Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 6 - Section VIII

by David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

Layout 2

VIII. De la Pryme.

The siege of La Rochelle filled the Protestants in French Flanders with such a sense of insecurity, that about eighty Walloon and Huguenot families came over to Hatfield, near Doncaster, in Yorkshire, about 1628-30. They were drawn to this royal village by the scheme for draining the great fens in the levels of Hatfield Chase, presided over by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden. The head of one of those families was Charles De la Pryme,^[1] of Ypres, in Flanders. In Flemish the word priem means a large dagger or poniard. The arms of De la Pryme were earned by a crusader of the twelfth century, named Alexander Priem, whose services were rewarded with a patent of gentility and a grant of arms, being a cross and poniard quarterly, — the crest, a cross upon a wreath. The refugee changed his armorial bearings, but his descendants in this country have reverted to the old arms.

Charles de la Pryme was possessed of some capital, but lost many hundreds of it in the drainage scheme, which as a work (though not as a speculation) was successful after “incredible labour and charges of £400,000.” His wife’s maiden name was Prudence, and she survived him only a few days; both were buried at Hatfield, he on 30th December 1699, and she on 5th January 1670. In his will he gave “unto the poore of the French and Dutch congregation of Santoft the summe of three pounds.” He left three sons, Abraham, Matthew (or Matthias), and David. Abraham, of Hatfield, gent, married in 1666, Anne Dillingham, and died 23rd July 1687; his children are unrepresented. David, of the Levels, married Mary Guoy; he was buried at Hatfield on 1st February 1672, and she on 26th October of the same year; their son, David, died intestate, and the administration of his property was granted to his grandmother, Susan Guoy, on 6th October 1684. The second son of Charles and Prudence, namely, Matthias de la Pryme, of the Levels, he was born on 31st August 1645. According to tradition he grew up a man of immense size; he was weighed against another man for a wager in the market-place of Thorne; and he was only twenty-eight stones, while his competitor was thirty. He married, in 1670, Sarah (born 17th November 1649), daughter of Peter Smaque, “a rich Frenchman, that with his whole family was forced from Paris by persecution for his faith, and was come to live in these Levels.” Her surname puzzled English people, and was probably seldom pronounced correctly; her own son in after years thought that her name was Smagge.^[2] Matthias de la Pryme died on 29th July 1694, in his forty-ninth year, and was buried at Hatfield; his widow was not laid beside him until 8th December 1729; she died at the age of eighty, having survived her two sons as well as her husband. Her elder son was Rev. Abraham de la Pryme, B.A. Cantab., F.R.S. (born 1671, died 1704); of him I shall give a separate memoir. But as he was the head of his family, I here mention any facts that connect him with his successors. He resigned his first curacy, and came to Hatfield in 1697. He was, in 1698, appointed Curate and Divinity Reader of the High Church, Hull (which is also named the Church of the Holy Trinity). “He was employed (says Mr Tickell, writing in 1769) by the Mayor and Aldermen to inspect and arrange the ancient records of the corporation of Kingston-on-Hull. From these original papers he has made long extracts, which are bound up in volumes and lodged in the Guildhall, with a general Index directing us to the originals, so that any record, previous to the period bounded by the present century, may be as readily examined here as any enrolment in one of our register offices.” He left Hull in 1701, and died at the parsonage of Thorne, near Hatfield, on 12th June 1704. The younger son of Matthew de la Pryme and Sarah Smaque was Peter, baptized at Sandtoft, 14th July 1672; he married at Thorne, in 1695, Frances, daughter of Francis Wood, of the Levels; he succeeded his brother, Rev. Abraham, in the family properties in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire; he is styled “of Crowtrees Hall in the Levels.” His wife was buried at Hatfield, 14th July 1707; he survived for seventeen years. He was one of the original trustees of the Hatfield, Thorne, and Wroot School Property left by Henry Travis. In 1722 he was elected Surveyor of the Levels. He died 25th November 1724, aged fifty- two, and was buried at Hatfield. Two sons survived him, the elder of whom succeeded to the landed property, namely, Abraham de la Pryme, of Carr-side, in the parish of Hatfield. The Yorkshire soil in course of time slipped away from his progeny, and that great county is more concerned with his younger brother Francis. In the first place, however, we must deal with Abraham, who was born in 1700, and married at Hatfield, on 23rd December 1725, Emelia, daughter of Rev. James Grenehalgh, Rector of Hooton-Roberts. He was buried at Hatfield on 8th October 1740, and she on 18th July 1769. He was survived by one son James, born at Hatfield, 4th January 1731 (n.s.) (He himself is not heard of in Hatfield after this date; two infants who died before him had been buried there, Peter in 1727, and Margaret in 1728; a younger sister, Elizabeth, who died in 1741, and another, Emelia, who died in 1760, wife of William Green, M.D., were also buried at Hatfield.) The above-named James is styled “of Sheffield, merchant;” he married at Manchester in 1755, Elizabeth, daughter of James Greatrex; the memory of this alliance is preserved in Manchester by a street named Pryme Street. He died in

1. I am almost entirely indebted to The Surtees Society’s Publications, vol. liv., and to the late Professor Pryme’s Recollections, edited by his aughter.
2. Perhaps the truth lay half-way, and there was no accent to the final E, which in that case would be mute. I find in the French Church Registers of Thorney Abbey, in 1687, Sara Smacq, wife of Abraham Bailleu.