This page details the origin of the British de Vismes family, and how they came to claim the title of princes in the 19th century.
The Daily Telegraph on Nov. 4, 2006 carried a death notice as follows:
"James Arnold Godfray Martin St Valery, Sovereign Count de Vismes, Ponthieu et St Valery" who died on 26 October 2006, aged 90.
This notice, posted to rec.heraldry, prompted my curiosity. What British family could claim such exalted French titles?
In short, the family in question descends from two brothers, French Huguenots who moved to London around 1714 and settled there. A century later, one of their grandsons imagined that he was a French count, and sought recognition both in France and the U.K., on the basis of forgeries and with the help of the founder of Burke's Peerage. At the next generation the claims inflated to "prince" and "royal highness". Although the descent is now extinct in male line, the false title has persisted, and may yet continue...
Personal note: Since I first posted about this in 2006, I have been asked why I took such an interest in this story. There are several reasons. I find the stories of the French Huguenots fascinating, and this is a typical example. I also find stories of impostures and false claims fascinating as well: I wonder how the falsehoods come about, and how they can be so easily accepted. I also want to correct the record when possible, and also give warning to others about the reliability of certain sources (in this case, John Burke). As it turns out, judging by the (slight) volume of email I have received over the years, this story is of interest to others as well.
The case is interesting because it highlights the role of the genealogist John Burke, founder of Burke's Peerage and other publications, in the invention of this fanciful claim. Burke served as de Vismes's agent in France, and later inserted a rather fanciful account of the de Vismes ancestry in his publications.
The family in question is issued from two French brothers, Pierre and Philippe de Visme, who probably arrived in London in the early 1700s (they seem unrelated to the numerous de Visme lineage in 17th c. Canterbury).
They were naturalized, Philippe on 23 Jan 1710 and Peter on 5 Jul 1717 by act of Parliament (private act 3 Geo I n. 33, "an Act to naturalize John Jacob Heldt, Theodore van Rheden and others"), and their marriages and descent can be readily traced through the registers of the French Protestant church at St. Martin Orgars, London. It is thus clear that they were French Protestants; I will return to their French origins below.
The lives of the two brothers are quite parallel. "Philipp DeVisme" first appears on the tax rolls in 1716 in St Lawrence Jewry precinct, Cheap Ward; later in St Mary Aldermary Lower Precinct (from 1729 to 1732, with his brother Peter) then on Broad Street (until 1754). Peter and Philip were admitted the same day (22 Oct 1728) into the freedom of the City, among the haberdashers. They both married with French Huguenots, Philippe first in 1716 and his brother Peter in 1717. All their children were baptized at St. Martin Orgars. Both describe themselves as merchants in their wills; Peter is described in the Gentleman's Magazine at his death as a "Hamburg merchant", i.e., trading with that city. They are listed in The Universal Pocket Companion as "Devisme, Peter and Philip" on Throgmorton Street until 1745, when "Devisme Peter and son" set up in Bartholomew Lane, while "Philip and son" (which becomes "Devisme William" after Philip's death in 1756) continues on Throgmorton Street.
The second generation continues mostly in the trading business.
Of Peter's surviving sons Pierre/Peter, Jean/John, and David are merchants (the last in Silesia), while his second son Philip moves to New York. Of Philip's surviving sons, the eldest Andrew (1718-79) and the youngest William (1729-81) were merchants in London like their father: William continuing in Throgmorton St while Andrew formed "Devisme and Courant" on Lothbury St., moving in 1767 to Cannon St and later back to Throgmorton. Later in life William becomes a director of the Royal Exchange Assurance Company. Of Philip's four other sons, Stephen worked for the East India Company in Canton, China (after his death in 1770, there was a family lawsuit over his will: Devisme v. Mello, 1 Brown Ch. Cases 537). Gerard became a merchant in Portugal (in the firm of Purry, Mellis and Devisme), made a fortune in the diamond trade with Brazil, and lived for a few years in the estate of Monserrate, Sintra before returning to England. Leo worked in the West Indies; and only Louis (1720-76) took a different route, training first for the clergy and then turning to diplomacy, starting as secretary to the British ambassadors in Florence, Madrid, and St. Petersburg and eventually minister to the German Diet in 1769 (see the entry in the Osford dictionary of National Biography).
In this second generation, those who marry still do so within the French Huguenot community and worship in the French Protestant church (Spitalfields), but by the time of their deaths they are integrating into the gentry, residing outside London, and styled Esquires.
Portrait of Gerard de Visme, by Thomas Hickey (National Trust, Tyntesfield)
Gerard de Visme's bookplate, 1797 (source: jjhc.info)
Bookplate of Revd Edward Auriol Hay Drummond, showing his arms impaling Visme (his first wife was
Elizabeth, daughter of William (d. 1790) and sister of Elisha William) and Auriol (his second wife m. 1791
was Amelia Emily Auriol).
At the third generation Peter's male line dies out: the last being Samuel DeVisme, who died in 1793 in Barbados. The third generation descended from Philip also thins out considerably: Lewis the diplomat, Stephen the Canton merchant, and Leo the West Indies merchant died unmarried; Gerard the Portugal merchant had only one daughter. Only Andrew and William, the London marchants, left male issue: Andrew had Philip Nathaniel (1744-1817), and William had Elisha William (1758-1840) and James (1758-1826).
Philip Nathaniel continued as a merchant (in partnership with Henry Smith and his mother's relative John Spencer Webb, from 1784 with Smith alone, in Turnwheel Street); his two sons Philip (d. 1828) and Gerard (d. 1835) died without issue, and his daughter Louisa had issue. By the early 20th c. the senior descendant was Louisa Thomas, who had in her possessions the "relics" of the DeVisme family, including a portrait of Philip's wife Marianne de la Méjanelle. The de Visme ancestry was remembered in the given names of her children and grandchildren, but she was under no illusion about the "princely" origins of her family (see her correspondance with Henry Wagner, Huguenot Library, london).
William's two sons were Elisha William and Andrew, a barrister in Gloucestershire. The eldest, named after his maternal grandfather Élysée Auriol (a Huguenot originally from Castres in southern France), entered a military career in 1779. By the time of the French Revolutionary Wars he was an officer in the Coldstream Guards, saw action at the battle of Linselles in August 1793, and had reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel in 1794. His military career does not seem to go further. At the age of 44 he marries Jeanne Salt, sister of Henry Salt, the British consul in Egypt and an early collector of Egyptian antiquities (many now in the Louvre and the British Museum). He lives in Somerset and later in Devonshire, and has two sons, William and Henry, and a daughter Eliza Jane.
In the Regency period, then, the descendants of Peter and Philip DeVisme, after a century, have thoroughly
assimilated: they are Anglicans, fully gentrified, marry well, and live in the country. None are merchants
any more: most are quite well off, and regularly styled "Esq", though nothing more.
A few examples from Newent, Gloucestershire: "James De Visme Esq of New Court" on a slab in memory
of his wife in the nave of the parish church, Andrew John De Visme "younger son of William De Visme
of Beckenham in Kent Esq" in the churchyard.
Sometime in the 1820s Elisha William (E. W.) started styling himself as "count" (he later changed the spelling of his name from "DeVisme" or "De Visme" to "de Vismes"). When exactly is not clear: in the Literary Examiner of 15 Jun 1834, a review of a recent biography of Henry Salt mentioned that "his widow subsequently married Lieutenant-Colonel de Vismes, of the Guards, who having lately succeeded to a title, she is now la Comtesse de Vismes." This is the earliest appearance in print that I find; if we trust the documents provided by E. W. in support of his claims (see below), he began using the title in the 1820s. In newspapers his eldest son William is styled "vicomte de Visme" at his marriage in 1832 and at the birth of his sons in France in 1833 and 1835. His younger son is styled "baron de Visme" at the birth of his eldest son in 1835, then count de Vismes in 1837 Note that E. W. only became the senior male-line descendent of Philip de Visme in 1835, when the line of his uncle Andrew died out.
Then, in September 1838 the Morning Post mentions the "baron de Vismes" (presumably E. W.'s younger son Henry); then, in February 1839 a number of local newspapers in southwestern England (Bath Chronicle, Woolmer's Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, Salisbury and Winchester Journal) carry a notice that the title of count had been recently recognized by the French government for E. W. The substance of this statement would be repeated in Burke's Peerage for a hundred years, and Ruvigny's Titled Nobility of Europe (1914, p. 1528) stated "recognition of count de Vismes [F. mpr.] for Elisee William by French govt 1 Sep 1838".
As we shall see, things were rather more complex.
In February 1838, John Burke, the founder of Burke's Peerage, and Antoine Perpigna, a Parisian lawyer specialized in patent law, filed with the "Conseil du Sceau" at the French ministry of Justice (the bureau in charge of validating inheritances of titles) a request for the recognition of the title of "comte de Visme de Cayeu" on behalf of Elisha (Elysée) William de Vismes, colonel of the Coldstream Guards and grandson of Philippe de Vismes. The contents of the file are reproduced here.
It was explained that the petitioner was desirous formally to use his title of count in Britain, particularly during the upcoming coronation festivities (Victoria's coronation in June 1838), and he had been advised that, in order to obtain formal recognition in Britain, he needed a formal recognition from the country of origin, in this instance France. John Burke, who was already gaining notoriety for his genealogical writings and would soon publish the first edition of his Peerage, acted as de Vismes' attorney in France.
The initial papers filed included a petition to the French minister of justice signed "de Visme" in Southampton, Feb 13, 1838; a letter from Burke, and two genealogical notices by Saint-Alais and by Somerset Herald (James Cathrow Disney). Burke wrote again on Feb. 27 and March 7, asking for a swift answer. Then, on March 16, he asked to withdraw the supporting documentation to update and improve it. Finally, in March, he was told that his petition was incomplete and in any case needed to be filed by one of the accredited solicitors (référendaires du sceau). Burke chose a solicitor named Grossot Devercy, who signed the subsequent petition.
The petition from Grossot Devercy had five supporting documents:
.jpg)
The file contains additional documents, particularly:
On May 28 a letter was sent to Lord Brougham to assure him that the petition would soon be addressed.
The file in the French national archives contains the report on the petition, presented to the commission of the Seal on May 22. The reporter concluded that the petition should be rejected, for a variety of reasons. The pedigree of Somerset Herald was rejected as insufficient because it was not certified by six to eight gentlemen of the county of residence of the family (a procedure which was deemed necessary to make the document authentic). The documents provided did not fully prove the descent, nor did it prove that the petitioner was an eldest son and his father an eldest son.
The key point, however, was that it made no sense to ask the French authorities to establish the claim to a title on the basis of British documents. It was possible to establish a claim to a title by documenting that the title was lawfully used for three generations. But only British authorities could make that judgment. And it was illogical to ask the French authorities to recognize the title when the only purpose was to convince the British authorities to recognize the title.
The reporter then added a note: considering the recommendation from Lord Brougham, the minister might consider writing a careful letter to the petitioner, and proposed a draft of such a letter, stating that "I think one could not dispute him the right to continue to use a title that he would have thus received from his forebears". The chair of the commission approved the idea, and the minister endorsed it. A letter was written in those terms on June 5 to colonel de Vismes.
The colonel immediately applied for recognition of the title in Britain with the Home Office, and his solicitor withdrew the documents in English that had been submitted (certified translations remained in the file).
At about the same time, Elisee William de Vismes petitioned for a Royal Licence to bear the French title of count de Vismes. The petition, sent to the Home Office, was referred to the College of Arms, which stated that "there was no precedent for such a grant without the previous production of the original patent".
On August 7, the French minister of justice received a letter from his colleague at Foreign Affairs. The British authorities thought that the letter of June 5 was not official, and asked for an explicit statement as to the recognition of the title in France. This request must have created some embarrassment for the French officials, as the multiple drafts of a response suggest. In the end, the minister replied that the letter of June 5 contained the exact expression of his opinion on the matter, and reiterated the deliciously ambiguous phrasing that "one could not, in [the minister's] opinion, dispute a title that he held in such manner from his ancestors". Fearing perhaps that the phrasing was too subtle, a sentence was added to the letter: "furthermore the documents presented to me must be the same as those presented to the English government in support of his request, and that government can therefore assess them and form an opinion". This letter was sent to the French minister of Foreign Affairs on September 1, 1838 and forwarded to the British ambassador.
This letter clearly achieved its effect: in October Burke was again in Paris and transmitted a letter from Lord Brougham explaining how this last sentence had created additional difficulties for de Vismes with the Home Office, who now claimed that the French authorities were suggesting that the British authorities investigate the whole matter themselves. Surely this was not the French minister's intention, and a word to say so would dispel doubts raised only by the greed of British bureaucrats. A reply was sent to Burke on November 25, curtly referring him to the letters of June 5 and September 1 (an explicit sentence in a first draft: "the explanations you request would be more damaging than useful to your client" was removed from the final version). Burke chose not to insist.
In the end the Home Office declined to submit the application for consideration to the Queen.
In July 1840 his younger son Henry (1808-75) wrote again on behalf of his ill father to the Home Secretary (HO 44/52, fol. 585-587) pressing for recognition. The Home Secretary declined to reconsider the case, and the correspondence dragged on, the vicomte writing in vain several rambling (if not incoherent) letters in 1844 and 1846, without receiving replies (he also sent a petition to the Queen in April 1846). he claimed to have a letter dated 8 Oct 1838 informing him that the Queen had agreed to allow assumption of the foreign title. He finally asked for his correspondence to be returned to him, which was denied. His correspondence makes it clear that, as of 1844, the British de Vismes now considered themselves to be a collateral branch of the sovereign comtes de Ponthieu, though they only claimed the title of count.
Separately, E. W.'s older son William (1805-77) wrote in March 1843 to the Queen, breezily asking for an audience before departing for some years on the continent. He wrote again to Lord Aberdeen (Foreign Secretary) in April asking for an immediate audience; Lord Aberdeen declined.
In 1865 and 1867 the matter was taken up again by Henry's eldest son Henry Auriol Douglas (1835-93), then a captain in the Royal Artillery, asking for copies of the correspondence and for an explanation why the petition had been denied. He was told that a copy of the correspondence could not be provided. He also cited the letter of 8 Oct 1838, but there was no trace of such a letter in the Home Office. The notes in the file mention that "an offer was made to pay L1000 into the Privy Purse" and that the correspondance on this subject "extends over a period of many years"...
It seems that further efforts were made to secure a royal license for the title in Britain. In 1896, the College of Arms asked through the british ambassador in Paris from the French authorities a copy of the decree confering the title of count on Elisha William de Vismes, a decree they thought dated to 1832. Being told that there was none, they asked to look under "Vismes de Ponthieu", then to look under 1838. Finally, they were told that there was no such decree at any date, the only title conferred on anyone with the name of Vismes between 1808 and 1848 was that of baron in January 1814 to Valéry de Vismes, sous-préfet of Vervins. In 1899 the College of Arms, having obtained a copy of the September 1, 1838 letter, asked for a copy of the minute in the file where the "faithful expression of the opinion" of the minister of justice on the title and nobiliary status of de Vismes was expressed, and the French authorities simply sent back a copy of the letter of June 5 (which the letter of September 1 merely repeated!).
Burke's failure to secure a clear confirmation in 1838 did not deter him from including the de Vismes in the "foreign titles" section of his Peerage, but now abandoned the connection to the Blocquel de Croix de Wismes. Perhaps he had noticed that the Wismes in their case was located in Artois, not in Ponthieu, and spelled with a W rather than a V. Perhaps, more to the point, he learned that the family was not extinct at all (it is still extant). It seemed safer to postulate a connection to the house that first owned the barony of Vismes, before it passed by marriage to the Cayeux. This meant, of course, abandoning the title of "Vismes de Cayeux", but claiming that this family was a junior branch of the counts of Ponthieu allowed to adopt the title of "Vismes de Ponthieu".
A notice ran as follows in The Standard (26 Jan 1839):
Better yet, the title could be upgraded from "count" to "prince", and become available German-style to all members of the family, not just the first-born. Indeed E. W.'s eldest son William had begun using the style "comte de Vismes, prince de Ponthieu" as early as 1839 (Exeter Gazette, 27 Jul 1839, p. 3: "the Count W. de Vismes, Prince de Porthieu [sic]"; 18 Oct 1839, p. 3: "the Count W. de Vismes Prince de Ponthieu and her Highness the Countess W. de Vismes Princesse de Po nthieu and his relatives the Count Onesiphore de Vismes Prince de Ponthieu, Comte and Comtesse des Reyle"). The Bath Chronicle noticed the death of E. W. as "His Highness Colonel le Comte de Vismes, prince de Ponthieu".
There was some dissension between E. W.'s sons William and Henry. Judging from the following letters to the Morning Post (19 Dec 1840 and 5 Jan 1841), E. W. had disinherited his eldest son William and placed Henry in succession to his invented title of count.
William gave his children born in 1833 and 1835 the names of Theobald Raoul William and Angilbert Valery, reminiscent of the names used by the Carolingian counts of Ponthieu. Meanwhile his younger brother Henry was styling himself "baron" and presented as such, both at the French court (29 Dec 1839) and British court (17 Apr 1839), though he later used the style of "vicomte de Vismes". The descendants of William's eldest son Theobald Raoul William used the name "de Vismes de Ponthieu" throughout, although the Army Lists never give them any title (his widow ceased using the style of countess some years before her death). And so we see in the Times that the wife of of Theobald is called "Princess Theobald de Vismes et de Ponthieu" in 1859 (as he was styled "Prince" at his marriage in St Helier, Jersey); that "HRH the Prince de Vismes et de Ponthieu &c &c &c" is on the committee of the Corinthian Club in 1870, and "HRH Prince de Vismes" on the committee of the Regent Club in 1872, etc.
Bookplate of De Visme (Walter Hamilton: French Book-plates, 1896,
p. 163)
Burke's Peerage, 1938, p. 2701 (under "foreign titles of nobility")
Other members of the family were less formal. The descendants of Henry remained "de Vismes", while the issue of E.W.'s younger brother James mostly retained the spelling "de Visme" and eschewed the titles. The exception was James's grandson Julius Sullivan, who started calling himself prince in the 1860s (at his marriage in 1848 he still signs plainly "J. S. de Visme") and is styled in the 1871 British census "SAR le Prince Julius S V ch de Ponthieu" with rank of "noble of the Empire of France"; all his children are "SAR Prince/ss". This Julius Sullivan went bankrupt in Bridgwater where he lived, moved to Wales and later to Romsey where he died in 1876.
What remains of the family and title? As far as I can tell, E. W. had two sons William and Henry. William had two sons, only the eldest had issue, still extant today in male line. Henry had many sons but none had issue and the last died in 1921. E.W.'s only brother James had issue, extinct in male line with Robert Raoul St Valery de Visme (+1956).
What of the "prince" whose death in 2006 prompted my research? He descends from the only daughter of "Prince" Julius Sullivan (grandson of James, great-nephew of E.W.): Lilian Jane married Edwin Godfray and had two sons and two daughters. Neither son had sons but they had daughters, one of whom at least still has living issue. One of the daughters, Geraldine Irene Godfray, married John Martin, and their younger son is the James Arnold Godfray Martin who assumed the title of prince. Why he thought that he could do so while the male line of Elisha William is still extant is anyone's guess.
The county of Ponthieu originates in a march created in the 8th century by the Frankish monarhy. Roughly speaking the county passed by inheritance to the kings of England from whom it was confiscated in 1336, 1360, and lastly in 1380. Thereafter it was given as apanage to various people, lastly the Angoulêmes, a legitimated line of Charles IX. The county was briefly (June-Sept 1710) part of the apanage of the duc de Berry. The last owner of the county was Charles, comte d'Artois, younger brother of Louis XVI, who received it as part of his apanage in 1773. He later became king of France in 1824 (at a time when feudal titles and apanages had been abolished) but after his overthrow in 1830 used the style of "comte de Ponthieu" as an incognito. Since Charles X's first port of call after his overthrow was the UK (from August 1830 to October 1832), with the comical implication that there may have been two comtes de Ponthieu at the same time in the same place.
The barony of Vismes (Somme, zip code 80140) was a fief within the county of Ponthieu. It passed from the family of Cayeux to the family of Monchy in the 14th century, and as late as Sept. 1665 it was still owned by the Monchy family (François de Monchy, son and heir of Charles de Monchy, baron of Vismes, gave homage).
The barony of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme (Somme, zip code 80230), a fief in the county of Amiens, passed from the Melun family with Isabelle to the Artois comtes d'Eu, then to the house of Bourgogne-Nevers along with Eu and followed the county of Nevers through the houses of La Marck and Gonzaga until the mid-17th c., when it passed by sale to the house of Rouault de Gamaches which still owned it in 1737.
It's not a little puzzling to see someone claiming all three titles at the same time, given their very disparate histories.
As we saw, the first claim made by Elisha William de Visme was a relation to the French family Blocquel de La Croix de Wismes. In his initial submission to the French authorities, his solicitor admitted that the Bloquel were "perhaps less noteworthy than those of Cayeux and Monchy" but still of ancient nobility, and the documents he submitted proved, according to him, the descent of Elisha William from that family.
Of course the documents proved no such thing, and within a few months any putative connection with the Blocquel family was forgotten. What the documents did show, taken at face value, were that:
But the documents can't be taken at face value: one of them is a patent forgery, namely the supposed copy of the burial register of Philip in 1756. The (original doesn't use the style of "comte" contrary to the statement of R. Gibbs, clerk of Clapham parish (who was no doubt compensated for the violence he did to his conscience). I have not yet seen the original list of members of St. Martin Orgars for 1716, nor the burial register for Beckenham Kent for 1781, but I doubt very much that they show a style of "count". As for the funeral monument of William de Visme in Beckenham, there seems to be no trace (see this 1922 description of monuments in St. George, Beckenham); it may well exist but is unlikely to show him a count, since the monument to his widow at St. Mary the Virgin (Stanton Drew, Somerset) describes her as "widow of the late William de Visme, of Beckenham in Kent, Esq.re" and not as a countess.
In short, the documents submitted that were authentic merely showed E. W.'s descent from Philip, the forgeries were designed to support the idea that they were called counts, and nowhere was anything shown regarding the origin of the brothers Peter and Philip in France.
The French officials were prepared to accept that three generations of de Visme had been called counts, because they took the documents at face value. Even then, they could not certify anything .
The one thread that connects the whole de Visme[s] family to France is the naturalization act of 1717, which lists "Peter Devisme, son of Peter Devisme, by Mary his wife, born at Gouy in Picardy" (see Commons Journal, 18:615; the name is often misspelled Couy in secondary sources). There were several Gouy in Picardy at the time, but the relevant one is undoubtedly Gouy-L'Hôpital, now part of Hornoy-le-Bourg, in the Somme. At the time it was a small village of less than 50 households, but consulting the parish registers (which begin in 1692) one finds several individuals named "Devisme", several of whom are recorded as abjuring Protestantism.
Nineteenth c. sources document the descendants of Jean de Visme, a "laboureur" (husbandman or plowman) in Gouy-l'Hôpital, remained mostly Protestant, and as such were increasingly the victims of persecution in the 17th and 18th centuries. A number of them emigrated to England, where their distant cousins were already established in Canterbury. From Jean the descent can be traced to Marin (b. 1604), Jean (1638-85), who left Pierre (1657-87) and Jean (c1662-after 1702). The latter Jean's great-great grandson Léon de Visme was sous-prefet under Napoleon I in 1814 and ex officio received the title of baron d'Empire. Pierre is said to have left three sons: André (1679-1726) whose descent still exists in France, Pierre (ca 1685-1768) and Philippe (15 Sep 1687-26 Oct 1763), both emigrating to England in the early 18th century. So, as it turns out, the authors of the British branch were younger brothers.
There is another Devisme or de Visme family in northern France, originating in Jean de Vismes, a local judge in the Quesnoy region (near Valenciennes, in French Flanders) in the mid-16th c., married to Annette Courchel. He is the ancestor of the de Visme of Amiens, Abbeville, and Paris, all Catholics. The Paris branch was represented in the 18th century by Pierre Martin de Vismes (1711-77), who became secretaire du Roi in 1757 and thus acquired hereditary nobility. He had made a fortune in the tax collection business, and two of his sons worked in the tax farms. His daughter, made "dame du lit" of Queen Marie Antoinette, married the court banker Laborde and later a member of the Rohan-Chabot family. His eldest son Joseph-Jacques-Martin (1741-95) was a military officer, his younger son Anne-Pierre-Jacques de Vismes de Valgay (1745-1819) was director of the Paris opera in the 1770s at the time of the composer Gluck's arrival; and the third son Alphonse-Denis-Marie de Vimes de St Alphonse (1746-1792) was a farmer general. The line became extinct in 1861. The Abbeville branch, also descended from Marin, is still extant.
The following genealogy of the descendants of Peter and Philip de Visme is based largely on original documents. I initially started from Burke's Peerage (1874, 1938: the last edition with a section on foreign titles), Annuaire de la Noblesse de France 1865 (p. 223-228, largely based on various editions of Burke's Peerage), Burke's Commoners (IV:321), Ruvigny's Titled Nobility (1914, p. 1528). But these secondary sources are not always reliable and I have corrected as much as possible, though errors may remain.
Pierre de Visme (+3 Feb 1768, probate 16 Feb 1768)
admitted into freedom of City of London (haberdasher) 22 Oct 1728)
Hamburg merchant; of Bartholomew Lane, later Clapham
~ (27 Jun 1717 London) Madelaine Beaufils (bur. St Bartholomew 10 Sep 1760)
all children baptized at St Martin Orgars
Philippe (15 Sep 1687-buried 25 Oct 1756, Clapham, Surrey)
~ (26 Jul 1716, Spring Gardens Chapel, Charing Cross) Marianne de la Méjanelle
(d. 16 Feb 1779)
all children baptized at St Martin Orgars
This sketch is based on the pages of Philippe Roelly's pages on Protestant genealogy in Picardy. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the lineage. It seems plausible enough, but I would want to check in the original sources now that they are online: but Catholic registers for Gouy only start in 1692, and have lacunae (1712-1730s).
The account is substantially the same as the one that appeared in the Annuaire de la Noblesse de France 1883, p. 216, except that the Annuaire identifies Marin's brother Jean with the ancestor of the Abbeville branch above (Jean ~ Catherine Lebas).This account comes from La Famille de Vismes by Philippe and Nicole Baudard de Fontaine (Éditions de Villiers 2005). It covers the descent from Jean de Vismes and Annette Courchel.
Jean de Vismes
~ Annette Courchel
sergent royal au bailliage d'Amiens, maître-priseur de biens (prov. 27 fév 1582)
~ ?
clerc au greffe civil du bailliage d'Amiens
~ 1598 Jeanne Legrand