'You need not fear anything dishonorable from me,' said the French preacher; 'you see all our garrison.'
'Impossible!' he replied; 'these children could not possibly have kept up all the firing.'
The house was then stripped of everything, not excepting the coats, which had been thrown off in the heat of the action; and the booty filled six boats. When they departed, M. Fontaine with his two eldest boys and two servants were taken away as prisoners. In vain did the brave good man protest that this was an infraction of the treaty. The remonstrance availed nothing with the freebooters. In a few days, the children with the servants were set ashore, but he was detained, when orders were given to raise the anchor. During all these severe trials, his noble and pious companion did not sit down, quietly lamenting her misfortunes. She first went to the parish priest, who was under great obligations to her husband, entreating him for his liberation. But he positively refused. Perceiving the privateer under sail, she resolved to follow it along the shore, as long as she could, and, reaching a promontory, she made a signal with her apron, on the top of a stick. A boat came near the shore, and she carried on a conversation with its crew through a speaking trumpet. After much bargaining, they agreed to set M. Fontaine at liberty, upon the payment of £100 sterling. Of this sum the excellent lady could only borrow £30, and the captain of the privateer consented to take this amount, with one of her sons as a hostage, until the remaining £70 were paid, calling her at the same time 'a second Judith.'
Mrs. Fontaine repaired forthwith to Cork, for the purpose of raising the sum wanted, and could easily have obtained it, but the merchants of that city objected to any payment of the kind. The privateer hovered about the Irish coast for some time, expecting the ransom money; but when the governor of Brest heard the circumstances, he condemned the captain strongly for bringing a hostage away with him, contrary to the law of nations. The difficulty did not terminate here. As soon as he was able, the French preacher visited Kinsale, and made an affidavit of the outrage he had suffered. At this place were a government officer and a prison, and immediately all the French officers who had been taken in the war then existing were ironed. Numbers of the same description were treated in a similar manner. These retaliatory measures excited great public feeling against the captain of the privateer, and he was summoned to appear before the governor of Brest, who imprisoned and even threatened to hang him. Upon his promising to set at liberty the young hostage, and convey him to the place from whence he had been taken, the officer was liberated.
M. Fontaine now determined to live in Dublin, and support his family by teaching the Latin, Greek, and French languages; and in the mean time the grand jury of Cork awarded him £800 for his losses at Bear Haven. In his new abode he was able to give his children an excellent education; one became an officer in the British service, and three entered college. The former was John Fontaine, and the family determined that he should visit America for information; and after travelling through Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Maryland, he purchased a plantation in Virginia. Peter, another brother, received ordination from the bishop of London, and with Moses, who studied law, both embarked for Virginia in 1716. Francis, the last son, remained at college.
There were two daughters in his family. The eldest, Mary Anne, married Matthew Maury, a Protestant Refugee from Gascony, in 1716, and the next year he joined his relations in this country. His son was the Rev. James Maury, of Albemarle, Virginia, a very estimable and useful clergyman of the Church of England. James was another son of the French preacher who made America his home, bringing with him his wife, child, mother-in-law, and thirteen servants, in 1717. Francis, in 1719, was ordained by the Bishop of London, on the particular recommendation of the Archbishop of Dublin, and then also sailed for Virginia. He became a very eloquent and popular preacher, and settled in St. Margaret's parish, King William county.
In the year 1721, Mr. Fontaine lost his most faithful, exemplary, and pious companion. 'A melancholy day,' he records in his autobiography, 'it was, that deprived me of my greatest earthly comfort and consolation. I was bowed down to the very dust; but it made me think of my own latter end, and made preparations to join her once more.' At the conclusion of his memoirs, he uses the following remarkable language:
'I feel the strongest conviction, that if you will take care of these memoirs, your descendants will read them with pleasure; and I here declare that I have been most particular as to the truth of all that is herein recorded.
'I hope God will bless the work, and that by His grace it may be a bond of union among you and your descendants, and that it may be an humble means of confirming you all in the fear of the Lord.
I am, dear children,
'Your tender father,
'James Fontaine.'