Jean Serres - the Huguenot galley slave who came to Winchester

 The poignant story of a French refugee in 18^th century Winchester

 

On the western wall of Winchester Cathedral’s Epiphany Chapel, is a marble plaque that commemorates a French Huguenot who lived the second half of his long life in the city, after 27 years as a galley-slave in the Mediterranean. It is almost certainly the first, and possibly the only, commemoration of a refugee in the Cathedral.

Erected around 1754 by Dean Thomas Cheyney for Jean Serres of Montauban, the plaque (translated from Latin) says:

 

Here lies buried Jean Serres, a Frenchman of good family from Montauban, who, after twenty-seven years condemned to the galleys at Marseilles, in chains and prisons, had fought with indomitable spirit for the protestant way of life and faith, freed by the goodness of Queen Anne, in the year of the peace treaty, came to England as a refugee. He died in 1754 aged 85. So that the memory may not die of a man who deserved so much from the reformed religion and who suffered so much from Popish Superstition, Thomas Cheney, Dean of this Church, set up this tablet.

 

Jean Serres was the youngest of three brothers from Montauban who were arrested by French authorities and condemned to life imprisonment as rower-slaves on Mediterranean galleys. Montauban, about 30 miles north of Toulouse in south-west France, was a major centre of reformed Protestantism. During the seventeenth century, worship by these Protestants, known as Huguenots, had been tolerated by France’s Catholic rulers. In 1685, however, Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes which had granted community toleration.

In Montauban, Pierre Serres, a cloth merchant, gave up his faith but his three sons Pierre (b. 1660), David (b. 1665) and Jean (b. 1668) decided to emigrate to maintain their beliefs. They were arrested in the eastern city of Grenoble and brought before the Court of the Parliament of Grenoble on January 11, 1686, and condemned to the galleys at Marseilles.

Pierre became a pastor to his fellow Huguenot prisoners and all three brothers spent time in the dungeons at the Convict Hospital at Marseilles as “dangerous” prisoners. Although forced to do back-breaking work in the galleys, they appear to have been fairly well off as supporters in Montauban sent clothing and food which was shared with poorer prisoners. They also corresponded with each other and with family and friends.

The three brothers doggedly maintained their Protestant faith for more than two-and-a-half decades. They spread the Gospel by distributing portions of the Scriptures from prison. Jean was put in the dungeons in 1698 because he converted an aged Catholic priest, M. L’Abbé Maupeau, to the reformed religion. He and his brothers agitated against their imprisonment and, in December 1700, Jean was a signatory to a document complaining about conditions. 

By the following year he was aboard the galley Valeur but, in 1702, Jean was again in the dungeons. His brother David congratulated him for being there and not on the galleys suffering from the filth, vermin, bad food and water, and the blasphemies and obscenities of fellow convict galley slaves. The dungeons were a holiday compared with life on the galleys.

The galleys, whose sail plan was supported by banks of oars on each side of the hull, were common in the Mediterranean which often has long periods of light winds. These wooden ships were used for both transport and naval operations. In 1696, a letter from Jean said that his galley had taken part in attacks along the Spanish coast and had landed at Barcelona.

David and Jean were freed in 1713 after the Peace of Utrecht, it is said by the intervention of Queen Anne of England. Pierre was freed a year later and all three came to London in 1716. After their arrival, a party of liberated Huguenots went to Windsor to thank the Queen for her support, with Jean as their spokesperson. Pierre married and remained in London, dying in 1741, aged 81. David left and lived in Zurich and Magdeburg before settling in Amsterdam where he died in 1733, aged 68.

Jean settled in Winchester and lived in the city until his passing, aged 85 in early 1754. As the plaque shows, he was buried at the Cathedral. Apart from a letter in 1740 and an entry about his death in the Cathedral’s Register: 1754. MR JOHN SERRES (a Native of France), aged 86, was buried Feb. 6^th, there are no records as to why he chose Winchester and where and how he lived in the city. There is no reference to Serres or the memorial tablet in Winchester Cathedral Chapter Minutes for 1754 or 1755. Dean Cheyney’s twentieth century biographer G.H. Blore refers to him as “poor old Jean Serres, the Huguenot refugee” who “had reason to thank the Dean for his kindness”.

The sole remaining correspondence from Jean’s life in Winchester was written in 1740 when he gave a New Testament, in a translation by the French Protestant David Martin, to Dean Cheyney. He had received it while in the galleys. It was accompanied by a personally very important document, the certificate of liberation that he was given in Marseilles on 20^th June 1713. At the time Jean was aged 45 and serving on la Grande-Reale galley.

The letter to Dean Cheyney expressed his strong faith and thanks for his welcome in Winchester. The New Testament must have been heavily used on the galleys and in dungeons as Jean wrote that it had been mended:

 

Translation

 

SIR

 

Here is the New Testament note from Mr. Martin, which I had mended, which he presented to me when I was on the galleys of France for the Word of God, under the great persecution of Louis fourteenth, which I received despite the precision with which I was observed to prevent me from enjoying the consolations that my very long and very distressing captivity demanded. The divine book remained many years with months in chains; but the Word of truth which it contains was not bound, made me conquer the falsehood and the error of the papists which assailed me furiously. Now, before God finally broke my heavy chain, I took him with me as the admirable subject of a miracle of his Providence which made me preserve him among a thousand eminent dangers which surrounded me. Hoping, Sir, that what I have just told you will make you accept it with more pleasure, as a very precious present. Wishing, Sir, that you will be able to read there at least for as many years as I have read there, and to be able to draw from it the eternal life of which it is the source.

 

Praying you, Monsieur, to believe me always filled with gratitude for the Christian affection with which you honor me so agreeably and with profound respect, Monsieur, your very humble and very obedient servant.

 

Jean SERRES THE YOUNGER

 

At Winchester, August 1, 1740.

 

• A more detailed, referenced version of this blog post is at Record Extra, the online journal of the Friends of Winchester Cathedral, which can be found at https://wincathrecord.org.

 

A Staid Angel - Bishop Tomline's memorial in Winchester Cathedral

In Winchester Cathedral’s south nave aisle, closer to the western end than the altar, a ‘staid’ white marble angel stands with its head downward holding a shepherd’s crook and a book, looking at a stone coat of arms. This is the memorial to Bishop George Pretyman Tomline (1820-27) who came almost briefly between two long-serving bishops, Brownlow North (1781-1820) and Charles Sumner (1827-1869). It is only when inspecting the stepped stone beneath the angel that his name is revealed as:

GEORGII TOMLINE

EPISCOPI WINTONIENSIS

 

    The memorial, designed by Richard Westmacott, was installed in 1830. Westmacott, knighted in 1837, was a neo-classical sculptor and a pupil of the great Italian sculptor Canova. It is one of Westmacott’s minor works as he was renowned for his statuary including two full scale-statues of William Pitt the Younger at Westminster Abbey (1808) and Pembroke College, Cambridge (1819). It is not without coincidence that Pitt the Younger’s sculptor also created Bishop Tomline’s memorial as the careers of both men were interlinked until the very moment of Pitt’s premature death in 1806. 

    The bishop was born as George Pretyman at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk on 9 October 1750. He was educated locally and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. He was ordained deacon in the diocese of Norwich in 1774 and priest at the Peterborough diocese two years later. 

    While Pretyman was a fellow at Pembroke, he became tutor to the precocious fourteen-year-old William Pitt the Younger who was as an undergraduate. Pretyman became his tutor, confidant and friend, thus establishing a personal connection which aided his advancement in the church and provided Pitt with a lifetime of political advice and support.

    When the twenty-four-year-old Pitt became Prime Minister in December 1783, Pretyman effectively became his private secretary and close counselor. In 1786, through Pitt’s influence on King George III, Pretyman was appointed as Bishop of Lincoln and, almost simultaneously, the Dean of St Paul’s, London. Although Pretyman moved to the bishop’s residence in Huntingdonshire, he remained on the terms of closest friendship with Pitt, who frequently wrote to “my dear bishop” to solicit his counsel about senior ecclesiastical appointments. Despite disagreeing with Pitt on Catholic emancipation, they remained close. Tomline attended the 46-year-old’s deathbed in 1806 and later wrote Pitt’s biography which was published in three volumes in 1822-23.

    Pretyman married in 1784 and had three sons with his wife, Elizabeth. His change of family name from Pretyman to Tomline came in 1803 when he unexpectedly inherited a mansion house and a large estate in Lincolnshire from Marmaduke Tomline. Although he may have met Tomline on not more than five or six occasions, Bishop Pretyman took the generous donor’s surname. In 1823, he claimed succession to a long-dormant Nova Scotia baronetcy of his family and for the rest of his life was styled Sir George Pretyman Tomline.

    The bishop wrote prolifically on theology. His two-volume Elements of Christian Theology (1799), dedicated to Pitt and Anglican ordinands, was very popular. By 1818, it had been published in twelve editions. In speeches and books, Tomline advocated a distinctly protestant form of Anglicanism. This was summarised in A Refutation of Calvinism (1811) in which he concluded: ‘Our Church is not Lutheran – not Calvinist – it is not Arminian – It is Scriptural: it is built upon the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone’.

    In 1805, despite Pitt’s strong advocacy to George III, Tomline was passed over as Archbishop of Canterbury in favour of Charles Manners-Sutton. It was a bitter disappointment to Tomline and his wife. He declined the bishopric of London in 1813 but accepted Winchester in 1820. He was the last bishop of Winchester to be enthroned by proxy. His time as bishop of Winchester is little recorded but he brought with him a reputation, unlike his predecessor Brownlow North, of being a ‘conscientious diocesan’ who conducted regular visitations and knew many of his clergy.

    George Pretyman Tomline died at Kingston Hall, near Wimborne, Dorset on 14 November 1827 and was buried in the Cathedral on 28 November that year. He was succeeded by Charles Richard Sumner, who had only been appointed as Bishop of Llandaff in the previous year.

    The position of his memorial in the Cathedral’s south aisle appears to have been a new one. Early in the nineteenth century, a new South Door was opened into the nave and, as a result, two medieval doors were closed which had opened on to the two arms of the (long-demolished) priory cloister. One of these provided room for Tomline’s memorial.