# Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 15 - Section II

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II. Layard.
The Layard family claims descent from the Raymonds, whose chiefs were the illustrious Sovereign Princes and Comtes De Toulouse. They are believed to spring from the same ancestry as the Ducs Caumont de la Force. The more specific ancestor was either Guillaume Raymond, the first Seigneur de Caumont (who died 1n 1337), or Nompar Raymond, Seigneur de Caumont, who died in 1400. Among the family papers are the names and armorial bearings of Pierre de Caumont and Jeanne de Brissac, his wife (1570), and of Raymond de Caumont de Layarde, and Francoise Savary de Mauleon de Castillon, his wife (1590).
Without presuming to decide the question of descent, I follow the documents before me, and inform my readers that the refugee’s name was Pierre Layard; his father’s name was Raymond Layard, and his mother’s baptismal name was Francoise. Pierre was born in 1666, at Montflanquin, in the Duchy of Agen and Province of Guienne. Having taken refuge in Holland in 1685, he came to England in the train of William of Orange. I first meet with him as a cadet in Miremont’s Dragoons. He had to go upon half-pay when the Huguenot regiments were disbanded in 1698. Soon afterwards he received a commission in an English regiment, and in 1710 he had attained the rank of Major. He was naturalized, along with many others, by Act of Parliament, on 16th July 1713.
In 1716 he married a Huguenot and comparatively youthful bride, Mary Anne Croze or Croisey, by whom he had twelve sons, of whom all died in infancy except one son and two daughters. Major Layard died in his eighty-first year, on the 18th March 1747.
Major Layard’s daughter, Elizabeth, was born at Sutton-Fryers, Canterbury, on 23rd June 1731, and was married at St. Bride’s, Fleet Street, London, on 4th November 1760, to Charles Fouace. Her sister, Mary Ann, born in the same place, 5th March 1733, was married on 2nd January 1769, to Brownlow Bertie, fifth and last Duke of Ancaster. The Duchess died 13th January 1804, leaving an only child, Lady Mary Elizabeth Bertie, the first wife of Thomas Charles Colyear, fourth and last Earl of Portmore, whose son Brownlow, Viscount Milsington (heir-at-law of the Duke of Ancaster), died before him, being mortally wounded by banditti near Rome, in 1819.
Major Layard’s sole male representative (registered as the son of Major Pierre De Layard) was Daniel Peter Layard, born on 28th March 1720, and baptized in the French Church of Les Grecs on April 8, the parents being resident in St. Ann’s parish, Westminster. He became M.D. of Rheims, on 9th March 1742. He married, on 9th August 1743, in the Westminster French Church in the Savoy, Susanne Henriette Boisragon, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Louis de Boisragon by his second wife, Marie Henriette, daughter of the Chevalier Nicolas de Rambouillet. In April 1747 he became physician accoucheur to the Middlesex Hospital, but retired to the Continent on account of bad health. On his return he established a prosperous medical practice in Huntingdon, and was styled “of Woodhurst, Huntingdonshire;” he claimed the barony of Clifton-Camville. He was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, on 3rd July 1752. A most calamitous cattle-plague raged in Great Britain from 1744 to 1756. In 1757 Dr. Layard published “An Essay on the Contagious Distemper among the Horned Cattle in these Kingdoms.” He also published “An Essay on the Bite of a Mad Dog” (1762). In 1769, when the cattle-plague again broke out, he was sent for by the Privy Council, and assisted in the drafting of Orders in Council and Acts of Parliament, which were mainly instrumental in extirpating the plague. The House of Commons gave him a grant of £500, and the king appointed him to be Corresponding Secretary with Foreign Courts on the nature, causes, and cure of that distemper. In 1762 Dr. Layard had settled in London as an accoucheur, and in 1772 he published a Pharmacopoeia, specially for his feminine patients. But in or before 1769 he had taken up his abode in Greenwich. He received many honours; he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, and of the Academy of Gottingen, and he received in 1792 the honorary degree of D.C.L. from Oxford. He was elected a Director of the French Protestant Hospital of London on 4th October 1775. He died at Greenwich on 28th March 1802, aged eighty-two.
Dr. Layard left three sons. His daughter, Susanna Henriette (born 1757, died 1832), wife of Peter Pegus, Esq., had a son, Peter William Pegus, M.A., of Cambridge, who married his cousin, the Countess Dowager of Lindsey, and whose daughter, Mary Antoinette Pegus, was married to Charles, tenth Marquis of Huntly. Dr. Layard’s younger sons, Lieut.-General Anthony Lewis Layard (died 1823, and buried ​in Salisbury Cathedral), and Lieut-General John Thomas Layard (died 1828, and buried in Walcote Church, Bath) had no descendants. The eldest son was the Very Rev. Charles Peter Layard, D.D., F.R.S., Dean of Bristol. He was born in the parish of St. Ann’s, Westminster, 19th February 1749; he married, first, Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Ward of Greenwich, and, secondly, Elizabeth, co-heiress of Rev. John Carver.
Dean Layard (whose early preferment was the Vicarage of Warle and Kewston) was a graduate of Cambridge with honours, M.A. in 1773, and S.T.P. in 1787. In 1789 he preached a Sermon at the consecration of Bishop Horsley, which was published. During his ministry in Oxendon Chapel, London, he was greatly followed and admired as a most eloquent and excellent preacher; he was Chaplain in Ordinary to his Majesty, and Librarian of Archbishop Tenison’s Library, in St. Martin’s Parish. On the resignation of Dr. Hallam he was made Dean of Bristol in January 1801, and died at the Deanery, 10th April 1803. His daughter, Charlotte Susanah Elizabeth, renewed the family alliance with the Berties, by her marriage on 15th November 1809, with George Albemarle, ninth Earl of Lindsey; this Countess died in 1858, being the mother of the tenth Earl. Another daughter of Dean Layard was Caroline Bethia, wife of Louis Gibson, Esq.
Three branches of the Layard family sprang from the three sons of Dean Layard, who were —
1st. The Rev. Brownlow Villiers Layard, M.A., Rector of Uffington, Lincolnshire (born 1779, died 1861), who married, first (in 1803), Louisa, daughter of John Port, of Ham Hall, Staffordshire, and, secondly (in 1821), Sarah Jane, daughter of Thomas Margary of Clapham Common.
2nd. Henry Peter John Layard, Esq., of the Ceylon Civil Service (born 1782, died 1834), who married Marianne, only daughter of Nathaniel Austen, Esq., of Ramsgate. (To this branch belong the Right Honourable Sir Henry Austen Layard, and his brother, Lieut-General Frederic Peter Layard; to the latter I am indebted for an abstract of the family papers.)
3d. Charles Edward Layard, Esq., of the Ceylon Civil Service (born 1786, died 1852), who married Barbara Bridgetina, daughter of Gualterus Mooyart, the last Dutch Governor of Ceylon. He had a family of twenty-six children, of whom at one time seventeen were living. One of them is Sir Charles Peter Layard, K.C.M.G., Government Agent in Ceylon (born 18th May 1806).
The heir of the first branch, Lieutenant-Colonel Brownlow Villiers Layard, M.P. for Carlow, died in his father’s lifetime in 1853, aged forty-nine. He had married in 1835 Elizabeth, daughter of Captain John Deane Digby, of the 5th Irish Dragoons. He left an only child, born in 1838, Lieut-Colonel Brownlow Villiers Layard, a military officer, the present head of the family, whose heir-apparent is Brownlow Villiers Layard (born 24th August 1884). A younger brother of the late Lieut-Colonel B. V. Layard, was Lieut-Colonel Bernard Granville Layard (born 1813, died 1872), who edited an abridgement of his great-grandfather’s essay on the Cattle Plague.