1893 text

Mrs. Pepys’s father was Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, a scion of a good family in Anjou. Having turned Huguenot at the age of twenty-one, his father disinherited him, and he was left penniless. He came over in the retinue of Henrietta Maria, on her marriage with Charles I., as one of her Majesty’s gentlemen carvers, but the Queen dismissed him on finding out he was a Protestant and did not go to mass. He described himself as being captain and major of English troops in Italy and Flanders.—Wheatley’s Pepys and the World he lived in, pp. 6, 250. He was full of schemes; see September 22nd, 1663, for account of his patent for curing smoky chimneys.


This text comes from a footnote on a diary entry in the 1893 edition edited by Henry B. Wheatley.

5 Annotations

First Reading

vincent  •  Link

Elizabeth fathers name has also been recorded as Alexander Marchant who goes down in history books with several Patents. From Liza Picards book Restoration London [pg xvi] full of saviory and other interesting titbits of the goings on in the 17th Century 'pepis' London

vincent  •  Link

more from the preface: Sieur de St. Michel
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext03/…
Her father, Alexander Marchant, Sieur de St. Michel, was of a good family in Anjou, and son of the High Sheriff of Bauge (in Anjou). Having turned Huguenot at the age of twenty-one, when in the German service, his father disinherited him, and he also lost the reversion of some L20,000 sterling which his uncle, a rich French canon, intended to bequeath to him before he left the Roman Catholic church. He came over to England in the retinue of Henrietta Maria on her marriage with Charles I, but the queen dismissed him on finding that he was a Protestant and did not attend mass

ignis fatuus  •  Link

great communication between s in law and pa in law
"...by and by seeing my wife’s father in the Hall, and being loth that my wife should put me to another trouble and charge by missing him to-day, I did employ a porter to go from a person unknown to tell him his daughter was come to his lodgings, and I at a distance did observe him, but, Lord! what a company of questions he did ask him, what kind of man I was, and God knows what. So he went home..."
Let it be said by L&M; The In-Laws be in Covent Garde from 1662

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References

Chart showing the number of references in each month of the diary’s entries.

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