David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

“ It is a great misfortune for you to be born in that religion, and that the Holy Ghost has not enlightened you. Withdraw.
I was remanded to the prison; and two hours after, the attorney-general came to tell me that if I would change my religion, I should have my pardon, and that they would help me to a good employment at Brest I gave him the same answer that I had given to the king’s attorney at St. Malo, namely, that I was ready to lose my life rather than renounce my religion; whereupon he went away, commanding to put me to the chain with some other galley slaves. ”

“ They are everyday threatened and tormented by priests and friars, who, being unable to convince them by reasons, think that severity alone can do it. To this I must add the trouble and vexation a Christian soul is afflicted with, to live with wicked and desperate fellows who never use the name of God but for cursing and swearing.
On the 3d of May, in the year 1694, orders came from court to transfer me into the prison of the citadel, and I was put into the same dungeon wherein Mr. Laubonniere, one of our most illustrious confessors, died seven months before. ”

“ They have only beans, and nothing else, for their food, with about 14 ounces of coarse bread a day, and ne’er a drop of wine whilst they are in port. They are devoured in winter by lice, and in summer by bugs and fleas, and forced to lie one upon another, as hogs in a sty. I shall not take notice in this place of the barbarity they are used with by the officers of the galleys, which is beyond imagination. The Protestants are obnoxious to all these miseries, and a great many other besides. They are not allowed to receive any money from their friends and relations, unless very privately. ”

“ Elie Neau, when only eighteen years of age, that is, in 1679, saw how persecution in France was always advancing to the climax of the extermination of the Protestants. Professor Weiss styles him “the chief of a great family from the principality of Soubise, in Saintonge.” Yet he made up his mind to be a voluntary exile. Being by profession a sailor, he had no dread of the ocean, and his first place of refuge was the island of St. Domingo. At the beginning of the reign of William and Mary he was at New York ”

“ Having continued six months in that pit, my fellow-sufferer happening to die, I was removed into the other with the other three confessors. As that poor man was in his agony, he heard the soldiers say that it was necessary to send for the chaplain ”