Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 6 - Section VI
VI. St Michel.
Monsieur Marchant de Saint-Michel was High-Sheriff of Anjou, in the reign of Louis XIII. He was a man of wealth, as was his brother, a Reverend Canon. The latter being, of course, a celibate, the son of the former, as the heir of both, was a youth of “great expectations.” Young St Michel entered the German military service, and at the age of twenty-one became a convert to Protestantism, for which reason he was disinherited by his father and also by his uncle. He then found a home in England, as gentleman carver to Queen Henrietta Maria. But a friar thought fit to rebuke him for not going to mass. St Michel struck the friar, and lost his appointment. Nevertheless, he married a daughter of Sir Francis Kingsmill, the widow of an Irish esquire, and settled at Bideford in Devonshire, where he had children, of whom a son and a daughter are identified. St Michel was persuaded to return to France and to take a house in Paris for himself and his family. He served in the French army; and once on returning home, he was distracted to find that his wife and two children had been inveigled into the convent of the Ursulines. One of these children was the lovely Elizabeth (born in 1640), then twelve or thirteen years of age, and “extreme handsome.” He succeeded in rescuing his family, unperverted by Romanism, and again betook himself to England, apparently settling in London. At the age of fifteen, Elizabeth was married to Samuel Pepys, gentleman, now known to fame as the “diarist.” She is called, in the register of St Margaret’s, " Elizabeth Marchant de Saint Mitchell, of Martins-in-the-ffeilds, spinster; " the date of her marriage is 1st December 1655. Her brother, Balthazar St Michel, thus became a protege of her husband, the really able naval administrator. His debut in naval warfare delighted Pepys: he writes —
" June 8, 1666. — To my very great joy, I find Baity come home without any hurt after the utmost imaginable danger he hath gone through in the Henery, being upon the quarter-deck with Harman all the time. ... I am mightily pleased in him, and have great content in, and hopes of his doing well."
Again —
"21st November 1669. — Sir Philip Howard expressed all kindness to Baity when I told him how sicke he was. He says that before he comes to be mustered again, he must bring a certificate of his swearing the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, and having taken the sacrament according to the rites of the Church of England. This, I perceive, is imposed on all."
Balthazar was made Muster-Master in 1668, and in this office he was allowed to employ a deputy in 1669, and to accept an appointment in the Admiralty. The latter year was the date of the lamented Mrs Pepys’ death, whose epitaph, written by her husband, is on a monument in the Church of St Olave, Hart Street: —
| H. S. E. cui Cunas dedit SOMERSETIA, Octob. 23d 1640 | ||||||
| Patrem e praeclarâ familiâ Cliffodorum CUMBRIA |
Matrem e nobili stirpe de St Michel ANDEGAVIA | |||||
| ELIZABETH A PEPYS Samuelis Pepys (Classi Regise ab Actis) Uxor Quae in Coenobio primum, Aulâ dein educata Gallicâ, Utriusque una claruit virtutibus Formâ, Artibus, Linguis, cultissima. Prolem enixa, quia parem non potuit, nullam. Hinc demum placidè cum valedixerat (Confecto per amamiora ferè Europae itinere) Potiorem abiit redux lustratura mundum Obiit 10 Novembris | ||||||
| Anno | AEtatis 29. Conjugii 15. Domini 1669. |
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Her father and mother seem to have survived her; for in 1672 Balthazar alludes to his mother as but recently a widow. I quote from his letter to Pepys, dated, “Deale, August 14th, 1672.” — “Hond. Sir, you dayly and howerly soe comble me with, not only expressions, but allsoe deeds of your worthyness and goodness, as well to myselfe as the rest of your most devoted humble creaturs heare, that I am as well as my poor drooping mother whoose continuall illness since the death of my father gives me but li tell hopes shee will survive him long, &c. . . . Litell Samuel, whoe speakes now very pretely, desiers to have his most humble duty presented to his most honrd. Uncle and Godfather which please to accept from your most humble litell disiple.” In 1686 Balthazar St Michel became Resident Commissioner of the Navy at Deptford and Woolwich with £500 per annum. He was married, but that his wife was the person whom Pepys called his wife’s brother’s lady, “my lady Kingston” (15th March 1661), is not probable: (there were other brothers). He appears among the relatives at Pepys’ funeral in 1703 as Captain St Michel; his son, Samuel St Michel, and his daughter, Mary, are mentioned. Perhaps he had been promoted to the rank of Post-Captain in 1702, as on that year a successor took his post of Commissioner.[1]
*⁎* Mr Pepys had in his service a native of Pluviers (or Pithiviers), the capital of Le Gatinois. The man’s name was James Paris Du Plessis, and he was the author of a manuscript (British Museum, No. 5426), entitled, “A short history of human, prodigious, and monstrous births,” for which Sir Hans Sloan, in 1733, gave him a guinea. Du Plessis, in his letter to Sir Hans, dated from The Hat, Port Street, over against Rider’s Court, Soho, says of himself and his manuscript:—
“It is a collection I made wilst I was a servant to my most honourable master, Mr Samuel Pepys, in Yorck Buildings, and Mr Laud Doyley in the Strand, of most honourable memory, and in my travels into several countries of Europe with Mr John Jackson in the jubily year, and several others. Being aged of 70 years, I being sickly and not able to serve any longer, and having about a thousand volumes of books I had collected in my younger dayes, with a considerable collection of prints, medals, curiosities, I took a little shop and exposed my said goods to sale; but it not pleasing God to bless my undertaking, and spending in it all the money I had, I have been oblidged to leave off shopkeeping, and take a garret to lodge myself and goods,” &c.
The thirty-six pictorial illustrations and descriptive articles in the manuscript are catalogued in All the Year Round for 1861 (vol. v., page 331). From this account it appears that he was a son of Jacques and Charlotte Du Plessis Paris; that a sister of his mother was the wife of the Sieur Martel, Doctor of Physic and Surgeon; and that he himself married a daughter of James De Senne, of London, a French Protestant of Dieppe, by Mary Rosel, his wife.
- ↑ Except for the dates connected with the Commissionership, my sole authority for the above Memoir is Pepys’ Diary, and accompanying materials. The ancestry of St Michel and his sister is described in Balthazar’s Letter to Pepys, dated 8th Feb. 1673-4, and summarized in the Editor’s Life of Pepys. Why that letter is not given there, verbatim and at full length, I do not understand. It seems to have been printed along with one edition of the Diary, for the late Mr Burn gives this quotation from it (Balthazar is alluding to his father), “He for some time, upon that little he had, settled himself in Devonshire, at a place called Bideford, where and thereabouts my sister and we all were born.”