of the family property. They were unfortunate in all
their movements, and 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