The Purcell Papers Volume I.

A noble Huguenot family, owning considerable property in Normandy, the LeFanus of Caen, were, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, deprived oftheir ancestral estates of Mandeville, Sequeville, and Cresseron; but, owingto their possessing influential relatives at the court of Louis theFourteenth, were allowed to quit their country for England, unmolested, withtheir personal property. We meet with John Le Fanu de Sequeville and CharlesLe 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 waspresented with William's portrait from his master's own hand. He afterwardsserved as a major of dragoons under Marlborough.
At the beginning of the eighteenthcentury, William Le Fanu was the sole survivor of his family. He marriedHenrietta Raboteau de Puggibaut, the last of another great and noble Huguenotfamily, whose escape from France, as a child, by the aid of a Roman Catholicuncle in high position at the French court, was effected after adventures ofthe most romantic danger