SUCCESSION OF CLERGY
S. Bride, S. Michael Le Pole, and S. Stephen, Dublin

AN APPENDIX FROM THE PREACHER'S BOOK,
AND A NOTE ON DEAN SWIFT'S BIRTH-PLACE

DUBLIN:
J. CHARLES & SON., 6t, MIDDLE ABBEY-STREET.
PARKER & co., OXFORD, AND 6, souTHAMPTON STREET, LONDON

1884


1810. PETER LEFANU, M.A. (Verschoyle promoted.]
He was the son of William Lefanu, Esq., of S. Stephen's Green. In his father's will he is called the fifth son, i.e., the fifth surviving son. He was really the seventh son as well as child (two having died in infancy), and on this account, in accordance with the superstition of the time, he was often asked to touch for the evil. Peter was married to Frances Knowles, whose mother was Esther Sheridan, daughter of Dr. Sheridan the schoolmaster,* Swift's friend, and was called after Mrs. Esther Johnston (Stella). In this way, through his wife, our Incumbent was connected with the Sheridans, though not descended from them, as has been often erroneously said. By this marriage, he had issue -one son the Rev. W. J. H. Lefanu, late Rector of St. Paul's. and three daughters, mentioned in the charming Annals of Ballitore.† One of the daughters, Esther, married Captain W. Dobbin, and was mother of the late Rev. W. P. H. Dobbin, Scholar and Ethical Gold Medalist of T.C.D., and Chaplain of Dr. Stevens's Hospital, and of the three unmarried daughters still living. Peter Lefanu was also uncle to Dr. T. P. Lefanu, Dean of Emly, who was married to a daughter of Dr. Dobbin, F. T. C. D., and Rector of St. Mary's, Dublin. The Lefanus are an old Huguenot family who were long settled at Caen, in Normandy, and had a patent of nobility granted by Henty IV. of France and confirmed by Louis XIV. On the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the. head of the family, Stephen Lefanu, was seized and imprisoned, when his wife voluntarily shared his imprisonment during many years. Their young child Philip was rescued by being hidden in a cupboard and fed through a hole, and was at last conveyed to Ireland. Here, when grown up to manhood, he engaged in the linen trade in the North, and realised considerable wealth, with which be joined Mr. LaTouche in establishing the old Castle-street Bank. He lost a good deal of it in the South Sea Scheme; and his son William, Peter's father, becoming nervous, withdrew from the bank and business, and lived and died a private gentleman. He was married to Miss. Henriette Raboteau, a Huguenot whose escape while a young girl from the dragonades was very full of adventure and interest. She and her two young sisters were wrecked. on the coast of Wicklow, where they were taken in and sheltered by the clergyman of the place. Here William Lefanu met her, and fell in love with her. Peter Lefanu was educated in Dr. Buck's school in King-street, near Bolton-street where Barry Yelverton, afterwards Lord Avonmore, was at one time usher. He took his degree of B.A. in 1769; was Curate of S. Michan's, and became Prebendary successively of Tassagart and of Dunlavin. In 1810 he was chosen Curate of S. Bride's by S. Patrick's Chapter, when. he voluntarily resigned Dunlavin. He was then appointed Chaplain to the Rotundo Lying in. Hospital. He was considered the most eloquent preacher of his day. In a letter from Monasterevan in l796 he says:

"Preaching here every Sunday keeps me continually writing, so that my eyes are quite tired of it. I found everything I had ever said totally unfit for the meridian or this place, so that
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* The schoohmaster was son of Mr. Patrick Sheridan, nephew of Dr. William Sheridan the deprived non-juring bishop of Kilmore, and of Dr. Patrick Sheridan, F. T. C. D., Vice Provost, and Bishop of Cloyne, and of Thomas Sheridan, F. T. C. D. He was grandson of the Rev. Dionysius Sheridan, the Roman Catholic priest whom Bishop Bedell converted to Protestantism, who afterwards assisted Bedall in the translation of the Bible into Irish, who saved Bedall's life in the insurrection of 1641, and in whose house the bishop died. By his marriage with Miss. Elizabeth M'Fadden he (the schoolmaster) became possessed of Quilca, whiter Swift used to retire with Stella, of which he gave such a humorous description, where he played so many jokes, and where he finished "Gulliver's Travels" after Stella's death. Sheridan quite perceived the cruelty of Swift's treatment of Stella, and offers no defense of his behavior. He w as present at the scene in Stella's last illness, when the Dean savagely refused to comply with her dying request and acknowledge even then the disgusting sham marriage. Sheridan was one of Stella's executors. Notwithstanding the calling of her daughter after Stella, Swift hated Mrs. Sheridan, and lampooned her as he lampooned everyone else male and female whom he disliked, and the cause of his dislike of Mrs. Sheridan was that she objected to allowing her grown up girls to join in the Deanery circle, or to be reared in the unwholesome atmosphere that surrounded Stella. Swift said she was a shrew, but her husband told Stella that "she was like other women bas as she was; and that they were all alike." Esther was his favorite daughter, and he left her £50. He left 5s. each to his other daughters and to his wife. On the schoolmaster's death Quilca passes to his son Dr. Thomas, and on his death in 1788, Joseph and Henry Lefanu, brothers of Peter, who were married to two of Sheridan's daughters, redeemed the place from the creditors for £600. Quilca thus passed into the Lefanu family, and with all its reminiscences it came into the Rolls Court a few years ago.


† "In the summer of 1808 a family came to reside in the neighborhood of Ballitore, and we frequently saw them driving through the village. The father, though advanced in years, was active and animated. He was exceedingly attentive to his three young daughters… The father was Peter Lefanu, the rector of Dunlavin, a man very eminent in his clerical character….I was informed that the clergyman's father was a native of France, a man of high respectability, who had become a banker in Dublin on his emigration…. In the summer the Lefanu family returned to the Rectory. The rev. gentleman possessed a vivacity which bespoke his French extraction, and he was a truly pleasant companion. Having lost his wife some years before, he superintended the education of his daughters himself…. They had a cousin-german on a visit with them, a lively and most engaging girl, niece to Richard Brinsley Sheridan… It was a great trial to us when Peter Lefanu and his charming family left our neighborhood on his obtaining the parish of Saint Bride in Dublin." [Mary Leadbeaters's Annals of Billitore.]
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I was obliged to compose new discourses every Sunday. The labour has been very great, but the practice will be of use in the main." In an unpublished letter to Miss Lefanu (1824) Archbishop Magee is quoted as speaking of him in the highest terms. His Grace "considered him a man of first rate merit in his profession; and whatever were his bodily sufferings, he had such a cheerful way of viewing things in this world, and such a well-grounded satisfaction in those of the next, that his manners inspired respect and admiration in all who knew him." While in S. Bride's he obtained by vestry assessment upwards of £730 for beautifying the church; and the assessments for communion elements exceeded £474, or more than £31 a year. The price of port wine at the time was about £1 15s. per dozen, large bottles. The other Dublin churches seem to have been nearly as well off in this respect as S. Bride's; e.g. in the Parochial Rates Return to Parliament for the year 1827, the cess for Communion wine was £36 in S. Peter's, £30 in S. Mary's, and £.20 each in S. Anne's, S. Mark's, and S. Andrew's; that year S. Bride's had only £ 10. In Lefanu's incumbency(1815) the Molyneux Asylum for Blind Females and the Chapel were opened in Peter-street and Bride-street, with Rev. John Crosthwaite as chaplain. In 1825 the Chapel was licensed by Archbishop Magee, in compliance with a petition of the Trustees stating the difficulty they had experienced. in procuring suitable chaplains owing to the Chapel not being licensed. The Rev. I. C. Lloyd was the first licensed resident chaplain and. preacher. He and the chapel appear for the first time in the Visitation Book of 1830. In 1823 the Rev. J. C. Lloyd, "assistant chaplain of the Molyneux Asylum, Dublin" published an 8vo. volume of sermons preached in the Chapel, so that be must have been connected with the place before that date. In the "Irish Pulpit", second series, there is a sermon without any date on the sin and danger of forgetting God, by the Rev. C. J. Lloyd, "one of the chaplains of the Molyneux Asylum." In this discourse the preacher insists upon the eternity of punishment, and explains the phrase "salted with fire" as meaning that "the fire of hell shall have the property not of wasting but of preserving substances." The Chapel was bound to yield, and used to yield, an annual sermon in aid of S. Bride's Daily Schools, -it was afterwards caelld the Albert Chapel and Retreat for Aged Females. The Chapel is now called the Molyneux Church. During the vacancy consequent on Lefanu's death the parish was sequestrated, and the Rev. Moore Morgan, Prebendary of Dunlavin, was named sequestrator. In Lefanu's time the Ship-street School had 54 boys, of whom 20 were boarders and the rest were day boys. Lefanu lived in Camden-street, and died there in 1825. His wife predeceased him. [Lefanu's Will, Family Manuscripts, Gilbert's "Contemporary Affairs of Ireland," & c.]