Paul Lorrain

Paul Lorrain (died 7 October 1719) was, for twenty-two years, the secretary, translator, and copyist for Samuel Pepys, and became well known as the Ordinary (chaplain) of Newgate Prison by standardising the publication of the gallows confessions of condemned prisoners.

Biography Lorrain was, by Pepys' account, of Huguenot extraction. He was taken on by Pepys as a secretary from 1678 and developed a close relationship lasting until Pepys's death in 1703. His responsibilities included transcription of records and cataloguing of Pepys's library; during his employment, he also published a number of Protestant polemical and devotional tracts. In the 1690s, Lorrain's Protestant theological leanings, perhaps together with concern for his future arising out of Pepys advancing years, led him to the Church of England. From his appointment until 1719 he compiled the official accounts of the dying speeches of criminals condemned to capital punishment and oversaw their printing in broadsheets; 48 of these broadsheets are in the British Museum. The confessions, to which are prefixed abstracts of Lorrain's 'funeral sermons,' are generally headed ''The Ordinary of Newgate, his Account of the Behaviour, Confession, and last Speech of X.,' &c. They were issued at eight o'clock on the morning following the execution, and signed Paul Lorrain, the public being warned against counterfeits and unauthorised accounts. Deborah Churchill (a "common strumpet" executed on 17 December 1708), and Jack Hall (1707). On some occasions, when 15 or even 20 condemned persons were executed at once, the confessions are proportionately abridged.

In a joint letter from Alexander Pope and Bolingbroke to Swift, dated December 1725, the 'late ordinary' is described ironically as the 'great historiographer.' The penitence of his clients is always described as so heartfelt that the latter are playfully called by Richard Steele 'Lorrain's Saints'.

Lorrain died at his house in Town Ditch, London, on 7 October 1719. He is said to have left £5,000. His post, which was in the gift of the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen, was keenly contested until 20 November when 'Mr. Purney, a young sucking divine of twenty-four years of age,' was elected 'at the recommendation of the very Orthodox Bishop of P——'.

Works Besides several sermons, including one on Popery near akin to Paganism and Atheism, dedicated to Harley (1712), and a translation of Pierre Muret's Rites of Funeral (1683), Lorrain brought out in 1702 a little book, entitled The Dying Man's Assistant, dedicated to Sir Thomas Abney, Lord Mayor, in addition to which he published and advertised on the vacant spaces of his Confessions various small manuals of medicine, devotion, corn-cutting, &c. – probably his own compilations. Other works include:

Marcus Minucius Felix Octavus, or, A Vindication of Christianity Against Paganism (1682) A Preparation of the Lord's Supper, to which are Added, Maxims of True Christianity (1688) A discourse of Christianity: laying open the abuses thereof in the Anti-Christian lives and worship of many of its professors; especially the Romanists; and shewing the way to a holy life in the character of a true Christian (1693) A way to salvation, or, The way to eternal bliss; being a collection of meditations and prayers suited to the exercise of a true Christian (1693)