# Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 23 - Bishop Chenevix

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Chapter XXIII.
OFFSPRING OF THE REFUGEES AMONG THE CLERGY.
Bishop Chenevix. — The name of Chenevix is pre-eminent in Huguenot martyrology, through the glorious constancy of Monsieur Paul Chenevix d’Eply. Quick says of him, “Monsieur Chenevix was a venerable and ancient gentleman, a person of eminent prudence, illustrious for learning and godliness, and councillor to the king in the court of Metz. He persisted faithful to death. He died, and they dragged most inhumanly his dead carcase upon a hurdle and buried it in a dunghill. He hath a brother, a very reverend minister of the Gospel, refugeed in this city of London.” A letter dated Metz, 2d October 1686, says:—
“Poor Monsieur de Chenevix lies very ill. The curate of the parish was with him to oblige him to confession, but he positively told him that he would not confess himself to any ​but God, who alone could forgive his sins. Afterwards he was visited by the Archbishop, who would have obliged him to communicate before death, which he also as stiffly refused. The Archbishop acquainted him with the king’s orders concerning such who, being sick, refuse to communicate ere they die. He replied that he cared not a rush for them, and that he would never communicate after the Popish manner.” Another account adds:— “Neither his character nor his age (he was eighty) were regarded; sentence was given that his corpse should be removed by the executioner. A guard of soldiers were unable to suppress such exclamations as, ‘There goes a man of God,’ — ‘he is on his car of triumph,’ — ‘his body is in the hands of the executioner, but his soul is with God,’ — ‘his body is disfigured with dirt, but his soul is washed in the blood of Christ.’ His friends fetched his corpse from the dunghill; they wrapped it in linen, and prepared a grave in a garden; it was borne thither during the night on the shoulders of four men, attended by 400 persons, chiefly females, who, while the corpse was let down into the grave, sang mournfully the 79th Psalm, in which the prophet deplores the desolation of Jerusalem.”
The brother was Pasteur Philippe Chenevix, of Limay, near Mantes, who married Anne de Boubers. Their son (aged twenty-six) served in the Guards in London, and was the father of the Rev. Richard Chenevix, Colonel Chenevix of the Carabineers, and Lieutenant Chenevix of the Artillery. Passing from Richard in the meantime, we note that Colonel Chenevix was father of another Colonel Chenevix, and grandfather of Richard Chenevix, Esq., author of “Remarks upon Chemical Nomenclature.”
The Right Rev. Richard Chenevix was Chaplain at the Hague to the Earl of Chesterfield, and when the Earl became Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, his Chaplain became Bishop of Killaloe — this was in 1745; but Dr. Chenevix was immediately translated to Waterford and Lismore, viz., on 15th January 1746. The Bishop was acquainted with the obligations of Ireland to the linen manufacture, and the Viceroy had observed the industrial advantages accruing to Holland from the Huguenot refugees; and consequently a revival of commercial prosperity marked the era now under our observation. The linen and sail-cloth manufactures had subsisted since 1715, when Lewis Crommelin set them up, under the management of John Latrobe. Under Lord Chesterfield’s government the management was given to a Patrick Smith, and fifty French families from the North of Ireland, and two from Holland, were transplanted to Waterford. The higher ranks of society, since the days of Bishop Foy, had been Huguenot, such names prevailing as Reynette, Sandoz, Franquefort, Fleury, Grueber, Pcrrin, Latrobe, Bessonet, Tabiteau, Boisron Vashon, Espaignet, and Delandre. There was a French church; the first minister was David Gervais, the second, James (or Jacob) Denis, next came Guidon Richion, George Dobier, and Augustus Devoree — the latter died in 1762, and was succeeded by Rev. Peter Augustus Franquefort, who held the office till his death in 1819, having bequeathed a valuable endowment to the City of Waterford Protestant Orphan Association. The latter was, by Bishop Chenevix, made Prebendary of Kilgobinet. The Bishop also gave preferments to other descendants of the refugees; thus we have the names of John Jaumard, Archdeacon of Lismore; William Grueber, Precentor of Lismore; Philip Chenevix (his son), Chancellor of Waterford Cathedral; Henry Gervais, Treasurer of Lismore; Antoine Fleury, Vicar-Choral. Bishop Chenevix “went about doing good,” and was “a man of great singleness of heart;” he died in 1779. In his Will, dated 13th August 1777, he left to the diocese of Waterford £1600, the interest to be given to widows of clergymen of that diocese; he also left £1000 to the diocese of Lismore. He was predeceased by his only son, who died in 1771 at Nice of consumption, of which his constitution had given early symptoms. This son, Rev. Philip Chenevix, married Mary Elizabeth, daughter of the Venerable Henry Gervais, Archdeacon of Cashel (formerly Treasurer of Lismore and Vicar-Choral). This young couple presented the Bishop with his only grand-child, Melesina Chenevix; she was married in 1803 to Richard Trench, Esq., barrister-at-law, a brother of Lord Ashtown, and a kinsman of the Earl of Clancarty. Bishop Chenevix is represented by the sons of his illustrious great-grandson, Richard Chenevix Trench, D.D., late Archbishop of Dublin.
*⁎* Connected with the records of the administration of law in Waterford are the refugee names of Bessonet, Tabiteau, Delandre, Latrobe, and Dubourdieu. Claude Souberment, nicknamed “Johny Brumo,” was clerk to the Rev. Peter Augustus Franquefort (who died in 1819), pastor of the French Church of Waterford. Johny’s successor, Charlie Taylor, was the last member of that church. Left to take refuge in the English congregation, he always used his French prayer-book, that his heart might join in the devotions.