Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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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.
Annotations
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Father of Pepys’ wife Elizabeth http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/150.php and husband of Dorothea http://www.pepysdiary.com/p/1066.php
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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
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more from the preface: Sieur de St. Michel
http://www.gutenberg.net/etext03/sp85g10.txt
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 -
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 -
Additional background information on Alexandre can be found in the article about Elizabeth (section IV in particular) at
http://www.pepysdiary.com/indepth/archive/2006/05/31/a_voice_for_elizabe.php