MEMOIR

OF THE LE FANU FAMILY

FROM THE GRANT OF HENRI IV

BY T. P. LE FANU

LARGELY FROl\tl MATERIALS COLLECTED BY W. J. H. LE FANU

PRIVATELY PRINTED

Contents

PAGE CHAPTER I. Our Forefathers in France - - • I CHAPTER II. The Refugees - - - - - 24 CHAPTER III. The Sheridan Connection .. 44

APPENDIX I. Grant of Henry IV, 1595 • - 69

.A.PPENDIX II. Baptismal Certificates of Philippe and Guill~ume Le Fanu 7 2

APPENDIX III. Commission of Charl1es de Cresserons in Queen Anne's Army - - - - - 74

APPENDIX IV. List of Works by Members of the Le Fanu family • 7 5

PEDIGREE. Table I - - - AT END PEDIGREE. Tabl,e II. .. "

List of Illustrations

1. HENRIETTE RABOTEAU (1709-1789), wife of William Le Fanu - FTontispiece 2. LE FANU ARMS, from the gTant of Henri IV, 1595 (d'azur au cygne d' aTgent; au chef d' OT, cha-rge de t-rois Toses de gueules, fieuronnees d' or, CHAMILLART, Recherche de la Noblesse de Caen en 1666- Caen, 1887) - - - Title page To face page 3. PHILIPPE LE FANU (1681-1743) - - - - 6 4. MARIE BACON (1674-1746), wife of Philippe Le Fanu - 8 5. W ILLIAl\1 LE F ANU ( I 708-1797) - - - I 2 6. THOMAS SHERIDAN, ~f .A. (1719-1788) - - 14 CFrom a p 01t1ait by John Lewis.) 7. FRANCES CHAMBERLAINE (1724-1766), wife of Thomas She1idan - 18 8. RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN (1751-1816), /1om a po1trait by Gains- borough in the possession of lVlajor Pym, of BTansted - - 20 9. JOSEPH LE FANU (1743-1825) - - 24 10. ALICIA SHERIDAN (1753-1817), wife of Joseph Le Fanu - - 26 11. CAPTAIN HENRY LE FANU, 56th Regiment (1748-1821) - - 30 12. ELIZABETH SHERIDAN (1758-1837), wife of Captain Hen-ry Le Fanu 32 13. THE REVEREND PETER LE FANU (174g-1825) - - 36 14. CATHERINE COOTE, wife of the Reverend William Dobbin, F.T.C.D. 38 15. THE VERY REVEREND THOMAS PHILIP LE FANU, Dean of Emly (1784-1845) (from a miniatu1e by Charles Robertson) - - 42 16. EMMA LUCRETIA DOBBIN, wife of Dean Le Fanu, died 1861 (/Tom a miniature by Charles Robertson) - - - 44 17. JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU (1814-1873) (from a photog1aph taken about 1855) - - 48 18. SUSAN BENNETT, wife of Joseph She1idan Le Fanu, died 1858 - - 50 19. WILLIAM RICHARD LE FANU (1816-1894), Commissioner of Public W 01/is in Ireland, 1863 to 1891 (from a photograph taken about 1855) - - - - 54 20. HENRIETTA VICTORINE BARRINGTON, wife of William Richard Le Fanu, died 1899 - - 56 21. WILLIAM JOSEPH HENRY LE FANU (1843-1923), Indian Civil Service 60 22. THOMAS PHILIP LE FANU, C.B. Commissioner of Public Works in lTeland from 1913 - • 62

The Le Fanu Family

c·HAPTER I.

OuR FoREFATHERs IN FRANCE •

.. THE name of Le Fanu appears to be now extinct in France and is, confined in England and Ireland to the descendants of Thomas Philip Le Fanu, sometime Dean of Emly, who died in 1845, and of his first cousin, William Joseph Henry Le Fanu, who was at the time of his death in 1879, and had been since 1834, Rector of St. Paul's, Dublin. The origin of the name is doubtful; Fanu as a French word is defined by Littre as: " Terme rural qui a beaucoup de fane. Se dit du ble qui pousse trop de feuilles," while fane is defined as "feuille secke tombe de l' arbre." It is hard to see how the epithet could be applied to a man, but there is another Norman name occurring much more frequently and differing only by one letter which denotes a personal peculiarity. This is Le Canu, in medireval Latin Canutus, meaning the white-haired Man, and used in legal documents to represent the English name Hoare. This suggests a possible connection with fenutio, defined by Du Cange as equivalent to ruber color. The meaning of the name would then be " redhead " or " redcoat." It has also been suggested that it may be a Scandinavian place name, though the termination of the Latin form Fanutus does not favour this deriva­ tion. There is an island Fano to the south-west of Jutland, and there B 2 THE LE FANU FAMILY is also a Fano in Norway. It has again been connected with the Norse and Danish word Fane, sifnifying a standard or banner, but these are mere guesses. - The derivation from the Roman Fannius is equally conjectural and against it may be urged the physical evidence of form and feature pointing to a Northern ancestry, as the caution which in not a few members of the family takes the place of good principles is unquestionably a legacy from our Norman forefathers. After these attempts to peer into the remote past, there is more than a touch of bathos in the con£ ession that save for a single reference nothing whatever is known of the family before the middle of the sixteenth century. That reference is, however, of some importance as it connects the name with Vire, a town some twenty-five miles south­ east of Caen. An ecclesiastical record of the year 1415, discovered at Chichamp by M. Butet Hamel, Conservateur de la Bibliotheque et de la Musee de Vire, and communicated by him to W. J. H. Le Fann (160)1 refers to one, Abbe Le Fanut, se disant Sieur de ,Bombenard. Possibly the worthy cleric had a cold in his head when he instructed his 1nan of law; anyhow Bombenard may well be a mistake for Montbes­ nard, the name of a hill close to Vire, from which the family would appear to have derived the style and title of Sieur de Montbesnard which they used at least down to 1738. The Le Fanu pedigree, so far as it can now be traced, begins with Michel I.:e Fanu (1) who took his degree in arts at the University of Caen in 1536. He is described in the university records as belonging to the diocese of Coutances, which agrees with the theory that he came from the neigbourhood of Vire. At Caen he studied law under Gilles de Caumont, whom he describes thirty years later in his poem, " De

1. The numbers in brackets refer to the pedigree appended to this memoir. OUR FOREFATHERS !IV FRANCE 3 Antiquissima Juris Origine '' (Caen, r 568), as a hale and happy old man devoted to teaching and to the good of his country. De Caumont was also the subject of a brief memoir by Jacques de Cahaignes, Rector of the University, who in_ his "Elogiorum Civium Cadomensium Centuria" (Caen, 1609), has left a series of portraits of his fellow citizens so candid th~t the book became extremely rare almost imme­ diately after its publication. De Caumont appears in that memoir as a venerable sage, learned in· Roman law and skilled in practice at the bar, simple and direct in thought and speech and utterly disdaining all niceties of language and those literary diversions _·which filled up the leisure of many of his fellow professors at the University. De . . Cahaignes' book, which is now available in an excellent translation, published a~ Caen in 1880, enables us to realise the sort of life which Michel Le Fanu lived. All the leading members. of the learned professions ·at Caen appear to have been connected with the University. 'fhe spirit of the renaissance and the new learning had in many _cases attracted them to the reformed religion, which in France, more than either in England or Germany, was especially indebted to the Univer­ sities for its advancement. There is reason to believe that in the middle of the sixteenth century the majority of the professors of the University were Huguenots,1 and the inquisitor, Laurentin, found it necessa1y in I 539 to investigate the cases of several persons in Caen ,vho were_ suspect~d of heresy. 2 Many of these professors, who were also busy men of the world taking their full part in the affairs of their city, amused themselves in their lighter hours by the composition of v·erses, sometimes in French but more often in Latin, the universal

1. Bulletin de la Societe de 1'histoire du Protestantisme Fran~ais, 1905, p. 417

2. Galland : L 'Histoire du Protestantisme a Caen, p. xx. 4 THE LE FANU FAMILY language of the learned. Of Michel Le Fanu and his son Etienne, Jacques de Cahaignes writes as follows :-

" Michel Le Fanu etait entraine par une vocation naturelle vers l'etude de la poesie; mais comme il voyait qu'elle n'etait d'aucune ressource pour le soutien de sa famille, et que la moisson du poete . etait nulle, les vers ne servant qu'a vous charmer et non a vous nourrir-il s'appliqua a l'etude du Droit Civil, bien que ce ne fut pas son penchant, et se destina ou barreau. T ~ut le temps que lui laissaient ses occupations judiciaires (car il se desinteressait entiere­ ment de la direction de sa maison), il le consacrait aux Muses, ses amies de predilection. A vrai dire, il improvisait ses vers latins et fran<;ais plutot qu'il ne les comE_osait. Chez lui facilite egalait !'inspiration; tout sujet, quelque aride et quelque futile qu'il fut, . etait pour lui une occasion de montrer les ressources inepuisables de son imagination. Les gens instruits font beaucoup de cas de ses poesies latines; ses vers fran<;ais n'ont pas cette tournure elegante qui est auj ourd'hui en usage; car notre langue a subi des changements; on y a introduit de nouvelles tournures de phrases; elle est bien diff erente de celle du siecle dernier. Les ouvrages ecrits en fran<;ais, qui, a cause de !'ignorance de l'epoque, etaient juges dignes de merite passent aujourd'hui pour grossiers, imparfaits et detestables. S'il sut donner cours aux productions de non esprit, il ne sut-pas mains developper les qualites de son fils unique, dont il prit soin d' orner !'intelligence et de former le coeur a la vertu. Mon Cher Etienne, c'est a toi que je m'adresse maintenant; apres avoir termine tes cours de jurisprudence, tu marches au barreau de notre ville sur les traces de ton pere. C' est I' erudition aussi bien que la loyaute que tu as .apportees clans les debats judiciaires qui on fait ta reputation. Tu .as su concilier, avec les devoir de tu profession, les etudes les plus variees et les plus differentes, la poesie fran<;aise et meme la poesie latine. Par le calme de ta vie, la simplicite de ton coeur et ton rare merite, tu as conquis !'affection de tous. Je continuerais encore et ·non sans raison m' ete11-drais d'avantage, si ton extreme modestie ne venait arreter les elans de ma plume. Puisse cet eloge meriter ton . entiere approbation! Je l'ai fait surtout a cause de toi, afin qu'il OUR FOREFATHERS IN FRANCE 5 temoigne a la posterite de l'amitie qui nous unit des nos plus tendres annees et de notre laison quotidienne, encore resserree par des services reciproques depuis tantot cinquante ans." Of Michel's poems there remain to us .his book, "De Antiquissinza furis Origine," a poem of some two thousand lines in Latin Hendeca­ syllables,1 published at ·Caen by Stephen Thomas, printer to the King and to the University, in 1568. Notwithstanding the dryness of the matter and the incongruity o-f the form of this work, it shows the .author to have been an enthusiast for his calling, anxious to base it on the broadest principles of natural justice, and the possessor of an extensive Latin vocabulary which he used with ease. He also prefixed some complimentary verses, still extant, to the " Partitiones f uris Civilis" of his friend and brother lawyer Claude du Buisson. In spite of the rival claims of poetry, Michel Le Fanu devoted himself with st;tccess and distinction to the practice of the law from 1543 until his death .in 1576. He acted as Counsel for the city of Caen in the action brought against it in 1553 by the inhabitants of Rauen and the other free towns of Normandy, and was apparently investing in land from 1554. Of his marriage we know nothing save that he was related through his wife to Jacques Duval de Mondrainville, one of the most notable of his fellow citizens, who held high office at the Court of Charles IX. Tio Duval he dedicated his book, and the verses in which he refers to him may serve as a sample of its style. They are as follows :-

" ...... At tu nunc Jacob, masculinum Qui de valle geris perenne nomen, Astraeam colito diuque noctuque

1. For another example of such verses by a Frenchman ·of the 16th century, cf. Joa: Vulteii Rhemensi,s Hendecasyllaborum Libri quatuo1· Paris 1538 in the Library of the Societe de T'Histoire du Prote!;tantisme · Fran~ais ·at Paris.

B2 6 THE LE FANU FAMILY

Sic pronoea j ubet dei vocantis, Non parere nefas deo jubenti. Sic prosis patriae, parentibusque Te natum et sibi sentiant amici, Inter quos ego nuptiae tibi quern Affinem f aciunt meae, quern amasti Non vulgariter, opto contineri."

Among the manuscripts of Jacques de Cahaignes, now in the Librarie }Ifarc el at Caen, is the following epitaph :-

E pitaphium M. Michaelis Fanuti, in foro Cadomensi causidici, mortui anno 1576, die J anuarii 13.

Et populo vigilasse juvat musisque foroque Et vigilasse deo, dum mihi vita fuit Defunctum vita luget populusque forumque Participem faciunt musa Deusque poli. "

As stated in the Eloge already quoted, Michel's only son, Etienne Le Fanu (2), followed in his steps as a lawyer and as a versifier in French and Latin. Several of his compositions are said to be included in a collection of poems in honour of Charles VII. and Joan of Arc, published at Paris in 1613. He also composed many of the inscriptions affixed to the symbolic decorations which adorned the public buildings of Caen on the occasion of the entry of the Due de Joyeuse in April, 1583. The collection published by Jacques de Cahaignes on the death of the celebrated Jean Rouxel, entitled "Le· Tombeau de Monsieur / ean Rouxel," contains verses by him, and he also addressed compli­ mentary verses to Pierre, the son of his father's friend, Claude du Buisson. His preparation for his career as a lawyer had not been restricted to Caen but had been pursued at the most famous universities of the realm. He became an avocat at Caen in 1572~ and in 1578 was

OUR· FOREFATHERS IN FRANCE 7 appointed to the office of avocat de la ville. He was also counsel to the University. Huet, the celebrated bishop of Avranches,1 writes of him: "fl fut Avocat et poite comme son pere et joignit a son talent beaucoup d'erudition. fl fut estime pour sa candeur, pour sa douceur et pour sa vertu et merita les louanges de tous ceux qui connurent sa merite.'' The reference to candeur suggests that he may have been the first to adopt the family motto, "Dat pretium candor." Etienne Le Fanu's chi~£ claim to be remembered by his descen­ dants does not, however, lie either in his professional achievements or in his literary efforts, but arises from the part which. he took in the stirring affairs of his time and his services to Henry IV, by whom he was ennobled in 1595. T·he original Titre de Noblesse then given into his hands was discovered in I 9 I I in use as the cover of a book in the library of a Norman monastery which. had recently been dissolved. The finder was an archiviste employed by the Bishop of Bayeux to . . catalogue the library, and the latter kindly consented to sell the . . document to W. J. H. Le Fanu (160), whose son Henry is now in possession of it. The arms,." D'azur, au cygne d'argent; au chef d'or charge de trois roses de gueules fl,euronnees d'or" are emblazoned in the centre of the parchment with two greyhounds as supporters and for crest a greyhound's head .. The document, which is printed in full as an appendix to this Memoir, thus describes Etienne Le Fanu's services:-

" 11 n-avait obmis aucun point de devoir et fidellite . . . . . qui touche notre service et le bien publicq speciallement au temps le plus turbulant et lorsque nos enemis se sont eff orcez de nous desrober le

1. Origines de la Ville de Oaen, 1st Ed. Rauen 1702, Cap. xxiv, p. 506. 8

coeur de nos bons et loyaulx subjects outre lesquels services qui meriteraient bien de nous une bonne recompense, il nous a encore en ces jours passez secouru d'une bonne somme de deniers pour subvenir au paiement des Suisses de notre armee, suivant notre edict du mois d'octobre mil cinq cent quatre vingt quatorze qui est un evident tes moignage de I' extreme affection qu'il a en notre service, au moien de quoy il merite aultant que nul autre estre retenu par nous au nombre de ceux que nous avons resolu d'anoblir par notre dit edict."

. Under the edict in question ten nobles appear to have been Cl:"eated in Normandy.1 Etienne Le Fanu, who died in May, 1616, married at Caen on the 11th November, 1576, Claude, daughter of Denis Laisne. They had six children :-

Pierre, hap. 10th July, 1580. Michel, bap. 6th March, 1583. Jacques, hap. 18th March, 1584. Etienne, hap. 24th March, 1585, died 15th May, 1613. Marie, hap. 1st November, 1578. Anne, hap. 11th November, 1581.

Marie married at Caen -on the 7th February, 1601, Samuel Le Miere, Sieur de Basly, like her father a protestant and a member of the legal profession at Caen. Their son, Jean, inherited one of the family failings, having published at Caen in I 664 a collection of epigrams entitled Seria et /oci. 2 Anne married in March, 1608, Jacques Deso­ beaux, a soldier in the retinue of the Due de Montpensier, who was the

1. De Cahaignes. Eloges, Caen, 1880, p. 12. 2. Galland, p. 141. Huet says of him, "Nous avons vft de ses vers Iatins et francais qui ne sont pas meprisables."

OUR FOREFATHERS IN FRANCE 9 son of Pierre Desobeaux, described in the registers of the Protestant Church at Caen for the year 1567 as "Honorable komme ·•...... 1eceveu1 de l'imposition et domaine fo1ain a Caen." The brothers, except Pierre, are now mere names to us. Pierre (4) married in 1614 Anne, daughter of Jean Le Hulle, a burgess and a member of a well­ known protestant family of Caen, and Anne Le Clerc. · In 1618 he bought from Isabeau Le Sens the fief noble of Cresserons, some eight miles from Caen. In virtue of this p_urchase he and his successors in that property became entitled to call themselves Seigneurs de Cresse­ rons in place of the more humble style of Sieurs de ·Montbesnard. Pierre had seven sons and four daughters, namely :-

Michel, hap. 15th FebruarY._, 1615. Jean, hap. 15th July, 1618. Louis, hap. 24th July, 1622. Jacques, hap. 2nd February, 1624. Etienne, hap. 13th February, 1625. Pierre, hap. 14th April, 1626. Philippe, hap. 6th June, 1627. Anne, hap. 1st May, 1616. Marie, hap. 4th June, 1617. Madelaine, hap. 1st December, 1619. Jeanne, hap. 13th May, 1621.

Pierre Le Fanu in 1626 made over to his children the fief of Cresserons with its rights and liberties, two houses in the parishes of St. Pierre and St. Jean at Caen, and houses and lands at Amfreville, Breville and Mondeville, besides a number of charges on other lands. On his death, in 1627, his widow was appointed guardian .. of the

1. Galland, p. 141. IO THE LE FANU FAMILY children, and in that capacity made attornment in the following year to the Abbey of the Holy Trinity at Fecamp in respect of two houses and gardens and sundry parcels of land at Mandeville containing in all some 46 acres,-,·for which she paid a head rent of 12 livres, 13 sols,

4 deniers, 2 fowls and 10 eggs, and also in respect of 20 acres held by her elsewhere at a head rent of 40 sols. Pierre's eldest daughter, Anne, married on the 20th October, 1637, Isaac, son of Robert Hellouin and Marie Mallet, and had two sons

I> Michel who, like so many of the family, followed the profession of the law-that being one of the callings which was not closed to protestants until the eve of the revocation1-and Jean, who became a refugee, served in King William's army and died in Ireland. Of the daughters we know nothing further. The sons except Jean, Pierre and Philippe; who had probably died young, all appear in the records of the Reckercke de la Noblesse held in 1666 and the following years. That inquiry was carried out in Caen by Guy Ch~millart who was then intendant. It appears to have be~n mainly fiscal in its object and aimed at putting to the proof those who claimed the exemptions from taxation attaching to the Noblesse. The portion of the Reclzercke relating to Caen ,vas published there in 1887 and includes the nan;ies of Pi~rre's four sons Michel ( 13), Louis (22), Jacques (24), and Etienne (27). One of the few relics of the time· when the family still ·lived in Normandy is an original certifi­ cate signed by Chamillart in 1671, and bearing witness to the fact that Michel and Louis Le Fanu had made good their claims to Noblesse by documentary evidence. It was not realised until lately that · this certificate referred only to two of four brothers who had proved their

1. Galland, p. 100. OUR FOREFATHERS IN FRANCE II case before Chamillart, and the consequence was· that our forefathers, wrongly basing their claim to noble lineage on it, convinced themselves in defiance of dates that Louis was the father and not the brother of Etienne Le Fanu (27), from whom the Irish Le Fanus trace their descent. They knew that Charles de Cresserons (31), the son of Michel Le Fanu, had died in Ireland leaving no children, but they did not realise that it was by him that the certificate was brought over, and that it only purported to declare Chamillart's decision so far as regards the two persons named in it. Michel Le Fanu (13), the elder of these two, married in 1649 Elizabeth, daughter of Jean de la Maugere and Marie de Berault. She had a fortune of 4,000 livres besides furniture to half that value; a copy of their marriage contract still exists in the Bib#otheque Nationale at Paris (Regist1e de Pieces. originals, cote 1099), from which it appears among other things that Pierre ·Le Fanu's widow Anne Le Hulle was still living. Michel and his wife had two sons. The elder was the Charles Le Fanu de Cresserons already mentioned. He was born in 1655, and appears t.o have used his territorial designation almost invariably in preference to his family name. He became a refugee like his cousin Jean Hellouin de Secque­ ville, and they will both be referred to at greater length in the following chapter. The second son, Thomas, born in 1664, would seem to have died young. Michel also had two daughters, Elizabeth, who did not marry and was still living at Cresserons in 17 33, and Anne, who married at Basly on the 2nd of August, 1677,Jacob Le Hardy, Sieur de la Ferte, of Caen, her cousin, Michel Hellouin, being a witness of the marriage. Louis (22), the second of the sons of Pierr~ Le Fanu who are mentioned in the Recherche, was twice married-first to Anne Roussel and secondly at Basly on the 18th October, 1665-, to Louise, .daughter I2 THE LE FANU FAMILY of Pierre du Bourget and Esther Dupont. By his second wife he had one daughter and five sons, namely :-

Esther, hap. 12th June, 1667. Henri, bap. I6th October, 1670. Jean, hap. 5th December~ 1671. Pierre., hap. 1st June, died 2 I st September, I 67 3. Charles, hap. 25th February, 167-8. Jacques.

In the baptismal entry of the son Charles the father is styled Sieur de Breville, .and it mentions that the child's godparents were his cousin Charles Le Fanu de Cres.serons and his aunt Leonor Georges, wife of Jacques Le Fann (24). Charles Le Fann (42) married first Marguerite Agnes Le Hautier. W. J. H. Le Fann had some re~son to think that the marriage took place in 1730, but rejected this date as in:iprobable on the ground that when a man waits till he is fifty to marry he generally has sense enough to remain celibat. Marguerite died on the 22nd June, 1730, and Charles married secondly. on the 25th September, 1731, Marie Anne de Brossard. He died on the 25th Augu~t, 1737, having apparently survived his brothers, as his property at Douvres and Breville appears from entries in the archives of Calvados to have passed to his cousin, Jacques Le Fann, then resident in Ire.land, who promptly sold it. The three children, Henri (38), Charles (42 ), and Jacques (44) Le Fanu de Breville mentioned by Haag1 as confined in the Nouveaux Catkoliques at Caen in 1688 were apparently the sons of Louis who had evidently drawn down on himself the wrath of Fran<;ois de Nesmond, Bishop of Bayeux. That prelate signalized the fifty-three years during which he held the see by his zeal alike in refarming abuses among his

1.. La Frartce Protestante, ed. 1860, vol. vi, p. 493.

OUR FOREFATHERS IN ~HRANCE 13, clergy and in extirpating Protestantism. Among other means to that end he fostered the House of the Propagation of the Faith at Caen, commonly called the Nouveaux Catkoliques, and placed it under the charge of a Parisian sisterhood. In this institution and in another in a different part of Caen, presumably under male government,_ a number of the children of protestants were brought up in the Roman Catholic faith, for the most part at the expense of their parents from whom they had been taken by order of the king or the Intendant; for the Bishop was unfortunately able to rely on the support of the civil power without which persecution is rarely· effective. Louis Le Fanu died in 1685, leaving the guardianship of his children to Jacques Le Sens. Nothing further is known· to us of their history. His brother, Jacques Le Fanu (24), was also an ardent protestant and one of the elders of. the church at Basly. He and his wife Leonor, daughter of Henri Georges, Sieur de 1\Iitois, and Leonor de Couvert, had an only son, Cyrus Antoine Le Fanu (45), who was born on the 2nd of March, 1669. Finding it necessary for the education of this son to move in 1679 from Basly to Caen, he applied to the consistory for permission to leave the one congregation and join the other, and the permission was granted " aux conditions de la discipline ."1 The necessity for this permission may have arisen from the fact that Jacques Le Fanu held office in the church. Cyrus Antoine Le Fanu married Madelaine Le Sauvage. They adhered to the ref armed religion and suffered the ·consequences. Possibly it was with a cynical reference to his sufferings for conscience sake that he registered his armorial bearings in 1696 as " une oie " instead of a swan. In I 707 there were among the children in the. l\l ouveaux C atholiques at Caen two daughters of Cyrus Antoine,

1. Beaujour. L' Eglise Rc.fonnee de Caen, pp. 373-4. 14 THE LE FANU FAMILY Madeleine (62) and Marie (63) de Montbenard, described as ~' filles de M. M ontbenard Le Fanu demeurant a C1esse1ons." 1 How far these two girls profited by the instructions of the good sisters of Caen we know not, but there is evidence that their parents did not change their religion and had to pay the penalties of their contumacy. A heretic or schismatic could not be allowed to contaminate the faithful in the church or churchyard. This view, which has been acted upon even in England, had in France the force of law under the Royal Decree of February, 1669, by·which the privilege of such burial was denied to those of the protestant religion even when they sought it in order to be laid in the tombs of their ancestors. If there was no protestant .cemetery those to whom ecclesiastical burial was refused had to be buried privately, and for that purpose had to obtain an order from the juge local. Madelaine Le Fanu (46) obtained such an order on the death of her husband in 1738 and buried him in his vegetable garden at Cresserons. She ,vas herself buried in the garden of the Sieur de Precourt at Caen in 17 56 under a similar order obtained by her grandson, Guy Henri Jean Andre Le Gouet de Cresserons. Cyrus Le Fanu was the last of the family to bear the name of Montbenard which had persisted for over 300 years if we count from the Abbe Le Fanut mentioned at the beginning of this Memoir. M. Le Gouet, whose father, Henri Le Gouet de Cam­ bremer, appears to have married one of the two girls just mentioned as imprisoned at the Nouveaux C atholiques at Caen, iived long enough to see the regime under which his relatives had suffered persecution ended by the French Revolution. He died on the 9th Brumaire in the ninth year of the Republic (Friday, 31st October,. 1804), and was buried by his own request at Cresserons. His widow, Marie Anne Joseph .de

1. Galland, p. 67.

OUR FOREFATHERS IN FRANCE 15

Blais, sold the fa1nily property at Cresserons to Demoiselle Le Miere d' Allemagne, who was the grandmother of the present owner, the Baron

\ de Ste. Marie. The chateau in which he lives is new but his farni buildings include a part of the old house. He wrote :-" On ne pourra vous montrer que l' emplacement de l' ancien ckateau aujourd' kui occupe par ma f erme. I l subsiste -tout au plus la porte d' entree," to W. J.. H. Le Fanu who called on him in 1909 and saw th·e old gateway. Having dealt with Pierre's three sons, Michel, Louis and Jacques, it remains to resume the· direct line of descent in the person of his most notable son Etienne (27), who was born in 1625 and was thrice married.. In 1656, being then thirty-one years of age, he fell in love with a Roman Catholic lady, Mademoiselle Catherine Le Blais de Longuemare (26), and by an error which the -historians Benoit1 and Haag2 endeavour to palliate under the terms complaisance and " condescendance pour des scruples naturels " con£ ormed for the occasion to the faith of his bride, abjured the reformed religion and was married by a Roman Catholic priest. For this he was summoned within le_ss than a year before the consistory when he made public acknowledgment of his fault and pro­ mised to bring up his children in the reformed religion. His efforts to carry out this promise brought him into conflict with his wife's relations and ultimately led to his trial and imprisonment. From a statement made by counsel on his behalf during certain legal proceedings before Guy Chamillart at Bayeux on the 23rd September, 1671,· and now pre­ served in the Archives Nationales at Paris (T.T. 238, Nos. 47 & 48) and certain documents in the Archives de Calvados (Tutelles 1670--1677), it appears that there were six children of the marriage of whom five

1. Histoire de l'Edit de Nantes, vol. iv, pp. 243-4.

2. La France Protestante, Paris 1860, vol. vi, p. 493. r6 THE LE FANU FAMILY were· baptised at Protestants. 1'here ,vere three sons, Jean Louis, b :r66o, Etienne, hap. 24th February, 1664, and Michel, hap. 20th May, 1666. T.wo at least of the remaining children were daughters, one of whom married a M. de B,ois Roussel.. Etienne's first wife died in the beginning of 1670 and the relatives thereupon assembled after the manner of the country to appoint guardians of his children, only four of whom, survived her-two boys and two girls. If one of these daughters was- Catherine Le Fanu de Mondeville (49) mentioned in Chapter II., and the other was Madame de Bois Roussel, it follows that Elizabeth, Eleonor and Marie, who were living at Caen in 1722, were daughters of his second wife. The maternal relatives would only agree to the father being appointed guardian of the children's property on condition that their education should be entrusted to their uncle, Jean le Blais, younger brother of the Sieur de Longuemare, and that they should be brought up in the Roman Catholic religion. A long series of legal proceedings fallowed. The marriage had taken place more than six years before the Royal Declaration of April, 1663, which provided that no Protestant who had once abjured and embraced the Roman Catholic faith could ever afterwards return to his old religion.1 Although the declaration of 1663 was held by an Arret de Conseil of the 18th September, 1664, not to be retrospective, nevertheless Le Fanu's right to bring up his children in the reformed religion was not recognized, and he reaped in full measure the fruits of his imprudence. His difficulties are best described in the words of Quick2 who, however, makes a slight mistake in the name. He writes : " Monsieur Mande­ ville de Fanue, a gentleman of an ancient family, was kept in the

I. Historie de l'Edit de Nantes, vol. iii, p. r. Appendix, p. rrn.

2. Synodicon in Gallia Reforrnata, vol. i. Introduction, se·c. 27. OUR FOREFATHERS IN FRANCE 17 common gaol of Normandy three years and was there in the year 1674. He married a gentlewoman bred up in the P opish. religion. By her he had several children. The first was a daughter, and his wife's kindred intended to carry her away by force to ·be baptised. . . . . To that end his mother-in-law procured from the judges of Caen an express command to the ministers of the protestant church not to baptize the child on pain of five hundred livres. This is directly contrary to the King's Proclamation Anno 1669, article 39, expressed in these very terms :- We order and command that the children whose father is a Protestant shall remain in their parents' custody and those who shall take them away or detain them shall be constrained to resto1e them." (It may be observed that the dispute as to the baptism of the eldest child must have taken place long before the declaration of 1669 which, how­ ever, was obviously intended to declare and not to modify the existing law, and in any case might fairly be urged against the decision of 1670 referred to below on the question of guardianship so far as regards any of the children who were still in the words of the declaration " avant l' age de 14 ans accomplis pour les males et de I 2 ans accomplis pour les f emelles.") Quick goes on:-" Hereupon he was constrained by night, to avoid the insolence and fury of the common people, to carry the child as far as Bayeux five French leagues distant from Caen there to be baptized after the manner of the Reformed Churches. As he was going to baptize his third child in the protestant temple at Caen, the Vicar of St. John's Church stopped him and took him by the throat suddenly, in so violent a manner that he almost choaked him and to avoid the fury of the common people who began to flock about he returned to ·his house. The last child being a daughter was carried away by stealth by the aforementioned Vicar, and was baptized in the C 18 THE LE FANU FAMILY

Romish way. The mother of these children dying a short time after, although by the custom of the country the father hath the right of being guardian and tutor of his children yet most unjustly and contrary to the 39th article of the Edict the relations of the deceased gentlewoman, ,vho were all Papists, chose her brother (who being a minor needed a guardian himself) to take care of these children. Thereupon he was condemned to give up his children to this young guardian. - From this sentence he made appeal. to the Parliament of Rauen, but his adver- saries by their false witnesses and counter£ eited contract be£ ore marriage, allowing the education of his children in the .... Romish Church (which he proved forged) -got two judgments passed against him and executed, enjoining him to deliver up his children under the penalty of eight hundred livres French money. Upon this he peti­ tioned the Privy Council and obtained a letter under the King's seal to M. Chamillart, Intendant of Caen, commanding him to put a period unto this affair. Bu.t he, being wholly governed by the Bishop of Bayeux and other of the Clergy and rigid papists this poor gentleman ,vas made a prisoner, and at the taking of him they miserably abused hi1n, beating him, tearing his clothes, breaking his sword, dragging him in a brutish manner through the streets, and in all probability had not a gentleman named the Viscount of Caen, come oy and took him into his coach, and conducted him with his guard to the prison he had been massacred by the bloody rabble. Over and above all this bad usage, some debtors to him have obtained an injunction upon any proceeding at law against them until he hath delivered up his children. His Estate is all seized, and he kept at the King's allowance, that he may be thereby compelled not having wherewithal to buy bread for his children to deliver them up. This order vvas confirmed and given forth

OUR FOREFATHERS IN FRANCE 19 by six ecclesiastical Councillors ...... Thus was this worthy gen­ tleman . . . . . more than three years imprisoned and placed among the most notorious rogues who £or their villainies are under restraint, without any hope of deliverance unless by death." In order to place them beyond the reach of his persecutors Etienne Le Fanu had two of his .children, nan1ely his eldest son Jean Louis (47), and a daughter. sent out of France.1 They landed in England, probably on the south coast, where t~ey were placed under the charge of a "Milor anglais" resident in the neighbourhood. Many English. noblemen, including the Duke of Ormonde and the Earl of Burlington, . had taken refuge at Caen in the troubled times of the Commonwealth and had made friends there. · .This "Milor" may probably have been one of them.2 To him Le Fanu, during his captivity, ·addressed a lengthy poem, which is publis,-ied in full in the sixth volume of the proceedings of the Huguenot Society, describing his troubles, ·the death of his wife and his imprisonment, and drawing a graphic picture of his chief persecutor, probably the Vicar of St.. John's referred to by Quick. He addressed his friend as "Cher Periandre," but give~. no clue to his identity beyond describing him as a man of tried prudence who has held high office and has shown himself the worthy son of a worthy father and, not content with receiving the children and· educating them in the protestant faith, has even crossed over to France to visit and comfort their father in his affliction. Whether the daughter- who was sent to England returned or not is uncertain•. There are some grounds, which \vill be dealt ,vith later, for believing that she did not. The son Jean Louis, returned to France sometime between 1674 and 1683, became

1. This is the account given by Etienne's grandson, Wm. Le Fanu, to his son Joseph.

2. Ormonde Papers (new series), i, 253 ; iv, 144. 20 THE LE FAN·u FAMILY

a Roman Catholic, joined the French navy after having carried a, musket for a time in the ranks of the regiment of Navarre, and was, stationed in · Brittany in 1696. He had his arms registered in the. registry of that province, and it is curious to find in the entry the mistakes in the blazon which are repeated in the arms shown on the cup bought by his half-brother Philippe (5_5) in Dublin shortly before his­ death in 1743. The entry is as follows :-/ean Louis Le Fanu, Ecuier, - Enseigne de Vaisseau du Roi, Lieutenant d'une compagnie /ranche de· la Marine. Armes: d'azur a une fasce d'argent accompagnee en chef de trois roses du meme et. en pointe d'une C')'gne d'argent. As two of­ Etienne-'s sons thus fall into an error which· their uncles did not share. it is not improbable that the mistake arose in the engraving of a seal be-­ longing to Etienne. Philippe had and used such a seal. Jean Louis Le Fanu subsequently presented a. petition to Louis XIV which is undated, but as it mentions that he had been thirty years in the navy it cannot have been presented much before 1710. In it he states that two years before entering the navy he had abjured the reformed faith and had been granted a pension of three hundred livres out of the property of the Abbey of St. Germain des Pres which was subsequently withdrawn when Cardinal de Fustenberg was put in possession of the Abbey. He further mentions that his brother Jacques (57), "malheureusement mal converti," has lately escaped to England without leave and prays the King to grant him the charge, payable by him under a family settlement to that brother, which has been confiscated by reason of his departure. The Royal Declaration of the 7th May, 1686, providing for the confis­ cation of property in· such cases may be read in the appendix to Benoit's "History of the Edict of Nantes." The result of the petition is not known, but it is clear, as will be shown in the next chapter, that the .Y?u:luud !JJruisle# cfkrularv

~gram, t/u,__J:wrfra..l:t- &do~i'n;J t.o .9Jly:or!?~

OUR FOREFATHERS IN FRANCE 2I

Crown did not wholly succeed in its pious intention of confiscating the entire property of the refugees. Jean Louis Le Fann married in June, 1704, Clere Marie de Ratouin (48), daughter of Louis de Ratouin, C onseiller du Roi, Directeur des vivres de la Marine, and of Lucresse du Ferry of Toulon. They continued to live at Toulon and had three children, Pierre Gabriel (65), born in I 708, Alexandre (66), and Clere (67), who were all living there in 1713 when their father made his will leaving his property, including certain lands at Crepon in the generalite of Bayeux, inherited no doubt from his mother, to his wife for life and afterwards to his eldest son, subject to charges for his younger children of 6,000 livres each. Alexandre died during his father's lifetime. Jean Louis himself fell a victim to the plague on the 26th June, 1721. His daughter Clere was carried off soon afterwards and also his son, Pierre Gabriel, who died on the 31st July, 1721. His ' property, including a house at Caen, passed, subject to his widow's life interest, to his sisters Elizabeth, Eleonor and Marie (59, 60 and 61 ), then living in the parish of St. Jean at Caen, and their elder sister, Madame de Bois Roussel (53), subject to certain claims made by his widow. It would seem that his brothers, Etienne (51) and Michel (52 ), were no longer alive. At some time between 1670 and 1680-the exact date is uncertain­ Etienne Le Fanu (27) married his second wife Anne (28), daughter of Guillaume Le Sueur, Conseillor du Roi, and Marie du Bois. Tiheir son, Philippe (55), was baptized in the Protestant church of ,Bourg l'Abbe at Caen on the 2nd of March, 1681, by Etienne Morin, who on the suppression of his church in 1685 fled to Holland, and subsequently became Professor of Oriental Languages at Amsterdam, dying at Haar~em in 1700. The registers of the church, having been confiscated

C2 22 THE LE FANU FAMILY with its other property in 1685, the certificate which was given in February, 1713, is signed by M. Drieu: "Commis regisseur des biens des religionnaires /ugitifs qui ont contrevenu aux edits, arrets et declarations du Roi." The fact that the signature of M. Drieu is verified by that of the Lieutenant-General of Caen would seem, on the analogy of modern practice, to indicate that it was intended for use abroad, and it may very probably have been obtained by Philippe Le Fanu at or about the time of his departure from France. A copy of the certificate will be found in the Appendix. Etienne Le Fanu and his second wife Anne, had another son, Jacques (57), who also became a refugee, and at least one daughter. Etienne died about the end of the century. He was alive in 1696 when he registered his arms in accordance with the edict of the 20th of November of that year, but ,vas dead before the marriage of his son, Jean Louis, in June, I 704. 'fhe date of his wife's death is unknown. Philippe Le Fanu, unlike his half brother Jean Louis, remained a protestant. He married in 1703 Marie Bacon (56), who was seven years his senior. Family tradition, preserved in a fragment of a letter from his grandson, Joseph (80 ), to another grandson, Henry Le Fann (83), has it that his half-brother was in a position to advance him in life and was willing to do so if he would break off his engagement. Whatever be the truth of the story it is obvious that Philippe must also have given up his religion if he was to look for advancement in France during the closing years of the reig-n of Louis XIV. He had a daughter Anne (70), who was married in 1722, as mentioned in the following chapter, and a son, Guillaume Philippe (68), born at Caen on the 30th of January, I 708, and baptized at the parish church of St. Peter's, Caen. The certificate of his baptism, still among the family records, is signed by the Vicar OUR FOREfi'ATHERS IN FRANCE of St. Peter's on the 3rd September, 1728, and was probably obtained by Guillaume himself as it is known from his son's letter, already quoted, that he visited France on family business about that time. On that occasion he saw one of his aunts in a convent at Caen, and spoke to her through the grate. The letter thus describes their inter­ view:-" Among many curious things which this well-bigotted lady said_ to him were these : 'Ah, mon en/anti quel do_mmage! V ous vcila. dans un pays ou le soleil ne luit.jamais et ou, quand on crache, on crache noir comme de l' encre! ' " This was the last speech the refugees of the Le Fanu family had with their relatives. in France. CHAPT-ER II

THE REFUGEES.

IF we except Marie Le Fanu, "dame du Bourg, originaire de Caen," who died in Alderney in 1669,1 and whose relationship cannot now be traced, the first members of the family to quit France were the two children of Etienne Le Fanu's first marriage, his eldest son and a daughter already mentioned as having been sent by him to England. The son, as we know, returned to France, but there is neither document nor tradition to show that the daughter went back. What then became of her? On the 23rd April, 1691, a Mademoiselle Le Fanu de Mande­ ville (49) was married at the Church of St. Mary Magdalen, Fish Street, London. She bore the name of Catherine, a name which up to that date only appears once in the pedigree, namely in the case of the first wife of Etienne Le Fanu. The Christian name of Catherine, and the territorial designation of de Mandeville combine to prove that she was the daughter of Etienne Le Fanu and Catherine Le Blais de Longue­ mare, and was called after her mother. Her age, which was over twenty--one at the time of her marriage, agrees with this belief, which is confirmed by the fact that she named as one of her residuary legatees Charles Le Fanu de Cresserons, who was Etienne Le Fanu's nephew. Her husband was Pierre Lorin de Granmare (50), stepson to Solomon Faubert, who quitted France on account of his religion, and came to London on the recommendation of the Marquis of Bath to set up an Academy "to lessen the vast expenses the nation is at yearly by

1. Schickler. Les Eglises du Refuge en Anglete1-re, ii, 526.

THE REFUGEES sending children into France to be taught military exercises." The Academy, which was established in the passage still known as Foubert Place off Regent Street, became very famous, and John Evelyn, from whom these words are quoted, records in his diary a visit to it in 1682 when he saw two Dukes practising the manege. He refers to Solomon Foubert and his son Henri as among the first riding masters in Europe. With such an education Pierre Lorin naturally adopted the army as his profession, and like his half-brother became an officer of one of·King William's French regiments. He was killed in Flanders-·tn- July, 1693, and his widow died before the end of the year, leaving an infant daughter, Catherine Frances, who only lived about two years. Catherine I.Jorin's will is a pathetic document. It was written in French and the official translation in the records of the Prerogative Court runs as fallows :-

" Although I am now in perfect health of body and mind never­ theless not knowing how it shall please God to dispose of me in my lying-in, I think fit to signify h~re my last will in case it shall please Him to take me out of this world. If it shall please Him to give life to my child I bequeath him generally all that may belong to me, and most humbly beseech Madame Faubert, my sister Lorrin and Mr. Le Bas to take care thereof. I hope that Mr. Faubert and the Major in consideration of his poor deceased father shall render it the services it shall want and that God will not forsake it. I doe beesech Him with all my soul, as allsoe to bless all the family. Done at London the sixteenth of November, 1693, by me Catherine de Granmare. In case it shall please God to take away my child as well as myself, I give to Mrs. Le Bas my diamond ring, my writing box tipped with silver and a box of new Ruben. I give to Mrs. Perreaux my sad colour gowne lined straw colour and my yellow THE LE FANU FA_!Vf JLY

gowne .half-a-dozen of my smocks. I give to Jacob his son tenn poun~s sterling for to putt him to a trade and to his father what shall be found of my husband's cloathes. I give to Catherine Williams my goddaughter tenn pounds sterling for to putt her to a trade. All the rest which doth belong unto me, as well in moveables as linen, plate and money which is due unto me I bequeath to my sister Lorin and to Mr. de Cresserons for to be equally shared between them. I except only my dear husband's picture and my Turquoi~e ring which I give to my sister Lorrin and desire her to keep them both for my sake as long as she lives. I give also to Mr. de Cresserons my gold watch which I desire he will keep and wear for ·my sake. Done at London this 16th day of November, 1693, by me. Catherine de Granmare."

The will was all in Catherine Lorin's handwriting, which was verified on the 18th of December, 1693, after her death, by two of her friends, and administration was granted on the 20th. April fallowing to the three trustees named in the will during the minority of the infant Catherine Frances de Granmare. By the beginning of 1696 the child had followed its mother, and Madame Faubert and Mr. de Cresserons were engaged in a lawsuit with regard to the effect of the ,vill, ,vhich was ultimately decided by the House of Lords on the 17th of June, 1698, against Madame Faubert, now for the second time a widow, and in favour of Charles de Cresserons, who thus made good his claim to one-half the property, some £600, which Catherine Lorin de Granmare, nee Le Fann, had acquired under her marriage settlement. It is to be noted that Dean Le Fann christened his only daughter, born in 1813, Catherine Frances-a somewhat strange coincidence if he had never heard the story of this little child, but perhaps explained by the fact that the Dean's grandmother \vas Frances Chamberlaine and his mother-in-law Catherine Coote. c!Jrner1,1C(JJa/J<..er ph., x __ , -·

THE REFUGEES

Charles Le Fanu de Cresserons (31) was the next member of the family to take refuge in England. He was living at Cresserons at least up to the beginning of 1678, as he appears in February of that year as godfather to one of his cousins. His subsequent history is best stated in his own words. Declarations as to their claims, services, and means ,vere twice called for during Queen Anne's reign from the French Pensioners on the Irish Establishment. The second occasion was in 1713-14 when Major Charles de Cresserons made the following· 1 statement :- " Pour obeir a l'ordre de My Lord Due de Shrewsbury, Lord Lt.-General and General Governor Dirlande. Je declare qu'entre mille six cents quatre vingt sept et huit j'aves une pension de Capitaine de mes Seig_neurs les Etats D'Holande, laquelle je quitte pour suivre le Prince d'Orange depuis Roy d' Angleterre; en 1689 je fus mis capitaine clans le regiment de la· Meloniere, ou j'ay servi pendant toutte la reduction d' Irlande, a pres quoy le regiment fut envoye en Flandre, ou j'ay toujours servy actuellement jusqu'a la paix suivante, et a pres la casse du regiment j e £us mis a la pension de capitaine comme les autres; en 1706 au mois d' Avril j e 2artis d'lrlande pour aller a Londre, et suivis my Lord Rivers en Portugal et en Espagn~, ayant une compagnie de Dragons et un brevet de major clans le regiment de Guiscar. Mais mon age advance et mes incommodites causees par mes longs services m' obligerent de quitter ma compagnie, et la Reyne en cette consideration eut la bonte de me remettre a la pension d' lrlande; depuis ce temps la et auparavant j' ay receu de l'argent de France (ce qui ne vient plus) qui m'a com­ pose a pres l'argent qui j'ay en interest en Angleterre, qui consiste en trois annuites, deux de vingt cinq livres sterling chacune, et l'autre de dix; j'en ay encore une de dix livres sterling sous mon nom, mais

1. The original, which was in the Public Record Office of Ireland, perished in the fire in the Four Courts in 1922. THE LE FANU FAMILY

je ne peux pas assurer qu'elle soit a moy. J'ay aussi-billets de la lotterie de I 710 qui coutoient IO livres sterling chacun et quatre de l'annee suivante du mesme prix. J'ay si peu d'argent en coffre que je serois honteux de le mettre sur ce papier, ny valeur des meubles qui sont dans ma chambre. J e n'ay ny terres ny maisons ny negoce; j'ay une femme et plusieurs de mes parents, les uns nouvellement venus de France, et les autres qui sont en Angleterre depuis long­ temps que je suis obliger d'assister sans quoy ils souffriroint de la nudite et la £aim. Je declare de plus que je suis persuade que j' ay plus depence de mon bien de France au service du Roy Guillaume et de la· Reyne d'aujourd'huy que je n'ay d'argent en interest en Angleterre; voila la declaration de Charles de Cresserons."

This concise statement can be amplified by a few facts gleaned from other sources. Charles Le Fanu de Cresserons was one of the numerous refugees ,vho escaped immediately before or after the revoca­ tion to Holland. While serving there he was saved, according to family tradition, by his soldiers, the waters of a canal having been let in upon them while he was sleeping in his tent. Joining the army of the Prince of Orange,.he served during the Irish campaign as a captain in La Meloniere' s regiment of foot, having as a brother officer his. first cousin, Jean Hellouin de Secqueville, who had escaped first to Alderney,1 and then to Holland. He fought at the battle of the Boyne in that regiment which was the first to ford the river at Oldbridge, and a portrait of William III, said to have been given to him by the King, is still in the possession of the family. It is ref erred to as having belonged to him in the will of Joseph Sheridan Le Fann, who died in 1833, but the story of its presentation is purely traditional. Michel de la Maugere, a friend and probably a connection of the tvvo cousins, also

r. Schickler. Les Englises dtt Refuge en .A·ugletcrre, iii, 525. THE REFUGEES served as an ensign in one of the French regiments of King William's arm.y. When these regiments were brought back to Ireland and disbanded after the peace of Ryswick, Jean de Secqueville was granted a pension of 3 /- a day on the Irish establishment and appears to have settled in Ireland in pursuance of the condition attaching to such pensions, but Charles de Cresserons, whose pension was at first 2/6 and later 3/6, would hardly seem to have offered more than a nominal compliance with that condition. In 1701 he was in London obtaining his naturalization by Act of Parliament. In June, 1702·, when the Auditor General inquired into the Irish Pension List, he was still absent. In the summer of 1705 he was back in Dublin, and by that time had married Marguerite· de Graindorge (32). In the same year he and his cousin entered into a mutual agreement by which the survivor· was to inherit the property of the other in the event of the decease of his issue be£ ore reaching the age of discretion. Each, however, reserved to himself the right of disposing of £160. Jean Hell~t;tin de Secqueville died unmarried. His will, bearing date the 30th of June, 1711, and proved on the 7th of May, 1712, gave him his full name, and was sealed with the Hellouin arms: D'azur au chevron d'or accom- pagne en chef de trois etoiles de meme et en pointe d'une pointe de lance renversee d' argent-thus effectually disposing of the tradition that these two cousins were Le Fanus. In it he cites the above agree­ ment, and after leaving certain legacies out of the £100 at his disposal makes his cousin his sole executor and residuary legatee-. Charles de Cresserons had on the 2nd of April, 1706, been given by Queen Anne a Commission, still in the possession of the family, as Captain in the regiment of dragoons commanded by Colonel Fran~ois de la Fabreque, a veteran who had served with him in King William's Irish campaign. 30 THE LE FANU FAMILY

This regiment was raised for Lord Rivers' campaign in Spain, and distinguished itself greatly at the Almanza. In the list of its officers when it was first raised Charles de Cresserons appears as senior captain, but he would seem from his declaration to have been subsequently transferr~d with the brevet rank of Major to the regiment of the notorious Marquis de Guiscard. He was now over fifty, and had been on active service almost without a break since he left France at about thirty years of age. Finding himself no longer equal to the hard­ ships of a campaign he retired from the army, an9- had settled down once more by November, 1710, in Dublin, where he remained.until his death on the 17th November, 1738. His wife had died in 1731. By his will, dated 23rd July, 1733, he left all his property in Ireland, ,England or France (after the payment of legacies to the French churches of Dublin, and to some friends including M. de la Maugere), to his cousins, Philippe and Jacques Le Fanu (55 and 57), asking his heirs to send help to his sister if in need-a request which presumably referred to his sister Elizabeth (33), who remained unmarried. His statements in his declaration as to his scanty means and the poverty of his relations need not be taken too literally. The French military pensioners were not anxious to help the Government to cut down their pensions, and the declarations made by some of their number when compared ·with what is known of their houses, and their manner of living, certainly did not err in the direction of overstating their incomes. Charles de Cresserons, within less than three years from the date of his deelaration, acquired a lease of a house on the west side of St. Stephen's Green for 114 years from his brother officer, Colonel Solomon de Blosset de Loches, at a head rent of £4 10/-, no doubt paying a heavy fine, and he also acquired from another fello,v soldier, Peter

THE REFUGEES 31

Combrecosse, a lease of a house " situate. on the east side of a new street leading through the dung hills towards Lord Abercorn's stables in the suburbs of the City of Dublin" at a yearly rent of £1 ·18s. 6d. This no doubt also cost him a considerable sum. It would seem probable that these two houses or their gard~ns adjoined at the back, and that Charles de Cresserons did not enter into possession of the 1 former until the death of his friend the vendor in 172·1. · The relations referred to in his declaration as having lately come over from· France were no doubt his first cousin Philippe (55) with his wife and two children. Philippe's brother, Jacques (57), as yet a bachelor, had been naturalized in January, ·17 1o, 2 and evident!y did not intend to return to France as he disposed of a ground rent at Breville to his cousin, Henri Le Fanu (38), in 1715. They would seem to have had other relations amongst the. refugees, but these cannot· now be identified. The records of the French Church of St. Patrick show that Jacques Le Fanu was in Dublin in 1728. Philippe Le Fanu and his family would appear to have remained in London from their arrival in or about 1713 until 1730 or 1731 when they crossed to Ireland. Possibly they came over to take care of their cousin Charles on the death of his wife in January, 1731. Possibly also there was· another reason for their wishing to leave London. While there Philippe and Jacques had attached themselves to the Church of La Patente, Soho, one of the brothers being for a time secretary to the consistory. In 1721 a young minister named Charles Barbe (71), who had previously served in Holland and as Chaplain to the Dutch Ambassador in Paris, was elected . as fourth minister of the United Churches of La Patente, Soho, and

1. Georgian Society, vol. i, p. 104.

2. Oath Roll Naturalizations, Huguenot Society's Publications, vol. xxvii, p. 97. 32 THE LE FANU FAMILY

West Street, St. Giles. In the fallowing year he married Anne, daughter of Philippe Le Fanu, who settled £50 a year on the bride and gave his son-in-law £100 at the time of the wedding, showing that he, like many other Huguenots, had been able to realize some of his property in France, very probably by the help of Roman Catholic relations such as his half-brother Jean Louis. The severity of the penal laws alike in France and Ireland was often mitigated by such acts of friendship. Charles Barbe was appointed in r729 to the Church of La Patente, Spitalfields, 1 but on the 17th of April of the following year he aban­ doned his post and also, as it would seem, his religion and took his eldest son with him to France to be brought up as a Roman Catholic. He is said to have been a profligate fellow and to have broken his wife's heart. Be this as it may they both disappear from the family records and must have died before 1741 as Philippe Le Fanu in his will made in that year does not refer to either of them but only to their two sons Philip and William Barbe, born in 1723 and 1724 respectively. Charles Barbe's defection must have been regarded by the congregation not as a mere change of theological views, but as treason to their cause in its time of need, and it is far fro~ improbable that the scandal occasioned by his conduct may have made Philippe Le Fann anxious to sever his connection with the church in Soho. Where he settled on his first coming to Dublin is not certain. In an inventory of his goods made after his death he is described as of Ballsbridge, and it is there£ ore probable that he resided there for some time in the house which his widow subsequently disposed of which is described in one of the documents relating to it as " the house in which Lord Castlecomer

1. Huguenot Society's Proceedings, vol. vi, pp. 283 and 288-9.

THE REFUGEES 33 lately dwelt." When he made his will on the 15th of April, 1741, he was in possession of the house and garden on the west side of St. Stephen's Green which he had inherited from Charles de Cresserons. He died there of a cold on the chest on the 13th October, 1743, leaving his wife the house and garden for her life and eleven hundred pounds together with his plate which included a cup still in the possession of the family. After her death the house was to go to his son William (68) and then to his grandson Philip Le Fanu (73), to whom he also left a. legacy of one hundred pounds. He directed that the remainder of his property was to be divided into two equal parts, one to go to his son William Le Fanu and the other to his grandson William Barbe, unless. Philip Barbe should return from France, revert to protestantism, and · live in a protestant -country for five years. In that event the moiety was to be divided between the two brothers. This provision led to a great deal of trouble between Willia1n Le Fanu and his two nephews, culminating in a suit in the Court of Exchequer in 1746, after which Philip Barbe, who had returned to Ireland in 1742 and entered Trinity

College, Dublin, left again in a ship bound for Rotterdam. In I 77 I the Rev. Philip Le Fanu, William's eldest son, heard that Philip Barbe was returning to Ireland from Boulogne having been engaged as tutor to the sons of a Roman Catholic gentleman in Kerry, but there is nothing to show whether he carried out his intention. William Barbe became a merchant in Dublin where he married and died and was buried at Drumcondra in April, 1749. His only child died in Fisher's Laner Dublin, in the following January. On Philippe Le Fanu's death it became the duty of his so_n to inform his aunts the Mesdemoiselles Le Fanu still living at Caen and to ask them to communicate the news to his mother's sister. He D 34 THE LE FA1VU FAMILY wrote : " Ma mere qui avait passe quarante ans avec lui est clans une affliction inconcevable. Sa plus grande consolation et la notre c' est qu'il a f ait la fin d'un bon chretien, ne temoignant aucune crainte de la mort, au contraire nous declarant qu'il s'y etoit prepare depuis longtemps et qu'il esperoit a l'heureux repos ou Dieu l'appeloit. C'est ainsi qu'il nous consoloit nous memes et moy en particulier en me donnant sa benediction." He went on to say that his uncle Jacques (57) and his child were dead and that .the property left to the former by Charles de Cresserons had passed to his widow. Jacques Le Fanu had married on the 6th April, 1739, Marie Anne D'Avessin (58). Their son, Etienne Philippe (72), who was born on the 22nd February following, died in infancy and Jacques himself died during the year 1740 .. His widow outlived him by nearly fifty years, dying in January, 1789. She was buried in the cemetery of the French Church of St. Patrick. Philippe's widow survived him for a much shorter time, dying intestate in 1746. She left only one son, Guillaume or William Le Fanu (he used both forms), but as six of his eight sons were born before. her .death there was no immediate prospect of the name dying out. He had married Henriette Raboteau (69) at St. Peter's Church, Dublin, on the 28th May, 1734. They were married by their friend Louis Saurin, Dean of Armagh, who was himself married to a Norman wife, Henriette Cornet de la ·Bretonniere, and had been minister at the French Church of the Savoy during the residence of Philippe Le ·Fanu and his family in London. Henriette Raboteau de Puygibaud, near Saintes, was a member of a very old Protestant family of Saintonge.1 She was

1. Bulletin de la Societ~ du Protestantisme Fran~ais, 1921, p. 92. THE REFUGEES 35 the daughter of a Conseiller referendaire au~ Parlement de Bordeaux. Her portrait, which is in the possession of the writer of this Memoir, is thus referred to in a letter1 written by Joseph Sheridan Le f anu in 1866 : " My dear father recollected Henriette Raboteau, his grand­ mother-he a very young child, she an old woman muffled in furs. I have her portrait-pretty and demure, in a long-waisted ·satin dress, and a little mob cap (I have gone and looked in the parlour at it; the cap is graver than that, but her young pretty face and brown hair con­ fused me; she has also a kerchief with lace to it over her neck and shoulders, a little primly placed). The portrait altogether has a curious. character of prettiness and formality; and she looks truly a lady." She had a sister, Marie Esther, and two brothers, Pierre Josue and Jean .. More than one relative of hers had taken refuge in Ireland. Isaac

Raboteau, who died intestate in Dublin in 17 I 9, would seem to have been a younger brother of her father, and Magdelaine Raboteau who married Pierre Barre, another native of Saintes, at the French Church of St. Patrick on the ·20th January, 1724, was also a relative. Hen­ riette's father died about 1729. Deprived of his protection the two girls, who were firm a_dherents to the reformed religion, had r~ason to fear that steps would be taken for their conversion. The following letter, dated 29th July, 1732, but without signature or address, which v,as found among some papers and hymns believed to have been written by Henriette or her sister, would seem to refer to their escape :-

" Monsieur, J'ay ete fort surprise quand j'ay ouy dire que vous vous plaignez de ce que nous ne vous escrivions point ayant eu l'honneur de

1. Quoted by Agnew. French Protestant Exiles, \·ol. ii, p. 222. THE.LE FANU FAMILY m'acquitter de ce si tot que j' ay ete arrivee icy sans avoir ete favorisee d'aucune reponse de votre part, ce qui m'avoit donne lieu de croire jusques icy que vous nous aviez entierement bannies de votre souvenir. Cependant, monsieur, si vous conservez encore quelque consideration pour des personnes qui vous estiment parfaitement je vous demande que vous accordiez a mes chers freres toute l'amitie et la protection que vous nous avez temoigne autref ois en tant d' occasions. Si mes prieres peuvent quelque chose sur votre esprit ne leur refusez pas votre · secours clans un terns ou vous voyez qu'ils souffrent comme d'innocentes victimes pour une faute que vous savez bien qu'ils n'ont pas commise car comme les personnes qui m'ont dit icy qu'ils ont ete pris ne m'ont pas sceu dire sur quel pretexte ils ont ete arretez je m'imagine que c'est sur quelque chose dont ont les accuse a notre sujet. Si cela est je ne vois personne qui puisse mieux les en justifier que vous et vous devez cela a leur innocence. Ils ne scavoient pas plutot que vous meme rien de ce que nous ayont fait bien plus ce n'est que l'extreme crainte du convent qui nous fit quitter la maison sans dire adieu a personne et nous n'eussions jamais songe a passer clans ces pays sans !'occasion favorable de Mr. Miot qui nous £acilita tout ce que nous faloit pour cela. Enfin, monsieur, je vous prie de rapeller en faveur de µies freres la tendre union qu'il y a eue entre vous et mon cher pere et daignez d'accorder a la memoire de cet amy qui eut toujours pour vous tant de confiance tout ce que vous pouvez faire pour rendre la liberte a des enfans qui luy furent si chers et qu'ils a tant recommandez a vos soins. Je crois qu'il n'est pas necessaire." The Miot family were for a very long time active members of the nonconforming Huguenot congregation in Dublin, and their tomb may still be seen in the churchyard in Peter Street. How Mr. Miot helped the two girls is not recorded, but according to a tradition handed down by Henrietta's granddaughter and namesake, Henrietta or Harriet Le Fanu (140), who was born in the lifetime of her grandparents, the vessel

THE REFUGEES 37. in which the two sisters escaped was pursued and searched by a French warship, but the girls were effectually concealed by having a sail furled round them. Another story, which is common to many Huguenot families, says that they were put on board ship in casks. They were consigned to the aforesaid Pierre Barre, who ,vas a master chandler and became an alderman of Dublin. He was afterwards god£ ather to Henriette's son, Peter (85), who was called after him. Tradition adds that they were wrecked on the coast of W ex£ ord. Their two brothers remained in France. One was killed in the war which ended in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748. The other .married and inherited the family property. The two sisters on their arrival in Dublin appear to have been placed under the care of Gaspar Caillard, a celebrated preacher, who was then one of the ministers of the French nonconform­ ing churches of Peter Street and Lucy Lane. He was a witness to the will of Marie Esther, made on the 30th March, 1734, by which she left all her property to her sister Henriette, cutting off her brothers with "treize sols monaye d' Irelande a chacun d' eux pour luy tenir lieu de tout d7oit et p7etention." He was also a trustee of the marriage settle­ ment of Henriette, dated 20th May, 1734, from which it appears that she brought her husband a fortune of £800. They would appear to have lived for some time after their marriage in St. Peter's parish, possibly at Philippe Le Fanu's house at Ballsbridge, for the parish then extended to the Dodder. The baptism of their first child, named Philippe after his grandfather who was also his godfather, is registered in the books of that parish on the 27th of May, I735; he was born on the 13th of March. They subsequently moved across the river to Oxmantown where they lived in a house in Frapper Lane, now known as Beresford Street, near their friend Captain Theophile Desbrisay of D2 THE LE FA1VU FAMILY the Halberdiers, who was agent for the Huguenot regiments. In that house four of their children were born, namely :-

Marie, born 6 February, 1_7_36. Gaspard, born 2nd February, 1737. Jean, born 25th January, 1738. Theophile, born 4th April, 17 40.

The next two children Joseph, born 20th August, 1743, and Henri, born 1st March, 17 46, were probably also born there. Theophile, who was the godson of Captain Theophile Desbrisay, grew up to follow the profession of ar1ns, and Joseph lived to be an old man. Marie, Gaspard, Jean and Henri seem to have died young. William Le Fanu would appear to have returned to St. Stephen's Green on the death of his mother, as the baptisms of his last two children are recorded in the registers of St. Peter's Parish. They were:- Henri (the second child of the name), born 13th January, 1748, and Peter, born 12th September, 1749.

William Le Fanu had prospered in the land of his a_doption. He ,vas a merchant and also to some extent a banker. The exact nature of his business is not known, but it appears from his will that he had a warehouse behind his house in the Green where he had wine stored, and he was granted a premium of £40 _by the Linen Board1 in 1749 for manufacturing or causing to be manufactured 203 and 606 yards of coarse linen. His life appears to have been generally a peaceful one. Though the baptisms of several of his children were entered in the

1. Postlethwayt. Dictionary of Trade and Commerce, II. 85, 180, 345

THE REFUGEES 39 registers of the French Church which assembled in the Lady Chapel of St. Patrick's Cathedral, he seems to have attached_ himself to his parish church, St. Peter's, where he was married. In 1751 he bought for £ I 6 a lease of the seats in the church described as " the end part of the Boarding School gallery seat measuring in length six feet ten inches ··and in breadth six feet six inches as now enclosed situate in tJ:ie south side of the said church,'' and by- his will he directed that he should be buried in the vault under the communion table in the church. He seems to have acquired considerable property. A list made out at the time of his death in 1797 includes lands in King's County and Westmeath with a rental of £656? houses in Anne Street, Francis Street, Fleet Street and Lee's Lane with a rental of £337, and ground rents amounting to £.123 in Lower Abbey Street and North Anne Street besides £3,800 invested in mortgages at S and 6 per cent., and £1,420 "with Patrick and Co. in discounts." He also had some .interest in the Theatre Royal in Crow Street which he left to his son Joseph. He lost his wife after nearly fifty-five years of married life on the 9th of May, 1789. Betsy Sheridan (84), Henry Le Fanu's future wife, wrote thus from London to her sister Alicia (8 I), wife of Joseph Le Fanu (80), on the 16th of May: "This day, my dear, I received from Harry the account of Mrs. Le Fanu's release, for in that light we must view her death when .\ve consider what her sufferings have been for some time past, yet I am sure at the painful moment of separation her sons must have felt sincere sorrow and I fear your spirits are unequal to the melancholy scene you have been engaged in. Harry seems truly affected tho' prepared for this event. I am certain Mr. L., who valued his mother sincerely, has felt his share of distress. Is the old gentleman much affected? " THE LE FANU FAMILY

He had, as already mentioned, one daughter and eight sons. The daughter and three of the sons died young; all the sons, though apparently baptised by French names, used in later life their English forms. The eldest Philip (73) was sent when he was 12 years old to Abraham Shackleton's school at Ballitore. He subsequently won a scholarship at Trinity College, Dublin, in 17 53, and became in after years a ·Doctor of Divinity. He vindicated his claim to that dignity by publishing a translation of the Abbe Guenee's "Lettres de quelques /ui/s portugais et allemands a M. de Voltaire." (Dublin, 2 vols., 1777.) He also published an abridgment of the "History of the Council of Constance." (Dublin, 1 vol., 1787 .)1 Taking orders he was appointed Rector of Moyacombe or Clonegal in the diocese of Ferns in 1759; the living was at one time in the gift of the La Tonche family, so perhaps his early presentation to it may have been due to a Huguenot friendship. He was subsequently in 1767 appointed Vicar of Carbery, Co. Kildare, but this was a preferment of little value without a glebe house and he does not appear to have felt called upon to leave the county Wexford where he lived at Umrigar, a place near Carnew belonging to his wife Rebecca (74), daughter of the Rev. Edmond. Newton and Rebecca Hamilton his wife, and widow of Benjamin Brownrigg. They were married in 1768 and do not seem to have had any children. He died in 1795 and she in 1809. Theophilus (78), the second of the five sons who lived to manhood, went into the army. An undated letter written by the celebrated John Muller, one of the Professors at Woolwich, to his father says:-" II a tout I' esprit et toute la capacite j ointe a une constante application q_u' on puisse desirer clans un jeune homme pour faire un hon officier ou

1. See Dictionary of National Biography. THE REFUGEES 4I ingenieur. Comme j'ai cru qu'il etoit plus avantageux pour votre fils d'etre oflicier qu'ingenieur je l'ai recommande pour tel au General Napier avec son consentement." The letter goes on to give the writer's reasons for his preference, but the father apparently thought otherwise and the boy ultimately went into the Engineers. He writes to his mother from Woolwich on the 6th December, 1757 :-

" Ma chere mere, La votre du 26 de novemhre m'est parvenue. L'occasion de me placer selon VOS intentions s'offre a present comme je l'ecris a mon pere. Il seroit fort avantageux pour moi d'avoir une de ces places comme cela ne m'empecheroit pas de continuer a l'academie le reste de l'hyver. J'espere que vous estes en hon sante et vous prie de faire mes compliments a Messrs Marcelle, Stratton et Crump. Je vous suis bien oblige pour les hon conseils que vous m'avez donne et j'ai dessein d'en faire usage. J e demeure votre aff ectione fils, THEOPHILE LE FANU."

In the fallowing August he was on active service taking part in the expedition to Cherbourg, of which he wrote to his father as follows:-

Cherbourg Bay, August 17th, 1758. Honoured Father, Last Monday the 7th we landed at some distance from Cher­ bourg and met with very little opposition. The next d3:y we marched to it. According to all accounts there were several regi­ ments in the town who all forsook it at our approach; the inhabitants, not being in a situation to defend themselves, surrendered. We remained in possession of it on T,uesday night. They had several 42 THE LE FANU FAMILY forts and batteries which we destroyed, as also a very fine harbour, and yesterday returned on board our respective ships. I have been in tolerable good health since I left Portsmouth. I hope that you and my dear mother are so at present. I hope that my brothers are well, and remain Your dutiful and affectionate son, THEOPH8 LEFANU.

In the spring of the following year he took part is an expedition to the West Indies under General John Barrington, and by a commis­ sion signed by that officer and dated " on board the Roebuck in the Bay of Fort Louis, Grande Terre, the roth day _of April, 1759,'' he was appointed an ensign in the 61st Regiment. In the autumn of the same y~ar he was stationed in Sussex where several batteries were to be erected for the defence of the coast. His father had apparently suggested that he· should leave the army and go to the East Indies, but . . he was not disposed to fall in with this proposal and wrote " I am sure the surprising promotion I have met with leaves me no room to com­ plain." On the 14th of January, 1761, he received a Commission appointing him "Theophilus Le Fann, gentleman ..... to be one of the Sub-Engineers upon the establishment of our Office of Ordnance and to take your rank as Lieutenant of Foot in our Army." In 1762 he was promoted to be Engineer Extraordinary, ranking as Captain Lieutenant. Both Commissions, it may be noted, are signed by another Huguenot, Lord Ligonier. In 1772 he was at Gibraltar and was one of the four officers who were first attached to the con1pany of soldier artificers, afterwards the Royal Sappers and Miners, at its formation in May of that year.1

1. Conolly. Histon.J of the Royal Sappers and JJ[ ine1·s, vol. i, p. 4. .. 7he CfJe,y ~uerend!Jhoma,s ghifj2_/l,9anu

0 ....?ram, a, m-l1u·a.turc '!3J Cli.a.rles ~rts-on,

THE"' REFUGEES 43 Of his subsequent life all we know is that it appears from his father's will and codicils that from 1791 to 1797 and for some years previously he had been out of his mind· with little hope of recovery. How long he lived after 1797 is not known. The three remaining brothers, Joseph, Henry and Peter, who also survived their father, all married and left children. They are dealt with in the next chapter. CHAPTER III.

THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION.

ALL living Le Fanus are also of Sheridan blood, that is to say they are all the descendants of Doctor Thomas Sheridan, the friend of Dean Swift, through either his son Tom or his daughter Hester, of whom more hereafter. It is not necessary here to discuss the vexed question of the Doctor's precise relationship to William Sheridan, the non-juring Bishop of Kilmore, to his brother Patrick, Bishop of Cloyne, or to 'fhomas Sheridan who, with his son and namesake, afterwards one of the seven men of Moidart, served King James jn exile. The necessity for reticence as to Jacobite connections on the part of an aspirant to ecclesiastical or academic promotion appears to have deprived us of any valid evidence on the subject. The Doctor, who was born in 1687 and died in 1738, married Elizabeth McFadden, stigmatized in his will as his "unkind wife," and had several children~ Of these only · the two above-mentioned concern us, viz., Thomas, who was born in 1719, and Hester, who married John Knowles. Dr. Sheridan, noting signs of ability in his son Tom, contrived through the influence of Dean Swift and Mr. Thomas Carte to procure him a ;place on the foundation at Westminster, though there were at the time but three Irish boys at that school and no more at Eton.1 He was meant to be a schoolmaster like his father, who though described by Swift as " doubtless the best instructor of youth in these kingdoms

1. Haliday Tracts, 283 (1), Royal Irish Academy. From the same tract it appears that the number of Irish boys at the two schools had increased to upwards of a hundred by 1757.

45 or perhaps in Europe," had reason to complain bitterly of the rewards meted out to professional merit in Ireland. " I would rather," he writes to his friend Thomas Carte in 1732, "be flea-catcher to a dog in England."1 Want of means, however, prevented Dr. Sheridan from continuing his son's education in England with a view to establishing him in that country. The boy therefore entered Trinity College, Dublin, and com­ peted for a scholarship. He failed at his first attempt, as his father writes to Swift :2 "Cerve Decane: meus filius Thomas sedebat nuper pro scholastica nave et _perdidit id per malitiam unius domini Hughes," but afterwards succeeded and took his degree with credit. Though possessed of considerable abilities he was, as Dr. Johnson said, " dull, naturally dull." Genius had skipped a generation, and he had none of the social virtues or failings which distinguished his father and his son. He caught the stage fever when Garrick visited Dublin in 1742, and abandoned the schoolroom for the theatre. Full of enthusiasm for the stage as an instrument of education, his high ideals as a reformer, coupled with a very obstinate character, led him into many troubles when a few years later he had attained to the management of the Smock Alley Theatre. His attempts to control the outrageous conduct of the " bucks'' led in January, 17 46, to the famous Kelly riot. Many pamphlets and letters appeared on the subject (which, according to Edmund Burke, divided the town into two parties as violent as

3 Whig and Tory ) and among them an anonymous poem entitled" The Owls," in which he was likened to " the glorious lamp of day " voted to be a nuisance by the birds of night. The flattery which thus held a

1. Carte MSS. in Bodleian Library, 227, fol. 32. 2. Swift's Wo1'ks (Nichols' Edition), xiv, 80. 3. Letter to Richard Shackleton. Leadbeater Papers, ii, 66. THE LE FANU FAMILY

candle to the sun was not too fulsome for his taste and he sought an introduction to the writer.to whom he was married within a year. She was Frances Chamberlaine, daughter of Dr. Philip Chamberlaine, a learned clergyman who had been consulted by Dean Swift with regard to his epitaph on the Duke of Schomberg. Her grandfather, Walter Chamberlaine, had been a proctor of the Ecclesiastical Courts in Dublin.1 The statement of her granddaughter and biographer, Alicia Le Fanu (94), which has been repeated in several books of reference, that she was the granddaughter of Sir Oliver Chamberlaine, an English baronet, is discredited by the simple fact that no such perso~ ever existed.2 Their marriage was followed by a few years of prosperity and of some measure of ostentation, both in town and country. Sheridan's dress in his portrait by John Lewis, the scene painter of his theatre, shows that the title of " the pink of Puppies " bestowed on him by his enemies was not wholly undeserved. In the same portrait his elbow rests on· a folio Shakespeare which was afterwards the favourite volume of his famous son and was rescued by him from his creditors

in I 800 on the ground that it had belonged to his father and had been the study of his life.3 Quilca, best remembered as the resort of Swift and Stella, was now purchased by Sheridan from his eldest brother and redecorated by Lewis, and it was apparently towards the close of this period that Sheridan bought at the sale of Dr. Mead's books and pictures in 1754-5, the portrait in crayons of Dean Swift by Rupert Barber which is still in the possession of the family. But this pros-

1. See Matriculation Book, Trinity College, Dublin, 24 Feb., 1690. 2. Frances Chamberlaine's sister Anne married the Rev. John Fish, their granddaughter Anne Dexter married Frederick Homan, and their daughter Helen Homan married in 184; Thoma~ · Frewen of Brickwall. 3. Sichel. Sheridan vol. i, p. 60. THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION 47 peri ty was not to last ; a second and more serious riot occurred in 17 5 4, this time occasioned by political passion. Al though Sheridan struggled for some years to retrieve the fortunes of his theatre he was ultimately compelled by financial difficulties, enhanced by the competition of the new and larger theatre in Crow Street, which was opened in I 7 58 by his rival, Spranger .Barry, to retire to London where he supported himself by acting and by writing and lecturing on education and elocution. At Edinburgh, in 1761, he was granted the freedom of the city" In regard to his distinguished abilities displayed in his ingenious, elegant and improving lectures on elocution delivered with universal approbation." The grant is still in the possession of his descendants. Mrs. Sheridan also took up her pen again and published in 1761 a novel, " Sidney Biddulph," which was followed by the production of "The Discovery" at Drury Lane, in 1763. A list of her other works will be found in the appendix to Lord Dufferin's edition of his mother's poems and verses. A visit to Ireland during the winter of 1763-4 was brought to an end by a creditor who placed a writ in the hands of the sheriff and Sheridan, after a hurried return to London, decided to seek greater leisure for his literary work abroad. · He therefore left for France in the autumn of 1764. His family now consisted· of his wife and four children:- ·

Charles Francis, born 1750. Richard ·Brinsley, born · I .7 SI. Alicia, born 1753. Anne Elizabeth Hume Cra,vford, commonly called Betsy, born 1758.

Their first child, Tom, born in 1748, had died in infancy. The three elder children were born in the house in Dorset Street, Dublin, built THE LE FANU FAMILY by Sheridan for himself, which is now marked by a tablet recording that his _famous son was born there. That -son stayed behind at Harro,v while Sheridan settled with the remainder of his family at Blois, where his wife died in I 766. His affairs in Ireland had in the meantime been left in the hands of William Le Fann (68) as trustee for the creditors, and his prudent conduct in that position, which he continued to fill up to Sheridan's death in 1788, led to a lasting friendship between the .families. From the date of his return to England in the following year Sheridan, though living for some years first in London and afterwards in Bath, made frequent visits to Ireland in the dual capacity of actor and lecturer. In I 776 his elder son, Charles Francis Sheridan, was returned, by the interest of Sir Robert Deane, afterwards Lord Muskerry, as member of the Irish Parliament for the Borough of Belturbet. During the following three years Sheridan was for the most part occup.ied in assisting his younger son in the management of Drury Lane Theatre. The latter did not take his father quite seriously. Family tradition says that he was the original of Sir Anthony Absolute, and it is difficult not to find an allusion to their different points of view in Sneerwell's observation: "The theatre in proper hands might cer­ tainly be made the school of morality; but now, I am sorry to say it, people seem to go there principally for their entertainment."1 One of his daughters usually kept the old man company while the other remained with her elder brother in Dublin, where they naturally renewed their acquaintance with many old friends, including William _Le Fanu and his family. Joseph Le Fanu (80), William's third son, who was at this time a man of between thirty and forty, held an office in the Custom House, under the title of " Clerk of the Coast and

1. " The Critic," Act I, Scene 1.

THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION 49 Examiner of the Coast accounts for the outports," to which he had been appointed in 1764. The precise duties of this office are not now ascertainable. His grandson, William Le Fanu (100), remembered that nearly fifty years later the old man used to take him occasionally to the Custom House in a hackney coach to get supplies of paper .and sealing wax. Whatever the duties were they seem to have left him a good deal of leisure; he was something of a scholar and devoted much of his spare time to literary pursuits, and half-a-dozen plays in his handwriting are preserved among the family records. He saw Garrick act in London in 1768, and maintained for many years a correspondence with George Colman the elder, for whom he seems to have acted as agent in connection with some Irish property. Through Colman's interest he succeeded in getting a play, based on Moliere's comedy,. "Le Mariage Force," put upon the London stage in 1772, but it did not survive the first night. It may seem strange that Huguenots like William and Joseph Le Fanu should have been closely associated with the theatre, but the Dublin refugees do not appear to have shared the puritan view expressed by Prynne that plays are :, the very pompes of the divell." William Chaigneau, a prominent member of their body, used to entertain many actors at his house in Abbey Street.1 A French colony in Peter Street had their private theatricals in which the families of Peltreau, Fleury, Le Fanu, Boileau and Vigneau took part,2 and "Comus" was performed at Marlay in 1776 by an amateur company consisting almost exclusively of La Touches.3 Charles Maturin was

1. Tate Wilkinson's Memoirs.

2. Family Papers. 3. Samuel Whyte's Poems, Dublin, 1795, p. 60.

E 50 THE LE FANU FAMILY a Huguenot, a clergyman and a dramatist, and so, in a less conspicuous way,"as will be seen further on, was the Rev. Peter Le Fanu (85). Joseph Le Fanu had married on the 1st October, 1771, Anne Franklin (79), who died on the 9th February, 1778; they had two· sons, William Philip (87), born on the 19th May, 1773, and Crawford (88), who was born on the 19th March, 1776, and died in infancy. The only memorial of his first wife which now remains is a mourning ring bearing the dates of her marriage and death and containing a lock of very fair hair. Her son was left sufficient money by his grand£ ather, William Le Fanu, who died in 1797, and by his aunt Rebecca, widow of the Rev. Philip Le F.anu, who died in 1809, to make him independent of his father and to enable him to devote the rest of his life to philan­ thropy. Intended originally for the bar he studied medicine so as to be able to minister to the poor in Dunlavin, of which his uncle Peter was for a few years rector, and in the neighbouring village of Balli tore, where his medical skill attracted such crowds that as one of his rustic patients told Mary Leadbeater, the annalist of the village, " the biggest market that was ever seen in Ballitore was not to be compared to it." He was interested in the establishment of Charity Schools both in Dublin and in Dunlavin, and founded the" Farmer's Journal'' for the benefit of the peasantry. He was also the author of several pamphlets. He died unmarried in 1817 and was buried near his mother in St. Peter's Churchyard. "Those who loved him and they ,vere all those who knew him, clung to him with no common attachment,"1 wrote Mary Leadbeater, who wished to edit the papers which he left behind him, " to preserve as far as we can the treasures of that rich mind, and not

1. Leadbeater Papers, ii, 297. ¥' ~!ftI, , . c5 usan . · an t-l,

THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION 51 to let that beloved and honoured name be forgotten," 1 but the wish was not carried into effect. Joseph Le Fanu married on the 11th October, 1781, as his second wife Alicia Sheridan (8 I). Her elder brother disapproved of the match, but her father, though regarding it as imprudent, did not press his objection. The marriage seems to have been a happy one. i\.licia took a leading place in literary society in Dublin and particularly in private theatricals which were then much in vogue. She was the author of a comedy, " The Sons of Erin," performed at the Lyceum Theatre in 1812, to which an epilogue was contributed by her nephew, Tom Sheridan, Richard Brinsley's son. She had another nephew of the same name, the son of her elder brother Charles~ commonly known to his relatives as Persian Tom, owing to his having been engaged in the diplomatic service in Persia, where he died. As there were at least six Tom Sheridans, all of the same family, who lived in the eighteenth century, some such method of distinguishing them is absolutely necessary. Alicia died on the 5th September, 1817, and her husband in December, 1825. Her eldest child, Henriette Frances (89), born in 1783, died when a few months old, but her th!ee other children survived her, namely :- Thomas Philip, born 29 January, 1784, Elizabeth Bonne, born 14 May, 1787, and Joseph Sheridan, born 28 June, 1793. Elizabeth (92) is described by Mary Leadbeater in her "Annals of Ballitore '' as_ a lively and most engaging girl. Her miniature, in the possession of her grand nephew Thomas Philip Le Fanu (110), belies this description. She died unmarried at ·Bath on the 25th July, 1828,

I. These words are from a letter addressed in Quaker fashion to "Thomas Le Fanu, Hibernian School." THE LE FANU FAMILY and is buried in Bathwick Churchyard. Joseph (93) also died unmarried in 1833. He had been a scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, and a silver medallist of the College Historical Society, and his will shows that his chief interests were his books and pictures. The only real property which he bequeathed was Quilca, the home of the Sheridans in Cavan. His father had on the death of Thomas Sheridan in 1788 purchased the interest of the latter in the place subject to various mortgages for £600. From these two it ultimately descended to their great grandson Philip Le Fanu (106), who came into possession of it in 1873 and sold it shortly afterwards. The only one of the three children of Joseph and Alicia Le Fanu who left children was Thomas Philip Le Fanu (90). Like his brother he distinguished himself in Trinity College, as is shown by many of his prizes now in his grand­ son's possession. He took part in the private theatricals at his mother's house, once appearing as Norval in Douglas-a performance which must _have remind~d many of the quarrel between his grandfather, Thomas Sheridan, and Dr. Johnson, with regard to the medal presented by Sheridan to the author of that play~ His mother appears to have shared her father's admiration for the tragedy in which she acted the part of Matilda, both on this occasion and also at Lady Borrowes' house in Kildare Street on the 30th September, 1709, when her relative, Miss Whyte, took the part of Anna, and was complimented on her per£ ormance in some verses addressed to her by l\1rs. Le Fanu.1 He was ordained deacon on the 30th April, 1809, by the Bishop of Clonf ert, and priest on the 16th of September, I 810, by the same bishop.2 He was curate of St. Mary's, Dublin, from 1809 to

1. Samuel Whyte's Poems, Dublin, 1795, p. 275.

2. Brady. "Rec01·ds of Cork," i, 8. THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION 53 r8r5, when he was appointed by Lord Whitworth, the Lord Lieutenant, to the Chaplaincy of the Hibernian School. In 1817 he was promoted to the rectory of Ardnageehy, co. Cork, and in 1823 to that of Abington, co. Limerick, but did not leave the Hibernian School until he was appointed, in 1826, Dean of Emly-a deanery without a cathedral­ when he went to live at Abington, where he remained for the rest of his life, dying on the 24th June, r 845. He is buried in the old churchyard at Abington. His portrait in miniature, by Charles Robertson, and that of his wife by the same artist, are in the possession of his grandson and namesake Thomas Philip Le Fanu, and are reproduced in this volume. He was a scholar and a musician, playing well on the harp, and a collector of books, which unfortunately had to be dispersed at his death. He was consulted from time to time on Irish affairs by the statesmen whose acquaintance he had made while he lived in the Phrenix Park. He married at Finglas on the 3rst July, 18r 1, Emma Lucretia Dobbin (gr), who is thus described by his cousin, Frances Le Fanu (r4r), in a letter to a friend: '' She has the sweetest face in the world, her blue eyes are set so darkly that at first one would mistake them for hazel, her mouth is surrounded by the graces, and whenever she speaks in company she blushes 'celestial rosy red, love's proper hue.'" L9ng afterwards, in r838, Sheridan Knowles, in a letter to Joseph Le Fanu, refers to " Dad the Dean and his angel wife-God bless them." Miss Dobbin was the daughter of Doctor William Dobbin, rector of Finglas and previously a fellow of Trinity College, and of Catherine Coote, his wife, daughter of Robert Coote qf Ash Hill, near Kilmallock, and aunt of Sir Charles Coote, ninth Baronet. She had been pestered for several years by the attentions of the eccentric Theophilus Swift, some forty years her senior, who on the

E2 54 THE LE FANU FAMILY announcement of her engagement to Mr. Le Fanu protested against her ill-treatment of him in a pamphlet entitled "The Touch-Stone of Truth," in which he published among other correspondence a mock challenge sent to him by Miss Dobbin and her sisters in the name of . . . an 1mag1nary cousin. The Dobbin connection brought into the family a fresh strain of refugee blood, for Dr. Dobbin was the grandson of Daniel Crone who left Stralsund on the Baltic on account of his religion about the time of the Restoration and came to Cork, where he prospered greatly as a merchant and became Sheriff in 1685 and Mayor in 1691 . . Dean Le Fanu and his wife, who died in 186r and is buried at Abington, had one daughter, Catherine Frances (97), who was born on the 7th of June, r8r3, and died on the 25th of March, r84r, unmarried, and two sons, Joseph Sheridan (98), the novelist,. who was born on the 28th August, r814, and died on the 7th February, 1873, and William Richard (roo), who was born on the 24th February, r8r6, and died on the 8th September, 1894. Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, to give him his full baptismal name, was there£ ore one of the goodly company of the sons of the clergy. The surroundings of his childhood were full of interest. Soldiers of the garrison paraded on the Fifteen Acres within a stone's throw of the Hibernian School in the unif arms which they wore at Waterloo; on the same ground duels still occasionally took place, but more than all the village of Chapelizod with its traces of happier days when it was the summer residence of the Viceroys, its ivied church tower and dreaded sexton, dwelt in hi~ memory and was vividly depicted in "The House by the Churchyard." At Abington also, in County Limerick, to which the family moved when he was twelve years

THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION 55 old, there was much to appeal to his imagination: the ruins of the Abbey of Owney from which the parish took its name, with the tomb of the Walshes,who acquired the abbey lands after the dissolution but spared the monks; the red brick house and terraced garden, built and laid out by their Caroline successor, Joseph Stepney; the road where the monks knelt to invoke judgment on him as their evictor; the strange stories of the grim old neighbour who was the prototype of Uncle Silas, and all the humours and tragedies of country life in southern Ireland in days gone by. The scenery surrounding his Limerick home, the· approach to the village of Murroe in his father's parish and the park of Cappercullen with the old house, long since pulled down, are vividly sketched under other names in his story of "Sir Dominick's Bargain" :1

" The road, ascending a gradual steep, found a passage through a rocky gorge between the abrupt termination of a range of mountain to my left and a rocky hill, that rose dark and sudden at my right. Below me lay a little thatched village, under a long line of gigantic beech trees, through the boughs of which the lowly chimneys sent up their thin turf-smoke. T.o my left stretched away . . . . a wild park through whose sward and ferns the rock broke, time-worn and lichen-stained . . . . As you descend the road winds slightly with the grey park wall, built of loose stones and mantled here and there with ivy, at its left . . . . and as I approached the village, thrpugh breaks in the woodlands, I caught glimpses of the long front of an old ruined house placed among the trees, about halfway up the picturesque mountain side . . . . A long grass-grown road, with many turns and windings, led up to the old house under the shadow of the wood. The road, as it approached the house, skirted the edge of a precipitous glen clothed with· hazel dwarf-oak and thorn, and the silent house stood with its wide-open hall door facing this dark

I. Reprinted in Madam, Crowl's Gliost. Bell & Sons, 1923. THE LE FANU FAMILY

ravine, the further edge of which was crowned with towering forest; and great trees stood about the house and its deserted courtyard and stables."

Joseph Le Fanu was a lonely boy devoted to his own thoughts and his father's books, climbing to the roof of the house and drawing his ladder after him on the approach of visitors, and though active and muscular taking no part in the field sports in which his brother excelled. After a desultory education temEered by the free use of a good library he entered Trinity College, Dublin, where besides winning classical honours he became one of the most notable speakers at the College Historical Society, of which he was successively T,reasurer, Silver Medallist and President, having among his brother officers John Thomas Ball, afterwards Lord Chancellor of Ireland, John Walsh, afterwards Master of the Rolls, Thomas Davis, James Anthony Lawson and William Keogh. After taking his degree he was called to the Bar in 1839, but he had already begun to devote himself to literature and journalism, and never attempted seriously to practice. He very soon became proprietor of two Dublin newspapers, " The Warder" and the "Evening Packet," and subsequently part proprietor of the "Dublin Evening Mail." In these papers he proved himself a convinced and vigorous fighter on the Conservative side in the politics of his day, notwithstanding the sympathy with the men of '98 which he had learnt from his mother and expressed in his ballads. He began his literary work in 1838 by contributing to the Dublin University Magazine the first of the Purcell Papers-Irish stories republished in 1880 in a collected form with a memoir by Alfred Perceval Graves. There also appeared in the Dublin University Magazine in· 1848 two articles on the recent State Prosecutions and the Irish League which, with the ..!ltenrle-tta cv· fe Yanu

THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION 57 exception of a pamphlet of 1865 on the University election and an obituary notice of Lord Palmerston in the Dublin University Magazine for the same year, are the only political writings which can now be identified as his. They are notable only for distinction of style and for the contrast between the views which they express and the senti­ ments embodied in his two well-known ballads,-" Phaudhrig Crohoore" and" Shanius O'Brien," published in the same magazine in 1839 and 1850 respectively; the latter had been written ten years before publica­ tion. These ballads were both originally written to be recited by his brother, William Le Fanu, of whom Justin McCarthy wrote in the

" Pall Mall Gazette " in I 893 : " I can well remember being present at an evening party some forty years ago when Mr. Le Fanu positively electrified an audience rather disposed to be languid and indifferent by his superb recitation of his brother's poem "Shamus O'Brien." The novels on which Joseph Le Fanu's reputation as an ~uthor chiefly rests began in 1845 with the publication of the Cock and Anchor followed in 1847 by The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O'Brien. The farmer. is still read by lovers of old Dublin, but on the whole the two books met with no great success and he dropped this kind of writing for sixteen years, his next novel being The House by the Churchyard,

published in I 863, followed in I 864 by W ylder' s Hand and Uncle Silas. These were at once well received, and nine more novels and two collections of shorter stories-The Chronicles of Golden Friars and In a Glass Darkly-followed during the remaining nine years of his life. Of his novels and stories T. W. Rolleston has written: "In Uncle Silas, in his wonderful tales of the supernatural, such c!,S The Watcher, and in a short and less known but most masterly story The Room in the· Dragon Volant, he touched the springs of terror and 58 THE LE FANU FAMILY suspense as perhaps no other writer of fiction in the language has been able to do so. His fine scholarship, poetic sense, and strong yet delicate handling of language and incident give these tales a place quite apart among works of sensational fiction. But perhaps the most interesting of all his novels is The House by the Churchyard, a wonderful mixture of sentimentalism, humour, tragedy and romance." Dr. M. R. James, no mean authority, gives it as his deliberate verdict that he stands absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories. A volume of his poems, reprinted for the most part from the Dublin University Magaiine, with an introduction· by Alfred Graves, was published in 1896, but Mr. Graves' belief, expressed in his article on Anglo-Irish literature in the Cambridge History of English Literature, that the qualities indicated in l\fr. Rolleston's appreciation are often conveyed with a finer touch in Joseph Le Fanu's verse is not one which his admirers have been generally able to accept, however much they may agree as to "the stamp of appalling power" impressed on the concluding Act of his verse drama Beatrice. The Dublin University Magazine, which he purchased in 1861 and continued_ to edit until 1869, contains in addition to some of his novels and poems most of the short stories vvritten by him up to that date. Between 1869 and his. death he contributed several stories to All the Year Round. Some of his early friends who had predicted for him a brilliant career at the Bar were wont to contrast his comparative want of success in life with the achievements of some of his college rivals, but Shamus O'Brien still lives after 70 years as a great Irish ballad, and Uncle Silas after 50 years holds its own as a masterpiece in its peculiar vein of fiction. A list of his writings, so far as they can be still identified, ·is included in Appendix IV to this Memoir. A number of his short stories, publ_ished THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION 59 anonymously, have been only recently identified by Dr. James, who hopes that someone will supplement his list.1, He married in 1844 Susan Bennett. She was the daughter of George Bennett, Q.C., and died in 1858. There are touches in his description of Austin Ruthyn of Knowl in Uncle Silas which vividly recall him in his later days and his favourite room at the back of his house in Merrion Square to the writer of this Memoir : " Many old portraits, some grim and pale and others pretty and some very graceful and charming, hanging fr~m the walls. Few pictures except portraits, long and short, were there . . . . His beautiful young wife died ... This bereavement I have been told changed him, made him more odd and taciturn than ever. . . . He ultimately became, I was told, a Swedenborgian. . . . He was now ,valking up and down this spacious old room ... It was his wont to walk up and down thus ..... He wore a loose black velvet coat and waistcoat. It was the figure of an elderly rather than an old man, but firm and with no sign of feebleness." The room in Merrion Square contained like that at Knowl the portrait of a handsome young man with a buff waistcoat and chocolate-coloured coat and the hair long and brushed back. The picture, which thus sug­ gested the description of Uncle Silas in his youth, is believed to be a likeness of George Colman the younger, whose father has already been referred to as a friend of the novelist's grandfather. The concluding words of his character of Austin Ruthyn might also be fitly applied to Joseph Le Fanu : " He was a man of generous nature and powerful intellect? but given up to the oddities of a shyness which grew with years and indulgence and became inflexible with his disappointments and afflictions." His only surviving son, Brinsley Le Fanu, is an artist

1. 11ladam Crowl's Ghost. p. 270. 60 THE LE FANU FAMILY in water colour and black and white who among other things has illustrated some of his father's works. Of William Richard Le Fanu it is unnecessary to say much. Most of the readers of this memoir will be familiar with his Seventy Years of Irish Life, and it is only necessary to observe with regard to that book that it records for the most part only the lighter side of a busy Ii£ e. The first railway in Ireland, that from Dublin to Kingstown, was opened while he was still at Trinity College, and on completing his University course he became, in 1839, a pupil of Sir John McNeill, the well-known civ.il engineer, having as a fellow pupil William McQuorn Rankine, afterwards the famous Professor of Engineering at Glasgow. The friendship of such a master of applied mathematics was of peculiar value in those days, when the theory and practice of engineering as applied to railway construction were in their infancy. For the next twenty-four years he worked as a civil engineer in Ireland. During that period practically all the main lines in Ireland were con­ structed, two of them, the Great Southern and Western and the Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford Railways, largely by his aid, and arterial drainage was also carried out to an extent not attempted in the country before or since. It was the busiest time that Irish engineers have known and his clear head, great power of concentration, and skill in managing both superiors and subordinates brought him to the head of the profession in Ireland. The obituary notice, written by his friend Charles Cotton, which appeared in the Journal of the Institution of Civil Engineers for 1895,1 says: "As a railway engineer Mr. Le Fanu carried out many large and important works, though none were of such novel or striking importance as to call for special description. It is

1. Vol. cxix, p. 395.

THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION 61

authoritatively stated that, so carefully were estimates prepared by him, that in no case was the amount exceeded which he advised as the capital to be provided. He was a well-known figure in the committee rooms, while in private practice, no session passing without his having Bills to support or oppose." In 1863 he was appointed a Commissioner of Public Works in Ireland. In that office he spent the remaining

years of his working life, retiring in I 89 I and dying on the 8th Septem- . ber, 1894, the intervening years being in large part devoted to recording his recollections in the book already referred to. He married, on the 15th January, 1857, Henrietta Victorine (101), youngest daughter of Sir Matthew Barrington, 2nd Baronet. She died on the 29th July, 1899. As nine of their children are still living it will be sufficient at this date to ref er the reader for details with respect to their descendants to the pedigree appended to this memoir. After Alicia Sheridan (81) had married Joseph Le Fanu (80) her sister Betsy (84) for a time kept house for her brother Charles who, in 1782, became Under Secretary for Military Business in Ireland, and took up his official residence in Dublin Castle. In the following year he married the beautiful Letitia Bolton whose portrait, believed to be by Gainsborough, is in the possession of the family of her great grand- . son, the late John Satterthwaite. Thenceforward Betsy constantly accompanied her father on his journeys for business or pleasure to London, Bath and Tunbridge Wells, and kept up a weekly corres­ pondence with her elder sister, a great part of which is still in the possession of the writer of this memoir and has been used by most of Sheridan's biographers. Moore1 apparently borrowed and did not return her letter to her sister on the death of their father. Fraser Rae2

1. Life of bheridan, ii, 4. 2. Sheridan, ii, 76, 77. 62 THE LE FANU FAMILY gives amongst other things her description of a visit to Westminster Hall during the trial of Warren Hastings when she heard Burke, Fox and her brother speak, and Sichel·1 refers to her account of the rooms which she occupied at Hampton ·court on her honeymoon. Old Mr. Sheridan died at Margate on the 14th of August, 1788, and is buried in St. Peter's Church there. After his death Betsy lived for a while with her younger brother and his most lovable wife, and her letters are full of grateful references to their kindness. In July of the following year she married Joseph's brother, Henry Le Fanu (83). He had been a Captain in the 56th Regiment and had served through the siege of Gibraltar. He was on leave in the interior of the peninsula when war broke out and Drinkwater, the historian of the siege, notices his bold and successful attempt, in company with two other officers, Colonel Ross and Captain Vignoles, to regain his regiment by assuming disguise and risking the passage in a rowing boat from Faro in Portugal to Gibraltar. The match was not a prudent one. Henry Le Fanu_ had been obliged more than once to ask his father to pay his debts and the newly married couple were dependent for part of their small income on a voluntary allowance from Richard Brinsley Sheridan, which proved to be a rather precarious security: " Before we parted,'' Betsy writes after her marriage," he took me apart to inform me that he should remit to me in a very few days a deed legally drawn up to entitle Harry to receive the income he had promised giving me. . . . We had no wish for any such security but his doing it is certainly truly generous and like himself." Before the end of the year she finds herself obliged to add: "I am internally convinced that Dick will keep his promise to me but the hurry he lives in makes him often unconscious of the length

l. She·ridan, i, 441.

THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION of time that passes between his promise and performance." By the kindness of Mrs. Sheridan's brother-in-law, Richard Tickell, they were able for a time to occupy rooms in Hampton Court, and seem after­ wards to have moved apout a good deal as Henry Le Fanu, who is described in a deed of 1819 as of Birmingham died at Northampton on the 9th of August, 1821, and his wife, who at one time kept a school' at Bath, died at- Leamington on the 4th of January, 1837, aged 79. Her portrait, which is reproduced in this volume, fell from the wall in the rectory at Abington the day before the news of her death reached her nephew the Dean. She published in 1804 a novel, "The India Voyage," and her daughter Alicia (94), followed the example of her mother and her aunt and wrote an interesting memoir of her grand­ mother which, however, is based too much on inaccurate traditions. Alicia also published a poem, "The Sylphid Queen,'' and· several romances which are now forgotten. She outlived her parents an_d died unmarried and in somewhat straitened circumstances. There were two other children: Richard (95), who died in infancy, and Harriet (96), who was born in 1796 and died in 1818 unmarried, and was buried ·at Aston Chapel, Birmingham. We have still to deal with Peter Le Fanu (85)_, the youngest of William Le Fanu's eight sons and the only one besides Joseph who has left descendants. In order to ·make good the assertion that all living Le Fanus are of Sheridan descent it is necessary to go back to Hester Sheridan, the daughter of Dr. Thomas Sheridan and sister of Thomas Sheridan the actor. 'fhis lady, who is said to have been named after Stella, married John Knowles, who was for some time Tteasurer of the Smock Alley Theatre and agent to his brother-in-law. They had two children : James, a teacher of elocution ,vho published THE LE FANU FAMILY in 1835 a pronouncing dictionary, based largely on that of his uncle Thomas Sheridan, and Frances. James married a widow named Daunt, daughter of Andrew Peace, a doctor in Cork, and became the father of James Sheridan Knowles, the actor and author. Frances (86) became the wife of Peter Le Fanu. The latter had been educated at a school in North King Street, Dublin, where Barry Yelverton, after­ wards Lord Avonmore, was the principal classical master. He was a fashionable preacher and was successively curate of St. Michan's, Rector of Primult, Rector of Dunlavin! and finally Rector of St. Bride's from 1810 until his death. He was also Chaplain to the Rotunda Hospital. During the summers of 1808 and 1809 he lived in the Rectory at Dunlavin returning for the winter to Dublin. Mary Lead­ beater, a resident in the neighbouring village of Ballitore, has left a pleasing account of him and his three daughters. She describes him as of advanced years-he was barely sixty-and possessing a vivacity which bespoke his French extraction.. Like many of his relatives he ,vas fond of the theatre, and in 1790 took the part of Gloucester in a per£ ormance of " Jane Shore " 1 in Lady ·Burrowes' house in Kildare Street. According to the Dictionary of National Biography he was the author of an occasional prelude entitled " Smock Alley Secrets," which was performed in Dublin in 1778. He died in 1825 at his house No. 9, Camden Row. His wife predeceased him by some twenty_ years. They had six children. Of these two daughters, Hester (146} and Elizabeth (147), died young, the four others survived their parents .. Henrietta (140), named in her father's will as his executrix, who though using her baptismal name in formal documents was al,vays known to her relatives as Harriet, lived successively in Mount Pleasant Square,.

I. Samuel Whyte's Poems. p. 72. THE SHERIDAN CONNECTION

Blackhall Street, and at 15, Aughrim Street, where she died unmarried on the 8th July, 1856, and was buried in Mt. Jerome Cemetery. In her will, dated 6th July, 1855, she mentions her sisters Frances (141) and Alicia (144), as still living. Frances also died unmarried. Alicia married Captain William Dobbin (145), brother of the Dean's wife, and as her son, the Rev. William Dobbin married his second cousin Frances, daughter of Sheridan Knowles, the relationships between the Dobbin and Le Fanu families have become exceedingly complicated. Besides these daughters Peter and Frances Le Fann had one son, William Joseph Henry Le Fann (142), who was born in 1790 and died in 1879. He was Dean's Vicar of Christ Church from 1823 to 1824, Rector of St. Paul's, Dublin, from 1834 to 1879, and sub-dean of the Chapel Royal, Dublin, in 1857-8. He married on the 10th September, 1822, Charlotte Mary (143), daughter of Edward Purdon of Curriston, co. Westmeath. For further information regarding their descendants, with one exception, it will be sufficient, as in the case of William Le Fanu, to refer to the pedigree, but no memoir of the Le Fanu family would be complete without some tribute to their second son, William Joseph Henry Le Fanu (160), known to his many friends as Henry, Scholar of Trinity College, Dublin in 1863, a distinguished Indian Civil Servant, and an accomplished linguist, whose indefatigable researches, terminated only by his death in 1923, have rescued many pages of the early history of the fa1nily from oblivion.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX I.

T•ITRE DE NOBLESSE.

Henry par la grace de Dieu Roi de France et de Navarre. A tous presens et advenir Salut : Comme les grandz Royaulmes et Empires se sont accreuz et conservez autant de temps que leurs peuples se sont nouriz a la vertu, ainsy la vertu de ces peuples a este aultant durable que les princes ont este soigneux de les recompenser et honnorer chacun en son particulier selon ses merites, a raison de quay desirant remectre nostre royaulme en sa premiere splendeur par les mesmes moiens qu'il l'a premierement acquise en proposant la quallite de noble comme ung prix d'honneur a ceux qui s' en rendront dignes par leur zele et affection vers nous et la chose publicque affin que ce soit ung aiguillon aux autres de suivre leur piste pour parvenir a pareil layer, scavoir faisons que nous deuement informez que Maistre Estienne Le Fanu advocat au baillage et siege presidial de nostre ville de Caen, est extrait de pere qui aiant consomme ses j eunes ans en l' estude des bonnes lettres et acquis par sa doctrine et scavoir les degrez de bachelier et licence en la f acul te de droit civil f aict diverses preuves de sa suffisance par lectures publicques livres qu'il a mis en lumiere, et exercice de sa charge et fonction d'advocat en la dicte ville, l'espace de trente trois ans a l'exemple et imitation duquel le dit Maistre Estienne Le Fanu son fils aurait frequente les Universitez plus fameuses de nostre Royaulme, acquis ses degres de licence, et suivy tousjours le chemin de vertu, par 1' estude des bonnes lettres tellement qu'il n'y a oncques degenere aux bonnes et louables actions de son diet pere aiant a toutes occasions qui se sont presentees rendu hon tesmoignage de !'affection singulier qu'il porte a nostre service et au bien publicq, auquel il s' est voue ayant par lectures et disputes publicques en la jurisprudence, faict cognoistre son erudition F2 THE .LE FANU FAMILY et exerce en toute fidelite la charge d'advocat en nostre dit siege presidial durant vingt trois ans au grand contantement du publicq, en consideration des quels merites la charge d'advocat et conseil tant de l'Universite que du corps commung de la dicte ville luy a este commis, en laquelle il s'est sy vertueusement comporte depuis dix sept a dix huit ans qu'il n'aurait obmis aucun poict de debvoir et fidellite en icelle ni en ce qui touche nostre service et le bien publicq, speciallement au temps le plus turbulant et lors que nos ennemis se sont efforcez de nous desrober le coeur de nos hons et loyaulx subjectz. Outre lesquelz services qui meriteraient bien de nous une bonne recompense, il nous a encores ces j.ours passez secouruz d'une bonne somme de deniers pour subvenir au paiemant des Suisses de nostre armee, suivant nostre edict du mois d'octobre mil cinq cent quatre vingtz quatorze, qui est ung evident tesmoignage de 1' extreme affection qu'il a en nostre service, au moien de quoy il merite aultant que nul autre estre retenu par nous au nombre de ceux que nous avons resolu d'anoblir par nostre dit edict. Pour ces causes et aultres bonnes et grandes considerations a ce nous mouvans avons de nos certaine science plaine puissance et auctorite Royale le diet Maistre Estienne Le Fanu decore et decorous du tiltre et quallite de noblesse. Voullons qu'il soit pour tel tenu et repute ensemble ses enfans posterite et lignee nes et a naistre en loyal mariage, tout ainsy que s'ils etaient yssuz de noble et antienne race, soient exemptez de toutes tailles creues levees de pionniers et imposi­ tions qui se levent et se leveront cy-aprez par f orme de tailles; puissent possedder fief z nobles sans paier la finance deue pour les francs fief z et nouveaux acquistz et generallement jouissent et usent doresnavant de tous les droitz, privilleges, honneurs auctoritez et aultres preroga­ tives dont jouissent les antiennes familles nobles de ce royaulme et que comme telz ils puissent parvenir au grade de chevallerie et aultres degrez d'honneur reservez a la noblesse, et oultre luy permettons et a sa dicte nosterite porter armoiries timbrees et blasonees telles qu'elles sont cy representees sans pour nos presente grace, privillege, et exemption, nous paier aulcune autre finance que celle qu'il a j a paiee en noz parties casuelles par forme de supplement ou aultre cottisation APPENDIX I 71 f aicte ou a faire pour quelque cause et occasion que ce soit, dont nous avons des a present comme deslors et deslors comme de present descharge et deschargeons ledict Le Fanu et sa posterite, et autant que besoing est lui en avons faict e! faison don par ces dictes presentes nonobstant taus edictz, ordonances reglements, mandements, lettres, et aultres choses a ce contraires ausquelles nous avons desroge et desrogeons et a la desrogatoire d'icelles. Sy donnons en mandement a nos amiz et f eaulx les gens de nos comptes et cours des aydes en Normandie President et Tresoriers Generaulx de France au bureau de nos finances etably a Caen et a tous nos autres justiciers et officiers qu'il appartiendra et a chacun deux que de nos presente grace, annoblisse­ ment, don d'armes, et de tout le contenu cy-dessus ils facent, souffrent et laissent ledict Fanu, ses enfans et posterite nais et a naistre en loyal mariage, jouir et user plainement et paisiblement cessans et .faisans cesser taus troubles et empeschements au contraire. Les quelz sy faicts mis ou donnez leur estoient ils facent mectre et restituer a plaine et entiere delivrance et au premier estat et deub car tel est nostre plaisir nonobstant comme diet est tous Edictz, ordonnance, reglement chartre Normand et toutes lettres a ce contraires. Et affin que ce soit chose ferme et stable a tousjours nous avons faict mectre nostre scel a ces dictes presentes, sauf en aultre,s choses nostre droict et auctorite en toutes. Donne a Lyon au mois de septembre l'an de grace mil cinq cent quatre quinze et de nostre regne le septiesme. (Signe) HENRY. APPENDIX II.

CERTIFICATES OF BAPTISM OF PHILIPPE LE FANU, 1681, AND OF GUILLAUME PHILIPPE LE. FANU, 1708.

(a) Extrait des Registres des mariages baptesmes et inhumations de ceux de la R.P.R. exercee cy-devant a Caen au temple du bourg 1' Abbe ce qui en suit: Du 2 Mars 1681. Item dud' jour deux mars mil six cens quatre vingt un le fils d'Estienne Le Fanu Eser, Sr de Mondeville et de Damlle Anne Le Sueur, sa femme, du quartier de Saint Jean de Caen ne ced' jour a este baptise par Mr. Estienne Morin, ministre, estant presente et nomme Philippes par led' Sieur son pere et a signe. (Signe) Estienne Le Fanu avec un paraphe. Collationne a l'original estant en nos mains et par nous Commis Regisseur des biens des Relligionres fugitifs qui ont contrevenu aux Edits Arrets et Declaracons du Roy. Certifie veritable et conforme aud' original ce sept F eburier 1713. Drieu. Nous Lieutenant Gral au baliage et Siege presidia! de Caen certifions que la signature cy dessus est celle du Commis Regisseur des biens des religionnaires. Donne a Caen ce sept F evrier 1713. Du Moustier de Coutrancelle.

(b) Extrait des regitres des baptemes de l'eglise paroissialle de St. Pierre de Caen en ce. qui suit : Le second f evrier mil sept cens huit a ete baptise par nous sousignes pretre cure Guillaume Philipes age de trois jours ne du pretendu mariage de Philipes le Fanu Ecuier et de Damoiselle Marie Bazon son epouse nomme par Jeanne Quedeville assistee de Jean Martin parain et maraine sousignes. APPENDIX II 73 Collatione en original par nous sousignes pretre Vicaire de la dite paroisse St. Pierre le troisieme j our de Septembre mil sept cens vingt huit. J. MAINGOT, Vic : de St. Pierre.

N .B.-The above certificates, the originals of which are in the possession of T. P. Le Fanu, are important as connecting the French portion of the pedigree given by Chamillart (Reckercke de la Noblesse en la generalite de Caen en 1666 et Annees suivantes, Caen, 1887) with the Irish portion, which is verifiable by wills and other documentary evidence also in his possession. The term " pretendu " was commonly applied in legal documents to Huguenot marriages. APPENDIX III.

COMMISSION OF CHARLES DE CRESSERONS IN QUEEN ANNE'S ARMY. Anne R.

Anne by the Grace of God, Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the F~ith, &ca. To Our Trusty and Welbeloved ~harles de Cresseron Esqr Greeting, Wee reposing especial! Trust and Confidence in your Loyalty Courage and good Conduct do by these presents constitute and appoint you to be Captain of a Troop in the French Regimt of Dragoons to be forthwith raised for Our Service, Whereof our Trusty and Welbeloved Francoise la Fabreque is Lieut Colonell. You are therefore to take the said Troop into your care and Charge and duely to exercise as well the Officers as Soldiers thereof in arms and to use your best endeavours to keep them in good Order and Discipline and Wee hereby Command them to obey you as their Captain and you to observe and follow such Orde~s and Directions from time to time as you shall receive from Us or any your Superior Officer according to the Rules and Discipline of War in pursuance of the Trust Wee hereby repose in you. Given at Our Court at Kensington the second day of April, 1706, in the fifth year of our Reigne. By Her Majty's Comand C. Hedges. Entd with the CommY GenI D. Cranford. Entd with the Secretary at War Sam. Lynn. APPENDIX IV.

LIST OF WORKS BY MEMBERS OF THE LE FANU FAMILY.

MICHEL LE FANU (died 1576). De Antiqu1ssima juris origine ejusque tradendi optima ratione deque juris-prudentire utilitate ac sanitate~ Thaleucium carmen sive endecassyllabi auctore Michele Fanuto apud Cadomenses causidico. Cadomi apud Stephanum Thomam regium Universi­ tatisque typographum MDLVIII. (There is a copy of this book in the Municipal Library at Caen.) ETIENNE LE FANU (died 1616). Latin verses published in (a) Le Tombeau de Monsieur Roussel recuilli de plusieur doctes personages par M. Jacques de Cahaignes -Caen, 1586, and (b) Recueil des pieces a l'honneur de Charles VII et de la Pucelle d'Orleans-Paris, 1613. ETIENNE LE FANU (1625-1700). Poem addressed to un Milord d' Angleterre ckez lequel il avait refugie ses en/ans-Published in the Huguenot Society's Pro­ ceedings, vol. vi, p. 112. REV. PHILIP LE FANU (1735-1795). Letters of certain Jews to Voltaire. 2 vols. Dublin, 1777. (A translation of Abbe Guenee's Lettres de quelques Juifs portugais et allemands a M. de Voltaire.) An abridgment of the History of the Council of Constance. 1 vol. Dublin, 1787. ALICIA LE FANU (1753-1817). The Sons of Erin, a Comedy. London, 1812. Verses to Miss Whyte on her performance of Anna in the Tragedy of Douglas-printed in Whyte's Poems. Dublin, 1795. ELIZABETH LE FANU (1758-1837). The India Voyage. 2 vols. London, 1804. THE LE FANU FAMILY

WILLIAM PHILIP LE FANU (1773-1817). A letter to His Excellency Charles, Marquis Cornwallis. Dublin, 1799· (Attributed to him by Warburton-History of Dublin, vol. ii, p. 1215.) EMMA LUCRETIA LE FANU (died 1861). Essay on the prevention of Cruelty to Animals. London, 1850. Life of the Revd. Charles E. H. Orpen, D.D. London, 1860. Magazine Articles including :- Chambers f ozernal.-Three Days in Tipperary, 1844; A Medical Call, 1844; Presence of Mind, 1845; A Glance at Associations, 1846; Pope's Corinna, 1846; The Instinct of Genius, 1847; Music for all, 1847; The Learned Herdsman of Cosse Daude, 1847; Sympathy and Eccentricities, 1848; An Editor's Country Visit, 1848; Paddy the Tinker, 1849; Temperament of Genius, 1849; Absence of Mind, 1850; Irish Travelling, 1850; The First Pupil of the Claremont Deaf and Dumb Institution, 1850; Vagaries of the Imagination, 1851; The Missing Ship, 1852; Local Impres­ sions, 1853; The Little Firebrands, 1855; Influence of Music on Idiots, 1856. Eliza Cook's f ournal.-Story Tellers and Improvisatori, 12 Jan., 1850; The Doctor, 1850; The Recollections of a Novel Reader, 18 50; John Baptist 1Belzoni, 18 5 1 ; F-orce of Habit; A few_ Simple Facts from Dog Trusty. (Dates unknown.) Sharpe's London / ournal.-The Eddystone Lighthouse. (Date unknown.) ALICIA LE FANU (daughter of Henry and Elizabeth Le Fanu). The Flowers or the Sylphid Queen. London, 1809. Rosara's Chains, or the Choice of a Life, a Poem. London, 1812. Strathallan. 4 vols. London, 1816. Helen Monteagle. 3 vols. 1818. Leolin Abbey. 1819. Tales of a Tourist.. 1823. APPENDIX IV 77

Don Juan de las Sierras, a Romance. 1823. Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Frances Sheridan. London, 1824. Henry the Fourth of France. 4 vols. London, 1826. CATHERINE FRANCES LE FANU (1813-1841). The Botheration of !Billy Cormack. Dublin University Magazine, November, 1840. JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU (1814-1873).1 The Purcell Papers. Dublin University Magazine, 1838-40. (Collected and published with a Memoir by Alfred Perceval Graves. 3 vols. London, 1880.) The Cock and Anchor. 3 vols. Dublin, 1845. The Fortunes of Colonel Torlogh O'Brien. 1 vol. (Illustrated by Phiz.) Dublin, 1847. The State Prosecutions. Dublin University Magazine, 1848._ The Irish League. Do. Some account of the latter days of the Hon. Richard Marston of Dunoran. Do. Billy Malowney's Taste of Love and Glory. Do. 1850. Shamus O'Brien-A Ballad. Do. The Mysterious Lodger. Do. *Ghost Stories of Chapelizod. Do. 1851. Ghost Stories and- Tales of Mystery. Dublin, 1851. (The stories with one exception are reprinted with alterations from the Dublin University Magazine.) · *Some Strange Disturbances in an old House in Aungier Street. Dublin University Magazine, 1861. *Ultor de Lacy. Do. Reviews of Brinckman's "The Rif!,e in Cashmere" and Pole- hampton's "Kangaroo Land." Do. 1862. Authentic Narrative of a Haunted House. Do.

I. See Bibliography b:r S. M. Ellis in "Tlie Irish Booklover," October and November, 1916, a.nd Dr. James' Epilogue to "Madam Orowl's Ghost." THE LE FANU FAMILY

Review of Cyrus Riding's new novel. Do. Duan-na-Claev-The Legend of the Glaive. Do. 1863. Abhrain an Bhuideil-The Song of the Bottle of Whiskey. Do. Review of "Mildrington the Barrister-a Romance." Do. Review of " Lispings from Low Latitudes "-by Lady Gifford. Do. The House by the Churchyard. 3 vols. London, 1863~ Review of "Their Majesty's Servants," by Dr. Doran, F.S.A. Dublin University Magazine, 1864. My Aunt Margaret's Adventure. Do. Review of the "Li/e of Laurence Sterne," by Percy Fitzgerald. Do. Felon Biography, a review of the" Memoirs of /ane Cameron, a Female Convict." Do. *Wicked Captain Walshawe of Wauling. Do. A Doggerel in a Dormant Window. Do. Wylder's Hand. 3 vols. London, 1864. Uncle Silas. 3 vols. London, 1864. (A French translation was published at Paris in 1877 .) The Prelude, being a contribution towards the History of the election for the University by J. Figwood. (Attributed to J. S. Le Fanu in Catalogue of T.C.D. Library.) Dublin, 1865. Guy Deverell. 3 vols. London, 1865. Lord Palmerston, an obituary notice. Dublin University Maga­ zine, 1865. Beatrice-a Verse Drama. Do. 1865-6. Review of "Contributions to an Inquiry into the state of Ireland," by Lord Dufferin. Do. 1866. All in the Dark. 2 vols. London, 1866. The Tenants of Malory. London, 1867. A Lost Name. 3 vols. London, 1868. Haunted Lives. 3 vols. London, 1868. *Squire Toby's Will. Temple Bar, 1868. APPENDIX IV 79 The Wyvern Mystery. 3 vols. London, 1869. (With the exception of "A Lost Name," which appeared as a serial in Temple Bar, all the above novels from 1863 to 1869 were published in the Dublin University Magazine­ the first under the pseudonym of Charles de Cresserons.) *T.he Child that went with the Fairies. All the Year Round. 1869-70. *The White Cat of Drungunniol. Do. 1869-70. *Stories of Lough Guir. Do. 1869-70. *The Vision of Tom Chuff. Do. 1870. *Madam Crowl's Ghost. Do. 1870-71. Checkmate. 3 vols. London, 1871. The Rose and the Key. 3 vols. London, 187.1. Chronicles of Golden Friars. 3 vols. London, I 87 1. In a Glass Darkly. 3 vols. London, 1872. *Dickon the Devil. London Society (Christmas Number), 1872. *Sir Dominick's Bargain. All the Year Round, 1872. Willing to Die. 3 vols. London, I 87 3. Hyacinth O'Toole. Temple Bar, 1884. The Watcher and other Weird Stories. Illustrated by Brinsley Le Fanu. 1 vol. London, 1894. (Reprinted from Dublin University Magazine and Ghost Stories, 1851.) Poems, edited by Alfred Perceval Graves.London, 1896. The Familiar and The Dream of Justice (the latter being the story entitled Mr. f ustice Harbottle in In a Glass Darkly), trans­ lated into German by J. T. Tissington Tatlow. Berlin, 1912. Madam Crowl's Ghost and other Tales of Mystery, by J. S. Le Fanu, edited by M. R. James. London, 1923. This volunze consists of the twelve Stories marked with an asterisk in the above list. All but one were published anonymously. WILLIAM RICHARD LE FANU (1816-'1894). Seventy Years of Irish Li£ e. London, I 893. 80 THE LE FANU FAMILY

\VILLIAM JosEPH HENRY LE FANU (born 1843). A Manual of the Salem District in the Presidency of Madras. Madras, 1883. A Manual of Questions and_Answers upon the Indian Penal Code. The Law of Evidence, &c. Madras, 1899. ELEANOR FRANCES LE F ANU (" Russell Gray"), (died 1903). Never for Ever. 3 vols. London, 1867. John Haller's Niece. 3 vols. London, 1868. Up and Down the World. 3 vols. London, 1869. (These Novels appeared first in the Dublin University Maga­ zine.) Poems.-Another Year; The Organ; My Violet; Long Years Ago; The Brook; My Love and I; Words of Love. Dublin University Magazine, 1867. THOMAS PHILIP LE FANu (born 1858). The Royal Forest of Glencree. Journal of Royal Society of Antiquaries ·of Ireland, 1893. Dean Swift's Library. Journal of Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, 1896. Verses addressed by Etienne Le Fanu, Sieur de Mandeville, to Un Milord d'Angleterre. Huguenot Society's Proceedings, 1898, vol. vi, p. I 12. The Huguenot Churches of Dublin and their Ministers. Hugue­ . not Society's Proceedings, 1905, vol. viii, p. 87. Archbishop Marsh and the Discipline of the French Church of St. Patrick's, Dublin, 1694. Huguenot Society Proceedings, 1922, vol. xii, p. 245. The Registers of the French Nonconformist Churches of Lucy Lane and Peter Street, Dublin. Huguenot Society's Tran­ sactions, vol. xiv, 1901. The Registers of the French Church, Portarlington. Huguenot Society's T,ransactions~ vol. xix, 1908. WILLIAM RICHARD LE FANu (born 1861). Queen Anne's Bounty-A short account of its history and work. Macmillan, 1 g 2 I. Table I. LE FANU.

I I Michel Le Fanu, B.A., Caen 1536, Avocat of Caen. t 13 Jan. 1576. I 2 I Etiene Le Fann de Jllontbenard, Clande, daughter1 of Denis Laisne. · Avocat au Siege Presidia( de Caen. M. at Caen 11 Nov. 1576.

' ' 5 6' 8 IO II 12 1 I . I I ~ I I I Pierre Le Fanu. Seigneur de = Anne. daughter of Jean Le Holle, Michel Jacques.r Etienne. Marie = Samuel Le Miere, Conseiller Anne. = Jacques Desobeaux, Homme Montbenard. Bourgeois of Caen. by Anne Le Clere. Bapt. Bapt. Bapt. Bapt. du l{oy en l'election de Caen. Bapt. 11 Nov. d' Armes de la Compagnie Bapt. 10 July 1580. Third banns published at Caen, 6 Mar. 1583. 18 Mar. l!i84. 24 Mar. f585. 1 Nov. 1578. Sieur de Basly. Bapt. 1581. du Due de Montpensier. Bought the Fie! Noble ol Cresserons, 30 Mar. 1614. t f5 May M. 7 Feb. 1601. 16 Nov. f578. Son of Jean 3rd banns published Bapt. 1 May 1683. 18 Jan. 1613. Le Miere, by Ann Lucas. 30 Mar. 1608. Son of Pierre Desobeaux. 1618. t 1627.

I I I I I I I I I I I 13 14 15 16 17 IS 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I Michel Le Fann = Elizabeth, Anne. ==-Isaac, Marie. Jean. Madelaine. Jeanne. Anne = Louis Le Fanu, = '... ou1se,. Jacques = Leonor, Catherine Le Blais = Etienne Le Fann, = Anne, daughter of Pierre. Phillip.fe. ·Seigneur daughter of Bapt. 1 May son of Bapt: Bapt. Bapt. Bapt. l{oussel. Seigneur daughter of Le Fanu. daughter of de Sieur Guillaume Le Sueur Bapt. Bapt. de Cresserons Jean de la 1616. l{obert 4 June 15 July 1 Dec. 13 May de Mondeville Pierre de Bourget Bapt. Henri Georges Longuemare. de Mondeville. Conseiller du R,oi, 14 Apr. 1626. 3 June 1627. and de Breville. Maugere M. 20 Oct. Hellouin 1617. 1618. 1619. 1621. et de Montbenard, Ecuyer, by 2 Feb. 1624. Sieur de M. 16'56. Bapt. 13 Feb. 1625. by Marie Du Bois. Author of the by 1647. and Marie Sr. de Breville. Esther Dupont, Mitois, by t 1676. Cresserons line Marie de Berault. Mallet. B. 1622. of St. Quentin, Leonor extinct. M. 10 Dec. 1649. Bapt. 24 July 1622 near Mortain. de Convert. Bapt. 15 Feb. 1615. t 1685. M. at Basly, 16 Oct. 1665.

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 31 32 33 34 35 36 38 40 41 42 44 46 49 50 SI 52 56 58 60 61 t7 18 I i3 Sf Sp I I I I I I 1( I f I I 13 I ts I 'I I I i7 I sr I I Charles = Marguerite Elizabeth, Anne. = Jacob Le Hardi, Thomas. Esther. Henri. Jean. Pierre. MargJerite = Charles. = Mari~ Anne Jacques. Cyrus Antoine = Mad~laine Jean Louis = Clere Marie, Catherine. = Pierre Lorin Etienne. Michel. A = M. de Bois Philippe Le Fanu = Marie Jacques = Marie Anne Elizabeth. Eleanor. Marie. Le Fann de living at M. 2 Aug. Sieur de la Ferte, Bapt. at Bapt. Bapt. Bapt. B.1 June Agnes Bapt. de Le Fann Le Le Fann daughter of M. 23 April 1691, de Granmore, Bapt. Bapt. Daughter. Roussel de Mandeville. Bacon. Le Fann d' Avessin. Bapt. de Graindorge, Cresserons 1677 son of Pierre and Basly 12June 18 Oct. 25 Dec. and Le Hautier. at Basly, Brossard. de Montbenard. Sauvage. de Louis at Killed in 24 Feb. 20 May de la Bapt. in church of B. 1674. de Breville. M. 6 Apr. 1739. 22 Oct. Cresserons. t 27 Jan. 1731. 1733. at Basly. Marie Le Hardi, 24 Aug. 1667. 1670. 1671. t 21 Sept. t 22 June 20. Feb. 1678. M. 25 Sept. B. 2 Mar. 1669. t 26 Sept. Mandeville de Ratouin St. Mary Magdalen, Flanders 1664. 1666. Ferrantiere. Bourg I' Abbe t 1746. t 1740. t Jan. 1789. 1672. B. 161>5. of the Parish of 1664. 1673. 1730. t 25 Aug. 1731. t 27 Jan. 1738. 1756. B. 1660. and his wile Fish St., London, 1693. f: faen, 2 March t S.p. Ste Honorine 1737. t 26 Jone Lacresse de t 1693. 8 17 Nov. 1738. A Chardonne. 1721. Ferry. t 13 Oct. 1743. M. 1704 at Toulon.

I I I I I 62 63 64 65 J 68 69 70 71 72 I I I I f I I I I I Madelaine. Marie. Pierre Gabriel Alexandre. Clere. Guillaume Philippe = Henriette l{aboteau de Anne. = Revd Charles Barbe, Etienne Philippe. B. 1696. B. 1698. Le Fann. d.s.p. t 1721. Le Fann de Mondeville. Puygibaud, near Saintes. M. 1722. son of Jean Barbe B. 8 Feb. 1740. B. 1708. B. 30 Jan. 1708. B. 1709. M. 29 May 1734. and Marie Gonguet. t young. One of whom l t 31 July 1721 Bapt. at St. Pierre, Caen. t 9 May 1789. Henri Le G,ouais. of plagu.e t 5 June 1797.

I I I I I I I I 76 78 80 8I 1k 83 84 85 86 11 7~ 7~ I 17 I ~9 I I I I I I I l{evd. Philip = l{ebecca, daughter ol Edward Newton, Marie. Gaspard. Jean. Theophilus. Anne = Joseph = Alicia, daughter of Henry. Henry Le Fann. = Elizabeth, Revd. Peter Le Fann. = Frances, daughter of John Knowles, Le Fann, D.D. of Umrigar, Co. Wicklow, and widow Bapt. B. 2 Feb. B. 2 Jan. B. 4 ,I.pr. Franklin. Le Fann. Thomas and Frances B. 3 Mar. - B. 13 Jan. 1747. sister of No. 81, and B. 12 Sept. 1749. of Dublin, by Hester, daughter B. 1735. of Benjamin Brownrigg. 6 Feb. 1737. 1738. 1740. M. l Oct. 1771. B. 20 Aug. and sister of l{lchard 1746. Capt. 56th l{egt. younger daughter of t 1825. of the {tevd, Dr. Thomas Sheridan, t r5 Jan. 1795. M. at St. Peter's, Dublin, 1736. tan infant. tan infant. t unmarried. t 9 Feb. and buried 1743. Brinsley Sheridan. tan infant. t at Northampton Thomas Sheridan. of Quilea House, Co. Cavan. 23 April 1768. tan infant. at St. Peter's, Dublin, t Dec. 1825. B. Jan. 1753. 9 Aug. 1821. B. 1758. M. 1789. 12 Feb. 1778. M. 11 Oct. t 4 Jan. 1837. 1781. t 5 Sept 1817.

I I I I I I I I See Table II. 87 88 90 91 92 96 I I I I I 9~ ~4 ~5 I William Philip. 1 The Very Revd. Crawford. Henriette Frances. = Emma Lucretia, daughter of Elizabeth Bonne. Joseph Alicia. l{ichard. Harriet. B. 19 May 1773. B. 16 Mar. Bapt at Thomas Philip the l{evd. William Dobbin, D.D. B. 28 June 1787. Sheridan t unmarried. tan infant. B. 1796. t 1817 unmarried. and buried at St. Peter's. Dublin, Le Fanu, LL.D. F.T.C.D., Rector t unmarried at Le Fann. t 8 Feb. 1818. St. Peter's 13 Feb. 1783. B. 29 Jan. 1784. ol Finglas and St. Mary's, Dublin. Bath B. 14 May unmarried. 17 June 1776. t 1783. t 1845. M. at Finglas 31 J nly 25 July 1828. 1793. t 1833. Dean of Emly. 1811. unmarried. t 11 March 1861. I I I 98 IOO IOI ~7 I I I Catherine Frances. Joseph Thomas Sheridan, = Susan, daughterf William l{ichard, = Henrietta Victorine, B. 7 June 1813. Barrister-at-Law. ol George Bennett, Q.C. Commissioner of 6th daughter ol t 25 Mar. 1841. B. at Dublin 28 Aug. 1814. M. 1844. Public Works Sir Mathew Barrington, unmarried, t 7 Feb. 1873. t 28 April 11158. in Ireland. 2nd Bart. B. 24 Feb. 1816. M. r5 Jan. 1857. t 8 Sept. 1894. t 29 July 1899. I I I I I I I I I I I I 106 107 Io8 109 110 III II2 113 II4 115 116 II7 II8 II9 I20 121 122 123 I I I I I I I I I I i I I I Thom~s Philip. George == Marion Charlotte Thomas = Florence Sophia Mabel, . Revd. Fletcher Sheridan, B.A., = Janie, eldes~ daughter of William Richard, B.A. Brinsley l{ankine, = lllargaret, Victor Rt. l{evd. Henry Frewen, = Mary Annette Ingle, Francis Hu~h = G~orgina Emma d.s.p. 20 Dec. Brinsley. Kate Anna. Philip, C.B. daughter of the l{evd. T.C.D., l{ector of St. John's, Walter Hore, St. John's College, Cambridge. B.E., T.C.D. daughter of Charles, D.D., daughter of Lewen. Barrington. Harriott, Catherine. 1846. 1878. B. 1 Aug. 1855. Morgan, B. 30 Dec. Commissioner of James Sullivan, Rector of Sandymount. of l{athwade, Co. Carlow. Barrister, Treasurer B. 10 Aug. John Dudgeon. B.A. Trinity Keble College, Oxford. nevd. John Dredge, Vicar B. 12 July B. 11 Nov. daughter of B. 19 Oct. ,y and 1857. Public Works Askeaton. M. 3 July 1890. B. 21 Jan. 1860. M. at Nurney, Co. Carlow, Queen Anne's Bounty. 1862. M. at Edinburgh College, Bishop of Brisbane. of Mautby, Norfolk .. 1871. 1872. the late 1874. College, in Ireland. 18 Nov. 1885. B. 26 Apr. 1861. 15 Apr. 1902. Cambridge. · B. 1 Apr, 1870. M. at Mautby, t 28 Sept. Commander W. Kingscote, B.A. Trinity College, B.14 Oct. 1865. 2'5 Oct. 1904. 1892. l{.N. M. 23 Dec. 19118. Cambridge. B. 9 Dec. 11158.

I I I I I I I I I I I I I I 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 I31 132 133 134 135 136 I'!7 138 139 I . I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I George Bnnsley Marion Emma. Lucie William Richard. Richard Brinsley John l\lary Henry Claire Francis Helen Elizabeth Barbara, Peter. Michael. Anthony. Sheridan. B. 13 Mar. 1884. Catherine. B. 9 July 1904. Sheridan. Lewen. Charlotte. Stephen Victorine. William. Catherine, B. 21 June 1920. . B. 25 Oct. B. 2 Apr . B. 2 Ang. B. 11 Aug. B. 24 Apr. 1882. t July 1885. B. 9 Feb. B. 2 May 1905. B. 17 July B. at John. B. 26 Aug. B. 4 May, B. 28 Nov D. 16 Sept. 1920. 1910. 1912. 1913. 1918. t May 1883. 1901. 1906. Brisbane B. 13 July 1912. 1915. 1916. 20 Aug. 1096. 1908.

Table II.

LE FANU.

Revd. Peter Le Fanu - Frances, daughter of John Knowles, B. 12 Sept. 1'149. of Dublin, by Hester, daughter of t 1825. the Revd. Thomas Sheridan, of (See Table I.) Quilca House, Co. Cavan. ( See Table I.) I I I I I I I I 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 I I I I I I I I Harriet. Frances. Revd. William Joseph = Charlotte Mary, daughter of Alicia Hester. = Captain William Dobbin, Hester Elizabeth. t 1856. t unmarried. Henry Le Fann. Edward Purdon, of Curriston, brother of Mrs. Thomas unmarried. B.1'190. Co. Westmeath. Philip Le Fanu. t young. t 19 Sept. 18'19. M. 10 Sept. 1822. No. 91. Rector of St. Paul's, t 1868. Dublin.

I I I I I I I I I I I I 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 100 161 I I I I I I I I I I I I l I Rose. = William Ed. Hearn. Frances = James Fawcett, Peter. = Maria Edward Thomas Charlotte t an infant. Katherine Adelaide William Joseph Henry = Katharine Mary, daughter of B. 1825. Vice-Chancellor of Elizabeth. of Strandhill, B. 182'1. Alexandrina Mitchell t an infant. Marie. Emma AdP.laide tan infant. Le Fann, B.A. William Daniel Moore, M.D., t 18'18. Melbourne University. B. 1826. Co. Leitrim. t 11 June Cruikshank, Sheridan. ta.ii infant. Indian Civil Service. by Mary Monserrat, his wife. B. 22 A pr. 1826. 1903, at of Keithock, t Aug. lSol. Barrister-at-Law. M. at Madras 23 June 1866. t 23 Apr. 1888. Londonderry. F orfarshire. unmarried. B. 13 Apr, 1843. t 1923.

I I I I I I ·1 I I I I I I I 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176' 177 178 179 18o 181 182 I I I I I I I I I I I I I l I I I I I I I Mary Charlotte = David R. Henry James Henri Gaspard = Marie, · daughter Rosalie Maud. = Dr. George Robert Noel. Aimee ·Margaret Francis Laura Kathleen Henry Edward = Beatrice Elizabeth, Louis Sidney George Ernest =Beatrice, Cecil Vivian = Gwenddine Isa, Roland Roland. = Marguerite, Elizabeth. Babington. Edward. Pierre. of F. F. Schroder. B. 12 Nov. Blacker B. 18 Nov. Helen Lindsay. Lane. Maud. William. daughter of Patrick Eugene. Hugh. daughter of Etienne. daughter of Bayard B. 13 May daughter of B. 28 Dec. M. 12 Nov. B. 11 Nov. 1859. 186'1. B. 25 Nov. B. 186'1. Frank. 1887. George Lumsden, B. 12 Nov. 1862. M. 15 Apr. 1896. 1865. Elliott. B. 2'1 Dec. 1869. B. 26 July 18'11. William George Lamb. B. '1 Dec. 18'12. B. 18'14. H. W. Fisher, Moore George Shaddock, 1857. 18'18. t May 1861. M. 13 Aug. 18'12. M.lnst.C.E. M. at Cambridge, t 8 Aug. 1896. M.B. L.R.C.P. & S., B. 18'1'1. of Beckenham. B. 1881. Captain of Tarvit, 1891. 1 July 1900. of Sefton. M.B. M. at St. James', t 1882. Leicestershire Cupar, Fife. Piccadilly. R,egt. M.C. M. 14 Sept. 1922. 22 March 1917. I I 183 184 I I Patrick. Richard