# Protestant Exiles from France/Book First - Chapter 10 - Section IX

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IX. Six.
This refugee family is best remembered in Canterbury. The surname first occurs in the account-book of the refugee French Church of Sandwich, described by Mr. J. S. Burn. In that book it is recorded that in February 1569, Jan de la Laye and Salomon Six were commissioned to buy 12 bushels of grain for distribution among the poor. Like the Des Bouveries the Six family seems to have removed to Canterbury from Sandwich. One of them was an ancien, and died in Canterbury in 1603.
The family survived in Canterbury until the end of last century. There is a singular resemblance of surnames in the French Churches of Norwich and Canterbury. This may have arisen (as Mr. Burn suggests) from the migration of refugees from Sandwich to Norwich. In both register-books the name of Six occurs frequently at early dates, but without suggesting a starting-point for a long pedigree until the year 1624. Without multiplying extracts I note the earliest entry of a baptism, which is a child of Jean Six, 22d June 1597, born at Norwich. Barthelemi Six became the head of the Canterbury stock; we have an indication that he had died before 15th August 1624, the day of the marriage of his son Jacques to Marie Le Poutre (also a Norwich surname), a daughter in a refugee family of Canterbury. In the Canterbury register (more communicative than that of Norwich) we are told that the family of Six came from “Andre près de Guine.” Jacques Six became an ancien of the French Church, and died in office on 28th March 1678, aged sixty-eight. He left three sons, Barthelemi, baptized 20th January 1628 (n.s.), Jean, baptized 13th December 1629, and Abraham, baptized 11th September 1636. It is from Barthelemi that the longest-surviving descendants sprang; therefore in the following memoir we shall begin with the youngest and end with the eldest.
(1) Abraham Six married Elizabeth Le Keux; he became a diacre of the church and died in office on 27th September 1670, in his thirty-fourth year, leaving an infant family. The elder son was Jacques, born 1665, who in 1686 married Elizabeth Despaigne, and died on 7th April 1701, leaving a son, Guillaume, and two daughters, from which three children there were no recorded descendants. The younger son of Abraham Six was also named Abraham, born 1667, who married Susanne Despaigne. He was a silkweaver, as probably his ancestors were. But the fact is noted in reference to him because he removed to London and carried on that industry at Booth Street, in the parish of Stepney and county of Middlesex; he had four children baptized in Canterbury — Elizabeth, born 1696; Susanne, born 1697; Abraham, born 1699; and ​Jacques, born 1702; and two daughters in Threadneedle Street, London — Susanne, born 1706, and Marie, born 1708.
(2.) Jean Six married Anne, daughter of Estienne Duthoit, on 17th July 1651. He had two sons, Jacques and Jean. Jacques Six (born 1652), married Marie Le Keux, on 7th December 1676, and had a son, Estienne, who left an only child, Anne. The younger Jean Six (born 1654) married, on 27th January 1676 (n.s.), Marie, daughter of Jean Le Hocq, or Le Houcq. This marriage became a famous event. The High Church party in Canterbury wished the descendants of the refugees to consider themselves English people, and to discontinue resorting to French pasteurs for the solemnization of their marriages. The Anglican Church Consistory were resolved to establish the opinion that such marriages were clandestine marriages. And it so happened that they took hold of the marriage of Jean Six and Marie Le Houcq as a specimen case, assailed it as a clandestine marriage, excommunicated Jean Six and his wife, and suspended from the ministry the officiating pasteur, M. Delon. Upon a petition to the king all this ecclesiastical censure was reversed. The French Church marriages were not again interfered with — a conclusion which became all the more real, when in the course of five years the fresh hordes of fugitives from the persecutions in France, made it evident that refugee life was not yet a thing of the past. The younger Jean Six had three children, who died young or unmarried. The elder Jean Six had been baptized by the pasteur Philippe Delmé in 1619, whose son, Jean Delmé (afterwards a merchant in London), born in 1632, became the companion of his youthful days, and the companions kept up a correspondence through life. When the above-named Mr. John Delmé was seventy-five years of age, he printed his father’s sermons on the Parable of the Sower, with this epistle prefixed:—
“To my much esteemed and dear friend, Mr John Six, in Canterbury.
“Sir, — Our long acquaintance and kind correspondence, both civil and religious, is very challenging, and demands the preserving of it in all offices of reciprocal love. I am much behind-hand, methinks, in the duties of it towards you. What I can’t do at once, I wou’d endeavour to do by little and little, still preferring the best things wherein you most delight. The many precious evidences you have given me, in the matters of God’s glory and Christian edification, make me dedicate to you in the same spirit some Sermons of my dear and much honoured father, of precious memory not only to myself but to you also, who was your faithful pastor. They are concerning the right hearing of God his holy word. I have been too long preparing ’em for the press; but upon our late being together, I thought none could better promote it than yourself by commending it to your numerous offspring, and to others of that Church of which you are a Member and Elder, for the benefit of their precious and immortal souls.
“If I had the whole of these excellent sermons preach’d by my father on this subject to the Walloon Church in Canterbury, the composure wou’d have been longer and better. What is defective can’t be help’d; and wherein my translation is so, I pray you and every one that reads it to bear with me, not imputing to the Author what faults may proceed from my version or from the want of those papers which have been mislaid. If but gleanings do yield so much good, how much more benefit wou’d the whole have produc’d! I desire to be very thankful to God for what there is of it, and that I had an able friend and good hand in the ministry of the Gospel to digest it in order which otherways wou’d never have seen the light. Now committing you and the candid readers to Father, Son, and Spirit, who alone can build us up in faith and holiness, I remain, Sir, Your very affectionate friend and humble servant,
Aug. 2, 1707.
John Delmé.
(3.) Barthelemi Six, the head of the refugee family, married in 1651 Lea Dambrin, and died on 17th January 1698 (n.s.), being within three days of attaining threescore years and ten. His son, Jacques Six, baptized 11th July 1652, married in 1675 Ester de Sedt; he died probably in 1734, his will having been proved on 10th October of that year, and if so, his age was eighty-two. He left two sons, Samuel and Jaques. Samuel, born 1683, married Marie, daughter of “Docteur Deprez,” and had a son, Jaques Deprez Six, unmarried. Jaques (the younger brother of Samuel), born 17th October 1694, married Ester, daughter of Louis Decanfour, and had a son Jaque, born 30th January, baptized 26th February 1731 (n.s.). At this date, although French was still the language of the congregation in the undercroft of the cathedral, and of their registers, the descendants of the very old refugees were English people. And I have no doubt that the last-named infant is James Six, Esq., F.R.S., father of James Six, M.A. (see my Chapter XIII.).