# Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 5 - Section II

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II. Ensign John Fontaine.
John, the fifth child, and (at the date of his entering the army) the third surviving son of the Rev. James Fontaine, was born at Taunton in 1693. He was a dutiful son and pupil of his father; but a prospect appearing of his being enrolled in the British army, he was allowed to desist from more profound study, and gave proof of talent in the art of military drawing, and in kindred pursuits. All the family had made the acquaintance of General Ingoldsby about two months before the destruction of their home at Bear Haven. The General was commander of the Forces in Ireland, and frequently acted as a Lord Justice. When on an official tour he was met by Fontaine, who asked him to visit his snug house and fort.
“He accepted my invitation (says Fontaine), and he and his whole retinue remained with me three days, during which time I treated them as hospitably as I possibly could, making them welcome to the best the country afforded. Having had a little notice beforehand we had time to make preparations, and I was able to have as many as fourteen or fifteen different dishes on the table every day, and a great variety of wine. He has been one of my best friends from that day to this.”
On hearing of the disaster inflicted by the French and Irish pirates, the General immediately obtained for him a grant of ,£100; and being pleased with the appearance and gallantry of his sons Peter and John, he put them down on his list to be provided for. He entered them among half-pay military officers, and in 1709 they received orders to embark for Spain; but Mr. Secretary Dawson removed their names from the list. This disappointment proved to be a merciful providential appointment, as the small transport in which the officers sailed had to surrender to a large French man-of-war, after a desperate resistance, in which one-half of their number were killed, and almost all the remainder were wounded. Next year, however, the Lord-Lieutenant having removed from the regiments under orders for Spain the names of all subalterns under sixteen years of age, John Fontaine applied for one of the vacancies. But his Lordship had resolved to sell all the commissions, and so John’s prospects of success were more than doubtful. “At last (says his father) on the very eve of departure, finding that some of the commissions were unsold, General Ingoldsby went himself to the Lord-Lieutenant and obtained an Ensign’s commission for John, without our having to pay anything more than the office fees.”
Ensign John Fontaine, of Colonel Shaw’s regiment of foot, sailed from Cork in February 1711, and from Plymouth on March 26th; the troops arrived at Lisbon on April 22d, and at Barcelona on May 31st. They evacuated Barcelona in November 1712; and were afterwards quartered in Majorca and Minorca. But in 1713 they were back again in England, and with the war John Fontaine’s military life ended.
Our Generals, employed under the Harley-Bolingbroke regime, were expected to do nothing; and if the Allies wished to fight the enemy, their duty was to draw off the British troops. So that young Fontaine was never in action. What is most interesting in this part of his Journal is his paragraph about the poor Catalans whom our un-English rulers abandoned to Philip the Bourbon’s revenge:—
“The latter end of November 1712 we had orders to embark; and as we were leaving Barcelona, the poor Spaniards seeing they were left in the lurch, they called us traitors and all the most vile names they could invent; and the common people threw stones at us, saying we had betrayed them into the hands of King Philip. It was with a great deal of difficulty we embarked.”
[The true English party at home had implored our Queen to throw her shield round the Catalans, but in vain. All the glory of Lord Peterborough was tarnished by our sacrificing that people, for it evidently would have been better if Catalonia had never been taken. Lord Peterborough, at the time when he ought to have joined Lord Galway at Madrid, had been made our ambassador for the express purpose of residing in that capital and consolidating ​King Charles’s dynasty. We have seen how Lord Galway drove the Duke of Berwick’s forces before him, and how also the concentration of the French forces, for their siege of Barcelona, had cleared Lord Galway’s road to Madrid. But even if we accept Lord Peterborough’s statement that it was he himself who had cleared the way to Madrid for Lord Galway, what was the use of his clearing the way to the rendezvous, if he did not himself hasten to join the allies there? What happened at last was a consequence of this cruel trifling; we lost the whole of Spain except Catalonia, and for that corner of land Lord Peterborough’s political friends did not care. Those politicians made use of an after-thought as an apology, namely, that King Charles III. having become the Emperor Charles VI. of Germany, it was impolitic for them to continue to support his claim to the throne of Spain. But they had abandoned him, before the unexpected death of his brother took place. Queen Anne, in reply to the lately mentioned appeal on behalf of the Catalans, was instructed by her ministers to insinuate that the new Emperor should relieve them. But those ministers had left him in a helpless condition in Spain. In order to take possession of his German dominions, he had to steal away from Spain like a poor hunted refugee.
To return to John Fontaine. He staid in Dublin for some time after leaving the army. The result of some grave family consulations was, that it would be desirable to obtain a settlement for the clan in Virginia. And John, having a love of travel and adventure, was sent across the ocean to make enquiries and to buy an estate. He landed in the new country on the 28th May 1715; and, acting on the best advice, he made his way to Williamsburg. Though industrious in his negotiations, he reports himself as still a visitor there in April 1716, not having made a purchase. He obtained the friendship of Governor Spottiswood, and accompanied him in his famous expedition for the discovery of the Passage over the Mountains, when Mount George and Mount Alexander received their names. On the second day they came to Christanna Fort. As to the fourth day we find the following satisfactory entry in John Fontaine’s Journal:— “In the morning I rid out with the Governor and some of the people of the fort to view the lands which were not yet taken up. We saw several fine tracts of land, well watered, and good places to make mills on. I had a mind to take some of it up, so I asked the Governor if he would permit me to take up 3000 acres, and he gave me his promise for it.”
We have now before us John Fontaine, as an owner of landed property in Spottsylvania (so named after the Governor Alexander Spottiswood), in King William County, Virginia, the father and founder of a plantation, at which, however, he was not himself to reside.
The first of his brothers who arrived was the Rev. Peter Fontaine and family; they came in December 1716. The singular circumstances of the marriage of Peter while a student at Trinity College, Dublin, are thus related in old Fontaine’s Memoirs. “In the month of November 1713 Captain Boulay, a French gentleman, a half-pay cavalry officer, with whom I had not the slightest acquaintance, called upon me to offer his granddaughter in marriage to one of my sons. Her name was Elizabeth Fourreau. He was upwards of eighty years of age; she was his sole descendant, her father and mother were both dead, and she was to inherit all his property. He told me he had heard an excellent report of my sons . . . . he said he preferred in the husband of his child virtue without fortune, above the largest property, accompanied with piety and discretion.” On the 29th March 1714 Peter was married to the Huguenot girl, whose grandfather died in March 1715, leaving £1000. John wrote to him that he had found a parish for him in Virginia. “He had taken his degree, and was ready to be ordained at the time he received John’s letter. He accordingly went to London, and received ordination from the hands of the Bishop of London, who is also Bishop of all the British colonics.” Peter obtained the parish of Roanoke near Williamsburg, and took up his abode there.
John set about building houses in his Spottsylvanian plantation; and before they were quite finished his eldest brother James arrived to occupy the first lot; this was in October 1717. In the following March their brother-in-law Maury arrived, and secured his lot. “On the 17th of July 1718 (says John), I made over the deeds of the land to my brother James in order to go to England.”
​John was again in Dublin in 1719. More than a year thereafter he removed to London, taking with him his youngest brother Francis, now a Master of Arts, who was fortified with a letter from the Dublin Primate, Archbishop King, to the Bishop of London (Robinson). The bishop ordained him in 1721, and he joined the family colony in Virginia. He was a superior scholar and an eloquent preacher, so that he had the choice of several parishes, and settled in St Margaret’s Parish, King William County.
Thus we have marshalled before us the Fontaine colonists. The 1st of June annually they observed as a religious festival, a family thanksgiving for the many providential deliverances experienced by their father’s household. They all met on that day, and went to the House of God in company. A sermon preached by Peter Fontaine at the festival in 1723 has been printed.
After the death of their father (the date of which is not preserved) the Virginians reported their progress to their brothers John and Moses, who lived in London. The latter was an engraver. John, having been forsaken by the military service, resolved to work for his livelihood, and under the tuition of his cousin, Peter Forestier, he became a watchmaker. John was married, and had four sons (or four boys in his family, sons and grandsons, or nephews?); he had also an only daughter, who was married to her first cousin, a son of her uncle James Fontaine, farmer in Virginia. Her early death was a great grief to the English and the American family circles.
When John Fontaine was in about his sixtieth year, his thoughts turned to an exchange of London life for the air of the country. He found a good investment in South Wales; so that in 1754 he was the resident proprietor of Cwm Castle, probably in the county of Glamorgan. The last memento of him, which we have, is his letter to the Rev. James Maury, dated 2d January 1764:—
“Dear Nephew Maury, — The last letter we received from you was dated the 18th June 1760, which was very acceptable to us, the which we answered the 24th January 1761, and have received no letter from you since. Our great desire to hear from you will not permit us to be any longer silent, as the peace is now concluded so much to our advantage, and more especially so to all those who possess estates in North America, bounded on the north by the North Pole, on the south by the Gulf of Florida, and the west by the great river Mississippi. Nothing more can (we think) be wished for as to extent of territory, but to be thankful for this great enlargement, and the great deliverance from our powerful enemies the French and Spaniards, and from popery and slavery which in our opinion is as great if not a greater blessing than any, or indeed all the others put together.
“Now, thanks be to our great God for it, he may and will be worshipped without a rival from the North Pole to the Gulf of Florida. It is impossible for you and me, without his especial assistance, to be sufficiently thankful for so many favours conferred on us, and our posterity. A land flowing with milk and honey to inhabit — the pure and unadulterated doctrine brought down from heaven by our blessed Saviour and Redeemer to lead us to eternal life, — these are blessings so complete that no more can be added to them.
“The poor natural inhabitants still remain as thorns in your sides, lest you and we should forget the past deliverances. We pray to God to open their understandings, and make tliem one flock with us, obedient to the same God and Saviour. Whilst those Indians continue uninstructed in the principles of Christ’s true religion, they will be cruel and treacherous. We are greatly concerned to hear of the horrible cruelties committed by those infidels upon your out-settlers. We hope you will soon put a stop to their proceedings, and by a superior force bring them to reason, and convince them of the folly of such undertakings.
“I received the Timothy grass you were so kind as to send me. I sowed some in my garden, and it grew well. I tried in the field and the grass killed it. It would grow well in well-cultivated lands if well weeded and (I think) would produce a great crop; but I am too old and too feeble to undertake anything, and I am often confined with the gout. — Your affectionate uncle,
“John Fontaine.”
I understand that this worthy representative of a Huguenot family founded an English family of Fontaines, but I have found no genealogical record of it. Ann Maury says that it was from his descendants she borrowed his Journal, and she adds, “They are now (1853) living in the neighbourhood of London. I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration of the piety and excellence of my kinswomen.” She presents her readers with a pleasing portrait of John Fontaine, “from an original likeness by Worlidge,” and with another of the reverend and venerable refugee “after an original likeness in the possession of Miss Fontaine, Bexley, England.”
* ↑ Lord Peterborough’s case is faithfully reported in “Collins’ Peerage,” though in the ambiguous language which such a case required :— "The possession he gained of Catalonia, of the Kingdom of Valencia, &c, gave opportunity to the Earl of Galway to advance to Madrid without a blow. . . . That war being looked on as likely to be concluded, he received Her Majesty’s commission for Ambassador Extraordinary, with powers and instructions for treating and adjusting all matters of state and traffic between the two kingdoms. Whatever were the causes of his being recalled from Spain, they are not publicly known; but ’tis certain that our affairs there were soon alter in a very ill condition by the loss of the Battle of Almanza.”
* ↑ “Charles hastened home from .Spain to take possession of the throne which had been unexpectedly vacated. The Capuchin Monks of Mount St. Jerome helped him to escape. That act cost the guardian and reader of the cloister their lives.” — “History of the Protestant Church of Hungary,” translated by Craig (London, 1854). page 205.