THE DRUNKARD'S DREAM


MEMOIR
OF
JOSEPH SHERIDAN LE FANU.
------

A noble Huguenot family, owning
considerable property in Normandy, the Le
Fanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes, deprived of their ancestral estates
of Mandeville, Sequeville, and Cresseron; but,
owing to their possessing influential relatives at
the court of Louis the Fourteenth, were allowed
to quit their country for England, unmolested,
with their personal property. We meet with
John Le Fanu de Sequeville and Charles Le Fanu
de Cresseron, as cavalry officers in William the
Third's army; Charles being so distinguished a
member of the King's staff that he was presented
with William's portrait from his master's own
hand. He afterwards served as a major of
dragoons under Marlborough.

At the beginning of the eighteenth century,
William Le Fanu was the sole survivor of his
family. He married Henrietta Raboteau de
Puggibaut, the last of another great and noble
Huguenot family, whose escape from France, as