on
their journey to France were taken prisoners by the Dunkirkers, who
stripped them of all their property. They now settled at Bideford in
Devonshire, and here or near by were born Elizabeth and the rest of the
family. At a later period St. Michel served against the Spaniards at the
taking of Dunkirk and Arras, and settled at Paris. He was an unfortunate
man throughout life, and his son Balthasar says of him: "My father at
last grew full of whimsies and propositions of perpetual motion, &c., to
kings, princes and others, which soaked his pocket, and brought all our
family so low by his not minding anything else, spending all he had got
and getting no other employment to bring in more." While he was away
from Paris, some "deluding papists" and "pretended devouts" persuaded
Madame St. Michel to place her daughter in the nunnery of the Ursulines.
When the father heard of this, he hurried back, and managed to get
Elizabeth out of the nunnery after she had been there twelve days.
Thinking that France was a dangerous place to live in, he removed his
family to England, where soon afterwards his daughter was married,
although, as Lord Braybrooke remarks, we are not told how she became
acquainted with Pepys. St. Michel was greatly pleased that his daughter
had become the wife of a true Protestant, and she herself said to him,
kissing his eyes: "Dear father, though in my tender years I was by
my low fortune in this world deluded to popery, by the fond dictates
thereof I have now (joined with my riper years, which give me some
understanding) a man to my husband too wise and one too religious to the
Protestant religion to suffer my thoughts to bend that way any more."

[These particulars are obtained from an interesting letter from
Balthasar St. Michel to Pepys, dated "Deal, Feb. 8, 1673-4," and
printed in "Life, Journals, and Correspondence of Samuel Pepys,"
1841, vol. i., pp. 146-53.]

Alexander St. Michel kept up his character for fecklessness through
life, and took out patents for curing smoking chimneys, purifying water,
and moulding bricks. In 1667 he petitioned the king, asserting that he
had discovered King Solomon's gold and silver mines, and the Diary
of the same date contains a curious commentary upon these visions of
wealth:--

"March 29, 1667. 4s. a week which his (Balty St. Michel's) father
receives of the French church is all the subsistence his father and
mother have, and abo