[277] Messenger he renders by messager, instead of huissier, p. 749. More often, through mere indolence, he suffers the English word to stand: récorder, p. 61; commission d'oyer et terminer, p. 841; ranter, p. 189; quaker, p. 1375. He indifferently writes aldermens, p. 61, and aldermans, p. 717. He apparently does not know the French word tabac, always preferring the form tobac (tobacco).
[278] The Duke of Gloucester.
[279] Journal, House of Commons, ix. 534.
[280] See Chapter III.
CHAPTER IX
A Quarrel in Soho (1682)
It is a comparatively easy task to find out how Monsieur l'ambassadeur of France or a distinguished foreign author lived in London. In both cases their dispatches, memoirs, and letters, and sometimes their friends' letters, are extant. But how about the merchants who had seldom time to gossip about their private affairs; and the crowd of artisans, working-men, and servants who did not, nay could not, write? Fortunately others wrote for them, when actuated by some strong motive. Take, for instance, the following story preserved in an old pamphlet[281] and which, reprinted, needs no lengthy commentary to give insight into the life of the poorer Frenchmen whose lot it was to work and quarrel in and about Soho and Covent Garden under Charles ii.:—
"About five weeks ago, the wife of Monsieur de la Coste, a French Taylor, dwelling then at the upper end of Bow Street in Covent Garden, lying upon her death-bed, sent for Mr. Dumarest (here the unknown author of the pamphlet is wrong, he should have spelt the name Du Marescq, as any one may see who cares to consult Baron de Schickler's learned work on the French churches in London) that he might comfort and pray with her before she departed; which the aforesaid minister having accordingly done, and acquitted himself of the function of his ministry (this phrase sounds strangely un-English; maybe the writer who knows so much about the French colony in London is a Frenchman himself), the sick person caused the company to be desired to withdraw, for that she had something particular to say to her husband and the minister. The company being withdrawn, she desired her husband to take care of a daughter she had by a former marriage, who lived in the house of the widow of one Reinbeau, because that she was a Papist, and that she feared that after her death she would seduce her daughter. (The construction of the sentence is confusing at first, and very ungrammatical. By using the verb 'to seduce' with the meaning of 'to convert to Romanism,' the author betrays a French Protestant descent.) The husband promised to do what his wife desired; the dying person, not content with the promise of her husband, made the same request to the minister, who assured her that he would acquit himself of his duty (s'acquitter de son devoir literally translated) in that respect.