man in every duty and relationship, and in society. He was noted for his pleasantry and jocularity, as well as for his more solid and serious qualities. He preached at the opening of the Tabernacle at Trowbridge on the 19th November 1771, and on each anniversary of its opening until his death. He died on the 16th November 1776, aged forty-six; his death was unexpected, and it grieved and startled many.[1] He left several children, a daughter, Jane Anne, who was married in 1782 to John Jordan Palmer, and a second Rev. James Rouquet, Vicar of West Harptree from 1789 to 1837.
Mr. Hill preached three funeral sermons on Mr. Rouquet — the first on Sunday forenoon, the 23rd November, in St. Werburgh, on the text, “Well done! good and faithful servant;” the second on the same evening, at the Trowbridge Tabernacle, on the text, “I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord;” the third in St. Nicholas’s, on Tuesday, on the text, “I have finished my course.” The first was published, “Dedicated to the Poor among whom he so diligently laboured, and who followed in weeping multitudes his coffin to the tomb;” its title was, “A Tribute of Respect to the Memory of the Rev. James Rouquet, being the substance of a Sermon preached in the Parish Church of St. Werburgh’s, Bristol, on Sunday, 24th November 1776, by the Rev. Rowland Hill, A.M., late of St. John’s College, Cambridge, and Chaplain to the Countess of Chesterfield.” The following notes are appended by Mr. Hill:— “A large concourse of people went before, singing funeral hymns, to the church door.” “Mr. Rouquet was the son of persecuted parents who fled from France to England for the sake of enjoying the inestimable privileges of civil and religious liberty. I mention this as an apology for his conduct in appearing so strenuous, with other great and good men, against those principles which he conceived to be in their end destructive to the liberties of mankind.” “Mr. Rouquet for many years of his life seldom used to preach less than seven times in a week.” I have room for only one extract from the sermon:—
“As a friend, from a very intimate acquaintance with him, give me leave to bear my testimony that one more constant and sincere I never found. To have equalled him would have been difficult; to have excelled him, impossible. And no wonder; an experimental knowledge of the friend of sinners is the only true basis upon which real disinterested friendship can be built. From the best of motives, therefore, he was of a more generous turn than to love in prosperity alone; in adversity he was the same — his conduct was invariable throughout. It frequently also happens that the method in which kind actions are performed adds a double lustre to the action itself. In this respect our dear friend was peculiarly happy; his free and affable disposition would never permit him to disgrace the cause of God by a sullen moroseness, too much adopted by some. That heavenly cheerfulness which true grace must ever inspire, united to the natural sweetness of his temper, gave him an opportunity to prove that it never was the end of the Gospel of Christ to make men melancholy and severe. But amidst all these amiable endowments is it to be wondered at, since there is not a just man upon earth that liveth and sinneth not, if one hears a distant hint that now and then my dearly-loved friend might have been supposed to have made somewhat of a small elopement from that cheerfulness, which is truly Christian, towards a disposition too much bordering upon a turn of pleasantry, which might have needed a little more the spirit of solemnity? With the greatest delicacy I drop the hint, and am glad to cover it with the mantle of love by lamenting, before you all, the same weakness in myself.”[2]
Rev. W. Romaine. — The father of Mr. Romaine was a Huguenot refugee who settled in Hartlepool as a merchant and corn-dealer. He was a man of great justice and benevolence. In 1741 when other corn-dealers took advantage of the scarcity, and withheld corn unless a tremendous price was offered, riots took place which were quelled through the conduct of Mr. Romaine in selling to all comers at a fair price. William was bom 25th September 1714. The house in which he was born is still standing within a few yards of the west end of St. Hilda’s Church, Hartlepool, in the High Street, south-west corner of St. Mary’s Street, and is at present used as a butcher’s shop (1876). “In those principles which were through life his shield and
- ↑ Perhaps Mr. Fletcher was shocked at Mr. Rouquet’s jocularity, and it may have been to him that he alluded when he wrote, “R__q__t dead and buried! the jolly man, who last summer shook his head at me as at a dying man! How frail are we! God help us to live to-day! To-morrow is the fool’s day.” This letter is in the Rev. John Fletcher’s posthumous pieces, dated 24th August 1776; and if the date be not a mistake on the part of the editor of the volume, the allusion cannot be to the Rev. J. Rouquet.
- ↑ Mr Rouquet inherited gaiety of tone from his French ancestors. In 1755 a Monsieur Rouquet (probably a near relation), Member of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, stated that he had resided thirty years in England, as his justification for publishing an Essay, entitled, “The State of the Arts in England.” He also was a humorist; for in that Essay he says that English physicians usually cultivate some art or science which has no relation to medicine, and adds, such pursuits are “sometimes of great service to their patients, because nature takes occasion, from the inattention of the doctor, to effect the cure in her own way.”
