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From: "Andrea Vogel" <>
Subject: [H-W-E] Temple at Quevilly, Rouen, FRA (Part 8)
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 00:26:06 -0800


This is the last in the series about the history of the Temple at
Quevilly, Rouen, FRA. As mentioned in previous posts on this topic, the
author is fellow lister Chris Shelley . I am sure you all
join me in thanking Chris for his kindness and generosity in sharing it with
us.
This history, sent to the list in installments over the last week, has
been posted on Chris's behalf and with his permission.

SURNAMES in the following information (alphabetically) --
BINYON, DE BOSTAQUET, LE GENDE, VROULING


Temple at Quevilly, Rouen, FRA (Part 8)

"The sad state to which my soul was reduced," continues DE BOSTAQUET,
"and the general desolation of the Church, occasioned me the profoundest
grief...... All feeling equally criminal, we no longer enjoyed that
tranquillity of mind which before had made us happy. God seemed to have hid
himself from us; and though by our worship, which we continued publicly to
celebrate, we might give evidence of the purity of our sentiments and the
sincerity of our repentance, my crime never ceased to weigh upon my mind,
and I bitterly reproached myself for having set so bad an example before
my family as well as my neighbors..... But I could not entertain without
grief the thought of my children being exposed to the danger of falling a
prey to these demons who might any moment have carried them away from me. I
was constantly meditating flight; but the flesh fought against the spirit,
and the fear of abandoning this large family, together with the difficulty I
saw before me of providing a subsistence for them in a foreign land, held me
back; though I still watched for a favorable opportunity for escaping from
France, by which time I hoped to be enabled to provide myself with money by
the sale of my property."

Others there are, both known and unknown, famous and humble, who were
of Rouen and who attended the beautiful Temple just south of the Seine river
at Quevilly. Many of this community died for their beliefs, many fled home
and family, dispersed among the nations of the world, some stayed and like
Thomas LE GENDE, and the DE BOSTAQUET family and VROULING family, abjured,
and had to learn to live with that decision. But they were a good people who
lived in a terrible and troubled time, and whose honest hearts sought after
the truth, a truth that seemed missing from the established church. However
after the Revocation of 1685, their existence in Rouen was, at least as far
as the law was concerned, prohibited. All evidence of their existence there
was obliterated, their Temple gone. But not all was lost, for although
the edifice that served as their meeting place might be destroyed, and
though they may have fled from Rouen still the record of their lives there
persists. One of the members of the protestant community, perhaps one of the
Pasteurs or one of the members of the Consistoire saved the records of the
church, and so, all these years later, we are able to compile this record of
their lives and deeds. It is indeed a blessing to be related to these fine
people and to be involved in the work we do with the records of their
church. In doing this we seek to perpetuate their memory and pay tribute to
their lives. We have
gathered them together once more as individuals but more importantly as
families. We find that their posterity has survived and increased throughout
the world; we have discovered distant cousins and family and made friends
through this project. And so the names of the past come fresh to our lips,
people dead three or four hundred years have become as friends to us. We
know them and have come to love them. Occasionally we come across a man, a
couple or a family from Rouen in a place where we did not expect them to be,
and it is like finding a friend who was lost, and we are happy that we have
found them once more. And so they have become a very real part of our lives,
and their memory endures with us. In the end, they will not allow us to
forget them.

The death of our martyred Huguenot ancestry is no less a death than
that of those killed in any war; their sacrifice, is no less a sacrifice
than any that mankind has made. And so, is it not right, in the end, in the
immortal words of Laurence BINYON to say of them that:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,
Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,
As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,
To the end, to the end, they remain.


End of Part 8 (last of the series)

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