Jacques de Gastigny (also spelt Gatigny; died 1708), known in England as James Gastigny, was a French Huguenot who served as Master of the Buckhounds to King William III. Through his will he founded the French Protestant Hospital in Finsbury, London, the first voluntary hospital in England. [1]
Gastigny was a Huguenot military refugee who fled to Holland following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. He was appointed Master of the Hounds to stadtholder William, then Prince of Orange. [2] He followed William to England after the Glorious Revolution and fought alongside him in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. [3]
He returned with William to England, although apparently, along with other Dutch courtiers of the new king, he did not wish to stay there. Many of those who followed William from Holland feared they would not be given positions at English court, and would be resented by the English. Constantijn Huygens Jr. recorded in his diary that Gastigny told him on 23 March 1689 "that he did not want to stay in London, and that most of the hatred and anger befell the favourite." [4]
However, Gastigny was appointed Master of the Buckhounds to King William on 9 September 1689, staying in this position until 1698. [5] He later appeared on the Patent Rolls as entitled to a £500 pension each year. [6] [7]
Gastigny died in London in 1708.
Himself a refugee in Holland, Gastigny wanted to provide for the Huguenot refugees in England. He was a member of the French Committee responsible for distributing the Royal Bounty to the refugees. In his will dated April 1708, he originally left £1,000 (equivalent to £170,932in 2021) to benefit poor French Protestants – £500 for an infirmary and £500 for a pest house to be converted to a home for the aging. [2] [8] [9]
The funds were allowed to accrue interest. Philippe Ménard, executor of Gastigny's estate, solicited for additional funds through public subscriptions for the hospital, known as La Providence. The hospital opened in 1718 by royal charter, with Henri de Massue, Earl of Galway serving as its first governor. [10]
A painting of Gastigny by Pierre Mignard, circa 1680, is in the collection of the French Hospital, now on display in the Huguenot Museum in Rochester, Kent. [11]
Gastigny Place, located near the original hospital location in St Luke's Parish, was named in his honour. It intersected Radnor Street and Galway Streets, just west of Moorfields Eye Hospital. [9] [12]
The Glorious Revolution is the term first used in 1689 to summarise events leading to the deposition of James II and VII of England, Ireland and Scotland in November 1688, and his replacement by his daughter Mary II and her husband and James's nephew William III of Orange, de facto ruler of the Dutch Republic. Known as the Glorieuze Overtocht or Glorious Crossing in the Netherlands, it has been described both as the last successful invasion of England as well as an internal coup.
The Battle of the Boyne was a battle in 1690 between the forces of the deposed King James II, and those of King William III who, with his wife Queen Mary II, had acceded to the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1689. The battle took place across the River Boyne close to the town of Drogheda in the Kingdom of Ireland, modern-day Republic of Ireland, and resulted in a victory for William. This turned the tide in James's failed attempt to regain the British crown and ultimately aided in ensuring the continued Protestant ascendancy in Ireland.
Sir Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem, was a Dutch Golden Age poet and composer. He was also secretary to two Princes of Orange: Frederick Henry and William II, and the father of the scientist Christiaan Huygens.
The Huguenots were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Besançon Hugues (1491–1532), was in common use by the mid-16th century. Huguenot was frequently used in reference to those of the Reformed Church of France from the time of the Protestant Reformation. By contrast, the Protestant populations of eastern France, in Alsace, Moselle, and Montbéliard, were mainly Lutherans.
Friedrich Hermann von Schönberg, 1st Duke of Schomberg, 1st Count of Mertola, was a Marshal of France and a general in the English and Portuguese army. He was killed at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Field Marshal François de La Rochefoucauld, Marquis de Montandre, also known as Francis de La Rochefoucauld, was a British soldier, who arrived in England as a Huguenot refugee. After serving as a junior officer during the Williamite War in Ireland, he was given command of Francis du Cambon's Regiment of Foot and led his regiment in the Low Countries during the Nine Years' War. He also fought at the Siege of Badajoz and at the Battle of Alcantara during the War of the Spanish Succession. He went on to be Master General of the Ordnance in Ireland.
François Leguat was a French explorer and naturalist. He was one of a small group of male French Protestant refugees who in 1691 settled on the then uninhabited island of Rodrigues in the western Indian Ocean. The colonists became discontented with their life on the island and after a stay of two years managed to escape to Mauritius in a small boat. Leguat arrived back in Europe in June 1698 and wrote a book recounting his adventures which was published in 1708. In his book Leguat describes several species of birds and tortoises that were endemic to Rodrigues but are now extinct.
The Edict of Potsdam was a proclamation issued by Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, in Potsdam on 29 October 1685, as a response to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by the Edict of Fontainebleau. It encouraged Protestants to relocate to Brandenburg.
Charles Angibaud was a French apothecary. He became the royal apothecary to Louis XIV of France, but moved to London to avoid persecution as a Protestant Huguenot. In London, he became Master of the Society of Apothecaries.
ÉlieBouhéreau was a French Huguenot refugee in Ireland and the first librarian of Marsh's Library in Dublin.
Lodewijck Huygens was a Dutch diplomat.
Constantijn Huygens Jr., Lord of Zuilichem, was a Dutch statesman and poet, mostly known for his work on scientific instruments. But, he was also a chronicler of his times, revealing the importance of gossip. Additionally, he was an amateur draughtsman of landscapes.
Jean du Quesne, the elder also known as Jan or Jehan was a particularly well-documented Huguenot refugee from Flanders reported to be from Ath in Hainaut, the son of Jean Du Quesne, native of Valenciennes.
Lt.-Gen. Forbes Champagné was a British Army officer who fought in the American Revolutionary War and served as Commander-in-Chief of the British Indian Army, 1807–11.
The French Hospital was founded in 1718 in Finsbury on behalf of poor French Protestants and their descendants residing in Great Britain. In the 1860s it moved into the spectacular purpose-built hospital designed by Robert Lewis Roumieu in Victoria Park, Hackney, and then in the 1940s moved out of London to Compton's Lea, Horsham, West Sussex. Since 1959 it has been located in Rochester, Kent and today provides almshouse accommodation for Huguenot descendants.
Elias Neau, born Élie Neau, in Moëze, Saintonge, was a French Huguenot. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, he fled first to the French colony of Saint-Domingue, then to Boston, where he became a prosperous merchant. In 1692, he was captured by a French privateer near Jamaica, and for being a fugitive Protestant, was first sentenced to a life sentence as a galley slave, imprisoned in a castle dungeon in Marseille for two years, and then transferred to the Château d'If off the coast of Marseille for 50 days. He was released in 1697, following the intercession of King William III, whose ministers argued that Neau was an English subject.
Benjamin Longuet was an English banker who served as Governor of the Bank of England from 1747–49, and who was a director of the bank from 1734 until his death. He had been Deputy Governor from 1745 to 1747. He replaced Charles Savage as Governor and was succeeded by William Hunt.
Matthew Clarmont was an English banker who served as Governor of the Bank of England from 1766–69. He had been Deputy Governor from 1764–66. He replaced John Weyland as Governor and was succeeded by William Cooper. Clarmont's tenure as Governor occurred during the end of the Bengal bubble (1757–1769).
The Orange College of Breda was a college of higher learning at Breda in the Dutch Republic in the middle of the 17th century, teaching divinity, philosophy, mathematics, and law.
Arabin is a family name originating in Provence in the south of France, as d'Arabin or D’Arabien.