| Description | Includes a will with special probate, 1742, pr 1743; papers relating to his death and estate including inventory, accounts, receipts and original will of 1736 (not proved); covenants from the Hospital to Duplessis to pay him life annuities related to capital payments by him to the Hospital at various dates, 1724-1740, totalling £5,055 and £500 Bank Stock; papers, 1740-1743, concerning his nephew Jacques Duplessis, junior, including report of committee on his circumstances and claims, n.d. (1743).
Jacques Duplessis senior, the uncle, who is called 'Ancien Garde du Roy' in one document and was an out-pensioner of Chelsea Hospital, is described in the earliest covenant (1724) as of St James's parish, Westminster, gentleman. Although he is said to have arrived in England almost penniless, he somehow acquired substantial means, and at the age of about 70, in 1723, decided to convey his money to the French Hospital. This he did by successive payments of capital between 1724 and 1740 in return for life annuities. The earliest gifts are recorded in the minutes anonymously, at his request. In 1729 he took up residence in the Hospital, where he died, aged about 90, in 1743.
He has been identified by C F A Marmoy, who tells the story of uncle and nephew in detail in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Huguenot Society (London: Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland), vol. XXIII, pp. 36-48, with a Jacques Duplessis who served, like a number of other Huguenot gentlemen refugees, in the ranks of the First Life Guards.
His nephew, Jacques Duplessis, junior, did not come over from France until 1736, when the uncle had already disposed of most of his capital, but the Hospital Directors, at their benefactor's request, agreed to subsidise the nephew during theological studies at Leyden, and on his return in November 1740 appointed him Chaplain to the Hospital. He was still disappointed at inheriting nothing from his uncle's fortune, and petitioned the Directors, who after going into the history of their relations with the uncle agreed to augment his stipend. He held the chaplaincy until his death in 1763. |