The Huguenots: History and Memory in Transnational Context (Studies in the History of Christian Thought)

The Huguenots: History and Memory in Transnational Context

Studies in the History of Christian Traditions General Editor

Robert J. Bast Knoxville, Tennessee In cooperation with

Henry Chadwick, Cambridge Paul C.H. Lim, Nashville, Tennessee Eric Saak, Liverpool Brian Tierney, Ithaca, New York Arjo Vanderjagt, Groningen John Van Engen, Notre Dame, Indiana Founding Editor

Heiko A. Oberman†

VOLUME 156

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/shct

Walter C. Utt

The Huguenots: History and Memory in Transnational Context Essays in Honour and Memory of Walter C. Utt

Edited by

David J. B. Trim

LEIDEN • BOSTON LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

Cover Illustration: Joseph-Nicolas Robert–Fleury, ‘Scène de la Saint–Barthélemy, assassinat de Briou, gouverneur du Prince de Conti, 24 août 1572’, 1833 (Paris, musée du Louvre, inv. 7673) This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Huguenots : history and memory in transnational context : essays in honour and memory of Walter C. Utt / edited by David J.B. Trim. p. cm. -- (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; v. 156) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-20775-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Huguenots--History. I. Trim, D. J. B. (David J. B.) II. Utt, Walter C. BX9454.3.H88 2011 284’.509--dc22 2011015899

ISSN 1573-5664 ISBN 978 90 04 20775 2 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. ­ Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS Acknowledgments������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ vii Contributors����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xi Abbreviations������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� xiii In Appreciation of Walter Utt................................................................. xv     Stanley G. Payne Walter C. Utt, My Colleague..................................................................xxi     Eric Anderson 1. The Huguenots and the Experience of Exile (Sixteenth to   Twentieth Centuries): History, Memory   and Transnationalism������������������������������������������������������������������������1     D. J. B. Trim 2.  The Huguenots and the St Bartholomew’s Massacre���������������������� 43     H. H. Leonard 3. ‘Sham of Liberty of Conscience’: Huguenots   and the Problem of Religious Toleration   in Restoration England������������������������������������������������������������������ 69     Gregory Dodds 4. How dangerous, the Protestant stranger?   Huguenots and the formation of British identity,  c.1685–1715����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 103    Lisa Clark Diller 5. Strains of Worship: The Huguenots   and Non-conformity�������������������������������������������������������������������� 121     Robin Gwynn 6. The Huguenots and the European Wars   of Religion, c.1560–1697: Soldiering in National   and Transnational Context���������������������������������������������������������� 153     D. J. B. Trim

vi contents  7. Models of an Imagined Community:   Huguenot Discourse on Identity and Foreign Policy������������ 193     David Onnekink  8. The Huguenots in British and Hanoverian   External Relations in the Early Eighteenth Century�������������� 217      Andrew C. Thompson  9. Exile, Integration and European Perspectives:   Huguenots in the Pays de Vaud������������������������������������������������ 241      Vivienne Larminie 10. Testaments of Faith: Wills of Huguenot   refugees in England as a Window on their Past�������������������� 263        Randolph Vigne 11. The Memory of the Huguenots in   North America: Protestant History and Polemic������������������� 285    Paul McGraw Index�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 305

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book was created in the belief that examining history and memory through the lens of a particular transnational community—the Huguenots—in the longue durée has the potential to provide uncommon and valuable insights into the academically fashionable areas of memory and transnationalism. It is the editor and contributors’ belief that the essays that follow also cast new light on several aspects of Huguenot history. Yet while this book is intended as a contribution to scholarship in its own right, it also has another purpose. It is a (very belated) festschrift for the late Walter C. Utt (1921–85), long-time Professor of History at Pacific Union College, in Angwin, California. Given that he was an historian of early-modern France, perhaps the French term hommage is more appropriate in this case than the German festschrift. Regardless of term, this collection of studies on Huguenot history, chiefly of the late–seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries—a subject of which Walter Utt became a master—is intended to commemorate an outstanding teacher and excellent scholar, who, at his untimely death, left behind only one monograph, a handful of articles, and two historical novels. His passing was untimely in that, although he was not young at his death (at age 64), he was not particularly elderly, and indeed he is still survived by two brothers now in their eighties, which suggests the world of scholarship lost many productive years. Happily, Utt’s second monograph (and masterwork), on Claude Brousson, was posthumously brought to publication.* However, the admiration a number of scholars and former students felt for Walter Utt, and the sense that his career would, in happier circumstances, have produced more excellent books, prompted the idea of a volume in his honour and memory, to mark the 25th anniversary of his death. This book owes a great deal to the support of the Walter C. Utt Endowment at Pacific Union College and of two Presidents of PUC,

* Walter C. Utt and Brian E. Strayer, The Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson and Protestant Resistance to Louis XIV, 1647–1698 (Brighton and Portland, Oreg.: Sussex Academic Press, 2003).

viii acknowledgments Richard Osborn and his successor, Heather Knight. The Utt Endowment provided a generous subsidy towards the cost of publication and also funded my appointment to a second year as Walter Utt Professor of History at the college, which provided the necessary time to complete editorial work. I gratefully acknowledge the members of the Endowment’s board for their practical and moral support: Vic Aagaard, Bruce Anderson, Eric Anderson, Martha Utt-Billington, Arleen Downing, Steve Herber, Wayne Jacobsen, Nancy LeCourt, Grant Mitchell, Amy Rosenthal, David Westcott, and Elle Wheeler. I am also grateful to John Collins, Paul McGraw, Dick Osborn and Leo Ranzolin, who took the practical steps to turn the Utt Endowment’s financial support into an extension of my tenure of the Utt Chair at PUC. Above all, I am beholden to Bruce and Audrey Anderson, without whom this festschrift would certainly have been neither commenced nor completed. I appreciated the efficient and enthusiastic support of Adugnaw Worku, Gilbert Abella, Karen Thomas and other librarians at Pacific Union College Library in developing the Walter Utt collection in the Library and in obtaining materials needed for chapters 1, 6 and 11. In addition, I am greatly indebted to the Folger Shakespeare Library, for awarding me a fellowship in 2009, and to the supremely competent and considerate reading room staff for their help during time at the Folger in 2009 and 2010, when the introduction was researched and drafted, and my own essay revised. For permission to use Joseph–Nicolas Robert–Fleury’s ‘Scène de la St–Barthélemy’ (1833) on the cover I am obliged to France’s Réunion des musées nationaux and I thank Cristina Sanchez of its Agence photographique for her help in obtaining an image of this evocative painting. I am grateful to Bruce Anderson, Eric Anderson, Peter Balderstone, Felicity Stout and Wendy Trim for helpful conversations about history and memory; and to Lisa Diller, Greg Dodds, Matthew Glozier, David Onnekink, and Randolph Vigne, for arranging or participating in conference panels on Huguenot history that were very helpful in developing chapters in this volume. Finally, I take this opportunity to acknowledge my indebtedness and gratitude to Robin Briggs, Mark Greengrass, Alan James, David Parrott, Guy Rowlands, and Randolph Vigne—from them, over the last 15 years, in many enlightening and enjoyable conversations, I have learned much about the Huguenots, early-modern France, and good scholarship. It is a pleasure to be

acknowledgments ix part of the community of scholars—the transnational ‘republic of letters’—that was vitally important to many of the people examined in the chapters that follow. David Trim Angwin, Calif., Reading, Berks., and Washington, DC, 2009 and 2010

CONTRIBUTORS Eric Anderson is President of Southwestern Adventist University; his publications include Race and Politics in North Carolina, 1872–1901 (Louisiana State University Press, 1981). Lisa Clark Diller is Assistant Professor of History at Southern Adventist University. Gregory Dodds is Professor of History at Walla Walla University and the author of Exploiting Erasmus: The Erasmian Legacy and Religious Change in Early Modern England (University of Toronto Press, 2009). Robin Gwynn is a distinguished authority on Huguenot history and seventeenth-century English history, on which he has published widely; he was Director of the 1985 British ‘Huguenot Heritage’ tercentenary commemoration under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II. Vivienne Larminie is Research Fellow at The History of Parliament. As well as publishing on seventeenth-century England, she contributed several entries on Huguenots to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and has written on religion in the Pays de Vaud. H. H. Leonard held the Walter Utt Chair of History at Pacific Union College in 2002, after teaching for 32 years at Newbold College in England. Paul McGraw is Professor of History at Pacific Union College. David Onnekink is Assistant Professor of History at the Universiteit Utrecht, in the Netherlands. He is the author of The Anglo-Dutch Favourite, the career of Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland (Ashgate, 2007) and editor or co-editor of four other books. Stanley G. Payne is Hilldale–Jaume Vicens Vives Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is a leading authority on both the history of European fascism and the history of Spain, and the author of fourteen books on Spanish and modern European history.

xii contributors Andrew C. Thompson is College Lecturer in History at Queens’ College, University of Cambridge. He is the author of Britain, Hanover and the Protestant Interest (Boydell & Brewer, 2006) and George II (Yale University Press, 2011). D. J. B. Trim, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, is Director of the Archives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and held the Walter Utt Chair of History at Pacific Union College in 2008 and 2009. His recent publications include, as co-editor, Humanitarian intervention— a history (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and European Warfare 1350–1750 (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Randolph Vigne, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and one of the preeminent scholars of the Huguenot diaspora, was for many years Editor of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He has published widely on the history of minorities.

ABBREVIATIONS NB: Abbreviations used in only one chapter are indicated in the footnotes of the respective chapters. Add. MS BL: Additional Manuscripts AHR American Historical Review BL The British Library, London Bodl. Bodleian Library, Oxford Bull. SHPF Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic CSPF  Calendar of State Papers, Foreign Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth I Dunan-Page, Religious Culture  Anne Dunan-Page (ed.), The Religious Culture of the Huguenots, 1660–1750 (Ashgate: Aldershot, 2006) EHR English Historical Review FHS French Historical Studies Gwynn, ‘Conformity’  Robin Gwynn, ‘Conformity, Nonconformity and Huguenot Settle­ ment in England in the Later Seventeenth Century’, in DunanPage, Religious Culture, 23–41 HJ The Historical Journal HMC  Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts [Historical Manu­ scripts Commission], calendars and reports HSQS Huguenot Society of London [later, of Great Britain and Ireland], Quarto Series HSP Proceedings of the Huguenot Society [originally of London; later of Great Britain and Ireland] LPL Lambeth Palace Library

xiv abbreviations MS(S) Manuscript(s) OxDNB  Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford Univer­ sity Press, 2004. PRO The National Archives (UK), at The Public Record Office, Kew, England repr. Reprint SCJ Sixteenth Century Journal SP State Papers Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove Walter C. Utt and Brian E. Strayer, The Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson and Protestant Resistance to Louis XIV, 1647–1698, (Brighton and Portland, Oreg.: Sussex Academic Press, 2003) Vigne & Littleton, Strangers  Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (eds.), From strangers to citizens. The integration of immigrant communities in Britain, Ireland and colonial America, 1550–1750 (London/Brighton & Portland Oreg.: Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland/Sussex Academic Press, 2001) Wing Wing, Donald. Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America and of English Books Printed in Other Countries 1641–1700, 2nd edn, rev. and ed. John J. Morrison, Carolyn W. Nelson, Matthew Seccombe, et al, 4 vols. (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1982–98) WMQ The William and Mary Quarterly

In Appreciation of Walter C. Utt Stanley G. Payne Walter Utt returned to Pacific Union College in 1951 as assistant professor of history, the junior member of a two-man History Department chaired by George Meldrum. The division of labour was simple: Professor Meldrum taught American history and Professor Utt taught European history. So limited a focus seems strange nowadays, but in those years even the large university history departments did not go very far beyond European and American history. At PUC this required what today would be considered a heavy teaching schedule, involving a wide range of courses from the introductory to advanced and specialized upper division offerings. Walter Utt threw himself into this broad curriculum with energy and youthful enthusiasm. Those of us who were history majors got a large dose of courses by two professors, but this did not strike any of us as unusual, nor do I remember that we were ever bored. Classroom teaching at that time involved little or nothing in the way of visual aids, much less electronic projection, placing a special burden on professors to present lectures that were clear, interesting, pedagogically effective, and also not tedious. Walter Utt had begun to teach, in so far as I recall, as a teaching assistant during his doctoral studies at UC-Berkeley, and immediately revealed that he had a special calling. Good teaching on the college or university level involves a combination of intellect, organization, style or method, and personality, and he excelled in all of these. Only later, after I myself began to teach, did I appreciate the amount of work involved in preparing those courses, particularly during his first semesters. Over the years I have had teachers and also colleagues who were not always prepared for their classes and filled the gap by simply ‘winging it,’ shooting the breeze in semi-scholarly fashion to fill in the time, or eliciting an unusual amount of student discussion and participation in order not to have to do very much of their own in that particular class. I do not recall that this ever happened once in the case of Professor Utt’s courses. Some lectures were naturally a little more dense than others, but all were seriously prepared and engaging.

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The Utt lecture style involved the preparation of basic lecture notes for each class, but these were rather informal and consisted simply of a list of main points to be covered. Professor Utt had a natural eloquence, precision and wit that turned these into a colorful and absorbing discourse for the full class period. The era of entertaining students had scarcely begun in the 1950s, and each class seriously focused on the main narrative and problems of history, with no time wasted. Nonetheless, these were never highly formal classes and certainly not dry-as-dust history. His lectures were delivered in a direct, engaging and conversational style, full of personalities and colourful anecdotes by way of illustration, so that in fact in the great majority of cases they managed to be entertaining, as well. The way history was done in those days, not merely at PUC but almost everywhere, gave prominence to political history and public affairs, the major framework of history. That meant little attention to minorities or women, and even less to the kinds of trivial themes in social and socio-cultural history that at the present time occupy so much of the program of the annual convention of the American Historical Association. Even in secular institutions, the idea of history as ‘transgressive’ was largely unknown. This was, in a word, basic history—the major issues, events and personalities of the European and Western past. It was in fact excellent preparation for further study because it built a basic platform of knowledge and gave students a serious focus for their current and continuing work. I have always been very grateful for it. Professor Utt’s energy was very rarely wanting, which was surprising in view of his physical limitations. There was perhaps one episode a year (or possibly not even that often) that required a few days in bed, and there might also be another occasion when his health was parlous and he was barely able to come to class, but even on the latter days he carried things off in his normal manner. That he was able to teach us so effectively and continue a full work schedule year after year, despite personal disability, was an inspiration to us all. There was never a single semester, during my years at PUC, in which this resulted in any significant hindrance to his teaching, and, in fact, in most semesters it caused none at all. For me personally, his was a courageous example from which I greatly profited, and which stimulated me to try to show the same determination and perseverance. As a Christian institution, PUC involved much more for the faculty than teaching classes. Its professors have always had greater



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r­ esponsibility as personal examples and as spiritual and social guides than is the case in secular institutions. Despite the heavier load—and in part because of the comparatively small size of the faculty—they have also been in closer personal contact with their students than is the case in a larger college or university, or even than in other small liberal arts colleges. Walter Utt’s personal relations with the students were as important as his classroom teaching. In those days college life was more formal than in the twenty-first century, in terms of dress, deportment and also the tenor of relations between students and faculty. At PUC, nonetheless, there was a certain kind of informality and more contact with the faculty, or at least some members of the faculty, than I would find in my graduate education at Claremont and Columbia. Walter Utt excelled in these informal relations, first in terms of his witty, personable and highly approachable classroom manner and then in the way he dealt with students either individually or in very small groups. He was sympathetic and understanding, but he never pandered or patronized, holding his students up to the mark not merely in their classroom but also in other responsibilities. In my own case, I began my education in Angwin as a sixteen-yearold senior at PUC Prep in 1950 and then entered the college in the following year. Thus my matriculation coincided with the arrival of Professor Utt in the History Department. Even before I finished high school I planned to become a history major, and by 1951 I was becoming strongly oriented to Modern European history, also Professor Utt’s main field, so that his courses became my principal focus from the very beginning. He was extraordinarily kind and even, I would say, attentive to me, and during the course of the nearly four years at PUC I spent what was probably an inordinate amount of time in the history department itself, then conveniently located in Irwin Hall. (I should point out, however, that this was not a matter of privilege, because there was a fairly steady flow of students in and out of the department office.) This involved innumerable conversations, from the briefest chats to occasional lengthier discussions, more than one could count, and created a personal bond that eventually became very strong. Professor Utt was young enough that he seemed more approachable and understanding than the older professors, and was rarely too busy to talk. For me he became an indispensable mentor, not so much because of what I learned in any particular class, but simply as a role model and a

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mentor in a broader sense in terms of values, attitude and a kind of professionalism. In the 1950s, the term of ‘being there for’ someone had not yet developed, but Walter Utt was always there for his students—for me and for many others. I did defect briefly. In 1953, as I neared my nineteenth birthday, I had the idea of transferring to San Francisco State College (as it was then called), to enjoy a more sophisticated life in the big city, though I had very little money. It was as near as I ever came to a youthful rebellion. Only one month’s residence and a few days of classes in my new surroundings were enough to convince me that I was making a big mistake, and that I would be better off both personally and pedagogically finishing up my work at PUC—a conclusion that was absolutely correct. Professor Utt welcomed me back with open arms, and nary a word of reproach. One of the great advantages of PUC in the 1950s was that an excellent core curriculum existed, so that students really did get a basic education—a true liberal education– something that in the twenty-first century no longer exists in most American colleges and universities of any kind. This meant that one learned the things during those four years that one really needed to learn, both inside and outside the classroom. The two-professor history department did not have means to offer certain kinds of specialized courses, nor was there very much in the way of undergraduate seminars. It would have been better to have provided more opportunity for writing, which, after my first year, I rarely did at an advanced level. Yet the freshman English and composition course that was required of all students was outstanding, and it has now disappeared from most undergraduate curricula, to the great loss of the undergraduates. In the fall of 1952 Professor Utt gave me a job as grader for the survey course in European history, in which I had been a student the year before, and during the remainder of my undergraduate semesters I was a grader for several different courses. This was excellent training, for it helped to develop a more mature focus on historical study, while providing experience in the process of examination and evaluation that is so important for teaching. Despite the relative dearth of writing courses, I was well prepared for graduate school, and here too Professor Utt helped to open the way, recommending, among other things, that I apply to a special new program at the Claremont Graduate School (now Claremont University), which proved to be an ideal stepping stone en route to Columbia.



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A basic responsibility for a history professor at PUC is to provide a Christian perspective on history, something that once upon a time was almost universal in American colleges, and then in the twentieth century began to disappear almost altogether. What was Walter Utt’s approach? He was a serious professional scholar and did not teach ‘Providentialist History’ or Christian blueprintism, in which every detail of history somehow revealed the Divine Will. He knew that no historian, as a serious scholar, can demonstrate that, and his teaching was consistently objective and empirical. Some would call that letting the chips fall where they may, but that would be an inadequate description. His approach rather was, through an objective and empirical treatment of history, to allow underlying meanings and basic interpretations to emerge. There was no pretence to discover the guiding hand of God behind every event; if that were the case, then the conclusion would have to be that God led in quite dreadful ways, since so much of history consists of the delusions, follies, misfortunes and sins of mankind. Nonetheless, a truly objective Christian approach, when compared with modern ideological interpretations, has the effect of demystifying history, because it frees the scholar from fashionable straitjackets and abstract determinisms, making it possible to grasp many—though not necessarily all—of the factors and influences at work in history. Christian historians in fact are more humble than other scholars, not merely because humility is a fundamental Christian virtue, but because Christian historians are free of the fads, foibles and ideological approaches that have dominated much of the work in history for the past century and more. Christian historians, more than many others, are not afraid to let certain facts speak for themselves, and have no reason to fear the conclusions that may emerge. They are also able, more clearly than most others, to discern what are the clearly productive and creative factors at work in history, as well as the frequently destructive consequences when these are ignored or abandoned. This is accomplished through a consistent empiricism on the one hand, and an appropriate attention to the moral and spiritual dimension of human affairs, on the other. They are not bewildered when historical outcomes are often much less than happy, though the wiser and more professional ones avoid facile moralizing about complex issues which need to be studied in their entirety. Walter Utt, it has always seemed to me, was this kind of Christian historian.

Walter C. Utt, my colleague Eric Anderson After earning a doctorate at the University of California, Walter C. Utt spent the rest of his life at a small denominational college, an institution unknown to most of his classmates and teachers at Berkeley. Pacific Union College was within easy driving distance of Berkeley, of course, but it existed on a different intellectual map from the eminent research university. Although Walter Utt became a remarkably influential teacher, scholar, and mentor in his long tenure at Pacific Union College, his achievements were mostly invisible to the wider academic world. He wrote three books, none an academic treatment of his speciality. He taught only a handful of graduate students, and his most significant research was not published until after his death. Professor Utt devoted most of his professional life to one major research project–the story of Claude Brousson and Huguenot resistance to Louis XIV. He took several research trips to France, filled scores of notebooks with his tiny left-handed scrawl, purchased many rolls of microfilmed documents, made hundreds of pages of photocopies, and compiled lengthy bibliographical lists. When he died in 1985, he left behind a 900-page manuscript, which was well beyond a first draft, having been rewritten two or three times. In contrast to his other writings, he called this long-gestating book ‘the real one.’ If he was obscure in the general academic community, he must have felt superfluous, at times, even on Howell Mountain (not yet a famous wine appellation). To the presidents, deans, and trustees of PUC during the years between 1951 and 1985, Walter Utt’s research could not have seemed very important. An elegant ornament to the College, perhaps, he and his study of seventeenth-century France appeared to have little direct connection to paying the bills, keeping the College accredited, maintaining enrolment, and all the other quotidian anxieties that dominated their agendas. Although the College did grant him rare sabbatical time, what he was doing was secondary, at best, at Pacific Union College. It was difficult to evaluate or measure in the schemes of quantitative assessment so popular by the end of his life.

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For that matter, the things that now cause former students to remember Walter Utt, including the many hours he spent in witty conversation with them, the remarkably rich and gossipy correspondence he carried on with dozens of graduates, and the lively discussion groups he sponsored, might well look, to a practical-minded observer, charmingly irrelevant. They had about as much to do with either historical research or the immediate survival of the College, such an analyst might conclude, as his stamp collection or his interest in French military music. And yet he is now being honoured by a book of scholarly essays. For ten years I was Walter Utt’s colleague in the history department at Pacific Union College. He was my chairman, mentor, editor, and friend. We worked together on many occasions as team teachers. I believe that the perspective of a teaching colleague may be useful to understanding the accomplishments of this important, yet oddly invisible man. It is possible, indeed, that some of his intellectual achievements were only fully manifest to his fellow historians. A teaching associate, especially an inexperienced and youthful one, sees some details more clearly than others, no doubt. My view of Dr. Utt was quite different from that of his colleagues in other disciplines, or from College administrators, high and low, many of whom saw him as a formidable, even frightening figure, capable of clever obstruction or sarcastic candour. My point of view was simultaneously more admiring and more familiar. I knew the academic actor backstage, without his makeup, and I thought I knew how he achieved his effects. I craved his approval and recognized that I was seen around campus as his protégé. I had some sense of what this meant, but not until later, much later, did I realize that he was more my teacher than my patron, that he was quietly showing me the imperfections of my scholarship, my shortcomings as an historian. In a sense, although no advanced degrees or seminars were involved, he was my tutor as well as my faculty peer. I did not recognize at first what he was teaching me. If Walter Utt had accepted a position in a larger, better-known institution, a place like Berkeley, he would have had the luxury of focusing his work on a fairly narrow academic speciality. He would not have had to teach anything except modern French history and closely related subjects. He would have had both more freedom and less. At a different kind of school he would no doubt have had fewer administrative assignments, no threat of theological controversy, and fewer (or at least



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different) intellectual or political limits to his research. Yet at the same time, he would have less flexibility to write historical novels, influence students in other disciplines, or connect his faith to his learning. As chairman of the history department, Professor Utt accomplished remarkable things by indirection. In a certain sense, department meetings were quite irregular, convened only when absolutely necessary. Looked at another way, however, he presided over one continuous meeting, with members of the department dropping in and out of each other’s offices, eavesdropping on conversations in the next cubicle, shouting jokes over the walls, or carrying on long telephone conversations after hours. Late in his career, when he captured a large, private, air-conditioned office, he regretted the splendid solitude, I think, and wished for the crowded sociability of the old arrangement. He protected the department’s curriculum, encouraged his colleagues, recruited new majors, found jobs for graduates, and built up a sizeable departmental library, stocked mostly with his books. He even provided more than a few of the decorations around the offices and classrooms, including vintage French and Soviet propaganda posters. Looking back, I now recognize what he taught me. Unlike my graduate school teachers, he had little interest in the latest historiography or popular intellectual trends. He did not teach me much about constructing a course or designing a test. Instead, he subtly challenged me to synthesize, to show how my specialized interests related to the big picture, illustrating larger developments in American history or Western civilization. In the process, I learned a great deal about gaps in my knowledge. For example, I had detailed information about Reconstruction on the local level, but little understanding of the political leadership of Lincoln or Grant. I could explain the Founding Fathers’ attitudes toward slavery, but I had never read the Federalist Papers. I knew more about historians’ favourite lost causes, such as Populism, than about the successes of the American economy. With quiet wit, Walter (as I learned to call him) told me colourful historical anecdotes, assumed that I, like ‘any educated person,’ knew the relevant facts, and constantly surprised me with his encyclopaedic knowledge of my own area–not just his field of modern European history. (Didn’t everybody know, say, John Paul Jones’s unusual naval career after the Revolutionary War?) Without ever delivering any direct pronouncements, he instilled in me a love of precision, a quiet intolerance for errors of grammar or spelling, an expectation that infelicities of style were unacceptable,

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even a bit gauche. He believed that historians should write and rewrite and he was happy to work on my drafts, rooting out vagueness, suggesting transitions, or demanding further evidence. Oddly enough, this specialist in seventeenth century France was as important to the editing of my first book as the readers at a famous university press or my eminent advisors at the University of Chicago. I was Walter’s teaching colleague in the fullest sense on those occasions, formal and informal, when we taught together. These included not only regular courses that we team-taught, but also student reading groups that met in our homes and voluntarily took on writers ranging from G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis to Malcolm Muggeridge. We were also part of the rotating group of discussion leaders in the ‘Choir Room,’ a weekly religious discussion group aimed more at faculty than at students, noted for its lively, freewheeling conversations. In all of these situations, I had the opportunity to watch Walter construct questions, direct discussion, and engage critics–all the while indulging in his penchant for sardonic observation. The interdisciplinary course we created on the history of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination was certainly the most stimulating, even disturbing, experience of such collaboration. Working in a time of intense controversy in the denomination, we found ourselves (as we often said quietly) ‘dancing along a precipice,’ trying to force one group (cocksure believers) to recognize historical context, while resisting another group (usually recently lapsed fundamentalists) who wanted to reduce history to polemical debunking. Facing an audience made up mostly of future elementary school teachers, Walter applied to the history of his own group the same calm and sympathetic curiosity that informed his other historical work. Relentlessly sceptical of claims of uniqueness or pure originality, he masterfully described what Adventists owed to general Protestant values and history. Working from small scraps of paper covered with cryptic notes, he brilliantly extemporized, improvising like a jazz musician on an essay by Hugh Trevor-Roper about the varieties of Protestant religious experience. By the time he was finished, an alert student would be able to put Adventist history into a broad perspective that extended well before 1844, and included a range of millenarian, messianic, and puritan movements. He counselled the rest of the teaching team, sometimes as many as three or four colleagues, on framing complex, controversial issues, always insisting on both integrity and prudence. He only became impatient when a student refused to listen, stubbornly missing the



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nuances of our presentations. (Indeed, although I was the junior member of the team, reputedly capable of rushing into any number of sensitive matters, I think I suffered fools more gladly than my mentor did.) In any case, a scholar could hardly have asked for a group of students more sure that ideas have consequences, that ‘getting the facts right’ really matters. Every time we taught the class, we had a wonderfully relevant illustration of what sort of questions history could answer. Our students also learned to think about the limitations of our discipline in weighing certain kinds of claims. Such questions also came up, albeit without the same immediate and intense implications, in the other classes we worked on together. Although Walter and I did not teach together the capstone course for majors called ‘Philosophy of History,’ it felt like we were collaborators. I followed immediately after him and employed the pattern he had created for a class that was one of his favourites. When he handed the course over to me, I used much of the same assigned reading, for example, with star billing going to E. H. Carr’s What is History? Over the years my students and I wrestled with Carr’s thoroughly secular, vaguely Marxist approach to history, thinking carefully about how an historian could ‘have the future in his bones,’ why Carr denied being a determinist, and the usefulness of the political definition of ‘objectivity’ used by this controversial historian of the Soviet Union. Along the way, we learned to read the footnotes, and to listen to the other side of the debate, including Carr’s selected punching bags–Isaiah Berlin, Herbert Butterfield, Louis Namier, and Karl Popper, and others. One could argue that even after his death in1985, Walter was a silent partner in our classroom debates. The course ended with a discussion of what was unique about the history taught at Pacific Union College. Walter believed in a Christian approach to history, but only if such an approach was defined in terms of Christian assumptions about human nature, progress, and the events affirmed in the creeds. He rejected any version of ‘Christian history’ that played ‘Providence’ as the joker in the pack (as Carr put it) or tried to assign the historian a special role ‘as a sort of confidential secretary to Prophecy’(in Walter’s words). In his own teaching and writing, he refused to promulgate ‘intuitions or insights beyond what the data will bear,’ believing that exaggeration would only lead disillusioned students to discard any attempt to understand the purposes of God.

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We were formal partners in a course we dubbed ‘Historiography,’ but which might better have been labelled ‘Great Historians.’ We asked upper division students to read and discuss selected classic historians, including, at one time or another, Thucydides, Gregory of Tours, Edward Gibbon, Henry Adams, and Francis Parkman. Meeting often in Walter’s living room, we asked students to think about historians’ assumptions and biases. ‘Could an historian rise above his patriotic or religious or political commitments?’ we asked, and then passed around the cookies. How did style and artistry shape what the historian had to say? These issues could not have been remote for Walter, who was about the same time attempting to write an accurate history of Pacific Union College, including the recent years in which he had been a significant participant and had definite opinions about policies and policy makers. Walter was the right person to write the college history, for he was, despite his reputation for independence and mocking candour, a man appropriately described as ‘institutional thinker.’ Unlike most of his students and not a few of his colleagues, he saw beyond current leaders and their personalities to the organic life of the institution. Most people on campus remembered his penetrating wit, his irreverent sense of humour. Yet he practiced a certain kind of college and denominational ‘patriotism,’ thinking of the long term and ultimately putting the success of the institution above his private preferences and his personal career. At times, he practiced the ‘patience of a Huguenot.’ He assiduously supported the prerogatives of the executive office, even if the current occupant made ridiculous mistakes and he obeyed the writ of the larger community. He longed for change–and reserved disobedience for direct conflicts with God’s demands. Walter’s approach to life, including his elegant wit, bore many marks of the ‘Age of Reason.’ Charmed by Bayle and Voltaire, he was in many ways an Enlightenment man. He preferred to interpret ‘écrasez l’infâme’ as an attack on superstition and corrupt religion, not Christianity per se. He had a constitutional aversion to extremes and excess, cherishing the jocular definition of a fanatic as ‘a person who does what God would do if He had all the facts’! He laughed when a crusading ‘liberal’ Adventist, dismissed him as a ‘gradualist.’ The word was ‘a good description of my historical view and temperament,’ he thought. On another occasion, he privately observed, ‘I am inclined to wish to weigh, balance, analyze, consider causations, etc., and this probably prevents me from the fiery commitment I should have.’ He was uneasy



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with what the eighteenth century called religious ‘enthusiasm’—that is, a Christianity that was ‘mystical’ or too emotional. He especially loathed far-fetched conspiracy theories, which turned the untidy contingency and regular follies of history into an intelligently designed plan of a few plotters. (One can easily image his reaction to The Da Vinci Code or the other overheated novels of Dan Brown!) In his lectures, letters, and conversations, he relished a tone of irony. Like Gibbon, he enjoyed seeing the realities that dwelt behind artifice and carefully crafted rhetoric. Zealots of all sorts exasperated him, but he was seldom enraged. Yet despite this posture, he was a thorough believer, intelligently defending his tradition, and distressed when students moved from thoughtful criticism to outright scepticism or, even worse, wholehearted rejection of Christianity. His embrace of the Enlightenment mentality was not unqualified, in other words. He could well have rewritten to fit his situation Senator Henry (‘Scoop’) Jackson’s famous credo: ‘I am a liberal, but I’m not a damn fool.’ As teacher and scholar, Walter can be imagined saying: I am a realist, but I am not a cynic. I am a churchman, but I am not intolerant. I relish questions, but I am not a relativist. I love wit, but I am not flippant.

Most important of all for a teacher in a school like Pacific Union College, he might well have said, ‘I am a Seventh-day Adventist, but I recognize the impact of history on me and those I love. I believe—but I am not afraid of studying the historical context of my own group.’ With Gibbon he could aver: The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

We must imagine all these statements delivered in Walter’s curious combination of provocation and prudence, as he stood behind a lectern, or inched his way around campus with one or two canes. He was a haemophiliac, suffering from recurring bleeding into his joints that severely limited his mobility—and he laboured on a hilly campus with few accommodations to his disability. His jaunty, hard-headed interpretation of human events flourished, in short, against a background of continual personal pain.

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On the deepest level, Walter Utt’s virtues are what made a school like Pacific Union College successful. He was stimulated by good questions, the lure of discovery, and the power of disciplined curiosity. He gave several generations of students and colleagues a working model of a Christian scholar. Unmoved by fads or self-promoters, he loved learning for its own sake, knowing that instant relevance and shortterm practicality might get in the way of wisdom–might, indeed be truly irrelevant or useless. He was prepared to sacrifice and to work alone. He believed in the time-honoured idea of searching for truth. All these old-fashioned virtues, in turn, made other people, including me, believe in a small, obscure, isolated college. The students (and others) who were truly educated by Walter Utt had to be ready to open their minds, to submit themselves to an intellectual discipline, to defer to a mentor. In all this, Walter was a profound democrat, the opposite of an ‘elitist.’ In the one episode of genuine elitism in PUC’s history (in the 1950s), he was mostly a sceptic, opposed to setting admission standards too high. Assuming a few common sense limits, Walter did not doubt the basic American commitment to mass education. On the contrary, he really believed in the power of education to change people. A teacher cannot avoid wondering from time to time: ‘Can education actually transform our students? Are our expectations too high, our hopes of mastery and synthesis and autonomy simply unrealistic for ordinary people? Are we too confident in our judgments of what is important?’ Though he sometimes sounded like a pessimist, on such questions he was a profound optimist. On the small stage of a liberal arts college, my colleague Walter Utt practiced all the values that informed his scholarship. He wasted nothing, it seemed, in three decades of teaching. Disciplined in the demanding world of an overloaded teacher, he mastered the art of synthesis and summary. Thriving in a deeply religious environment, he learned how to balance the competing demands of commitment and analysis. More than anything else, the years at Pacific Union College showed him the importance of explaining his specialized work to a wider audience. As a result, he approached the world of Claude Brousson, the ‘bellicose dove,’ with an appropriate mixture of irony, faith and realism. Far from being a distraction or a detour, his life on Howell Mountain was an ideal preparation for ‘the real one.’

CHAPTER ONE

The Huguenots and the experience of exile (sixteenth to twentieth centuries): History, memory and transnationalism D. J. B. Trim This book is concerned with the interplay of history and memory in transnational context. The studies that follow explore, using different approaches and a range of different sources, the role of history and memory in shaping a particular transnational community: that of the Huguenots. ‘Huguenot’ was the term given in sixteenth-century France to adherents of John Calvin, though they characteristically called their confession not ‘Calvinism’ but rather ‘the Reformed religion’ (la religion réformée). Always a minority, the Huguenots were subject to sustained persecution by the Roman Catholic majority in France: episodically in the late-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, then continually in the late seventeenth century. Oppression was both mental and physical: Huguenots were for example officially required to call their faith ‘the so-called reformed religion’ (la religion prétendu reformée); and their persons suffered from both legal sanctions and communal violence, as well as appalling mass killings that blurred the distinction between state and popular action, such as the infamous St Bartholomew’s massacre (1572), in which the dead numbered in the thousands. The Edict of Nantes (1598), the work of Henri IV, extended liberty of conscience and limited liberty of worship and organisation to the French Reformed Churches, but the tolerationist framework erected in 1598 was gradually eroded over the seventeenth century. The ‘so-called reformed religion’ was formally suppressed in France by Louis XIV, whose Edict of Fontainebleau (1685) revoked the Edict of Nantes; to be a Protestant was thereafter illegal in France until the French Revolution when Calvinists re-emerged after a century of secrecy. Members of the French Reformed Church of the nineteenth century and after increasingly reserved the term ‘Huguenot’ for their ancestors, rather than

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using it for themselves. In a sense, then Huguenots no longer existed in France after c.1700; however, thanks to a mass departure, Huguenots survived in several European countries and overseas colonies. Thus, the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulted in the destruction of Reformed organization in France, but not in the extinction of the Huguenots. Waves of emigration from France had taken place in the late sixteenth century and then again in the 1670s and early 1680s, but from 1685 there was a huge expansion and acceleration in flight to sympathetic countries, which collectively the Huguenots called ‘the Refuge’ (le refuge)—the origins of the modern term ‘refugee’.1 Protestants who remained in France were driven underground, part of what they dubbed ‘the church of the desert’ (l’église du désert) due to the necessity of holding its meetings in wilderness areas; as early as the late-­ seventeenth century le désert was contrasted with le refuge. For those in the desert, the Revocation was a calamity, since practicing their faith could mean fines, imprisonment or death; Protestantism in France was literally in the wilderness for a hundred years. Yet in the Refuge, Huguenots could survive and thrive. Surely the most significant consequence of the suppression of Protestantism in France was the creation of an extraordinary, truly global diaspora.2 Huguenot settlements were established in four of the seven ‘United Provinces’ of the Netherlands (Friesland, Groningen, Zeeland and Holland) and in the Dutch republic’s recently founded colony in the Cape of Good Hope; in England, Ireland, and the British colonies in America, especially South Carolina and New York; in Vaud and Geneva (in Switzerland); in Germany— primarily in Brandenburg–Prussia, but also in Württemberg, Baden

  Rather than a neologism, it ‘was coined … in the 1680s’: Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement c. 1550–1700, trans. Peregrine and Adriana Stevenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1991), 2. 2   As Bertrand Van Ruymbeke argues, although until recently the Huguenot mass migration was ‘not … called a diaspora or included in diaspora studies … the Refuge undeniably belongs to the Jewish diasporic paradigm’: ‘Minority Survival: The Huguenot Paradigm in France and the Diaspora’, in Van Ruymbeke and Randy J. Sparks (eds.), Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic Diaspora (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 18 n.2. Cf. Eckhart Birnstiel with Chrystel Bernat (eds.), La Diaspora des Huguenots: les réfugiés protestants de France et leur dispersion dans le monde (XVIe–XVIIe siècles), Vie des Huguenots, 17 (Paris: Champion, 2001). 1



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and Hesse; while some individuals went as far as Poland, Sweden and Russia.3 The Huguenot diaspora was greatly influenced initially by its transnational nature, but as scholars increasingly recognise it was also significantly shaped, over the longue durée, by the interplay of history and memory.4 These three factors—transnationalism, history, and memory—are the subject of this book, which illustrates how they and the interplay between them fashioned the ethnic Huguenot identity over several generations. They moulded the self-conceptualisation and selfunderstanding of French Calvinist émigrés and their descendants, and additionally shaped how Huguenots were perceived and received by their host communities, both during the original waves of emigration and over subsequent decades and centuries. The transnational nature of the Huguenot ethnie5 diminished over time, yet while Huguenots gradually assimilated into host communities, some sense of Huguenot identity was generally preserved in most countries where Huguenot refugees settled; even when the French language was no longer used and distinctive cultural practices had vanished, that identity was (indeed, is) still expressed in art, literature, drama, and genealogical and historical research. Important reasons why a sense of Huguenot identity persisted are the shared memory of historical events, and the fact that, relatively quickly, to be a Huguenot did not necessarily mean being ‘French’.

3  For an overview of the approximate distribution of refugees during Louis XIV’s reign see map 1 in Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (2nd edn, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 31. 4   Examples of studies of history and memory from Huguenot perspectives include the collection edited by Van Ruymbeke and Sparks, Memory and Identity; Christian Jouhaud, ‘ “Camisards! We Were Camisards!” Remembrance and the Ruining of Remembrance through the Production of Historical Absences’, History and Memory 21 (Spring/ Summer 2009), 5–24; and the conference of the Association suisse pour l’histoire du Refuge Huguenot at Ascona in Oct. 2010, ‘Histoire, mémoire et identités en mutation: Les huguenots en France et en diaspora (XVIe–XXIe siècles)’ [http:// www.unige.ch/ihr/huguenots2010.html]. For some potential pitfalls in the scholarly study of memory see Alon Confino, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method’, AHR 102 (Dec. 1997), 1386–1403. 5   The very helpful term coined by Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), for an ethnic community, defined as ‘human populations with shared ancestry myths, histories and cultures, having an association with a specific territory and a sense of solidarity’ (ibid. 32, emphasis supplied—the Huguenot retained their identification with France long after having, as noted above, become an essentially émigré community).

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Instead it meant being a member of a community that, despite s­ peaking a different language than the indigenous hosts, shared (or at least approximated) its confessional allegiance and had suffered as a result, and that moreover transcended borders so that its members, while not necessarily ‘us’, were also not necessarily ‘other’. Knowledge of these points persisted in the collective memory of the host communities in le refuge, as well as of Huguenot refugees. As a result, the latter could readily be absorbed into the former. Rather than only being strangers in strange lands, Huguenots had multiple identities they could adopt, facilitating their adaptation and assimilation: skilled craftsmen and women, who added to the prosperity of their host community; active citizens of the republic of letters; suffering saints and martyrs, deserving of sympathy; and comrades-at-arms in a war against Catholic tyranny. Chameleon-like, members of Huguenot communities, exploiting empathy (or at least relative lack of suspicion and hostility), could take on such personae and identities as best suited their ends. Yet this could engender difficulties among the Huguenot community by raising questions as to who its members really were. Huguenot identity was thus innately bound up with the Huguenots’ history, the transnational nature of their diaspora, and the memories they and others preserved of their experiences. Ultimately, however, the traumatic shared experience of persecution, forced emigration, and the contested process of integration, all helped to ensure that a memory of being Huguenot endured even when most signifiers of ethnic distinctiveness had been eroded. The chapters that follow are separate but overlapping case studies. They focus chiefly, though not entirely, on the history of Huguenot émigré communities and the Huguenot experience in exile, rather than on the history of the ‘Reformed religion’ and its adherents within France. In particular they examine the ways in which the Huguenot history in France, and knowledge thereof, both among French Calvinists and foreigners, affected the way Huguenot emigrants interacted with host communities, the way they adjusted and assimilated, and the way, eventually, their history was written and the uses to which it was put. In this book history and memory are each explored in two ways or in two senses. The workings of memory, in particular, are analysed in more detail, below, but the twin pair of different usages for history and memory can be summarised as follows (and is set out, including the



the huguenots and the experience of exile5

interrelationships between them in schematic form in figure 1, which shows the probable chronological progression). The essays in this book explore the actual historical experience of the Huguenots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—what might be termed the Huguenot heritage;6 but they also consider the shaping of the written record, or historiography, of that heritage, which scholars began to construct in the nineteenth century, though drawing on literary works, intended as histories, that were written soon after the events they describe. But the chapters in this book are also concerned with both the memories and the group-memory of that heritage: the first are actual remembrances of events (i.e. of history in the first sense) by those who personally experienced them, whether recalled individually or mutually;  the second is the collective concern of a group for its past, expressed in the preservation and transmission through generations, of what started as memories, but becomes common memory of the shared heritage.

History I (Historical events)

Memory I Personal memories

Memory I Collective memories

Memory II Collective memory

History II Historiography

Figure 1.  Relationship between different types of history and memory   The title of Gwynn’s seminal Huguenot Heritage.

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The chapters that follow are arranged in roughly chronological order; they begin in the late sixteenth century and move to the nineteenth century. Some are studies of Huguenot history (in the first sense) and memory, examining the Huguenots’ role in and experience of key historical episodes, as well as the ways in which collective memory of those episodes (including early histories, in the second sense) shaped responses to Huguenot émigrés (chapters 2–6). Other essays explore Hugue­not history (again, in the first sense) in transnational context (chapters 6–8). The final three chapters (9–11), while written by historians rather than sociologists on episodes in the past, are primarily on memory, but are also on history in the second sense, exploring how a ‘Huguenot’ identity was preserved, re-shaped, and times created, both by the descendants of the original Huguenots and among broader communities into which they had gradually assimilated, and how the collective memory of the Huguenot past that had emerged among European and American Protestants played a critical role in the identity-­formation process and in the development of historiographical accounts. Thus, the emphasis of the volume is on the experience of Huguenots in England (chapters 3–5, 7–8, 10). This concentration of chapters reflects Robin Gwynn’s recent argument that, contrary to the presumptions of previous scholars, by 1700 ‘England had emerged as [a] more significant centre for Huguenots than the Netherlands’ (although unquestionably the Dutch Republic attracted great numbers of refugees immediately after the Revocation), and his demonstration that London was the largest single centre of Huguenot population.7 But the Huguenot diaspora was wider than England and in this volume consideration is also given to the Huguenots’ experience as refugees in three other significant foreign milieus (chapters 7–9): respectively the Reformed United Provinces of the Netherlands, Lutheran and Reformed principalities in Germany, and the Reformed (and Frenchspeaking) Pays de Vaud in Switzerland. In addition, three other chapters (2, 6, 11) look at particular aspects of the Huguenot experience that significantly shaped their identity and the way they were regarded and remembered: the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre; their military 7  See Gwynn, ‘Conformity’, esp. 25–26, 39–41; cf. Willem Frijhoff, ‘Uncertain Brotherhood: The Huguenots in the Dutch Republic’, in Van Ruymbeke and Sparks, Memory and Identity, 128–71, esp. 134–35.



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service beyond France; and their place in the writings of North American historians and theological controversialists. Beyond the three fundamental issues (history, memory, transnationalism) and their interplay, there are six broad themes which chapters explore. The first is the experience of the Huguenots as an ethnic and confessional minority in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (chapters 4, 5, 10); and, second, in particular, their role, and the role of memories of their sufferings, in debates over ecclesiastical policy and religious toleration in Great Britain (chapters 2–5). The third is the way political and intellectual debates in late-seventeenthand early eighteenth-century Great Britain, Hanover, and the Dutch Republic, were shaped not only by concern about the fate of France’s Protestants, but also by the actions and writings of prominent Hugue­ nots: drawing on their transnational networks, they influenced foreign and military policy-making, and contributed significantly to the increasingly influential discourse of toleration (chapters 3, 6, 7, 8). Fourth is the role, of both the Huguenots and those debating how they should be received, in the emergence of the nascent ‘public sphere’ in Britain and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century (chapters 3, 4, 7, 8).8 Fifth is the cultural and social impact of Huguenot exiles in northern Germany, western Switzerland, and Great Britain, during the late-seventeenth, eighteenth, and earlynineteenth, centuries; these highlight the necessity of including a local dimension to Huguenot studies, since local contexts shaped the wider story of international experience and encounter (chapters 8–10). Sixth is the broader social, cultural and particularly literary impact of the

8  For the importance of public opinion and print debate in this period, especially in Britain, see Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, ‘‘Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England’, Journal of British Studies 45 (April 2006), 270–292; cf. Judith Pollmann and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions 121 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), for its importance in the Low Countries. The role of Huguenots in the emergent public sphere is beginning to be explored by scholars: e.g., Itamar Raban, ‘The Newspaper The Post Man and its Editor, Jean Lespinasse de Fonvive’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 397–403; Simon Harvey and Elizabeth Grist, ‘The Rainbow Coffee House and the Exchange of Ideas in Early Eighteenth-century England’, in Dunan-Page, Religious Culture, 163–72; Andrew Thompson, The Protestant Interest and the History of Humanitarian Intervention, c.1685–c.1756’, in Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), Humanitarian intervention—a history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 67–88.

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Huguenots, their persecutions, and emigrations, in Britain, France, and the United States of America, from the mid-nineteenth century to the late twentieth century (chapters 1, 10, 11). Collectively, the essays suggest that the economic prosperity and access to the upper ranks of society achieved by French Protestant émigrés in many countries derived not only from rapid acculturation and entrance into mainstream circles of the host society, but also (at least for some) from cultivating strong social networks across national borders. Some studies of modern immigration and religion seem to take for granted that, once immigrants have arrived, then, if they if they are able to, they will settle permanently and thereafter undergo a process of assimilation and acculturation —slow, perhaps, but steady and almost inescapable.9 To some extent this pattern does describe Calvinist emigrants from France; however, for several generations, at least until the Reformed Church in France was definitively driven into ‘the desert’ and there was no hope of a change of heart by the Bourbon monarchy, Huguenots retained a keen interest in the fate of their literal and figurative brethren and sisters, both in France and in the diaspora, as well as a willingness to act on behalf of confrères regardless of where they were. This meant that, even though probably many Huguenots concentrated on making new lives for themselves in new lands, certainly many others faced outwards as well as inwards; their focus was on the Huguenot community, whether in the particular national context or the general transnational context, as well as on integration and assimilation. This had consequences for transplanted French Calvinists. And the following chapters additionally indicate that one of the most significant and divisive issues facing those who had emigrated to the lands of ‘The Refuge’ was their own identity: were refugees primarily subjects of the House of Bourbon? Frenchmen and women (with enduring loyalties to France but not necessarily its crown)? Persecuted Protestants? Productive members of their host communities? Or, as eventually became the case, were they primarily ‘Huguenots’? Because of the importance of this issue of identity, it will be considered explicitly in

 9   Cf. e.g., Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race, Religion, and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964); Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landolt, ‘The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls and Promise of an Emergent Research Field’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (1999), 228.



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the remainder of this introductory chapter. First, however, three other issues will be explored; transnationalism; the meaning and workings of ‘memory’; and the way it relates to ‘history’. Each will be considered  in more detail, as these were so formative in the construction of identity. Transnationalism The Huguenots are an extraordinary and early example of the phenomenon of ‘a transnational community linking immigrant groups’ across borders, made up of different national or local communities, each composed of people living ‘dual lives’.10 Members of such communities often (though not inevitably) speak two or more languages and are consciously members of both their host community and the local representation of their transnational community. Transnational activity can be economic, political, socio-cultural and religious. There are the ‘economic initiatives of transnational entrepreneurs who mobilize their contracts across borders in search of suppliers, capital and markets’, such as the Huguenot merchants who have been examined by a number of scholars.11 There are also the political  activities of officials, functionaries, immigrant community leaders, and, in the early modern period, polemicists, who seek power or influence in either their original or their host countries.12 There are ‘the manifold socio-cultural enterprises oriented towards the

  Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, ‘Transnationalism’, 217.   Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, ‘Transnationalism’, 221; see e.g., Herbert Lüthy, La Banque Protestante en France de la Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes à la Révolution, vol. I, Dispersion et regroupement (1685–1730), École Pratique des Hautes Études—VIe Section, Affaires et gens d’affaires, 9 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1959); F. M. Crouzet, ‘Walloons, Huguenots and the Bank of England’, HSP 25:2 (1990), J. F. Bosher, ‘Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century’, WMQ, 3rd series, 52 (1995), 77–100; Ole P. Grell, ‘Merchants and Ministers: The Foundations of International Calvinism’, in Grell, Calvinist Exiles in Tudor and Stuart England (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), 98–119; Robin Gwynn, ‘The Huguenots in Britain, the “Protestant International” and the Defeat of Louis XIV’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 414–18; R. C. Nash, ‘Huguenot Merchants and the Development of South Carolina’s Slave-Plantation and Atlantic Trading Economy, 1680–1775’, in Van Ruymbeke and Sparks, Memory and Identity, 208–40; and cf. chapter 4, by Lisa Diller, below. 12   Cf. Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, ‘Transnationalism’, 221; this is the subject of chapters 7 and 8, by David Onnekink and Andrew Thompson, below. 10 11

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reinforcement of a national identity abroad or the collective enjoyment of [common] cultural events and goods.’13 Last, and insufficiently recognized in studies of modern transnationalism, but significant in the Huguenot context, are the activities of theologians, episcopal and synodal officials, scholars, and—at least among the Huguenots—‘prophets’.14 Such men (and occasionally women and children) sought to build or to maintain a common set of theological interpretations and a common set of values and behaviours, rooted in the homeland and often in the face of divergent (even when similar) ecclesiological, spiritual and liturgical praxis in the host nation.15   Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, ‘Transnationalism’, 221. Huguenot examples are the activities of artists and craftsmen, many of whom crossed national borders: cf. e.g. chapters 12–17 (by Karen Hearn, Julia Marciari Alexander, Christine Riding, Eileen Goodway, Tessa Murdoch and Natalie Rothstein) in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 117–71. Virtually all issues of HSP in recent years have carried at least one article on such protagonists in cultural transnationalism. For a broader view of sociocultural ‘international interchange’, see chapter 9, by Vivienne Larminie, below (quotation at p. 261). 14   There is a wealth of scholarship on this area, though rarely from the perspective of transnationalism. There are studies of a range of 16th- and 17th-cent. theological and ecclesiastical leaders who operated across borders: e.g., chapters 2–4 (by Carrie A. Euler, Christoph Strohm, Jeannine E. Olson) in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 17–47; Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove; Paula Wheeler Carlo, ‘The Huguenot Soul: The Calvinism of Reverend Louis Rou’, in Dunan-Page, Religious Culture, 109–19; Jonathan Israel, ‘Group Identity and Opinion among the Huguenot Diaspora and the Challenge of Pierre Bayle’s Toleration Theory (1685–1706)’, in Pollmann and Spicer, Public Opinion and Changing Identities, 279–93; cf. chapter 9, by Larminie, below; cf. also Anthony Milton (ed.), The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (1618–1619), Church of England Record Society, 13 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), ‘Introduction’, xvii–lv, and the apparatus criticus, passim, which illuminate the role that ecclesiastical statesmen played in the Synod of Dort, a key episode in 17th-cent. Calvinism. On the Camisard ‘Prophets’ and their influence in England and North America, see Hillel Schwartz, The French Prophets: the History of a Millenarian Group in Eighteenth-century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Kenneth G. C. Newport, ‘The Prophets and Early Methodism: Some New Evidence’, Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 50 (1996), 127–40; Terrie Dopp Aamodt, ‘ “Out of thee, O England, shall a bright star arise”: Mother Ann Lee and the English Origins of the Shakers’ in Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds), The Development of Pluralism in Modern Britain and France (Oxford, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, New York, etc: Peter Lang, 2007), 169–88. 15   The issue of conformity was a particular challenge to Huguenots in Great Britain and its colonies: this is the subject of chapter 5, by Robin Gwynn, below; cf. also Gwynn, ‘Conformity’; Paula Wheeler Carlo, ‘Anglican Conformity and Nonconformity among the Huguenots of Colonial New York’ and Jane McKee, ‘The Integration of the Huguenots into the Irish Church: The Case of Peter Drelincourt’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 313–21, 442–50; Andrew Spicer, ‘ “A Place of refuge and sanctuary of a holy Temple”: Exile Communities and the Stranger Churches’, in Nigel Goose 13



the huguenots and the experience of exile11 Memory

As already observed, the studies that follow examine two forms of memory. The first is what has been called ‘the living experience of memory’; the second is ‘the capacity of collective entities to preserve and recall common memories’, even after those who actually experienced them have died.16 Actual memories can be both individual and collective—one of the pioneers of memory studies, Maurice Halbwachs, stressed that there are ‘social frameworks for memory; it is to the degree that our individual thought places itself in these frameworks and participates in this memory that it is capable of the art of recollection.’17 The point here is that memories are socially constructed rather than being autonomous. But this means they are also dynamic and fluid. They go ‘through a process of invention and appropriation’.18 As various studies of memory, including in early modern Europe, have emphasised, when people ordered their ‘memories’ of events into narratives they shared with others, they were often influenced by the stories they had heard others tell, the books and pamphlets they had read (including chronicles and near-contemporary narrative history), the paintings, broadsheets and plays they had seen, and the songs and ballads they had heard sung. Thus, their process of remembrance incorporated not only their own recollections, but also other people’s memories, and/or contemporary or later propaganda and polemic.19 There is a second kind of collective memory, however, separate from actual memories of person experiences—it is rather the recurrence of the past in collective consciousness, and the conservation by subsequent generations of the memories of those who experienced events.20

and Lien Luu (eds.), Immigrants in Tudor and early Stuart England (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 91–109; and Susanne Lachenicht, ‘Differing Perceptions of the Refuge? Huguenots in Ireland and Great Britain and Their Attitudes towards the Government’s Religious Policy (1660–1710)’, in Dunan-Page, Religious Culture, 43–53. 16  Paul Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (London & Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 7, 124. 17  Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser (London & Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 38. 18   Confino, ‘Collective Memory and Cultural History’, 1393. 19   This is brought out well by, e.g., Judith Pollmann, ‘ “Brabanters Do Fairly Resemble Spaniards After All”. Memory, Propaganda and Identity in the Twelve Years’ Truce’, in Pollmann and Spicer, Public Opinion and Changing Identities, 218. 20   Cf. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 39.

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In this second sense, ‘memories’ are not first-hand recollections at all, but instead are traditions. This kind of memory is, at its heart, how a culture or community ‘lives with or against its past’, and it can be expressed in multiple forms—most obviously in simple storytelling about the past (an actual transmission, even while also a reshaping, of original memories), but also in ‘rituals, ceremonies, monuments’ and, eventually, in the research and writing of history.21 It is therefore also the way that the past is represented, both by and to the community, shaping how the community sees and understands itself. The traditions that are preserved and perpetuated derived originally from personal reminiscences (subject, as these were, to varying degrees of conscious or unconscious post-event shaping), which were irregularly and informally gathered, and often collectively inchoate, but were then transmitted down the generations. All this means that collective memory, like collective memories, is dynamic. While the living reminiscences from which it derives have passed away, much of what they encompassed lives on as collective or group-memory; and this form of memory is retained and recalled by ‘living societies’. ‘It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting … vulnerable to manipulation and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically revived.’22 There is a danger that when, as often happens, traditions are invented to serve group purposes, memory will also, in a sense, be invented.23 A recent study of the Huguenots and memory suggests that the discourse of remembrance not only ‘produces powerful effects of the presence of the past but at the same time obscures the very past on which it is based’.24 Group memory, then, is dynamic, evolving, and enormously influential—not least in generating a sense of identity, and to this we shall return later. In sum, memory is both actual remembrance of the events that are ‘history’ (in its first sense) by people who lived through them,

21  Michael S. Roth, ‘Remembering Forgetting: Maladies de la Mémoire in Nineteenth-century France’, Representations, no. 26, Special Issue: ‘Memory and Counter-Memory’ (Spring 1989), 49. 22   Pierre Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, Represen­ tations, no. 26, Special Issue: ‘Memory and Counter-Memory’ (Spring 1989), 8. 23   The classic work is Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). 24   Jouhaud, ‘Camisards’, 6.



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including the way their memories were shaped, both consciously and subconsciously; but it is also the representation of those events and their construction as a shared cultural knowledge by subsequent generations. This second form of memory, group memory, collectively produced and retained, is an example of what scholars of memory call ‘ethnic memory’, the sociological function of which is to reproduce certain behaviours in societies.25 Nations and ethnies emphasise common historical experiences and shared memories, capturing them and preserving them and making them serve the purpose of the group. Thus, ‘collective memory is not only a conquest, it is also an instrument and objective of power.’26 Arguably, indeed, without it, no sense of a distinct ethnic identity can exist: as Anthony Smith argues, ‘there can be no identity without memory (albeit selective), no collective purpose without myth, and identity and purpose … are necessary elements of the very concept … of an ethnic community.’ An ethnie must ‘have an identity … and hence myths and memories’.27 Indeed, ‘without memory, there can be no ethnicity.’28 Collective memory is even more important in a case (such as that of the Huguenots), ‘when an ethnie and “its” homeland are separated, perhaps by external power’; the association between the community and its lost homeland ‘becomes an essential part of the collective memory and identity of the community.’29 Thus, memory in its second sense is a primary source of the constituent myths of ethnies and nations—and thus of ethnic and national identity. It is also, however, inevitably a source for historiography (‘history’ in the second sense), which it is also likely to influence, for ultimately, history, like memory, ‘is a representation of the past.’30 History can therefore also be a source of, or vehicle for, myth and identity; yet it can equally be a means of their dissolution. Accordingly, before we examine the role of memory in shaping Huguenot identity, it is important to consider the relationship of history and memory.

 See Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman (New York & Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1992), 53, 55. 26  Le Goff, History and Memory, 98. 27  See Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, 2. 28  Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, 87. 29  Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, 29. 30   Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, 8. 25

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In both recording and representing the past, memory and historiography serve similar functions (and face similar constraints).31 However, history and memory are ‘far from being synonymous’: some scholars have explicitly argued for a difference between ‘history’ and ‘popular memory’; contended that history and memory are ‘in fundamental opposition’; or characterised them as ‘two very different phenomena’.32 In fact, while the two are rightly regarded as distinct, there is often considerable overlap between them. In addition to the social construction of memories, those who experienced events might read chronicles or contemporary histories, and later generations read early narrative histories. Thus, the shaping both of memories and of collective memory reflected historical processes and sometimes the work of historians—even while genuine, adapted and purported memories, and representations, of historical events shaped attitudes to them and thus also influenced the writing of history. Given this and given what we have seen about the role of story, ritual, monument and representation (all of which embody a narrative), it is clear that, in describing, representing and interpreting the past, the storyteller and the historian are points on a continuum, not necessarily dichotomies. Both transmit knowledge of a collective heritage to a nation or ethnie; and both attempt to make it understandable to an audience and significant for them. Both, in short, attempt to convey meaning. At first the traditions of group-memory serve instead of ‘history’; then for a time they co-exist alongside, and supplement, scholarly histories. However, collective memory usually breaks down, eventually, as Pierre Nora, the French scholar of memory and place, argues; and after its collapse, ‘history’, as written and reconstructed by historians, takes its place as the authoritative source of information. Yet for many

  Cf. Le Goff, History and Memory, 18.  Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, 8; Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, 13; Cornelius Holtorf, Monumental Past: The Life-histories of Megalithic Monuments in MecklenburgVorpommern (Germany), Electronic monograph (University of Toronto: Centre for Instructional Technology Development, 2002–2008; http://hdl.handle.net/1807/245), § 2.8 (‘History and Memory’) [https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/holtorf/2.8.html]. 31 32



the huguenots and the experience of exile15

cultures, especially pre- or quasi-literate ones, up to that point of commemorative breakdown, it is group memory, rather than the embodied research of scholars, that is the chief vehicle for knowledge of the collective heritage.33 However, one can go further: arguably, only infrequently is memory truly replaced entirely by historiography, for a collective consciousness of the group’s past endures, even when its contours are themselves shaped by the findings and arguments of historians.34 Furthermore, historians have sometimes treated their task as in effect a search for sources that buttress existing collective memory and the myths of origins it generates. This has the potential to pervert an historian’s findings from an abstract ideal of detached scholarship into ‘semi-fiction’.35 Alternatively, if historians endorse the group-memory of one section of nation or ethnie, it may even make historiography, for a time, less reliable than the collective memory of other groups within the national or ethnic community.36 For example, Eric Hobsbawm asserts of the nineteenth century (which, as we shall see, witnessed a renaissance of interest in the Huguenots and the first modern histories of them), that ‘the history which became part of the fund of knowledge or the ideology of nation, state or movement is not what has actually been preserved in popular memory, but what has been selected, written, pictured, popularized and institutionalized by those whose function it is to do so.’37 Nevertheless, in such cases historians had not repudiated memory but privileged one form of collective memory over another. All in all, to picture history and memory as dichotomous is surely to exaggerate, since the two overlap to a great extent; even so, the potential for tension between them is undeniably great. The most obvious examples are when individual memories, or group memory, declare the reality of past events to be one thing—but ‘history’ indicates that

  Cf. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, 7–8.   Having attended social gatherings of modern French Protestants and descendants of Huguenot emigrants to Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, I would say that a fairly clear and reasonably consistent view of French Protestant history is unquestionably still current; it is conserved and continued in conversation and story telling. It reflects recent historical scholarship (of which many present-day ‘Huguenots’ are keen consumers), but it seems also to perpetuate older traditions. 35   Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, 7. 36   Cf. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, 8. 37   Hobsbawm, ‘Inventing Traditions’, 13. 33 34

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reality to be otherwise, based inevitably to some extent on memory, but usually on a range of memories, many recalled almost immediately and thus less subject to distortion by time or by social interactions (or construction). In addition to these differences as to événementielle actuality, there can also be differences over moral qualities: group memory can characterise the group’s essential nature in certain terms, whereas history may suggest it is at the least more nuanced, if not actually of a rather different character altogether. Memory can easily mythologise; however, as a leading historian of eighteenth-century France astutely observes, often ‘self-proclaimed commonsense realists [who] have gleefully debunked … myths’ have ‘underestimated the role of myth as a historical force in its own right.’38 Memory does not simply equate to myth, and myth can be perpetuated and passed on in history, because all historians are influenced, albeit to different extents, by their own group’s collective memory, which shapes their underlying presumptions, and by the group-memory of those they investigate, since the latter will inevitably be reflected in the sources historians examine. Nevertheless, history more often problematises than supports group-memory and myth, and it has a greater potential than memory to dissolve myth. Formal academic history is at its heart ‘a critical discourse’, as Nora observed; ‘analysis and criticism’ are integral parts of what an academic historian does, and achieving as much factual accuracy as possible is integral; his or her avowed objective is not to endorse or underpin the collective self-understanding of a group, whereas that is one of the story-teller’s primary purposes and functions.39 Indeed, whereas history can generate identity it can also dissolve it; but memory is regularly a primary constituent of identity, and, almost inevitably, is innately intertwined with it. Huguenot Memory and Huguenot Identity Jacques Le Goff neatly encapsulates what we have seen already: ‘Memory is an essential element of … collective identity’.40 From a very

38  David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Modern Warfare (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 120. 39   Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, 9. 40  Le Goff, History and Memory, 98.



the huguenots and the experience of exile17

early stage, the Huguenots had a powerful sense of the importance of remembrance, and were shaped by their memories. Even in the sixteenth century the Huguenots carefully, consciously exercised memory, treasuring the (often violent) events of their past as warnings for the future, or as encouragements. For example, the Huguenots of central-western France, around La Rochelle, regularly inscribed structures that had been destroyed by royal armies (and sometimes been reconstructed, sometimes not), with long texts or short comments, commemorating the circumstances of destruction, so that they would not be forgotten; some of these were tablets or plaques placed by civic authorities, but others were graffiti, testament to the fact that memory was unofficial as well as official.41 In opposition to this trend was a widespread awareness, among the elites on both sides, of the necessity of oubliance (‘forgetting’) if peace was to be established in France. As Philip Benedict observes, in his penetrating study of the instruments of social memory in earlymodern France: Every edict of pacification from 1563 forward included provisions instructing the French to consider ‘the memory of all that has occurred on both sides since the troubles began in our kingdom … to be to be snuffed out and set aside as if they had never happened.’ The 1576 and 1577 peaces of Beaulieu and Bergerac added articles forbidding processions to be held ‘because of … St Bartholomew’s day, or other events that might revive the memory of the troubles.’42

Despite these strictures, the memory of nearly forty years of sustained military and communal violence could not easily be erased, even at the urging of leaders of both confessions, buttressed by the power of the crown—especially because Catholics were as keen to commemorate as Protestants. In many cities, to be sure, both sides were, in effect, willing to forget;  yet as Benedict argues, ‘the mirroring tales of the true faith’s victimization or near-victimization by its seditious and violent confessional other’ were widely disseminated and very influential. A number of large, predominantly Catholic cities staged major annual rituals  See examples in Pierre Boismorand, Freddy Bossy and Denis Vatinel (eds.), Protestants d’Aunis, Saintonge et Angoumois (Paris: Le Croît vif, 1998), 77–80. 42  Philip Benedict, ‘Divided Memories? Historical Calendars, Commemorative Processions and the Recollection of the Wars of Religion during the Ancien Régime’, French History, 22 (2008), 384. 41

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‘recalling how the city and its saints and relics had once narrowly escaped falling into the clutches of violent Huguenot hagiomachs.’ In contrast, a large number of Huguenot texts ‘drew particular attention to the many massacres of which the Protestants were victims … and to the many battles Henri IV had to win in order to [establish] his legitimate rights’. As a result of this bi-partisan determination to commemorate: ‘Notwithstanding the commandment of oubliance, the Wars of Religion continued to cast a long shadow over the subsequent centuries.’43 In exile, the Huguenots were determined to perpetuate the memory of their persecution, emigration, and associated ordeals. Several chapters in this book explore this process but it is worth highlighting two important socio-cultural structures that facilitated the conservation and transmission of memory of the Huguenot heritage. First was French Protestants’ very active engagement with the essentially new business of journalism. As scholars have long recognised, very often refugees directed their ‘first conspicuous energy … to the writing of pamphlets’. However, it was not only ‘political newspapers [which] grew up under refugee auspices’; so, too, ‘did journals devoted to science and letters.’44 This engagement with the public sphere thus provided one important framework for the preservation and perpetuation of memories and memory among the Huguenots; another was the family. As Bertrand Van Ruymbeke argues: ‘the familial nature of Huguenot memory, wrongly perceived as a structural weakness, actually constituted its greatest strength. Families, genealogists, and amateur historians preserved an embellished individual and collective memory…. Huguenot identity, in France and in the Refuge, is rooted in the gray area where memory and history overlap.’45 It is clear, then, that Huguenots undoubtedly valued memory, for the first and second generations of émigrés fought against the ‘voluntary or involuntary loss, of collective memory among peoples’ that can, as Le Goff observes, ‘cause serious problems of collective identity.’46 Early-modern Huguenots would not have put the matter in those

  Benedict, ‘Divided Memories’, 402–3.   Reginald Lane Poole, A History of the Huguenots of the Dispersion at the Recall of the Edict of Nantes (London: Macmillan & Co., 1880), 176, 177; cf. sources cited in n.8, above and chapter 7, by Onnekink, below. 45   Van Ruymbeke, ‘Minority Survival’, 17–18. 46  Le Goff, History and Memory, 53. 43 44



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terms, but they do seem to have been well aware of the danger of losing their identity. The Huguenot identity, in France, the loss of which confronted émigrés in le Refuge, was shaped not only by religious, but also by cultural, economic and social factors, though these latter were themselves shaped by the reality that the Huguenots were a religious minority. Gallican Calvinism was not distinctive in terms of its doctrines, its ecclesiology, or its attitudes towards discipline and the intersection of church and society. Yet even in global Calvinist terms there were certain traits that were more marked in France than elsewhere, while its Reformed attributes made it distinctive in French terms—and also to some extent in English terms. In England, there were Calvinist communities (of ‘the godly’ as they dubbed themselves, or ‘Puritans’ as others called them) but English Calvinists were, like Huguenots, a minority. Thus, the Calvinist nature of Huguenot culture laid the seeds both for a warm welcome and for a degree of scepticism, if not hostility, when French Protestants took refuge in foreign countries. Huguenots were marked by their distinctive Reformed church organization—each congregation was governed by a consistory of the pastor and elders, whose agents were the deacons; and each church was represented at a colloquy or synod that met periodically to discuss matters of mutual concern. The first Huguenot émigrés to England took this organisation with them (even forming what was, in effect, a colloquy with the Italian and Dutch Churches of London, which also were organised on Reformed lines).47 Whether this Calvinist ecclesiology had to be preserved became a key issue facing Huguenots in England, one explored by Robin Gwynn in chapter 5. One of the consistory’s main purposes was to maintain the spiritual discipline that was integral to Reformed Protestantism: moral lapses would be judged by the elders, who imposed appropriate punishments—ranging from public penance, fines or suspension from communion, to the ulti­ mate sanction of expulsion. This collective communal self-discipline was alien to other Protestants, much less Catholics. The consistory was, however, an instrument of support as well as of constraint. It coordinated poor relief, so that indigent Calvinists could count on institutionalised assistance, rather than relying on personal inclination to 47  See O. Boersma and A. J. Jelsma (eds.), Unity in Multiformity: The Minutes of the Coetus of London, 1575, and the Consistory Minutes of the Italian Church of London, 1570–1591, HSQS, LIX (1997).

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charity, as with other Protestants. Other traits were not institutionally created, but were significant. Although the extent to which Calvinists wore sombre clothing has been exaggerated, they were more likely, especially in the seventeenth century, to dress in black and less likely to adopt particularly riotous dress and adornment. Marriage arrangements probably allowed for a greater emphasis on personal choice, as opposed to arranged marriages, than among contemporary French Catholics, but in any case marriage was largely endogamous, helping to preserve distinctive characteristics. These included unique naming patterns. ‘As part of his attack on the cult of Saints, Calvin forbade his followers to bestow saints’ names on their children’; while this was a ‘prohibition … not universally obeyed among Calvinists’, it was followed very widely.48 The Huguenots were probably the strictest in their rejection of traditional saints’ names. Philip Benedict’s study of Rouen shows that among the five most popular names in Protestant baptismal registers were, for boys, Abraham, Isaac and Daniel and, for girls, Judith and Sara—names not used in France previously, save among Jews. Now they were introduced into the mainstream population. As Benedict observes: ‘Saints names were overwhelmingly Catholic, Old Testament names predominantly Protestant, and the names of the apostles and other New Testament figures cut across confessional lines.’ Strikingly, too, ‘the percentage of Old Testament names among the Protestant children in Rouen was over 20 per cent higher than the percentage of such names bestowed on infants in Geneva’, the birthplace and stronghold of Calvinism. This surely ‘reflects the difference between a minority reformed congregation whose members had all joined out of conviction and a community where the faith was imposed on all by law.’49 All this meant that a Huguenot church really was a community, rather than just a group of people sharing common doctrines and liturgical practices. First, consistory, discipline and poor relief all systematically directed the attention of Huguenots to their own 48  Philip Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 105; see Guido Marnef, ‘The Changing Face of Calvinism in Antwerp, 1550–1585’, in Andrew Pettegree, Alastair Duke and Gillian Lewis (eds.), Calvinism in Europe 1540–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 155–56; cf. Nicholas Tyacke, ‘Popular Puritan Mentality in Late Elizabethan England’, in Peter Clark, Alan G. R. Smith and Tyacke (eds.), The English Commonwealth 1547–1640 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979), 92. 49  Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion, 105–6, 257–58, 256–60.



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congregation—the nature of Reformed ecclesiology made French Protestants likely to act communally. Second, all these characteristics made Huguenots stand out; so, too, as Harry Leonard stresses in chapter 2, did their refusal to participate in the communal religious rituals which, as well as being presumed to gain God’s blessings on a community, bound it together in common practices and behaviours.  Thus, in addition to the characteristic practices and institutions  that focused their own attention inwards, accentuating group identity, French Calvinists were separated from the geographic communities in which many lived. They did not have to have a separate language, accent or skin colour to be clearly distinguishable from the rest of the population. They were set apart by their distinctive, confessionally-generated cultural and social practices and behaviour patterns—sometimes even by their names! If they chose to emigrate, then, even if they took refuge in Reformed polities, they were additionally set apart by a further distinctive, innate characteristic: they spoke French. Language ‘is closely linked’ to the formation of distinct ethnic or ‘national identity’50 and their language naturally branded the Huguenots, when living in exile, as ‘other’. In le Refuge, Huguenots perpetuated many of these distinctive traits, at least initially, as Vivienne Larminie and Randolph Vigne bring out in their essays in this volume.51 The cohesive group identity of French Protestants was indubitably a strength, yet it was also a weakness. Their Gallican Calvinism made them deeply alien even to those who sympathised with them as fellow Protestants. In particular it meant they could not presume on the sympathies of conservative English Protes­ tants. Fresh from their own ‘wars of religion’ that had resulted in the creation of a short-lived republic,52 Anglicans were as unsympathetic to French Calvinists as to French Catholics and this was a complicating factor for Huguenots in late-Stuart England—an issue explored by Greg Dodds and Robin Gwynn in chapters 3 and 5.53 Some of these aspects of Huguenot identity were the fruit of Reformed theology and ecclesiology, but others arose from the particular context of French Calvinists; and all were moulded by  Le Goff, History and Memory, 4.   Chapters 9, 10. 52   Borrowing the terminology of John Morrill, ‘England’s Wars of Religion’, in his The Nature of the English Revolution (London & New York: Longman, 1993), 33–44. 53   Chapters 3, 5. 50 51

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e­ xperience—by history. The Huguenots’ distinctive identity, including idiosyncratic behaviour patterns and communal practices, could only be preserved in exile by preserving and perpetuating collective memory. Yet the reality of Huguenot history in the eight decades after the Edict of Nantes was that there were things French Protestants, despite the high value they placed on collective memory, might well feel uncomfortable recollecting. Between History and Memory: Tensions in Identity The tension between history and memory placed strains on identity. Memories were often bittersweet, and their implications for identity could be ambiguous. In the lands of the Refuge, too, memory could result in Huguenots having a vexed relationship with la Patrie. As Bernard Cottret observes, ‘from the very beginning the Refuge Churches acted as a reminder, and upheld,’ for the church of the desert, which was ‘still exposed to persecution or the hazards of the wars or religion … a living example of a society’ in which true worship of God (as the Huguenots saw it) was in harmony with loyalty to the sovereign and state.54 But this created ‘a dialectic between France’ and the foreign land of refuge, which naturally ‘gave rise at times to bitterness and misunderstanding: lukewarmness, temporising, compromise … were all accusations levelled at the Protestants who remained in France’, yet so too were charges of religious fanaticism and excess.55 When it came to the French state, bitterness was intensified, and manifested in the wills of Huguenot émigrés, as Vigne and Larminie show in this volume.56 Part of the problem was that the Edict of Nantes, both the symbol and expression of such religious liberty as the Huguenots enjoyed, had been issued by the crown. No king after Henri IV was as sympathetic to his Protestant subjects as the sometime Huguenot Henri of Navarre; however, his son, Louis XIII, and (initially) his grandson, Louis XIV, continued to uphold the rights of the Reformed Churches of France.

 Cottret, Huguenots in England, 7.  Cottret, Huguenots in England, 7–8. 56   Chapters 9 and 10. Vigne gives examples of outright hostile language in the wills, but in addition he and Larminie both cite evidence of testators regarding France as a country best abandoned. 54 55



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This was in contrast to the general hostility of wider society; hence the Bourbon monarchy came to be seen as the source and preserver of Protestant liberties. ‘Whenever they [Huguenots] invoked the Edict of Nantes’, and appealed to the special royal tribunals the crown had established to deal with confessional grievances, Protestants were submitting ‘to the authority of the state and especially of the monarchy, on which enforcement of the law and their legal privileges depended.’57 In consequence, the Huguenots actually came to be defenders of ‘divine-right monarchy’ and criticised their own noble leaders who led armed resistance to royal power in the early seventeenth century.58 In 1663, in a sermon that was published, one Calvinist pastor, Pierre du Bosc, even called Louis XIV ‘our sole source of strength, our safeguard, our fortress, and our place of refuge.’59 Throughout much of the seventeenth century, ‘the Huguenots’ assertion of collective identity [was] entangled with the issue of their obedience to the French crown.’ Or as Élisabeth Labrousse puts it, the Huguenots had become wholly enveloped by, and dependent upon, his Majesty’s pleasure.’60 The problem this created was two-fold. First, when the king changed his mind about toleration, as Louis XIV gradually did, French Protestants had cut from under their own feet many of the grounds on which to criticise his decision. ‘Huguenots [had] vied with Catholics to exalt [the French monarchy’s] royal rights—rights … which paradoxically served as one of the ideological justifications of the Revocation!’61 Second, the Huguenots found it very difficult to express resentment of, or urge resistance to, the very regime that was stealing their children, destroying their churches, sending them as slaves to the galleys or breaking them on the wheel. In practice, Huguenots resisted very valiantly and stoutly, witnessed not least by the large-scale emigration of the 1670s and 1680s. ‘Ideologically’, however, as Labrousse observes, 57  Dianne C. Margolf, ‘Identity, Law, and the Huguenots of Early Modern France’, in Van Ruymbeke and Sparks, Memory and Identity, 40. 58   Élisabeth Labrousse, ‘The Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought’, in Alfred Soman (ed.), The Massacre of St. Bartholomew: Reappraisals and Documents, International Archives of the History of Ideas, 75 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 246; Theodore K. Rabb, ‘St. Bartholomew and Historical Perspective’, in ibid., 253. 59  Du Bosc, Les estoiles du ciel de l’Eglise (Rouen: 1663), 64, quoted in Labrousse, ‘Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought’, 249. 60  Margolf, ‘Identity, Law, and the Huguenots’, 40; Labrousse, ‘Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought’, 249. 61  Labrousse, ‘Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought’, 245.

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‘they were in total confusion.’62 Only gradually did this change. Even then, while some French Calvinists were willing to attack the Bourbon monarchy and the French government, others found it hard to stop being loyal subjects. As Walter Utt has shown, even the celebrated Claude Brousson, eventually executed as a traitor for encouraging the church of ‘the desert’ to resist Louis XIV’s regime by force, had initially spilled much ink writing treatises intended to persuade the king to change his mind—a fantastic notion, indicative of a theological leadership out of touch with reality. But Brousson learned from experience, and he, together with Pierre Bayle, Pierre Jurieu and others, helped lead a change in Huguenot thought, decrying instead of defending absolutist monarchy, and arguing for genuine religious toleration.63 As a result, in the seventeenth century, certain aspects of the Huguenot heritage became no-go areas, avoided in public statements and problematic for private and family remembrance. This was deeply ironic, because, ‘From the very beginning, religious beliers were entwined with the militancy of the movement … [which] was, of course, translated into political violence over the course of the civil wars.’ This was an important part of Huguenot memory and their records of their own history, as well as of their polemic, ‘especially in the wake of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre.’ In its wake, some Protestants had been ‘prepared to think the unthinkable and to develop political theories that, although unpalatable for many justified tyrannicide’ (and hence, potentially, the assassination of a king). And yet, ‘Protestants remained fundamentally loyal to the crown and the established order’.64 Before the tide of oppression inexorably turned against  Labrousse, ‘Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought’, 251.  Ibid. See Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove; Israel, ‘Group Identity and Pierre Bayle’s Toleration Theory’; John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: Religious Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and ‘Early Enlightenment’ Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 20–21, 32–34, 153–54, 158, 161–68, 179–93, 418–39, 474; F. R. J. Knetsch, ‘Pierre Jurieu: Theologian and Politician of the Dispersion’ Acta Historiae Neerlandica 5 (1971), 213–242; idem, ‘Pierre Jurieu and the Glorious Revolution according to his “Lettres Pastorales” ’, in J. van den Berg and P. G. Hoftijzer (eds.), Church, Change and Revolution: Transactions of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch Church History Colloquium, Publications of the Sir Thomas Browne Institute, new series, 12 (Leiden: E. J. Brill/ Leiden University Press, 1991), 145–66; chapter 7, by Onnekink, below; and, for a memorable fictionalised depiction, Walter C. Utt. Home to Our Valleys! (Mountain View, CA & Oshawa, ON: Pacific Press, 1977). 64   Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer, ‘Introduction: Être protestant’, in idem (eds.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World 1559–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge 62 63



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them under Louis XIV, Huguenots were often reluctant to refer, at least in print, to their own history during the wars of religion, because ‘the past actions of the Huguenots … were said to reveal them to be subjects dangerous to the monarchy and potential traitors to the country.’65 When they did address their history they might, as noted above, even criticise those who had led them in resistance to the crown. This tension between confessional loyalty continued even after the Revocation, since many pastors were accustomed to asserting absolute royal authority and were, as Labrousse puts it, ‘in total confusion’; they, like Brousson, continued to try to persuade the king to change his mind. Yet as we shall see, other Huguenots became fervent advocates of taking up arms against their king, believing that revolt or military aid to Louis’s enemies might force an eclipse of the Sun King’s religious policy; and this meant that the whole of Huguenot history, including the wars of religion and their heritage of armed resistance to unjust government, and of radical political arguments that kings had to rule with the counsel or consent of the governed, could at last be recovered. Just as the religio-confessional climate underwent a radical change, so too did the way French Protestants thought, spoke and wrote about their past. Identity in the Era of Exile This brings us to the role of history and memory in shaping Huguenot identity in the era of renewed persecution and exile, from the 1670s onwards. Huguenots did not face their last difficult choice when deciding between ‘the desert’ and ‘the refuge’—between staying in their homes and homeland or making new lives as strangers in a strange land. If they chose they latter then, when they went into exile, they faced, indeed, difficult decisions. They not only had to make economic and social choices, but also had to face fundamental questions and doubts about who they were and the nature of Huguenot identity. Some questions reflected their ecclesiological organisation and the religio-cultural practices that derived from them, though in the

University Press, 2002), 6–7; cf. Robert M. Kingdon, Myths about the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacres 1572–1576 (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press, 1988), 136–82, 218–19. 65  Labrousse, ‘Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought’, 245.

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Netherlands and Switzerland these were shared by the host community, and elsewhere the Huguenots were able to avoid scepticism or hostility on the part of locals by remaining largely detached from them. As one recent study observes, ‘in Brandenburg-Prussia and several other German states’, Huguenots were ‘granted privileges enabling them to form separate and distinct entities, or become a state within a state.’ On the continent, it was common for Huguenot communities to have ‘their own administration, a separate jurisdiction under French law, and their own churches and educational system.’66 In contrast, although Huguenots under British governments (whether in England, Ireland or North America) were permitted ‘their own churches and consistories … French refugees were supposed to integrate into preexisting towns and villages.’67 It was in Britain, then, of all the lands where Huguenots took refuge, that their identity was potentially problematic and this was especially so in the era of the Revocation. As noted earlier, the Huguenots’ history of resistance to royal authority in France and their Calvinist ecclesiology made them objects of suspicion to many in the Angli­ can  establishment in England; yet at the same time their history of persecution, martyrdom and massacre, from even before the St Bartholomew’s Massacre, meant there were many who instinctively sympathised with their plight, in Anglican England and indeed in Lutheran Hanover, as well as in the Reformed Netherlands and Switzerland. The wealth and military experience of many émigrés made them valuable potential allies against an aggressive and expansionist France. Huguenots thus faced multiple choices over identity. Even in exile, they could be Frenchmen, loyal subjects of a king whose religious views they hoped would change; or Frenchmen, but in opposition to the French state; or persecuted Protestants; or trustworthy allies in war against the Catholic enemy; or a prophetic community, a ‘new Israel’; or simply new citizens or subjects of Britain, the Dutch republic, the pays de Vaud and so forth.68 As this author and Andrew Thompson show, in chapters 6 and 8, some Huguenots became active opponents of the French state, both in  Susanne Lachenicht, ‘New Colonies in Ireland? Antoine Court and the Settlement of French Refugees in the 18th Century’, HSP 29:2 (2009), 231. 67  Lachenicht, ‘New Colonies’, 231–32. 68   Cf. chapters 2–5 and 7–9, by Leonard, Dodds, Diller, Gwynn, Onnekink, Thompson and Larminie, below. 66



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arms and in the councils of rival states. In doing so they at last reclaimed for French Protestant memory the history of the wars of religion, of the vigorous Huguenot resistance that had once forced the crown to concede confessional pluralism, and of the Huguenot alliances with sympathetic states that had been a large part of Calvinist military success in the sixteenth century. There was in fact no realistic prospect, by the 1680s, of a successful revolt against Louis XIV’s military infrastructure.69 But with the Sun King engaged for almost a quarter of a century from 1689 in two pan-European conflicts, there was a warm welcome for Huguenot military, financial and logistical expertise across Europe. Hopes that the Protestant powers might make concession of liberty of conscience in France a condition of peace with France, or a strong sense of anger at what was perceived as betrayal by the House of Bourbon, turned many émigré French Protestants into keen partisans of France’s enemies. Thousands of Huguenots served in their armies, including in invasions of French territory; others provided money, matériel, propaganda, and policy advice to the allied war effort.70 Huguenot ‘hopes that Protestant Europe, led by Anglican England would force Louis XIV to restore French Protestant rights as guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes’ were long lived. Even after they ‘were disappointed in the Peace of Rijswijk’, which ended the Nine Years’ War (or War of the Grand Alliance) in 1697, such hopes persisted among some Huguenots.71 They faded entirely only after the Peace of Utrecht in 1713 which ended English and Dutch involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession, and which obtained only one minor concession for the Huguenots: the release of 136 men condemned to servitude in 69   On Louis XIV’s army, see Guy Rowlands, The Dynastic State and the Army under Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661 to 1701 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); John A. Lynn, Giant of the grand siècle: The French Army, 1610–1715 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 70  See Gwynn, ‘The Huguenots, the “Protestant International” and the Defeat of Louis XIV’; Matthew Glozier and David Onnekink (eds), War, Religion and Service: Huguenot Soldiering, 1685–1713 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), chapters 2, 4, 6–8, 11 (by John Childs, Randolph Vigne, Harman Murtagh, Glozier, Onnekink, Dianne W. Ressinger and Matthias Asche); Matthew Glozier, ‘Schomberg, Miremont and Huguenot Invasions of France’, in David Onnekink (ed.), War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648–1713 (Farnham & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 121–53; Laurence Huey Boles, Jr, The Huguenots, the Protestant Interest, and the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702–1714, American University Studies, series IX (History), 181 (New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Washington, DC, etc: Peter Lang, 1997)and chapters 4, 6–8, by Diller, Trim, Onnekink and Thompson, below. 71  Lachenicht, ‘New Colonies’, 227.

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the galleys of the French Mediterranean fleet for Calvinist worship or for having aided the flight of refugees. But the Protestant faith continued to be prohibited—and persecuted—in France.72 The Reformed Church remained in ‘the desert’. The recovery of their history as warriors, rebels and theorists of a right of resistance to royal sovereigns not only did not, for all their military efforts, effect the restoration of the Edict of Nantes; it also potentially could negatively influence perceptions of Huguenots in England, as Greg Dodds shows in chapter 3. In any case, it affected their own self-understanding. If émigrés emphasised their military, financial and logistical potential, it could engender suspicions or hostility in host countries; yet stressing their history as victims had the potential to remove agency from them, making them merely passive and dependent on others. This was particularly problematic in England and its American colonies, where the Huguenots and their history sometimes tended to be tangential to the debates in which they were discussed. As Lisa Diller shows in chapter 4, the Huguenots were crucial to debates about economics, religious identity and political parties in the embryonic British state. However, as Diller, Dodds in chapter 3 and Paul McGraw in chapter 11 all demonstrate, the Huguenots could become a locus for debates that weren’t really about the reception of the Huguenots and their place, as migrants, in the Anglo-British body politic. They and their past were sometimes simple vehicles for expressing satisfaction or dissatisfaction about other issues and causes, ranging from royal policies, to the treatment of indigenous Protestant Dissenters, to the danger posed by Roman Catholics. There was a danger, in accepting victimhood and passivity, that Huguenot concerns could be sidelined, or even that a degree of contempt (for not resisting Papists more vigorously) might be evoked. Thus, whichever identities émigrés adopted, they faced challenges. In practice, the Huguenots did not adapt just one strategy, either in rhetoric or in practice. All the different types of identity were claimed by some Huguenots, in some places, over the thirty years after the Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Not only were different strategies adopted by different émigrés, depending on their circumstances, but also, as David Onnekink highlights in chapter 7, writers were not necessarily consistent in the rhetorical strategies they deployed, even in  Boles, The Huguenots and the War of the Spanish Succession, 249.

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those first decades after the Revocation—Huguenot identity was already beginning to fragment. However, those thirty years were perhaps the high point of portraying, to others at least, the Huguenots as valuable allies in making war on France. After the final death of hopes that the Protestant powers would compel France to undo the Revocation, those of the Huguenot ethnie abroad preserved and treasured memories of the Wars of Religion, of the massacres of the 1560s–’70s, of the dragonnades in the 1670s–’80s, and of their heroic service in the armies of Britain, the Dutch republic and German states in the 1680s–’90s. But while these parts of Huguenot history and memory remained significant, the influence of the past on Huguenot identity in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century present dwindled. The historically contingent and memory-constructed character of the Huguenot as persecuted martyr and/or valiant soldier was still cherished, yet, as Larminie, Vigne and McGraw reveal in their chapters, it ceased to be fundamental to Huguenot identity. Huguenots continued to value their language, but its use gradually diminished, even when endogamous marriage was practiced; the pressure not to assert ‘difference’ and other-ness by preserving a different language, eventually told. Huguenots continued to value cross-border connections, especially to France, but typically also to other countries of the Refuge; thus, they remained transnational in outlook, even as they began to assimilate into their new homelands. This they did with great success, being ‘largely assimilated’ into host communities throughout the Atlantic world.73 The Huguenot ethnie ceased to exist in a meaningful sense and ‘Huguenot’ became an alternative but always secondary identity for English, Swiss, Dutch, German, and American men and women, who had also frequently abandoned their Calvinism, though there seems to have been no real trend of secularism in the nineteenthcentury Huguenot community.74 As Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, in his recent study of Huguenots, memory and identity, argues: ‘French Protestantism paradoxically survived in the diaspora by losing its core identity, i.e., its Gallican

73   Quotation from chapter 11, by Paul McGraw, below, p. 304 (though as he points out, there were isolated, less assimilated, pockets). So completely were the Huguenots assimilated that, e.g., in southern Africa, all French traces were entirely lost, both in the language (Afrikaans) and in the culture, except for some surnames: I am indebted to the Afrikaaner literary scholar, David Schalkwyk, for this observation. 74   Cf. Cottret, Huguenots in England, 240.

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Calvinism and French language, while espousing the religious and cultural traits prevailing in the host societies it encountered.’75 Bernard Cottret in his history of the Huguenots in England concludes similarly: The communities survived only in so far as they adapted, but, at the same time, the more they complied … the more they appeared to lose their idiosyncratic character. Therefore, they were in a perpetual state of instability, and, with the renewal of each generation, or as a result of geographical mobility, they were confronted with the danger of losing their identity.76

However, also paradoxically, it was the very loss of a genuine Huguenot ethnic identity that led to a resurgence of Huguenot memory and the creation of Huguenot historiography. The Emergence of Huguenot Studies The stories and traditions of collective memory were maintained and provided the basis for an extraordinary nineteenth-century revival of interest in the Huguenots and their history. Its initial impulse was a growing awareness among descendants of original refugees that their community was on the verge of forgetting its past (i.e., of losing its collective memory) and thus of losing touch with its history. But the interest in the Huguenot heritage was not to be limited to those of French ancestry. One way of negotiating the stress created by the danger of the loss of identity that seemed to be a necessary concomitant of communal  success in the eighteenth century, was to preserve a partial and, increasingly, an imagined identity, alongside the new national identities. The emergence of history as an academic discipline at European universities in the mid-nineteenth century provided an impetus to the writing of Huguenot history, but it was encouraged by leaders of the French Reformed Church in France and of the Huguenot community in Britain, as a deliberate ‘endeavour to avert the loss of memory.’77

  Van Ruymbeke, ‘Minority Survival’, 17.  Cottret, Huguenots in England, 267 and see 264–66. 77  Cottret, Huguenots in England, 267. 75 76



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As we shall see, the nineteenth century’s new enthusiasm for the Huguenots was to take various forms and be expressed in various ways, including in literature, music, drama and art. These creative successes reflected the revitalised interest in Huguenot heritage; yet they really transmitted, with artistic license, a representation of the Huguenots that derived from collective memory, more than history. But the nineteenth century’s new enthusiasm for the Huguenots also had a scholarly manifestation: what has rightly been called a ‘nineteenth-century Huguenot renaissance’.78 In 1852, Baron Fernand de Schickler founded the Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français (SHPF). It still exists and its Bulletin is still the journal of record for Huguenot history in the Francophone world. In 1885 the Huguenot Society of London (today the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland) was founded; its Proceedings are the premier journal of Huguenot studies in the Anglophone world. Meanwhile, in 1867 Samuel Smiles had published the first edition of his path-breaking history The Huguenots, their settlements, churches and industries in England and Ireland. Within 22 years, it had gone into its sixth edition. In addition was the work of Henry Wagner, examined in chapter 10, who set about recovering the fading Huguenot past through genealogical research. Over a period of some sixty years, Wagner (1840–1926) collected information on the Huguenot ancestry of 997 English families. He created some 5,000 abstracts of Wills and Administrations relating to testators with identifiably Huguenot names, proved between 1617 and 1849, the great majority in the forty years following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Drawing partly on the research generated by the SHPF and partly on the work of Smiles and other Huguenot researchers in Britain, in 1892 Schickler published his three-volume history of Les Églises du Refuge en Angleterre in 1892, also a pioneering work. The reconstruction of Huguenot history in the nineteenth century, drawing both on collective memory and on the research of scholars, took place in the high noon of Protestant memory culture. This was an era in which the most successful histories of the Reformation were told from an avowedly Protestant perspective; in which even religious authors who wrote for a general audience and sold widely, such as Ellen G. White, used the history of the Reformation and in particular  See Van Ruymbeke, ‘Minority Survival’, 13–16 at 13.

78

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the heritage of the Huguenots, to make wider theological and spiritual points.79 It was also an era in which Luther and Calvin were appropriated for group identity purposes by Calvinist scholars: for example, in the Netherlands, where historians tried to utilise memory to shore up and defend an increasingly fragmentary Dutch Protestant identity.80 These Protestant influences were felt in the emergent Huguenot historiography, which ‘constructed a group identity born of a mythically glorified self-perception of their history’.81 This involved not only group memory but also historiography, for one by-product of the Huguenot revival was the researching and writing of scholarly Huguenot history. This new scholarship ironically laid the groundwork for eventual exploding of some of the constituent myths of the new Huguenot identity. The new historiography was often characterised by rigorous scholarship, but while collective memory was tapped as a source, it was frequently endorsed; in effect, the new historiography at times was really ‘selective memory’, even into the twentieth century.82 There was also a tendency towards undergirding some cherished Huguenot myths; in effect, some traditions were invented. Even when archival research was critically and skilfully interwoven with oral tradition, it might be in order to create a ‘Protestant version’ of controversial episodes that ‘would challenge the Catholic version’. Huguenot and Catholic historians to some extent fought ‘old religious battles again’, seeking to ‘exonerate [their] own side’, or ‘to apportion guilt’ to the other. There was an understandable desire to demonstrate the heroic virtue of early Huguenot protagonists (and/or the wickedness of those who oppressed them), which authors tended to take for granted; and a craving to validate the antiquity of familial or communal roots, reflected in the fascination of many self-proclaimed ‘Huguenots’ with genealogy and pedigrees.83 What emerged was a ‘Victorian image’ of the original

 See chapter 11, by McGraw, below.   Herman Paul and Bart Wallet, ‘A Sun that Lost its Shine: The Reformation in Dutch Protestant Memory Culture, 1817–1917’, Church History and Religious Culture 88 (2008), 35–62. 81   Van Ruymbeke, ‘Minority Survival’, 2. 82  Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomew’s Massacres, 217. 83   Jouhaud, ‘Camisards’, 11; H. G. Koenigsberger, ‘Introduction’, in Soman, Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 1. Cf. Van Ruymbeke, ‘Minority Survival’, 16; Donald R. Kelley, ‘Martyrs, Myth, and the Massacre: The Background of St. Bartholomew’, in Soman, Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 202; Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Mass–Producing Traditions: 79 80



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émigré Huguenot as ‘austere … characterised alternately as a fearless hero or as a fanatic’.84 Eventually historians were to demonstrate that it was not just Huguenots who remained in France who sometimes compromised their faith in order to survive; as scholars such as Walter Utt showed, some of those who left France informed on their fellow émigrés to the French government.85 Such revisionism, though, awaited the twentieth century—a hundred years earlier, there was a different paradigm. ‘In the eyes of their descendants, and of those who claimed to have collectively inherited their “values,” the Huguenots who fled France were … devoted to and uncompromising in their faith, [and] courageous’. It was only natural to see ‘their survival [as] heroic, not to say edifying.’86 The Victorian image was, however, sometimes a triumph of collective memory over historical vérité. Despite these limitations, the work of the pioneer historians of the Huguenot heritage in France, continental Europe and the Atlantic World laid a relatively solid foundation on which all subsequent scholars have built. They preserved for the future much of the version of history that survived up to that point in collective memory; they opened up archives, made records and documents available in modern editions, and popularised serious genealogical and historical research. That Huguenot Studies is today a vibrant and flourishing subdiscipline is thanks to the work of the pioneer scholars of the late nineteenth century. But it is also due to subsequent generations who while recognising that they stood—that we stand—on the shoulders of giants nevertheless also recognised that new historical methodologies open up possible new interpretations and must be applied; and have recognised, too, that history and memory are always interpreted, at least to some extent, through the prism of the present of the analyst and interpreter. Hence there is a need for ‘a constant rereading of the past in relationship to the present, which must constantly be questioned anew.’87 This Huguenot scholars have done and continue to do, not least in the essays that follow. Europe, 1870–1914’, in Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, 292–93; chapter 11, by McGraw, below. 84  Cottret, Huguenots in England, 7. 85   E.g., Walter C. Utt, ‘A small mistery from 1690 (Jacques Gautier)’, Bolletino della Società di Studi Valdesi, 127 (1970), 55–58; Brian Strayer and Walter C. Utt, ‘Un “Faux frère”: le Sieur de Tillières et les réfugiés huguenots aux Provinces Unies, 1685–1688’, Bull. SHPF, 150 (2004), 507–16. 86   Van Ruymbeke, ‘Minority Survival’, 17. 87  Le Goff, History and Memory, 18.

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d. j. b. trim The Huguenots in Art, Literature, on the Stage and on Screen in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

It is striking, that after decades during which memories had faded or lapsed, there was an extraordinary efflorescence of interest in the Huguenot past in nineteenth-century Britain and France. It had popular and public manifestations, and was limited neither to scholars, nor indeed to those of Huguenot descent.88 This may have owed something to the fact that, after over a century of regular conflict with France (1689–1815)—what has been called a ‘second Hundred Years’ War’89—England and France enjoyed a prolonged period of peace and even, briefly, in the 1850s, of alliance in the Crimean War. But the public fascination with the Huguenots probably owed even more to Romanticism, for the Huguenots had all the romance of a lost cause; the Wars of Religion also were genuinely rich in the ‘violence, passion, and sensation’ that the new mass audiences (produced by widespread education) demanded ‘large helpings’ of, and which became ‘the staple fare of popular literature’.90 In addition, in their opposition to absolutist monarchy the Huguenots seemed, in hindsight, to have been foreshadowing not only the democratic ideals of the French Revolution but also more fundamental Romantic concepts of individual freedom and destiny. The first signs of creative interest in the Huguenot experience were manifested among French painters of the early nineteenth century. In 1821 Victor–Jean Adam painted that ambiguous Huguenot hero Henri of Navarre pre-conversion and pre-accession to the French crown. His painting ‘Henri IV après la bataille de Coutras’ (now in the Musée national du château de Pau) shows the King of Navarre (as he then was) as an heroic leader of men, surrounded by wounded soldiers under a gloomy sky—an interesting blending of attempted realism and outright romanticism. In 1833 Joseph–Nicolas Robert–Fleury, whose œuvre mixed portraits and historical paintings, executed his striking ‘Scène de la Saint–Barthélemy, assassinat de Briou, gouverneur du

88  I am indebted to Randolph Vigne for his advice on the Huguenots in 19th-cent. British culture. 89  E.g., François Crouzet, ‘The Second Hundred Years’ War: Some Reflections’, French History 10 (1996), 432–50. 90  David Coward, ‘Introduction’ to the Oxford World Classics edn of Alexandre Dumas, La Reine Margot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), vii.



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Prince de Conti, 24 août 1572’, now in the Louvre (which can be found on the cover). It is notable that Robert–Fleury did not paint the murder of Gaspard de Coligny, with which the massacre began and which was the subject of many contemporary and later woodcuts, prints and other depictions; the artist thus theoretically adds to the iconography of the massacre and shows his originality. But choosing Briou, tutor of the young Prince of Conti, who was of advanced years, allows Robert–Fleury in effect to paint Coligny’s killing by another name. Thus, the painting shows the murder of an essentially defenceless, elderly Calvinist man (his religion signalled by his sombre black dress), cut down in the intimacy of his bedchamber by numbers of well-armed assailants who are in the prime of life. Using Briou as a surrogate for Coligny means Robert–Fleury could work on a familiar theme but it also allows him to add to his scene the pathetic figure of the young prince of Conti who, as some sources recount, attempted to save his old tutor with his own body.91 This greatly adds to both the pathos and the violence of the scene, since Conti has to be forcibly held back by one of the attackers, who wears a prominent white cross on his helmet, reminding the viewer of the religious motivation of the killing, as does the somewhat sinister figure of a monk, directly behind the boy. Meanwhile, a well-dressed man looks on approvingly, wearing above his left elbow the white armband that was the identifying mark adopted by those who initiated the massacre. This figure is surely a surrogate for the Duke of Guise, who, according to some sources, was an onlooker as Coligny was butchered. All these details suggest that the artist assumed in his audience some knowledge of the actual events of the historical massacre. The painting thus indicates the prominence of St Bartholomew’s in collective memory. It is additionally interesting from an artistic perspective: on the one hand, it is a graphic and beautiful depiction of an appalling murder, yet on the other it also feels highly staged and artificial. It is a (surely deliberate) triumph of striking staging and depiction over dynamism, and of romanticism over realism. This, too, tells us something about the place of the Huguenots in collective memory.

91   This was a reasonably well-known episode when Robert–Fleury was painting: e.g., it is highlighted in ‘Massacre of St. Bartholomew’, a lengthy narrative serialized in the New York periodical The Correspondent, vol. 5 (Jan.–July 1829), 125.

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Seven years later Robert–Fleury added a prosaic and uninspired depiction of the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561—a (failed) attempt to resolve Catholic–Huguenot differences by dialogue—which is now at the seat of the SHPF in Paris. In the 1850s, he returned to a Huguenot theme with his apparently simple, but richly painted, ‘Henri IV et Sully à l’Arsenal’ (now also at Pau). It shows the elderly (and by now Catholic) Henri IV discussing policy with his (still Huguenot) principal minister, the duc de Sully, in an apparently domestic setting, though the title tells us the room is somewhere in the Arsenal of Paris. It could be interpreted as a commentary on the possibility of peaceful dialogue across confessional boundaries. Meanwhile, in England the distinguished literary figure Thomas Babington Macaulay had composed his stirring poem ‘The Battle of Ivry’, first published in 1824. This extraordinary narrative poem is probably the first sign of a rebirth of interest in the Huguenots in England, as well as France. It is compelling to read (or hear), characterised by evocative language and an urgent, driving metre; yet it is also remarkably accurate historically. Twelve years later, in February 1836, Giacomo Meyerbeer’s hugely successful opera Les Huguenots premiered at the Opéra in Paris. Possibly the most commercially successful opera of the nineteenth century, it had its premiere at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden in 1842 and received its one thousandth performance at the Opéra over seventy years after its first.92 In 1845 Alexandre Dumas père published his novel, La Reine Margot, set in the St Bartholomew’s Massacre and the two years that followed. Dumas depicts Marguerite de Valois as ‘a heroine who stakes all for love’ and the Huguenot Henri of Navarre as ‘a leader doomed by fate to achieve greatness at the expense of personal happiness.’93 La Reine Margot was a ‘an immense success’; it greatly outsold (for example) its rival of the day, Honoré de Balzac’s Les paysans, was translated and went through numerous editions in Britain, and spawned two sequels and a stage version.94 92  Matthias Brzoska, trans. Christopher Smith, ‘Meyerbeer: Robert le Diable and Les Huguenots’ in David Charlton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 199–207, esp. 206–7. 93   Coward, ‘Introduction’, xxii. 94  Moshe Sluhovsky, ‘History as Voyeurism: from Marguerite de Valois to La Reine Margot’, Rethinking History 4 (July 2000), 193; cf. Coward, ‘Introduction’, xv, xxii–xxiii; David H. Solkin, ‘Philibert Rouvière: Edouard Manet’s “L’Acteur Tragique” ’, The



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By 1850 there was a decided public appetite for things Huguenot on both sides of the Channel. One of its fruits was John Everett Millais’s celebrated painting ‘The Huguenot’, which shows a Huguenot and his (presumably Roman Catholic) lover; it is evidently from August 1572 for she is tying above his left elbow the white identifying armband used by the perpetrators of the St Bartholomew’s Massacre, yet it seems clear from his expression of tender regret as he cradles her head in his hands, and her look of wistfulness bordering on desperation, that he is about to take it off. (This, certainly, is how the painting has generally been interpreted.) It was ‘a great public success’ when exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1852, so much so that it was ‘the foundation of [Millais’s] later reputation’.95 This speaks to the huge public interest in Huguenot history, but what is striking is how much is left to the viewer to work out—Millais provides the visual cues that allow the painting to be decoded, but his original elliptical title leaves so much unsaid. Instead, he assumes that a reasonably detailed knowledge of the events of the massacre was fairly widespread. Thus, the painting also speaks to the extent to which the massacre had (or was perceived to have) penetrated collective memory in Britain. Perhaps partly inspired by Millais, the artistic interest in the dramatic (and romantic) possibilities of Huguenot history spread further east. In the early 1870s a Latvian artist, Karlis Fridikh Huns painted the wonderfully evocative character study ‘An Old Warrior of the Time of the Huguenots’ (1870), which shows a grey-bearded, helmeted, craggy-faced veteran, and a stylised ‘Scene from St Bartholomew’s Night’, showing a single murdered Huguenot and his grieving lover or wife, receiving a mock-courtly bow from a stylishly-clad aristocratic murderer (both are in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow). In 1875, in a painting now in the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg, Vasiliy Dmitrievich Polenov depicted the arrest of a minor Huguenot leader, Jacqueline de Montbel d’Etremont, who is shown with the pale and ascetic countenance of a martyr, being led away by three shadowy halberdiers.

Burlington Magazine, 117, no. 872, Special Issue: ‘Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Art’ (Nov. 1975), 702. 95   Alan Bowness, ‘Art and Society in England and France in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: Two Paintings before the Public’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 22 (1972), 129.

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The nineteenth-century paintings as a whole reflect a particular version of the Huguenot past, one which is indicative of collective (though second-hand) memory, and yet which also shaped it in a new direction. The Huguenots are heroic figures, suffering at the hands of an oppressive aristocratic elite; persecution has a personal, human cost, to the Huguenots and their loved ones, rather than political, religious, or wider socio-economic significance. Huguenots are thus emphatically romantic figures—they are mythologised, rather than realistically presented. By the late nineteenth century the Huguenots were also providing rich material for popular fictional re-workings of history. They were, for example, a particularly rich source for G. A. Henty, Victorian war correspondent, apologist for muscular Christianity and British imperialism, and prolific and hugely popular author of historical fiction for children and adolescents.96 One of his novels is entirely based on the same vital episode in Huguenot history already exploited by Robert– Fleury and Millais in paintings, Meyerbeer in opera, and Dumas in literature: Saint Bartholomew’s eve: A tale of the Huguenot wars was published in 1894. French Protestant soldiers also appear in four other novels: The lion of the north: A tale of Gustavus Adolphus and the Wars of Religion (1886); By pike and dyke: A tale of the rise of the Dutch Republic (1890); By England’s aid: The freeing of the Netherlands, 1585–1604 (1891); and Won by the sword: A story of the Thirty Years’ War (1900). Henty’s novels favour a somewhat formulaic Protestantism: in Won by the sword, his Scottish hero, a mercenary in the Catholic French army, is nevertheless avowedly Protestant. But they also stress the respectability of a military career—all his heroes are soldiers, or are obliged to use force to save themselves and those they love. If these are much more stories for boys than girls, Henty’s fiction does present heroines as well as heroes. His novels were, moreover, based on (indeed at times closely followed the text of) serious path-breaking works of archival history.97 Henty sold prolifically in his lifetime, and his fiction

96  See Godfey Davies, ‘G. A. Henty and History’, Huntington Library Quarterly 18 (1954–55), 159–67; The Henty Society [website at http://www.hentysociety.org/]; Peter Newbolt, ‘Henty, George Alfred (1832–1902)’, Oxford DNB, online edn, May 2006 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33827, accessed 8 July 2009]. 97   E.g., the ‘Preface’ and ‘Note’ at the start of By England’s aid (both unpaginated) commend to readers the work of two pioneering historians, John Lothrop Motley and Sir Clements Markham, on which Henty declares he depended.



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retains a devoted fan base, including among American evangelicals who feel his works endorse Christian and ‘family’ values.98 In the twentieth century, Walter C. Utt, historian of late seventeenthcentury Huguenots and Vaudois, turned from work on his major biography of Claude Brousson,99 to write three novels, two published in his lifetime (the third completed in two parts after his death), all dealing with Huguenots during the reign of Louis XIV. These, too, were novels for older children and adolescents, though they, too, have a devoted adult fan base. Although not selling as widely as Henty’s novels, they have sold on all six continents and been reprinted in paperback.100 Like Henty’s novels, the heroes are military men: one a Huguenot soldier, forced to choose between his career and his conscience, who rescues from persecution a Huguenot family, including a boy who becomes a soldier in foreign pay, serving along with his saviour and mentor (like those discussed in chapter 6). In contrast to Henty, however, Utt, an American, was far from an apologist for imperialism; and was a prominent member of a pacifist Church. It is very likely, though, that Henty was at least partly the inspiration behind Utt’s remarkable mid-life turn from historical scholarship to historical fiction, for on his death Utt owned one of Henty’s novels on the American Civil War.101 As he knew and liked Henty’s oeuvre well enough to own at least one copy it seems likely that Utt had read one or more of the early-modern novels. The prose style, however, is entirely Utt’s own and arguably (albeit such judgements are inevitably subjective) it is also more sophisticated. There still seems to be a market for novels about Huguenots among North American Protestants, at least in the area of children’s fiction, no doubt building on the successes achieved by Henty and Utt. Several children’s stories about Huguenots have been published in the 1990s and 2000s, all but one by Inheritance Publications, a company which seems to specialise in didactic and inspirational material for children, from a Calvinist perspective—other novels include a short series on William of Orange. The Huguenots, in these literary versions, are again  98   According to the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._A._Henty# Biography [accessed 9 Aug. 2009].  99   Completed posthumously: Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove. 100  Walter C. Utt, The Wrath of the King (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1966); Home to Our Valleys! (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1977); Walter C. Utt and Helen G. Pyke, No Peace for a Soldier (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2007); Utt and Pyke, Any Sacrifice but Conscience (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2008). 101  G. A. Henty, With Lee in Virginia (Chicago: M. A. Donohue & Co., n.d.).

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romantic heroes struggling against great odds, but they also stand for religious faithfulness.102 There is, finally, also clearly a market for at least some cinematic dramas about Huguenots aimed at adults. The 1994 motion picture La reine Margot, an adaptation of Dumas’s novel, directed by Patrice Cherau, and starring Isabelle Adjani, Jean–Hugues Anglade, Daniel Auteuil and Vincent Perez, was critically acclaimed and enjoyed international commercial success. It has numerous scenes of graphic sex and (less gratuitously, given the subject matter of the St Bartholomew’s massacre) of mob, individual and state violence—and thus is definitely not for children and adolescents. It adapts Dumas’s text, itself a free adaptation of history, rather than being directly based on the events of 1572–74, yet the director declared that he and his team had undertaken research to get historical details right. The success of La reine Margot testified that the Huguenots and their history are still capable of capturing the public imagination and conjuring up myth and collective memory.103 Conclusion To conclude this introductory chapter: the Huguenots were unique because of their diaspora and the connections that the various émigré communities kept with each other. This afforded the Huguenots some military and political power in the century and a half after the French Wars of Religion, as foreign co-religionists not only felt impelled to aid the Huguenots, but also sought to utilise their contacts and military capability. Yet the transnational dimension also made them ever more ‘strangers’; it thus created tensions for subsequent generations, since it was both an important part of their identity and yet also something they effectively eroded, in order to achieve assimilation. The Huguenots 102   A. Van Der Jagt, The Escape: The Adventures of Three Huguenot Children Fleeing Persecution (Based on Historical Facts) (Neerlandia, AB & Pella, IA: Inheritance, 1993; repr., 1997); idem, The Secret Mission: A Huguenot’s Dangerous Adventures in the Land of Persecution (Neerlandia, AB & Pella, IA: Inheritance Publications, 1998); Katherine Kirkpatrick, Escape across the Wide Sea (New York: Holiday House, 2004); Sabine Malplach and Deborah Alcock, The Baron of Salgas: A True Huguenot Story by Sabine Malplach; and: The Cross and the Crown & The Carpenter of Nîmes: Two Huguenot Stories by Deborah Alcock (Neerlandia, AB & Pella, IA: Inheritance, 2010). 103  Julianne Pidduck, La reine Margot (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2005) is a critical study from the disciplinary perspective of Film Studies.



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formed the catalyst for some of the first debates about national identity and immigration, and about the extent to which common values and religion could substitute for common language and culture; their experience provides important evidence for modern debates about how much immigrants can or should preserve their own institutions and identity, and the extent to which, even in assimilation, they mould those around them. The Huguenots and their experience in transnational context also provides important evidence for the influence of memory on history, because of the extent to which memories of their turbulent past influenced both Huguenot émigrés and those around them. Frequently, knowledge of the Huguenots’ history (or a version of their history constructed both among émigrés and in their host communities) ensured a welcome in foreign Protestant communities; yet at the same time, especially in England, it meant they were associated with rebelliousness, resistance to authority, and other forms of controversy, which led emigrants and their descendants to change their collective representation of their own past. Furthermore, while the discourse of remembrance could produce a powerful sense of the past in the present, it also, at the same time, could sometimes obscure the very events on which it was based. History and memory intersect, and there is interchange between them, because real, adapted, and purported memories and representations of historical events were shaped by contemporary polemic and propaganda, and by near-contemporary chronicling of those events, yet at the same time they were shaping attitudes to those events and thus the writing of history and polemic. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century narratives of the Huguenots, whether historical or fictional, have been shaped by longstanding memories (or myths), as well as by new, path-breaking scholarship. Memory thus continues to influence history. *** In the 27 July 1998 issue of the popular American magazine, Sports Illustrated, ‘columnist Frank Deford lamented, “I am from a forgotten tribe. Not lost, you understand. That’s romantic: lost. My tribe is simply forgotten. I am a Huguenot. A French Huguenot. Who remembers us?” ’104

 http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2001/issue71/14.45.html

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This plaintive lament neatly encapsulates the Huguenot experience of success both in assimilating and in remembering—the answer to his rhetorical question was that they themselves remembered. Not just the original émigrés and their children, but those descended, even remotely from Huguenots, have preserved collective Huguenot memory and ensured that Huguenot history flourishes. In every country of the Refuge, they very successfully became part of the host community, yet in most countries they retained a sense, even if only a limited and distorted one, of the Huguenot identity. Collective memory preserved Huguenot identity, even if it has ended up being a rather different one to that of c.1700; and Huguenot history has reinforced that identity. But it is an identity that would surely have been very different had memory completely broken down, or had history not been researched and written when it was. The multifaceted interactions of memory and historiography in transnational context, explored in the following case–studies, explain much about the creation and historical development of the Huguenot diaspora.

CHAPTER TWO

The Huguenots and the St Bartholomew’s Massacre* H. H. Leonard The awful violence of the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day, 24 August 1572, continues to be an event both of history and, in a sense, of memory, for, unlike some great historical episodes, it is still relatively well known today – it is remembered. Estimates of the numbers killed in 1572 vary. The more conservative estimates suggest between 2,000 and 3,000 were killed in Paris in the course of a week. In the aftershock of the next six weeks at least another 3,000 were killed in other French towns, mainly in the North. A probable total of some 6,000 deaths in all, although it could have been as many as 8–10,000; far short of the 70,000 claimed by nineteenth-century Protestants, but appalling just the same.1 The death toll of all the massacres certainly exceeds those of, for example, all the Islamist terrorist atrocities of the twenty-first century and even beyond the impact on the Huguenot community of such large-scale mortality, the memory of the bloody events of St Bartholomew’s unquestionably shaped subsequent French and Huguenot history in profound ways. The events of late summer and autumn 1572 continue to generate considerable historiographical controversy among scholars; and they had the power to stir wider *  An earlier version of this paper was given as the fourth Utt Lecture, at Pacific Union College, in 2002. I am grateful to David Trim for his comments and suggestions. 1   Philip Benedict, ‘The St Bartholomew Massacres in the Provinces,’ HJ 21 (1978), 207; Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in SixteenthCentury Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), for Paris. It seems clear that from the very first years after the massacres Protestants on the whole exaggerated the numbers, while after a time Catholics minimised them, so that by the nineteenth century Protestants were claiming 90,000 dead while some Catholic writers were talking of a few hundred! Even today we cannot be sure of the numbers: Denis Crouzet, La nuit de la Saint–Barthélemy: un rêve perdu de la Renaissance (Paris: Fayard, 1994), gives 8,000, J. H. M. Salmon, Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (London: Methuen, 1975), 187 suggests as many as 13,000. I stick with the most conservative figure for the present.

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controversy in France into the 1990s. The memory of St Bartholomew’s, in sum, has not yet faded. This essay is a synthesis of recent scholarship, rather than of original research. It seeks to understand why the St Bartholomew’s massacres occurred and it examines their legacy, which subsequent generations of Protestants, within and without France, memorialised. It argues that the massacres have to be seen in the context of the religious violence that escalated into three civil wars in the 1560s, in which Huguenots tended to attack objects, rather than people – the mass, images, shrines – though also sometimes the priests who kept the system going; Catholics, on the other hand, tended to attack the persons of heretics, because of the prevalent concept of heresy as a deadly infection and pollution. However, the nature of cities and towns as well as the communal nature of religion also contributed to the possibility of violence. Ceremonial processions, whether to thank God for victory, to show penitence in defeat, to ward off dangers of a more local kind, or to mark Corpus Christi day, had all shown, before the advent of Protes­ tantism, a united community at work in resolving the endemic earlymodern problems of famine, epidemic and poverty. The unwillingness of Protestants to take part in these important rituals – and their occasional willingness to attack them – created divided communities in which Huguenots were regarded as the reason and cause not only of disunity, but also of whatever troubles befell the city or parish in which they lived, and therefore made them targets. But the pre-existence of religious and communal violence is only one of the roots of the massacre of 1572. In the summer of 1572 Paris, a city whose civic identity had traditionally revolved around its role as the heart of a sacral monarchy (a point discussed below), was flooded by Huguenot noblemen and their retinues, come to witness the marriage of Henry of Navarre to the sister of the king – the marriage of a Protestant to a Catholic. Parisians and staunchly Catholic nobles regarded the marriage as symptomatic of the king’s failure to act as the ‘first son of the pope’ ought, and crush heresy. Each of the three civil wars had ended, not in victory, but in concessions to the heretics. The Parisians had already shown their disapproval of the terms of the peace treaty of 1570 by a tax strike. The marriage brought these passions to the boil, aided by preachers who warned their congregations that God would not let the marriage and failure to punish heretics go unpunished. A general eschatological excitement and anxiety raised the temperature still higher. Appalling violence was the tragic result, and a



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suspicion by Protestants of Catholic motives that went beyond the borders of France. For the next thirty years, until a Protestant (and survivor of St Bartholomew’s day) member of the House of Bourbon, Henry of Navarre, succeeded to the French throne as Henry IV, Huguenots were deeply distrustful of the Valois monarchy, ensuring peace could not be made in France until 1598. But in addition, right into the eighteenth century, foreign Protestants associated both French Calvinists and the French crown with massacre. St Bartholomew’s shaped the triangular interrelationship of French Protestants, French government and foreign governments for a century and a half. * How could the St Bartholomew’s massacres have happened? The massacre of St Bartholomew’s day was not the first in France in the sixteenth century and events in Paris in 1572 have to be seen in the context of the religious violence that had previously escalated into three civil wars in the 1560s. ‘The violence of St Bartholomew was not new but more intensive, for rioting and lynch-law had been pervasive from 1562.’2 Hostility to Protestants was particularly marked in Paris. It was a large, bustling, cosmopolitan city, the largest in Northern Europe. Its 300,000 inhabitants, confined more or less within its medieval walls, crowded into its narrow streets, its five-storey multioccupancy buildings, its hovels, its mansions and its palaces.3 It was a commercial and manufacturing centre, a capital city, host to a royal residence, home to the Parlement and to the oldest university in Europe. In short it was a magnet for all sorts and conditions of people. It also had its poverty and crime problems that its city government tried to deal with – not with total success. This makes it sound like any number of modern cities. But there was one important difference. Paris was proud of its Catholicism. It is tempting to say that the majority of Parisians were fanatically Catholic – except that one man’s fanaticism is another man’s loyalty to truth and principle. We shall return to Paris’s deep-rooted Catholicism later. For now it is sufficient to note  Menna Prestwich, ‘Calvinism in France, 1559–1629’, in Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism 1541–1715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 92. 3   Robert Descimon, ‘Paris on the eve of St. Bartholomew: Taxation, Privilege and Social Geography,’ in Philip Benedict (ed.), Cities and Social Change in Early Modern France (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 69–82; Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 9 2

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that it was one of the distinguishing features of this large and exciting city which one Catholic observer enthusiastically – and significantly – compared to Jerusalem.4 In the hot and sultry August of 1572 Paris was even more crowded than usual. Hundreds of extra bodies – the nobility of France with their households, retainers and servants had descended on the capital for a royal wedding. Including a large number of Huguenot nobility. Paris had never seen so many rich and highborn Protestants. They were there for the wedding of one of their political leaders, the young Henry of Navarre, to the princess Margaret, sister of king Charles IX. The marriage of a catholic to a protestant was itself a rare event. The marriage of a protestant leader to the king’s catholic sister was unheard of. It required a papal dispensation. The pope declined. The marriage went ahead without a papal blessing. For most Parisians it was an unwelcome marriage. Unwelcome is too weak a word. Popular preachers, their churches filled to bursting point, thundered from their pulpits against it.5 It could only bring divine judgment upon the capital city and the state. For this was an era when people really did believe that God was active in the natural and political world and that famines, floods, epidemic diseases, monstrous births, comets, and even defeats in war were all signs of God’s displeasure.6 Albrecht Dürer’s masterly and haunting image of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse bringing with them God’s judgments of famine, disease and death were printed and imitated many times during the century. Preaching in Paris reflected this. At least since 1557 when France suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Spanish at St Quentin the preachers had blamed whatever troubles befell the city onto the presence of heresy. Such troubles, they

 Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 38. It is notable that Huguenots also used ‘Jerusalem’ in reference to Paris, but in rather different ways. French Protestants regarded Paris as a potential Jerusalem, if it could be cleansed of apostate religion: Crouzet, La nuit de Saint-Barthélemy, 87, 121; and they called one of their unofficial house churches in Paris ‘Jerusalem’, rather than the city as a whole: Nancy Lyman Roelker, One King, One Faith: The Parlement of Paris and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 270. 5  Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 45–158 is the best account of the role of the Paris preachers throughout the period leading up to 1572. 6   Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). They also observe that people saw God working through the stars – our word disaster literally means a negative star. 4



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warned, would continue until heresy was extirpated. They sounded like Old Testament prophets. But they also linked the troubles around them with the second coming of Christ for which people had to be ready in these the last days. France suffered from what Denis Crouzet calls ‘severe apocalyptic anxiety’.7 The final judgment was near. One had to be ready. Being ready meant doing right. And doing right was just what was not happening when a Catholic princess married a Protestant. ‘God,’ fulminated Simon Vigor, both one of the most popular and one of the most rhetorically violent Paris preachers, ‘will not suffer this execrable coupling.’8 To summarize: in August 1572 Paris was more overcrowded than usual; it was overcrowded with unwanted, lordly heretics and it was overcrowded because of a marriage that would bring down upon France and its capital city the judgments of God. Paris was on edge. It was a city of raw nerves. Paris had been on edge for over a decade. From the time that Protestants began to appear in anything like visible numbers in 1557 there had been trouble. When the ultra-Catholic Duke of Guise killed members of a congregation at Vassy in 1562 Paris welcomed him as a hero—never mind that his rash action precipitated civil religious war. Something was being done at last. There were three civil wars between 1562 and 1570 and wars engender fear. Rumours circulated that the Huguenots intended to destroy Paris. There was a certain collective paranoia concerning Protestants. Of course, there was just enough evidence to make Parisian fears plausible. Huguenots in other towns had at various times in the three civil wars taken over the administration, expelled Catholic dissenters and on occasion killed some also.9 But conspiracy theory was the result, not the cause, of Parisian dislike of Protestants. It is perhaps difficult for some in these days of individualism to understand that religion in early-modern Europe was a 7   Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de dieu: la violence au temps des troubles de religion, vers 1525-vers 1610, (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990), I, 103–62, 172–73, 386–87, II, 407, 627. 8   On Vigor see Barbara Diefendorf, ‘Simon Vigor: A Radical Preacher in SixteenthCentury Paris’, SCJ 18 (1987), 399–410. 9   Philip Benedict, Rouen during the French Wars of Religion, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1980), 125–150, gives a full account of happenings in Rouen; he deals more briefly with some of the other cities in ‘Saint Bartholomew’s Massacres in the Provinces’; Penny Roberts, ‘Calvinists in Troyes, 1562–1572,’ in Andrew Pettegree et al. (eds), Calvinism in Europe 1540–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 100–118 deals more fully with the problems facing the Huguenots in Troyes.

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communal affair, worship a communal event, salvation a corporate act. If you did not participate you were in effect saying that you did not want to be part of the community, and it wasn’t far from there to others believing that you wished to destroy the community. In a sense they were right. The old rituals bound communities together. Whether it was the ritual of regular attendance at the Mass, the yearly taking of the Eucharist, the weekly distribution of non-communion bread and wine during Sunday service,10 or taking part in a procession, people showed that they were in some sort of harmony with their fellows. Not to participate set you apart. And if you also wore more sombre clothes, sought to live a rather more sober life, refused to take part in the nonreligious festivals of the community (somewhat riotous affairs), you set yourself apart even more. There was, then, a strong social dimension to Catholic suspicion and dislike of Protestants. But there was also genuine theological hostility, reflecting doctrinal divisions. What beliefs might separate a community so decisively as to cause communal violence? Probably the two most important were the beliefs about the Mass and religious processions. The views I portray here are by and large those of the person in the pew and some of the parish priests and may not do justice to the sophisticated theology of the Sorbonne, but we are trying to see why ordinary people acted the way they did. Parish Catholics normally made their communion once a year, usually at Easter, but they watched the priest celebrate it every week; or if they chose, as some did, more often. What did they see as they watched? They saw the priest take the bread and the wine and lift them up in consecration before the altar. And they knew – without a shadow of doubt – that at that very moment the bread and wine became the very body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ; that Christ was sacrificed on the altar for their sins; and that they were nearer to salvation than before it had happened.11 Now, while the Catholic faithful gazed in adoration at the uplifted bread and wine and worshipped their

  On this, Dieffendorf, Beneath the Cross, 29.   Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 19–20, argues that the Mass was principally a social act, that it underscored ‘the bond between the communicants themselves’ more than between themselves and God. While there certainly was an important social dimension to the Mass, or for that matter to the protestant Communion, one can elevate the social dimension higher than is warranted. An attack on the Mass was undoubtedly ‘a dagger stuck in the heart of the body social’ (20) but it was also blasphemy and a dagger stuck into the heart of Christ. The two are not mutually exclusive. 10 11



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s­ aviour, all that Protestants saw was dangerous idolatry or superstition. For them the bread was still bread, the wine still wine. To gaze and kneel in adoration at a specially made wafer was, as they crudely insisted, to worship a God of paste. Such a view was clearly offensive to Catholics. Even worse, it was blasphemy. It mocked the very body and blood of Christ. And everyone knew that to permit such blasphemy was to run the risk of divine judgement. The city needed to be purged of such people. And there were so many occasions on which such blasphemy could be seen to be committed apart from the saying of mass. The most public of these was the procession. Processions were held for various reasons. To celebrate a victory; more often, to ask for divine favour in times of war, bad harvest and epidemic disease; and always on Corpus Christi day, simply to celebrate the fact that God was with them in the form of bread and wine. On this day the holy sacrament was taken through the streets in solemn procession while the inhabitants knelt, or stood with heads bared and bowed, having first suitably decorated their houses to honour the body of Christ as it passed. But processions involved not only the Blessed Sacrament but also the whole community of the saints. The aid of St Genevieve (the patron saint of Paris) was invoked by elaborate city-wide processions no fewer than forty six times in the century, fourteen of them between 1550 and 1570, while individual parishes sought the blessing and protection of their own patron saint, whose likeness was processed through the streets of the parish together with holy relics, ranging from splinters of wood of the Cross of Christ downwards. A typical parish might have as many as thirteen such processions a year in addition to joining in the great city processions.12 All were powerful media, keeping the city in touch with heaven, the saints working with God to provide solutions to every day problems as well as catastrophic events. They also kept the city in touch with itself since the great and the good processed while the ordinary people looked on in wonder and in awe. But to Protestants they were at best a waste of time: they had no scriptural validity; they were superstitious idolatry; they could not help people’s souls; they probably did a great deal of harm to their

12  Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 40; cf. Moshe Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris: Rituals of Devotion in Early Modern France, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions, 3 (Leiden: Brill, 1998).

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s­piritual lives. Now a Protestant who wanted to keep out of trouble could do so by keeping his mouth shut and not attending Mass. But there was little he could do when the Body of Christ or some holy relic was processed through the streets. He could not, in all conscience, adorn his house nor could he not kneel, or even doff his hat. So he was a marked man, the more so if he was rash enough to make a counterdemonstration. As, of course, some did. The mass was mocked, shrines were vandalised, processions interrupted, stones thrown, swords unsheathed, lives lost. Reacting to increasingly radical Cath­ olic  rhetoric and heightened persecution, the Huguenots, as Arlette Jouanna argues, had been radicalised in their turn and become more aggressive.13 In sum, then, Protestants were an offence to the community; they tore the seamless robe of parish and civic unity; they offended the saints by whose aid Parisians were protected from the ills of this life and assured of salvation in the next; they were, as heretics and blasphemers, an affront to God. Paris was polluted. For zealous Catholics and the priests they listened to there was only one solution: the offence – the pollution – had to be removed. It seems that it is much easier for us to do unspeakable things to others once we have ceased to think of them as fellow human beings with friends and families, hopes, fears and potential. It is part of what Crouzet calls ‘the animalisation of the reformation’.14 That is why later English radicals so objected to Edmund Burke’s characterisation of the revolutionary Paris crowd as a ‘swinish multitude.’ Animals had no rights. It is also why, at least in part, a civilised nation like the Germans could create a holocaust: the Jews had been depicted as somehow less than human. Something similar happened in sixteenth-century France. The words used to describe heresy and heretics are significant: vermin; predatory beasts; disease; infection; pollution; and d ­ emo­nic agents.15 These were things sixteenth-century people did not tolerate –

13   Arlette Jouanna, La France du XVIe siècle 1483–1598, 2nd edn (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997), 452–54. 14   Guerriers de Dieu, I, 263: ‘l’animalisation du réforme’. The fact that the Apocalypse deals so much in the imagery of beasts may also have helped. 15  Crouzet, Guerriers de Dieu, I, 254–62, 265; Luc Racaut, ‘Persecution or Pluralism? Propaganda and Opinion-Forming during the French Wars of Religion’, in Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), Persecution and Pluralism: Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe 1500–1700 (Oxford, New York & Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 65–87.



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and feared. Vermin were fit only to be trapped and exterminated.16 Tolerating a cancer was out of the question if you could remove it. Similarly, infectious people were isolated where possible. In the 1490s when a venereal disease popularly called the pox swept through Europe, the Paris authorities ordered that all infected Parisians should be isolated in some way and that infected foreigners should leave the city immediately. The disobedient were to be bound and thrown into the river Seine.17 Drastic problems called for drastic measures. It is not a coincidence that the same fate befell many of those killed on St Bartholomew’s day.18 Heresy was a deadly infection not only to the one professing it but also to all with whom he came in contact. Heresy was ten times worse than the pox in that it killed men’s souls as well as their bodies. Worse still, heresy was an offence to God and He would judge those who were negligent in removing it. Indeed, the judgment was already upon them. Had not Daniel 9:27 foretold of those who would make the sacrifice [the Mass] to cease and of abominations and judgments to follow?19 But there was yet another reason why the Huguenots were disliked. Heresy was regarded as treason. The French thought of their monarchs as particularly favoured of God. Each king was anointed with holy oil delivered in a holy ampoule by a heavenly dove at the coronation of Clovis, the first Christian Frankish king, over a thousand years before.20 In the coronation oath French kings swore to keep the realm in the most holy catholic faith and to root out heresy. They had been given the papal title of ‘Most Christian King’ (le roi très chrestien) and each French king was called the oldest son of the Pope. They were almost priests: at their coronation they took communion in both kinds – something that only priests were permitted to do. They expected to tend to the spiritual needs of their subjects and had a sacerdotal role. 16   Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of Myth, Ritual, and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, pb edn, 1992), 100. 17   Cunningham and Grell, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 267. 18   They too were disobedient and by metaphorical definition infectious. The dumping of the bodies in the Seine has been regarded as an ironic form of baptism but I think it just as likely that it was seen as a means of cleansing the city of ‘refuse.’ This was, after all where most of the sewage ended up (Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 14), and it is consistent with the throwing of executed heretic bodies on rotting heaps of criminals and garbage. 19  Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy, 195. 20  Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 45.

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Their model was the Old Testament king.21 The French monarchy was (and had been since the late tenth century) a sacral monarchy, in which the sovereign, mystically imbued with God’s presence and deputed with some divine powers, effectively combined in his own person the offices of king, quasi-priest and judge. To be a heretic was not only to be a spiritual degenerate it was also to be a traitor. The traditional French adage, ‘One king, one faith, one law’ (un roi, une foi, une loi) was much more than an aphorism; it described how contemporaries believed the French polity was—and ought to be.22 This theoretical attitude was, moreover, expressed in juridical practice during the first six decades of the sixteenth century, resulting in the execution of several hundred heretics.23 But when the young Charles IX came to the throne in 1560, with his mother, Catherine de Medici acting as regent, royal policy on heresy became at best inconsistent. There was a disjuncture between what ought to have been and what was. Parisians saw Charles as simply too lenient. By 1572 he had fought three wars against the Huguenots. Each time the war had ended with the king making unthinkable concessions. Paris wanted a king that would fight on, not make peace. A flood of pamphlets poured from Paris’s presses from the time of Charles IX’s accession urging him to be a modern David or Solomon, or even more significant, the new Josiah. This built up an almost messianic expectation that the king, learning the lessons of biblical and secular history, would play his role as the divine agent to rid the state of heresy and avert the justice of God.24 In these circumstances, royal policy was a let-down. Peace seemed to reverse the policy on heresy that the wars pursued. Of course, Parisians simplified both the problem and the king’s

 Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy, 191–205.  Holt, French Wars of Religion, 9–29, is particularly persuasive here; cf. Roelker, One King, One Faith, 163, 314; Mark Greengrass, ‘France’, in Bob Scribner, Roy Porter and Mikulás Teich (eds.), The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 49, 56–57; Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy, passim; Richard Bonney, ‘The Obstacles to Pluralism in Early Modern France’, in Keith Cameron, Mark Greengrass and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Early Modern France (Oxford, Bern, New York, etc: Peter Lang, 2000), 209–29. 23   William Monter, ‘Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe, 1520–1565’, in Ole Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (eds.), Tolerance and intolerance in the European Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 49, table 4.1. 24  Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy, 191–205. 21 22



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position, but it was the way they perceived it. As far as they were concerned, when it came to the extirpation of heresy the king was not entirely on board. Two incidents in Paris illustrate this. The first concerns the Gastines family. In 1569, during the third civil war, Philippe and Richard de Gastines were caught celebrating holy communion according to the reformed rite in their house. They were executed.25 Then their house was torn down and in its place a pyramid with a large cross was erected. There is a great deal to ponder here. Heresy had to be expunged— hence the executions. But the site of the false and blasphemous mass had to be removed also. And then heresy had to be atoned for: hence the cross upon the site. This was not triumphalism. It was the way in which the community was cleansed and made right with God. It is not difficult to imagine, then, the fury of the Paris mob when they learned that one of the terms of the treaty of St Germain in 1570 was that the cross of the Gastines was to be removed because it offended Protestants! Passions ran high in the capital and the city authorities ignored the royal order to remove the cross for over a year while the priests fulminated from their pulpits. Only when a second royal order was given— and then after several failures due to resistance - and only under guard, in secrecy and at dead of night—was the cross removed and re-erected in the Cemetery of the Innocents. The fury died down eventually but the event was not forgotten. It is significant that among the first victims of the massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day were the friends and relatives of the Gastines. The second incident concerns the man who was probably the most hated in Paris: Gaspard de Coligny, leader of the Huguenot military forces. He was a traitor twice over. He was a traitor simply because he was a protestant. He was even more of a traitor because he had fought in three civil wars against the crown. And during the third, a royal inquiry found him guilty of conspiring in the assassination of the Duke of Guise—that same duke so beloved of Parisians because of his firm stand against heresy. The inquiry, held as it was during the war, was probably a propaganda move to blacken the name of the leading protestant nobleman and general. Since he was not around to be executed he was hung in effigy. The effigy was then mutilated and left to rot – as

25  Diefendorrf, Beneath the Cross, 83, suggests that the fury of the mob overcame the judicial options of fine or banishment.

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would have happened had he been there. But in 1570 peace was made and Coligny was re-instated. A further commission of inquiry declared him innocent of the conspiracy and he was welcomed back to the royal court. Although he only spent five weeks there between 1570 and 1572 he was re-admitted to the king’s council and was rumoured to be gaining influence over the king.26 Paris was predictably incensed – and once again, when the massacres began, Coligny’s body suffered all the indignities that had been heaped upon it in effigy three years before. In 1572, then, Paris was alienated from its monarch and from its city government that sought to implement royal edicts. It deplored the ending of each of the civil wars without an outright victory over heresy. It deplored the concessions of toleration, however limited, that were made to the Huguenots. It refused to pay the tax bill of 1570, which was to be used in part to pay off the protestant armies that had to be disbanded. It was maddened by the Gastines affair and the reinstatement of Coligny. It hated the arrogance of the Huguenot n ­ obility who came in their droves to a marriage they deplored. And it listened to its preachers when they said God sometimes raised up the common people to do for Him what kings failed to do. Paris was on edge. But that does not necessarily mean that a massacre was inevitable. Paris had been overcrowded, resentful, listening to its preachers, worried about their king’s attitude to heretics for twelve years without a full-scale massacre taking place, although for both religious and economic reasons it was at times nearly ungovernable.27 The elements for a massacre were there. The catalyst that turned elements into awful reality was a bungled assassination attempt on Gaspard de Coligny. A few days after the controversial marriage Coligny was wounded, but not killed, by an assassin’s bullet as he walked back to his lodgings from an audience with the King. Who was responsible is impossible to determine.28 What is certain is that the Huguenot nobility in Paris became increasingly strident in their demands for justice. In the face of increasing pressure for action, Catherine de Medici and Charles IX panicked. Perhaps they 26  N. M. Sutherland, The Massacre of St Bartholomew and the European Conflict, 1569–1572 (London: Macmillan, 1973), is not alone in this view. 27   Barbara Diefendorf, ‘Prologue to a Massacre: Popular Unrest in Paris, 1557– 1572’, AHR 90 (1985), 1082–83, observes that several years of bad weather led to food shortages and high prices, which added to unrest in the decade leading up to 1572. 28   It seems very likely that the Spanish were involved: see Salmon, Society in Crisis, 186; Sutherland, Massacre of St Bartholomew, 42, 107.



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really did believe that the Huguenots had determined to kill the king and his major advisers in revenge. Certainly the accounts we have of the night meeting of 23–24 August exude a sense of panic as well as of determined and off-the-cuff planning. They agreed on a pre-emptive strike. Coligny and the major Huguenot noblemen and their retainers would be killed before they could cause any trouble. This is probably all that was intended—bad enough and a massacre of sorts but hardly the massacre that ensued. Two things turned this panicky and cynical pre-emptive strike into the massacre we know about. First, in order to ensure that things went according to plan the Paris militia was called out. Nothing could have been more disastrous than to have some of the most convinced Catholics in Paris armed and on the streets. It conveyed a sense of dire emergency and confirmed rumours that the Huguenots were bent on revenge.29 It also conveyed a sense that they were doing the king’s will. This was reinforced by the words of the Duke of Guise who supervised the killing of Coligny, ‘This was done on the orders of the king.’ The news quickly swept through Paris. ‘This was done on the orders of the king.’ The participation of many of the people of Paris has to be seen as an awful but almost joyful celebration that after ten years of half-hearted war and unwanted toleration their king was at last on their side and fulfilling his sacred coronation vows. The King had returned to his people and to his Catholic duties. They would respond with holy joy. And their joy knew no bounds when the rumour spread that in the cemetery of the Holy Innocents a hawthorn tree, symbol of Christ’s passion, that had seemed to be dead and had not blossomed for several years, had burst into bloom. It was, to eschatologically anxious minds, a sign, a miracle of approval. Not only had the king returned to his people; the King of Kings stood in the midst of those who in this ‘New Jerusalem of the latter days’ were cleansing the city of the pollution of blasphemy.30 Once it had started the massacre was difficult to stop. Despite the best efforts of the city government, the parlement and the crown, the rampage continued until it burnt itself out. Paris was for a week a city out of control.

  Diefendorf, ‘Prologue to a Massacre,’ 1091.   Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy, 525–31 (at 526), is persuasive on this point. 29 30

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The massacre spread with the news to a dozen other cities. The death toll increased accordingly. Two points might be made about the massacres in other towns. First, those perpetrating them believed, or professed to believe, that they were doing the king’s will. The same rejoicing that I have suggested accompanied the massacres in Paris is to be seen elsewhere, especially in cities with a Huguenot minority big enough to pose a threat, and where there had been some sort of communal violence during the preceding decade.31 Second, very often the violence followed a pattern also; it had had a ritual, symbolic nature.32 In the past, Huguenots had vandalised and desecrated shrines, shouted abuse at the mass, and roughed up priests to show that saints and priests had no mystical, miracle-working power. On the other hand, for Catholics, it was not enough simply to kill a heretic: the body had to be mutilated and left to rot on or by the gallows without a Christian burial – the fate of common criminals: heretics were worse than common criminals. Sometimes pages of the Bible or a Protestant tract were stuffed down the throat of the dead person before they were burnt. The burning pages were a symbol of the powerlessness of the Bible on which the heretic placed so much faith. The communal violence of the period had an awful theatre about it. And it followed the patterns of normal judicial violence in an exaggerated form, even down to mock trials carried out sometimes over dead bodies.33 Of course, sometimes violence was just violence, carried out by those whose psychotic natures thrive in such times. But on the whole those who participated in the massacres of the late summer and early autumn of 1572 did so because they believed they were carrying out the work of God in the name of the king. They saw themselves as the agents of divine retribution on those that had mocked and desecrated their shrines and churches, blasphemed against the holy mass, divided the community by their refusal to participate in the ritual events that bound the community together.34 By their acts of violence they believed that they would avert divine retribution upon their community by 31   Benedict, ‘Massacres in the Provinces’, 220–21; idem, Rouen, chap. 2; Roberts, ‘Calvinists in Troyes’, 100–18. 32  Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-century France’, Past and Present, no. 59 (1973): 51–91, repr. in Society and Culture in Early Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), 152–88, remains authoritative on what she first called ‘the Rites of Violence.’ 33  Ibid.; cf. Benedict, Rouen, 56–68, 127–28. 34  Benedict, Rouen, 218–19; Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthélemy.



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ridding it of the blasphemy of heresy. Of course, not all Catholics in Paris believed and acted like this. Some bravely sought to save their protestant friends, neighbours and relatives from the violence. And all over France there were those who turned from the massacres in revulsion. Whether they were the majority is difficult to determine. If they were the majority they were very much the silent majority; perhaps that silence came from the feeling that Huguenots were divisive, infectious, polluting and blasphemous. In other words they shared the murderers’ views even if they were repelled by their methods. As in Germany in the 1930s all that is required is the silence, inactivity, and therefore tacit consent of the majority, for the zealots to have their way. Thus it appears to have been France in 1572. * What did it all achieve? There were international responses and domestic consequences and eventually international effects as well. Initially, the international reaction was limited to words (and music) rather than deeds. In 1572, celebratory masses were said in Rome and Pope Gregory XIII had a commemorative medallion struck, gruesomely depicting corpses, but struck down by the angel of death, rather than the duke of Guise or citizens of Paris.35 Three years earlier, Pius V had celebrated Te Deums to mark victories over the Huguenots at Jarnac and Moncontour during the third civil war, but this was a rather different kind of ‘victory’ and Gregory XIII’s celebrations of slaughter became part of Protestant legend — but then, he had previously declared that he ‘desire[d] nothing else than the extermination of the Huguenots.’36 A celebratory mass was also held in Paris following a solemn, citywide procession. Hearty congratulations came from at least Rome and Spain. On the Protestant side, there were condemnations but little else. Elizabeth I of England gave the Spanish ambassador a rough ride: he arrived at the court to find all the courtiers dressed in black, and she gave him a tongue-lashing. But that was all. The only active diplomatic 35   The medallion is reproduced in Sutherland, Massacre of St Bartholomew, plate facing p. 55. 36   A. Lynn Martin, ‘Papal Policy and the European Conflict, 1559–1572’, SCJ 11 (Summer 1980), 44, 45. Cf. chapter 11, by McGraw, below, p. 000.

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effort on behalf of the remaining Huguenots came from Poland, where the elite refused to elect Charles IX’s brother, Henry, Duke of Anjou, as King of Poland (which had an elective monarchy) unless concessions were made to the Huguenots.37 The English government clearly contemplated war, but the options were unattractive, as the lesson of Henry VIII’s wars with France in the first half of the century, and Elizabeth’s overt military intervention in the first war of religion (1562–63), was that England needed a strong ally (whether external, like the emperor, or the Huguenots as they were in 1562), to wage war effectively against France, or it risked disaster. The Huguenots in 1572 apparently were disastrously weakened (though they were to bounce back) while the Spanish Monarchy approved of the massacre and was angry at England for supporting, albeit covertly, Dutch (and partly protestant) rebels. This is not to say that foreign Protestants, especially those in England, did not take the events of 1572 very much to heart. As we will see, the reverse was true and this was not without consequences. But in the immediate aftermath, the most significant effects of the massacres were domestic. The political leadership of the Huguenot movement was all but wiped out. There was secondly a wider – and immediate — effect on the French Protestant population: it was diminished, in many places dramatically. In addition to the dead, many more, as contemporaries immediately recognised, fled abroad, particularly to England and Switzerland; so significant were their numbers that those who had emigrated in the aftermath of the massacres made up the bulk of some Huguenot communities in England. But thousands who had escaped with their lives returned to the Catholic fold in the months that followed.38 In Rouen, for example, the membership of the Huguenot church dropped from 16,500 to 3,000. Yet in Rouen only a few hundred had actually been killed. Even so, ‘Catholic parish registers reveal a flood of re-baptisms of Calvinist children making their

37  Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomew’s Massacres, chap. 5, especially 103–6. There were, of course, other reasons for the ending of this civil war: see James B. Wood, The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1562–1576 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1996). 38   Haultain to Burghley, 27 Sept. 1572, CSPF, X (1572–74), 181, no. 575; Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (2nd edn, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 19, 38; Andrew Spicer, The Frenchspeaking Reformed Community and Their Church in Southampton 1567–c.1620, Huguenot Society Publications, New Series, 3 (1997), 15–17, 21, 149, 150, 154.



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reintegration into the Catholic fold. Many adult Huguenots formally abjured in the Cathedral.’ For many, no doubt, it was understandable fear that led them to start attending mass again and to have their children re-baptised according to the Catholic rite. For others it might have been a strategic move to draw attention away from themselves while they prepared for emigration. But for still others, and these might have been the majority, the enormity of the events of the 1572 seemed to have convinced them that they had been in error. Surely God would not have permitted his elect to suffer in this way? They believed that God was punishing them for their sin of heresy. They returned to the Catholic fold for good and apparently with conviction.39 In consequence, the St Bartholomew’s massacres constituted a significant ‘turning-point for the Huguenots’ and in the wars of religion.40 As Prestwich observes, ‘The momentum of conversion had already slowed down by 1570, but in Normandy, Picardy, and the Île-de-France the effects of the massacre were dramatic and permanent.’41 In 1582 a leading Huguenot expressed his belief ‘that the French Protestant churches had lost two-thirds of their members’ in the aftermath of massacres.42 And the figures from Rouen suggest this is credible, at least in some parts of France. In general terms, ‘massive abjurations’ occurred in the North, the product both of ‘the immediate shock [and] the cumulative effects of years of insecurity.’ Abjurations in the 1570s were less common in the South, where ‘Calvinism had struck deeper roots’ than in the North, but many southerners emigrated. But the loss in numbers was much more marked in the North and thus ‘a major effect of the massacre’ was to heighten the geographical divide, so that

39  Benedict, Rouen, 125–38, 147–50; cf. Holt, French Wars of Religion, 94–95; Robert J. Knecht, The French Civil Wars (Harlow: Longman Pearson Education, 2000), 166– 67. While Roberts reports a decline in Troyes, over the period 1562–72, from 8–9,000 Huguenots to a handful, there systematic persecution had wrought a steady decline over the decade and the massacre of 1572 simply finished things off: Roberts, ‘Calvinists in Troyes’. 40   Menna Prestwich, ‘Calvinism in France 1555–1629’, in idem (ed.), International Calvinism 1541–1715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 97; cf. Sutherland, Massacre of St Bartholomew, 2. 41   Prestwich, ‘Calvinism in France’, 97. On long-term trends in the French Protestant population see Philip Benedict, The Huguenot Population of France, 1600–1685: The Demographic Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 31: 5 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991). 42   Quoted in Knecht, French Civil Wars, 166.

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eventually Calvinism became essentially a movement limited to southern parts of western France.43 Third and following naturally on the second were the effects on Huguenot mentalité: the strain of suffering such concentrated persecution, often at the hands of their neighbours, inevitably had consequences. As Donald Kelley eloquently argues, the massacre became the locus of ‘swirling emotions, revolutionary implications [and] festering resentments.’44 Fourth, the massacres, and how they were remembered, significantly shaped Huguenot collective self-perception. Indeed, as Luc Racaut argues, the ‘massacre provoked a transformation of Huguenot self-perception and identity.’45 For the seventy years subsequent to the Edict of Nantes the Huguenots themselves, at least in print and in public declarations, were inclined to avoid mentioning the St Bartholomew’s massacre or indeed the wider wars of religion, from a desire to avoid controversy.46 However, while this is an interesting phenomenon, it misses a crucial point. If many in the north felt the massacre to be a sign of divine displeasure, there were many others, mostly in the south, who looked at it differently. As avid readers of the Old Testament, Huguenots were aware that God not only prospered his people but also sometimes allowed disaster to befall them as part of the refining process that was especially significant to believers in the doctrine of the elect. ‘A calamity was a call to repentance and St Bartholomew’s Day became “le jour de Seigneur’ ”, who had chastised his people. From 1572 the theme of the [Israelites’] long march across the Desert was invoked more frequently’.47 August 1572 became seen as a testing time and a punishment for lack of zeal and piety. Many Huguenots, then, remained faithful despite the circumstances; and although Huguenot numbers never approached the heights of the late   Prestwich, ‘Calvinism in France’, 97–98.  Donald R. Kelley, ‘Martyrs, Myth, and the Massacre: The Background of St. Bartholomew’, in Alfred Soman (ed.), The Massacre of St. Bartholomew: Reappraisals and Documents, International Archives of the History of Ideas, 75 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 202. 45  Luc Racaut, ‘Religious Polemic and Huguenot Self-Perception and Identity, 1554–1619’, in Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World 1559–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 36. 46   Élisabeth Labrousse, ‘The Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought’, in Soman, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 243–51; and see chapter 1, by Trim, above. 47   Prestwich, ‘Calvinism in France’, 95. 43 44



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1550s again, French Protestants remained a force sufficient to be reckoned with. They produced texts such as Vindiciæ contra tyrannos (1579), which argued explicitly for the right of subjects to resist a king who was guilty of tyranny and of murdering his own subjects; it was one of the most controversial texts of the sixteenth century, and continued to be reprinted and translated into the middle and later decades of the seventeenth century. While the situation changed after c.1600, in the first thirty years after St Bartholomew’s, Huguenot literary, political, and military, activity was massively moulded by the massacres, resulting in a ‘new militancy’.48 In sum, while the seventeenth century was to witness a different approach, the stamp of St Bartholomew’s had surely already been set on the French Reformed Churches. In addition, even in the seventeenth century, the silence of Protestant pastors (at least in public) and intellectuals about their trials during the wars of religion does not mean that the Huguenots did not preserve memories, told around the family fireside; the scale of the massacres must have meant that many Calvinist extended families would have lost at least one of their members. As already seen, many emigrants had been impelled to flee the country by the St Bartholomew’s massacres and they made up a considerable proportion of some Huguenot communities abroad; thus, for several years, memories would have been as common and vivid among Huguenots in England, the Netherlands and the Swiss cantons as in France itself. Fifth, the massacre was prominent in the history and memory of foreign Protestants, affecting powerfully how Huguenots were perceived abroad. Ever after, the Huguenots could always elicit sympathy elsewhere in Europe – certainly from Protestants, sometimes even from Catholics – based on the mass murders of 1572. Indeed, the events of St Bartholomew’s provided a kind of template of persecution, onto which various other nationalities could easily imprint their own persecutory experience. The forcible ejection on 24 August 1662 of Nonconformist English ministers from their pulpits was dubbed by   Racaut, ‘Religious Polemic and Huguenot Self-Perception and Identity’, 36. See Kelley, ‘Martyrs, Myth, and the Massacre’, 181–202; Robert M. Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacres 1572–1576 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), passim. The Vindiciæ appeared in French editions as well as the original Latin and was frequently reprinted: Etienne Junius Brutus, Vindiciae contra tyrannos. Traduction française de 1581, ed. A. Jouanna, J. Perrin, M. Soulié, A. Tournon, and H. Weber, Les classiques de la pensée politique, 11 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1979), includes a lengthy (though still incomplete) bibliography. 48

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those affected ‘as “Bartholomew’s Day”, which allowed them to [… evoke] images of martyrdom with deep, symbolic significance.’49 This highlights the extent to which foreign Protestants often identified with their French confreres not only as fellow believers, but also as fellow martyrs or fellow persecuted believers, even though the St Bartholomew’s massacres were entirely unique in scale. Certainly preachers, pamphleteers and political leaders across Protestant Europe were ever ready to see any persecution by the French government in the grim shadow cast by St Bartholomew’s.50 In sum, then, intellectually the massacres only stiffened the resolve of many (though as we have seen not all) French Protestants. Organi­ sationally, too, the Huguenots bounced back from the loss of most of their leaders. And ordinary Huguenots continued to be willing to fight as soldiers to defend liberty of conscience.51 The massacres of 1572 did not end the civil wars and the civil wars did not wipe out heretics. By 1598 the Huguenots had won the large measure of toleration they desired. And they kept most of it until it began to be eroded in the 1670s and was revoked in 1685. That they were able to do so owed much not only to their own intellectual and military resolve and reorganisation, but also to events beyond their control, in which (however) they were keen partici­­ pants, making the most of the opportunities that chance or external events provided them with. And here we come to the second set of

  Anne Dunan-Page, ‘Introduction’ to idem, Religious Culture, 15.   A few examples: Princess of Orange to Walsingham, Middleburg, 11 Jan. 1589, CSPF, XXIII (1589), 1; anon., A Warning Peece for London: being a True Relation of the Bloody Massacre of the Protestants in Paris, by the Papists and Cavileers (London: 1642); speech in the English Parliament, May 1679, recorded in Roger Morrice, in Mark Goldie et al (eds.), The Entring Book of Roger Morrice [1677–1691] (6 vols., Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), II, 158; Gilbert Burnet, Relation of the Bloody and Barbarous Massacre of about One Hundred Thousand Protestants, Begun at Paris and Carried on all over France by the Papists in the Year 1572 (London: 1678); anon., The Deplorable State and Condition of the Poor French Protestants Commiserated, and humbly Represented to all Princes and People of the True Reformed Church; with Reasons for a Protestant League (London: 1681), p.1; [Benjamin Keach], Sion in Distress: or, the Groans of the Protestant Chruch [sic] (London: 1681), 94; J. S., Popery display’d in its Proper Colours. Wherein its Nonentity and Nullity is demonstrated by Undeniable Arguments. With Several Remarkable Passages relating to the Present Times. Humbly offered to the Honourable House of Commons (London: 1681), 8. (I am indebted for these references to David Trim and Robin Gwynn.) And cf. chapter 3, by Gregory Dodds, below. 51   Cf. chapter 6, by D. J. B. Trim, below. 49 50



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international consequences of the massacres, which were, however, bound up with events in France. Not the least significant of these was the death of the last of the Valois kings, Henry III, without a male heir in 1589. His successor was none other than Henry of Navarre, the young bridegroom whose wedding had been one of the conditions of the massacre of 1572. Protected from death in 1572 but forced to become a catholic and a prisoner at court, he escaped and led the Protestants in civil wars after about 1580. He converted to Catholicism in 1593 when it became clear that he could not take Paris, or possibly much of the rest of the country, without it.52 As a king sympathetic to Protestants but also a catholic he was able to reunite the country and impose peace for the rest of his reign. But good general and leader of men that he was, he could not have done it without aid. Spain sought to have him deposed and sent forces to aid those Catholics that would not accept him. Elizabeth of England sent official aid to Henry in the 1590’s after Spain declared war on her in 1588 and protestant mercenaries from Germany formed a significant part of his military resources. During the last quarter of the century the Dutch were in revolt against their Spanish king and one of the matters of contention was his unwillingness to grant toleration to Protestants there. Something like what we would call ideological warfare was taking place. As in modern ideological warfare there were overt and covert operations. The English, for example, helped both the French and the Dutch Protestants covertly until the late 1580s and early 90s when they supported the Dutch Rebels and the French Protestants openly with money and men. Indeed, what happened then was not unlike what happened during the Cold War. Covert operations on the other side included the assassination of the Dutch rebel leader, William of Orange, in 1585 and a series of unsuccessful attempts on the life of Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was fortunate to have as her spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, who had been the English ambassador in Paris during the massacre and whose skills the CIA would have admired.53 He was

52  Greengrass, ‘France’, 62 argues persuasively that even after four years of campaigning as the rightful king Henry was not accepted by most of urban France. 53   Cf. Robert Hutchinson, Elizabeth’s Spy Master: Francis Walsingham and the Secret War that Saved England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006); Stephen Budiansky, Her Majesty’s Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern Espionage (New York: Viking, 2005).

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also a committed Protestant, as were a number of Elizabeth’s ministers of state, who pushed the policy of aiding their co-religionists overseas.54 And ambitious ministers of state as well as sober ministers of religion saw these events as part of the last great conflict between the forces of Christ and the forces of the Antichrist in rather the same way as in the last half of the twentieth century world events were seen in the light of the battle between the forces of communism and those of democracy. In terms of their black-and-whiteness the world-views of the sixteenth and twentieth centuries were not all that different. Now, French Huguenots after the massacre did not create these international events. But they were part of the picture and as such contributed to it. And one way they did so was by the propaganda that flowed from the pens of the likes of Simon Goulart.55 He and his collaborators published a considerable body of material, sent men on diplomatic missions, and kept the plight of the Huguenots on the agenda of the international protestant community. They were part of the propaganda campaign that accompanies ideological warfare. They also provided their fellow Huguenots with a series of stories of heroism and terror that became activating myths: they energised the faithful and gave them models of action in troublous times. * The significance of the massacres was felt not only at the time and in the subsequent century. It is also identifiable today. The massacres constitute one of the most bitterly contested sites of collective memory, historical imagination, and historiographical debate. As one scholar wrote in 1974, in the light of a series of new inter­ pretations prompted by the four hundredth anniversary of St Bartholomew’s: The massacre has remained one of the most memorable events of European history … attested not only by its tenacious hold on the 54  See, for example Sir Charles Wilson, Queen Elizabeth and the Revolt of the Netherlands (London: Macmillan, 1970); D. J. B. Trim, ‘The secret war of Elizabeth I: England and the Huguenots during the early Wars of Religion, 1562–77’, HSP 27:2 (1999), 189–99; idem, ‘Seeking a Protestant alliance and liberty of conscience on the Continent, 1558–85’, in Tudor England and its Neighbours, ed. Susan Doran and Glenn Richardson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 139–77. 55   On Goulart (or Goulard) and his collaborators, see Robert M. Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacres 1572–1576 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988).



the huguenots and the st bartholomew’s65 popular imagination, but also by the steady accumulation of scholarly activity devoted to the circumstances of the Massacre, its causes and effects, and its persistence as one of the major historical “myths” throughout the course of subsequent centuries.56

This judgment would apply equally well today. The motion picture La Reine Margot (1994), which enjoyed international success, testified that twenty years later the massacre retained its ‘tenacious hold of the popular imagination’.57 As for scholarly activity, the 1990s saw debate reach a height not seen for decades, with the publication of several new interpretative works based on fresh research, which sparked intense controversy, both within and without the academy and prompted further reconsiderations in the 2000s.58 Meanwhile, Pope John Paul II’s carefully worded reference to, but non-apology for, the massacre, at a 1996 mass in Paris, held on St Bartholomew’s Day,59 contrasted sharply with the French Catholic bishops’ apology to Jews for the Church’s treatment of them in the Second World War. The events of 1572 have a mythic quality, capable of generating emotion to an extent probably unmatched by any other sixteenth-century event, and akin perhaps only to the mass murders of September 11, 2001, March 13, 2004, and July 7, 2005, in New York, Madrid and London. These events, signalling the apparent start of a new era of wars of religion, brought a new relevance to St Bartholomew’s.

56   Alfred Soman ‘Editor’s Preface’ to Soman (ed.), The Massacre of St. Bartholomew: Reappraisals and Documents, International Archives of the History of Ideas, 75 (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), viii. 57   Cf. chapter 1, by Trim, above, p. 40. 58  Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross; Marc Venard, ‘Arrêtez le massacre!’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine 39 (1992), 645–61; Jean–Louis Bourgeon, L’assassinat de Coligny (Geneva: Droz, 1992); idem, Charles IX devant la SaintBarthélemy (Geneva: Droz, 1995); Crouzet, La nuit de la Saint–Barthélemy; Mark Greengrass, ‘Hidden Transcripts: Secret Histories and Personal Testimonies of Religious Violence in the French Wars of Religion’, in Mark Levene and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Massacre in History (New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999), 69–88, esp. 74–75, 79–85, 87; Arlette Jouanna, La Saint–Barthélemy: les mystères d’un crime d’Etat, 24 août 1572 (Paris: Gallimard, 2007); and, most recently, Stuart Carroll, Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), chap. 8. A good brief overview which skilfully elucidates the issues at stake, the historiography, and the nature and problems of the sources, is David Potter’s ‘Introduction’ to chapter 5, ‘The Era of the St Bartholomew Massacre’, in Potter (ed. and trans.), The French Wars of Religion: Selected Documents (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1997) 122–29, esp.125–28. 59   Cf. D. J. B. Trim, ‘Tumults, riots and seditions: persecution and violence in France during the Wars of Religion’, Liberty 102:3 (May-June 2007), 18.

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There are, moreover, parallels between the mass killings of ‘9/11’ and St Bartholomew’s day; the similarities can illuminate not only the events of 2001 but also those of 1572. I think we have to accept that, in 1572 as in 2001, people on both sides truly believed that right was on their side. The western allies today might articulate it rather differently. They do not claim that they are chosen of God, as both Catholics and Protestants did in France, and as the adherents of Al Qaeda undoubtedly still do today, but the effect is the same: my rightness is selfevident; if you cannot see it you must be both perverse and corrupt. So wrong is met with extreme force while both sides remain blind to the genuine concerns of the other; as R. M. Kingdon observes, violence ‘in the name of religion’ not only continues in the modern world, it also ‘continues to feed on the mutual incomprehension we saw in the sixteenth century.’60 Wrong must be met by force because we have allowed ourselves for millennia to be part of a culture of force. This was certainly the pattern in early-modern France. The Hugue­ nots did accept a reasonably generous peace settlement in 1598, embodied in the terms of the Edict of Nantes, issued by the king and former Calvinist, Henri IV, for whom control of Paris, the capital city (and, as seen earlier, traditional centre of the French sacral monarchy) was ‘well worth a mass’. But the past history of massacre and war meant there were always enough influential leaders, both Protestant and Catholic, who perpetuated the old hatreds, even though there were also many with a genuine desire for peace.61 There were Huguenot revolts in the 1610s and 1620s; and French Calvinists only renounced force thereafter, and trusted in royal power to protect them from the Roman Catholic majority, because their strongholds had all fallen to the armies of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. While the king and cardinal continued to concede limited religious toleration, it was not out of a genuine spirit of reconciliation: instead, it was for politic reasons, since France was about to wage war against the Habsburg empire and needed unity; and it was also in the belief that while persecution would entrench Huguenot resistance, co-existence would allow for the erosion of pluralism peacefully.62 The fruit of enduring confessional hostility was that, in the 1670s and 1680s, Louis XIV, persuaded partly  Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomew’s Massacres, 219.   Cf. Cameron, Greengrass and Roberts, Adventure in Religious Pluralism. 62  See chap. 6, by Trim, below; and Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), ‘Introduction’ to Persecution and Pluralism, 44, and cf. 41–42, 52. 60 61



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by his clergy, decided that the gradualist policy was not working and instead imposed ever more rigorous persecution; eventually, in 1685, the Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes and abolished liberty of conscience.63 Armed force was the arbiter of religious dispute: the king’s decision was imposed by his army—so much so that ‘dragonnade’ became synonymous with persecution, after the royal regiments of dragoons that frequently enforced the king’s will on his Huguenot subjects. But the result was not only mass Huguenot emigration; it was also insurrection. Huguenots enlisted in the armies of the enemies of France, helping to inflict defeats on them and joined invasions of the south of France, hoping to bring liberation to their confreres. And the Camisard revolt in the south of France was a major threat for two years and took another eleven to quell completely.64 On neither side had there been a sincere desire for dialogue or to tolerate, even when limited pluralism was the official policy. Both sides, too, subscribed to a culture of force and the belief that a polity must be confessionally unitary or it would not survive: there was no concept that the principle of ‘un roi, une foi, une loi’ might be fundamentally mistaken. In the end, the countries that benefited from France’s confessional division were Great Britain and the Dutch Republic – not shining examples of religious liberty by today’s standards, but significant for the degree of toleration they granted by seventeenth-century standards. Huguenot émigrés fought in the British and Dutch armies and Huguenot merchants and financiers powered the wars their host nations waged against Louis XIV for almost thirty years, which almost ruined France. Confessional hatred simply meant perpetuating conflict and resuscitating it after periods of uneasy coexistence. Part of the reason for British and French mistrust of Louis XIV was precisely the long history of French oppression of the Huguenots, which Louis had so thoroughly and disastrously (for himself as well as for many Huguenots) revivified.   Brian E. Strayer, ‘The Edict of Fontainebleau (1685) and the Huguenots: Who’s to Blame?’, in Bonney and Trim, Persecution and Pluralism, 273–94. 64   See Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove, a superb study of Huguenot responses to Louis XIV’s persecutions in the 1680s and 1690s; cf. Agnès de La Gorce, Camisards et dragons du roi (Paris: Michel, [1950]), an older, classic study of armed resistance; and Roy L. McCullough, Coercion, conversion and counterinsurgency in Louis XIV’s France (Leiden: Brill, 2007), an authoritative study of the use of the army in ‘religious coercion’ in the period c.1683–98 (chap. 4) and during the Camisard revolt (chap. 5). 63

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The St Bartholomew’s massacres, in conclusion, shaped the ideas and actions of Huguenots, French kings and administrations, and neighbouring states, for nearly a century and a half. It was not only because the original events were so horrifying, but also because their legacy was so significant, that they were remembered and debated for a further three centuries, and they retain relevance in an era when religious war has sadly been revitalised.

CHAPTER THREE

‘Sham of Liberty of Conscience’: Huguenots and the Problem of Religious Toleration in Restoration England Gregory Dodds The history and experiences of French Huguenots formed a significant context for debates over the expansion of religious tolerance in Restoration England. Events in England during the 1670s and 1680s did not take place in isolation, but were shaped by the international conflict between Catholics and Protestants. In particular, the policies of Louis XIV that increased persecution of French Protestants heightened English anti-Catholic hysteria and provided plenty of material for anti-Catholic propagandists. In 1672 Charles II issued the Declaration of Indulgence, which sought to remove penalties against dissenters and Catholics.1 The great fear for English Protestants was that Charles II, whom many feared was a secret Catholic, would use the ruse of gradually expanding religious toleration to reintroduce Catholicism in England. Tolerance, in the minds of many English Protestants, had become code for the betrayal and destruction of the English Reformation. While many Protestants feared that Charles was a secret Catholic, by the latter half of the 1670s there was no doubt about his younger brother James’s Catholicism. James, the heir to the throne, converted to Catholicism in 1668, married a Catholic in 1673, and then stopped attending Church of England services in 1676. His public declaration of Catholic belief came in 1673 when he refused to follow the requirements of the Test Act and, as a result, had to step down from his position as Lord High Admiral. The subsequent ‘Exclusion Crisis,’ which pitted Whigs, who sought a law barring James from inheriting the crown, and Tories, who supported James’s right to inherit the   Toleration was viewed by Charles as a way of binding dissenters to the absolutist monarch. Brian Weiser has argued that Charles wanted ‘dissenters to see their freedom as a gift of grace, not of right, and to be aware that the free exercise of their religion relied solely on keeping in the good graces of the king.’ Brian Weiser, Charles II and the Politics of Access (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 72. 1

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throne, hardened political and religious sentiments and created deep rifts in English society. It came as no surprise that when James II ascended the throne in 1685 he renewed attempts to expand religious tolerance. James maintained, rather passionately at times, that his goal was not the destruction of English Protestantism, but rather religious freedom for his subjects.2 Seriously complicating James’s professions of religious openness, however, was Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. It could not have come at a worse time for James and played a critical, though often overlooked, role in the rebellions against James and his eventual overthrow in 1688. The revocation dramatically increased persecution of Protestants, brought back memories of the St. Bartholomewe’s Day Massacre, and intensified the exodus of French  Protestant refugees fleeing across Europe, with a contingent landing in England.3 In 1681 Louis used his dragonnades, or dragoons as they were often called in England, to intimidate and harass Protestants who refused to convert to Catholicism. Following the formal revocation in 1685, Protestant schools and churches were confiscated. By 1686 a large portion of France’s Protestants had been forced out of the country. It might seem that English Protestant anger regarding French intolerance would strengthen a commitment to religious tolerance in England. If English Protestants believed that intolerance was wrong in France and that Huguenots should be tolerated, should there not be an equal commitment to religious tolerance in England? However, the opposite proved to be the case and James II’s Declaration of Indulgence in 1687 precipitated his overthrow the following year. This chapter examines rhetorical arguments about Huguenots in English polemical religious texts from the 1670s and 1680s. Within these texts, English authors employed a well-developed anxiety of

2   James did not proclaim this policy of toleration immediately upon taking the throne, but initially sought to assure Tories that he would not change the laws. When he did attempt to expand freedom of conscience two years later he was viewed as being untrustworthy. See John Miller, James II (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000), 120. Steve Pincus has argued that James was never interested in real liberty of conscience. See notes 98–101 below. 3  Huguenots began coming in to England in larger numbers after James II’s Declaration of Indulgence: Gwynn, ‘Conformity’, 24. For a full analysis of Huguenot emigration, see Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The history and contribution of the Huguenots in Britain, Second Revised Edition (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001).



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French Catholicism to argue against broadening English religious ­tolerance. These arguments became more potent with the revocation  in 1685 and the intensified persecution of French Protestants. References to Huguenot suffering, which were already being employed during the reign of Charles II, became the perfect rhetorical argument against James II and his policies. Anglican clergymen sought to remind English nonconformists that if they allied with papists to advance tolerance in England, the papists would eventually use imprisonment, inquisitions, and torture to destroy English Protestants.4 Any Protestant who supported James II’s toleration, according to one anonymous writer, was ‘deluded by the present Sham of Liberty of Conscience.’5 Rhetorical reminders of the French Wars of Religion therefore operated first as an attack on Catholicism and, second, as an argument against English non-conformity. Conversely, prior to the revocation, English Catholics and nonconformists argued that if Huguenots were tolerated in France then they should be tolerated in England. Furthermore, English nonconformists, such as William Baxter, argued that it was hypocritical for conformists to welcome French Protestants, who were not of the Church of England, while continuing to penalize Protestant dissenters in England. All three of these groups, conformists, nonconformists, and Catholics, sought rhetorically to bolster their arguments with reference to the memory and experience of French Protestants.6 Huguenots thus became increasingly central to the problem of religious toleration and, therefore, the religious and political turmoil in England during the 1680s. Huguenots and anti-Catholic Rhetoric under Charles II The crisis over the Catholicism of the heir apparent reached a new level of hysteria in the late 1670s. It was not uncommon for published texts and sermons to mention French Protestants, but starting in 1678,

4   John Fell, Seasonable advice to Protestants shewing the necessity of maintaining the established religion in opposition to popery (London, 1688; Wing F 620), 33. 5   Anonymous, ‘A Letter to a Dissenter’, in Anonymous, Fourteen Papers (London 1689; Wing B 5794), 53. 6   While I use the terms ‘conformist’, ‘dissenters’, and so on in this chapter, I do so with the understanding that these are complex definitions that do not reflect uniform groups of people. For more on the intricacies of conformity and Huguenot communities in England, see Gwynn, ‘Strains of worship’, ch. 5, below.

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with the Popish Plot, numerous publications began to focus on the past and present plight of the Huguenots. Overt anti-Catholicism was standard fare, but the newly heightened focus on French antiProtestantism signalled a new argument against both the succession of James and, perhaps more importantly, the battle against expanding religious toleration to dissenters and Catholics. With hindsight and knowledge of both upcoming Huguenot persecution and the Glorious Revolution, this approach seems unsurprising. In the 1670s, however, Charles was still king and Louis XIV had not yet begun aggressively harassing Protestants. After 1681 the stories of Huguenot suffering were a powerful political weapon in the battles waged over religious toleration. But intense persecution had not actually begun in the 1670s. The emphasis on French Protestants in English print points to something else. What anti-Catholic propagandists needed in order to maintain strong penalties against English Catholics were stories of Catholic violence and intolerance. If such stories were not available in current events, then history, especially Huguenot history, had to provide the lessons and teach another generation to fear Catholics.7 The major interest in the plight of French Protestants began with the Popish Plot in the late 1670s and then increased with Louis XIV’s more aggressive decrees against Protestants in 1681. Before this, however, some English Catholics used the freedoms experienced by Huguenots to argue for greater tolerance of Catholics in England. In 1666, the year of the Great Fire, Roger Palmer, the Earl of Castlemaine and a well-known Catholic, published an apology asking for greater tolerance of English Catholics.8 ‘Why,’ Castlemaine asked, ‘may not we, Noble Country-men, hope for favour from you, as well as the French Protestants find from theirs?’9 If Catholic France could tolerate Protestants then why could not English Protestants tolerate loyal 7   Both Whigs and Tories realized the importance of public opinion. Publishing moral histories became one of the primary methods for shifting and shaping society views. See Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdom (New York: Penguin, 2006), 211–220. 8   Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, To all the Royalists that suffered for His Majesty, and to the rest of England. The humble apology of the English Catholicks (London, 1666; Wing C 1249). 9   Roger Palmer, Earl of, Castlemaine, A reply to the answer of the Catholiqve apology, or a cleere vindication of the Catholicques of England from all matter of fact charg’d against them by their enemyes (Antwerp, 1668), 37: Wing C 1246. This was Castlemaine’s response to William Lloyd, The late apology in behalf of the papists re-printed and answered, in behalf of the Royalists (London, 1667; Wing L 2683).



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Catholics?10 Castlemaine also pointed out the injustice of holding an entire group responsible for the actions of a few: ‘These neighboring people sequester none for their Faith, but for transgression against the State; Nor is the whole party involved in the crime of a few, but every man suffers for his own and proper fault.’11 Even more unjust was that Recussants, after paying dearly for ‘securitie and quiet,’ had been ‘decimated’ by Cromwell and the Puritans.12 It was only right and fair that loyal English Catholics, who had supported the reestablishment of the Protestant Church in England, be given the same freedoms accorded to French Protestants across the Channel. How, he wondered, did other rulers ‘refrain from violence against our Religion, and your, tender breasts seem not to harbour the least compassion or pity?’13 Castlemaine thus sought to reverse the standard English worldview that depicted Catholics as the evil persecutors of Protestants. It was a well-crafted argument. The English tradition of anti-Catholic histories came into its own, of course, with Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, and presented a picture of tolerant, freedom-loving, Protestants who were brutally attacked by bloodthirsty Catholics. This Protestant self image could no longer function, suggested Castlemaine, when France tolerated Protestants, while English Protestants did not tolerate Catholics. To counter such arguments, English anti-Catholics needed new stories of Catholic violence or, more easily come by, the threat of Catholic violence in England. Ultimately, English Protestants would get both: first the hysteria of the Popish Plot and then Huguenot refugees with horrifying stories in the 1680s. Castlemaine’s argument was defeated, not by William Lloyd and other English apologists, but by Louis XIV. The year before Castlemaine’s Reply, William Lloyd had published a strong defence of English laws and penalties against Catholics. Lloyd’s text was then republished in 1673 as another response to Castlemaine. Lloyd marshalled the classic, secular, defence for political or religious intolerance: that it was not so much about religion and faith as about the security of the state. Laws were established to protect the people and the enforcement of ‘known laws’ was neither an injustice nor a 10   Lord Acton would later write that the papacy was not pleased by Castlemaine’s correlation of Catholics and Huguenots. This would also complicate matters when James II later sent Castlemaine as his ambassador to Rome. John Acton, Lectures on Modern History (Teddington, Middx: The Echo Library, 2007), 172. 11  Castlemaine, A reply to the answer of the Catholiqve apology, 38. 12  Ibid. 13  Ibid.

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manifestation of a lack of compassion. ‘We only desire,’ wrote Lloyd, ‘to be Safe from those dangers, to which your Principles would expose us, and against which neither Affableness nor Hospitality will secure us. The Protestants of Ireland were never so treated and caressed by their Popish Neighbors, as they were the very year before they cut their throats.’14 Just because English papists were, at the moment, acting quiet and peaceful, it did not lessen the Catholic threat—it actually made it worse. Such reasoning did not allow for an understanding of Catholic loyalty and portrayed Catholics as more seditious the less seditious they appeared. Lloyd bluntly stated that ‘the best Means of our security, is, that which his Majesty has been pleased to require, viz. The discreet Execution of his Laws.’15 This was what differentiated the semi-freedom of Protestants in France from the semi-intolerance of Catholics in England. Lloyd wrote, ‘In France then, whatsoever Liberty the Protestants enjoy, it is by vertue of their Edicts: which how they were obtained, we shall have occasion to mind you; and how they are observed, let the poor Hugonots tell you. But if they were observed to the full; should we therefore grant You that Liberty which is against Law? because they are allow’d that which you say is not against Law.’16 The laws granting freedom to French Protestants, Lloyd insisted, were not being respected by either local authorities or the Crown. And, according to Lloyd, the laws requiring religious conformity in England were necessary because of the Catholic actions in the past, both in England and in France.17 William Lloyd therefore turned to history and memory. At present, Catholics might be allowing Huguenots limited freedom in France, but the history of Catholic intolerance should not be forgotten. Memory was critical for Protestants if they wanted to keep the Reformation alive. Sarcastically he asked, ‘But pray what did you, when you govern’d the Civiliz’d World? you hang’d and burn’d men, for no other cause but

14   William Lloyd, The late apology in behalf of the papists reprinted and answered in behalf of the royalists (London, 1673; Wing L 2684), 39. 15  Ibid. 16  Lloyd, The late apology, 16. Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, similarly argued Huguenot’s obeyed the law while Catholics, by being Catholics, renounced obedience to the king. See Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, Animadversions upon a book intituled, Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholick Church (London, 1674; Wing C 4415), 84. 17  Many bishops, Lloyd included, worked to support Huguenots in England. Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 164.



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their Faith.’18 It should not be forgotten, he insisted that ‘in England, while it was Yours, did you give any Liberty at all? yet the Name of Protestant was very well known here, and was sufficient for the burning of any one that was known by it.’19 Across the Channel, persecution of Protestants had been even more intense. Naturally, he reminded English Protestants of what happened on St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572. ‘In the dead-time of the night,’ he wrote, ‘the whole City was in Arms about them; they fell upon all the Protestants Houses and Lodgings; they butchered them without distinction, Men, Women and Children, till the Channels ran down with Blood into the River: And scarce a Protestant was left alive’.20 Lloyd then made the logical leap and asked, ‘Pray Sir, may it not well be said, that Papists cannot live without persecuting Protestants?’21 This was a seemingly difficult argument to make as it was Protestants, rather than Catholics, who were doing the persecuting in England, but it was a sentiment expressed by many Protestants and it was built on a well-ingrained fear of Roman Catholicism. English anti-Catholic laws had to continue, they insisted, because if Catholics were given tolerance then Catholic persecution of Protestants would be the likely result. Such ironic reasoning was well in place prior to the dramatic increase in anti-Protestant activity in France. Rhetoric, therefore, preceded reality, but it provided a mental context that would help Protestants make sense of what they witnessed in the 1680s. The great problem for English Catholics, as well as for both Charles II and James II, was that Louis XIV seemed to play directly to the fears of English Protestants. A similar sentiment can be found in Robert Barclay’s writings on universal love and how far tolerance should extend to different religious groups. While Barclay, a Quaker, supported tolerance, Catholicism, by its very nature, was a persecuting religion. The pope, wrote Barclay, had shown himself ‘very Zealous and Violent to bring all to a ready obedience to the least of his Commands, as by many examples could be largely proved’.22 For evidence, Barclay turned to  Lloyd, The late apology, 34.  Lloyd, The late apology, 16. 20  Lloyd, The late apology, 17. 21  Lloyd, The late apology, 21. 22   Robert Barclay, Universal love considered and established upon its right foundation being a serious enquiry how far charity may and ought to be extended towards persons of different judgments in matters of religion and whose principles among the several sects of Christians do most naturally lead to that due moderation required (1677; Wing B 741), 19. 18 19

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French history and the ‘many Inhumain Butcheries and Massacres committed both in France, and the Netherlands, upon Men meerly for the matter of their Consciences.’23 For Barclay it was ‘abundantly manifest that there can be nothing more contrary to this Universal Love and Charity than Romish Principles, and that no man of that Religion, without deserting his Principles, can pretend to it.’24 It was impossible, he believed, for ‘Romish Principles’ and brotherly love to coexist in the same person. Therefore, acts of tolerance and charity by Roman Catholics were, in fact, devious, hypocritical and subterfuge to later violence.25 Just as Lloyd claimed that Catholicism was, by nature, incapable of not persecuting Protestants, so too Barclay stated that Catholicism was intrinsically violent. In both Lloyd and Barclay we see the same logic. Catholics might appear, at the moment, to be tolerant and charitable, but the past told a different story and Catholics would persecute again in the future and so, according to Lloyd, Protestants could not extend tolerance to Catholics. This reverse logic to support ongoing penalties against English Catholics was ultimately justified in the minds of English apologists by the increased hardships of French Huguenots. Texts such as Lloyd’s and Barclay’s established an antiCatholic rhetorical foundation for the propaganda and fear of the Popish Plot which began at the end of 1677 and became a mass hysteria in 1678. The Popish Plot, concocted by Titus Oates and Israel Tonge, dramatically heightened English paranoia about renewed Catholic violence against Protestants.26 Not surprisingly, numerous books and pamphlets were published that justified the Catholic threat by reminding readers of past Catholic atrocities. If England was going to defeat the Catholic conspiracy then historical memory was absolutely critical. In 1678 Gilbert Burnet translated and published excerpts from François Eudes de Mézeray’s history of the French Wars of Religion and from the writings of Jacques Auguste de Thou.27 Not surprisingly, Burnet’s  Ibid.  Ibid. 25   Barclay wrote that Protestants can see ‘how much they act the Hypocrite when they pretend Christian Charity to any that differ from them.’ Barclay, Universal love considered, 19. 26  For a detailed analysis of the Popish Plot see John Kenyon, The Popish Plot (London: Heinemann, 1972). 27   A translation of de Thou’s history of the French Huguenots and particularly the massacre was also published in 1678. See Edward Stephens (trans.), Jacques-Auguste de Thou, A true history of the Roman Catholicks designs and bloody contrivances 23 24



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text focused on 1572 and the massacre of French Protestants. The point of the text, in the event that any reader managed to not make the connection to the Popish Plot, was clearly elucidated in the introduction and conclusion. Burnet began by contrasting Protestant morality with Catholic barbarism. According to Burnet, ‘There are no Principles of Morality more universally received, and that make deeper impressions on the minds of all Men, that are more necessary for the good of humane Society, and do more resemble the Divine Perfections, than Truth and Goodness.’28 A humane society, characterized by goodness and truth, was Protestant. Catholic society was the opposite because ‘the Church of Rome teaches Barbarity and Cruelty, against all who receive not their Opinions; and that Hereticks are to be delivered to secular Princes, who must burn them without mercy.’29 Cruelty and inhumanity were fundamental Catholic doctrines. He wrote, ‘Cruelty and Treachery are become a part of their Doctrine, and they may join them to their Creed.’30 The problem was that Catholics were no longer acting with quite so much obvious evil and had made cruelty and persecution the ‘Secrets of their Religion, till a fit opportunity appear.’31 The secret nature of Catholic plans for the future persecution of Protestants had resulted in Protestant memory loss. Protestants had forgotten to fear Catholic machinations. Burnet sought to correct this memory lapse by detailing what had taken place in 1572.32 If any Protestants were becoming ‘charitable’ to Catholics and doubting that Catholics would again use religious violence and persecution, ‘the History of the Parisian Massacre may satisfie them to the full.’33 ‘We may be taught from such Precedents,’ he continued, ‘what we ought to expect, when ever we are at the mercy of Persons of that Religion, for the subversion of the Protestant religion in England. And how by the wonderful providence of God their treasonable and bloody conspiracies and designs have been discovered and prevented (2nd edn, London, 1678: Wing T 1077A). This work also sought to link the 1572 massacre with the 1678 Popish Plot. 28  Gilbert Burnet, A relation of the barbarous and bloody massacre of about an hundred thousand Protestants, begun at Paris, and carried on over all France, by the Papists, in the year 1572 collected out of Mezeray Thuanus, and other approved authors (London, 1678; Wing R 814), 3. 29  Burnet, A relation of the barbarous and bloody massacre, 3. 30  Burnet, A relation, 4. 31  Ibid. 32   John Miller has also noted the prevalence of references to the 1572 massacre during the Popish Plot. See John Miller, Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 89, 181–2. 33  Burnet, A relation, 4.

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who, if they be true Sons of the Church of Rome, must renounce both Faith and Mercy to all Hereticks.’34 This, of course, was the primal fear behind the Popish Plot—that Catholics would violently take control of the English government and then use violence against the Protestant population. Catholics were secretly planning more massacres. It was his duty to expose the secret by reminding his readers of Catholic history, even if it was over a hundred years in the past. The rest of Burnet’s work contained the translation of texts detailing the killings of Protestants. Burnet’s own voice returned for the final sentence to remind his readers once again what they could expect if a Catholic ruled England. ‘We may easily gather,’ he concluded, ‘What is to be expected from that Court, and what we ought to look for, when-ever we are at the mercy of Men, whose Religion will not only bear them through, but set them on to commit the most Treacherous and Bloody Massacres.’35 Burnet had fixed the Protestant memory loss by reintroducing an agitated public to the details of St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre at a critical time when many people believed that Papists were determined to assassinate the King and other Protestant Lords.36 Evidence of Catholic treachery was necessary to make the Plot believable and given both the secret nature of the Popish Plot and the reality of Catholic tolerance of French Protestants in 1678, it was critical for English authors to focus on historical accounts of the Massacre and the Wars of Religion. Burnet’s was far from the only text designed to reawaken a national anti-Catholic memory by describing, in detail, the French massacre in 1572. One anonymous author unwittingly recounted a cruel historical irony given what was soon to occur with the Popish Plot in England. The massacre began, he wrote, because certain people spread the rumor ‘that the Hugonots (for so the Romish Catholicks term the true Protestants in France) were in Arms (they being all, alas, in their Beds, far from any such thoughts) and meant to kill the King.’37 French Protestants were massacred because Parisians  Ibid., 4.  Burnet, A relation, 47. 36   Burnet also directly criticized Charles II and later fled England during James II’s reign. See John Spurr, England in the 1670s: ‘This Masquerading Age’ (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), 202. Also see Richard L. Greaves, Secrets of the Kingdom: The Popish Pot to the Revolution of 1668–89 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992), 318. 37  Anon, An Account of the several plots, conspiracies, and hellish attempts of the bloody-minded papists against the princes and kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland from the reformation to this present year 1678 as also their cruel practices in France against the Protestants in the massacre of Paris (London, 1679; Wing A 387), 37. 34 35



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became paranoid that there was a secret conspiracy among Protestants to kill the Catholic monarch and replace the Catholic government with a Protestant one.38 In England during 1678 the exact opposite was taking place. Titus Oates was spreading the rumor that Catholics had a secret plan to kill the Protestant king and replace English Protestant rule with a Catholic government. The result, though not a massacre, would be the deaths of at least fifteen innocent Catholics. But rather than see the similarities of the situations, the author and, presumably, his readers, saw such Catholic cruelty as substantiating proof of the secret Catholic conspiracy in England. The hysteria agitating the English populace was further heightened by accounts of the French massacre that went beyond a description of events and asked readers to picture how being in Paris in 1572 would have looked and felt. By imagining the massacre, they were also being asked to imagine what living under a Catholic government in England would feel like: Now let the tender hearted Christian Reader, but consider and ponder in his Heart, how strange and horrible a thing it might be in a great Town or City, to see at the least 60000 Men with Pistols, Pikes, Courtlasses, Ponyards, Knives and other such bloody Instruments, run swearing and blaspheming the sacred Majesty of God throughout the Streets, and into Mens Houses, where most cruelly they massacred all whomsoever of the Religion they met, without regard of Estate, Condition, Sex or Age, the Streets paved with Bodies cut and hewed in pieces, the Gates and Entries of Houses, Palaces and publick places died with Blood. A horrible Plague of shoutings and howlings of the Murtherers, mixed with continual noise of Pistols and Calivers, together with the pittiful cries of those that were murthered, the Bodies cast out at Windows upon the Stones, drawn through the Dirt with strange noise and Whistlings, the breaking open of Doors and Windows with Bils, Stones and other surious Instruments, the spoiling and plundering of Houses, Carts carrying away the spoils, and dead Bodies which were thrown into the River of Soame, all red with Blood, which ran in great Streams through the Town, and from the Kings Palace into the said River.39

Readers of such accounts, which went on page after page, could place  themselves in the middle of the massacres and experience   A similar point was made in William Dugdale, A short view of the late troubles in England briefly setting forth, their rise, growth, and tragical conclusion, as also, some parallel thereof with the barons-wars in the time of King Henry III : but chiefly with that in France, called the Holy League, in the reign of Henry III and Henry IV, late kings of the realm (London, 1681; Wing D 2492), 601–606. 39  Anon, An Account of the several plots, 38. 38

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the terror.40 The terror of the Popish Plot was thus tied to a history of terror and took on dimensions far beyond any logical response to the rumours peddled by Oates. The conclusion of this pamphlet made it clear that the greatest of all the Papist conspiracies was not in the past, but the present plan to destroy Protestantism in England. The author reported that ‘this Plot, in the general Opinion, is thought to be the greatest and most Dangerous that ever was since the Reformation: For as it has been of long Continuance, so it is laid Universal; for no less than these three Northern Kingdoms were designed to be delivered from that which they call Pestilent Heresie … all the power and Wealth of the popish Party was laid out to carry on the Catholick Cause.’41 Connecting Oates’s allegations to the history of religious violence made the Plot eminently believable to an increasingly scared English population. The last sentence made it clear that, ultimately, it was the Devil behind the threat of Catholic violence: ‘The Reader may see that the Religion of the Papists is not from above (which is Pure, Peaceable, and Gentle, and easie to be Entreated;) but from the Devil, who was a Murther from the Beginning, and like a Roaring Catholick Lion, goes up and down seeking whom he may devour.’42 The purpose of such texts was obviously to increase the fears of English Protestants and, in so doing, support the ongoing investigations against English Catholics. A secondary point, which would soon become a national obsession, was the attempt to avoid having a Catholic monarch, namely the king’s brother James, inherit the throne. The Popish Plot made it clear to English Protestants that Catholics had not left religious violence in the past, or in France, and that a strong response to Catholic treachery was justified and continued laws against English Catholics were absolutely necessary. History, memory, and imagination were at the center of the building anti-Catholic hysteria in England. At the heart of these attempts to reconstruct an anti-Catholic memory was the history of French Huguenots.

40   Another example of a text designed to spread fear of a Catholic coup can be found in David Clarkson, The case of Protestants in England under a popish prince if any shall happen to wear the imperial crown (London, 1681; Wing C 4569). Clarkson also recounted the 1572 massacre in horrifying detail: the ‘Catholick Assassinating Spirit’ would naturally lead to massacres in England just as it had in France. (ibid., 22, 29) 41  Anon, An Account of the several plots, 46. 42  Ibid.



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On the 25th of March 1679, the Speaker, Edward Seymour, gave an impassioned speech against the Catholic conspiracy.43 Seymour’s choice of Biblical passage upon which to build his message was rather peculiar, but apparently was remembered by those who heard it. Numerous authors would later recall Seymour’s speech, which sought to link the futures of English, Scottish and French Protestant history. Taking Song of Solomon 8:8–9 as his starting point, he told his audience: We have a little Sister and she hath no Breasts, what shall we do for our Sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a Wall, we will build on her a Palace of Silver; if she be a Door, we will inclose her with Boards of Cedar. We have several little Sisters without Breasts, the French Protestant Churches, the two Kingdoms of Ireland and Scotland; the foreign Protestants are a Wall, the only Wall and Defence to England; upon it you may build Pallaces of Silver, glorious Pallaces. The protection of the Protestants abroad, is the greatest power and security the Crown of England can attain to, and which can only help us to give check to the growing Greatness of France.44

French and English Protestants were linked; as were French and English Catholics. There were good sisters and bad sisters. The good Protestant sisters needed to care for each other. In particular, the English government needed to better support French Huguenots. The bad sisters were papists in France and England who were determined to overthrow English Protestantism and enslave the English people. He told his audience, ‘Popery and Slavery, like two Sisters, goe hand in hand, somtimes the one goes first, somtimes the other, in a doors, but the other is always following close at hand.’45 If the Popish Plot was successful and Popery controlled England then slavery would surely follow.46

43   See Andrew Swatland, The House of Lords in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 230. 44   This speech was included in John Dunton, The Compleat statesman demonstrated in the life, actions, and politicks of that great minister of state, Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury (London, 1683; Wing C 5658), 61. 45  Dunton, The Compleat statesman, 62. 46   With all the vitriolic condemnations of ‘popery’ and the conflation of Louis XIV’s policies with the nature of Catholicism, it is important to remember that Pope Innocent XI was at odds with Louix XIV, was opposed to the revocation, and, eventually, condemned the dragonnades and persecution of the Huguenots. See John McManners, Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: Volume 2: The Religion of the People and the Politics of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 584.

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While there had been varying degrees of harassment and intimidation of French Protestants since the 1660s, in 1681 Louis XIV dramatically increased the persecution of Huguenots. He commissioned his dragonnades to stay in Protestant households and cause as much trouble as they could.47 The purpose was to either compel Protestants to convert to Catholicism or harass them out of the country.48 The policy worked and many Protestants fled France well before the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685. In essence then, what were unfair characterizations of French Catholicism, as being intrinsically persecutory, became real in the 1680s.49 No longer could English Catholics ask for the same tolerance as Huguenots had in France. While this destroyed the arguments of English Catholics it also fuelled the anti-Catholic hysteria in England and supported the allegations of Protestant propagandists. Louis XIV thus placed Charles II, who was seeking to broaden religious toleration in England, in an increasingly precarious position.50 Religious toleration was part of a secret plan to give Catholics freedom and pave the way for a Catholic coup that would then result in the denial of religious toleration to Protestants. However unlikely such a grand conspiracy, it was believed by large portions of the English Protestant population. Again, the historical irony is profound. Attempts to broaden religious freedom for both Catholics and Protestant dissenters were interpreted as the first step towards the persecution of English Protestants. In the words of David Clarkson, in reference to the trial of the Catholic Edward Coleman: ‘Coleman at his Tryal would have us believe, that nothing was intended but the advance of Popery, by the Innocent way of Toleration; that is no wonder, for he was then concerned, if ever, to disguise their Design. But when he hath to do with those who were conscious to the Plot, and with pleasure could see

  Richard Baxter referred to ‘French Prelacy and Dragoon Discipline’ as methods employed in France to destroy Protestantism. His target, however, was also English prelacy and Anglican discipline against dissenters. See Richard Baxter, Richard Baxter’s penitent confession and his necessary vindication (London, 1691; Wing B 1341), 32, 78. 48   Robin Gwynn has noted that the dragonnades in 1681 led to the introduction of the word ‘refugee’ in England. Robin Gwynn, ‘Roger Morrice and the Huguenot Refugees’, in McElligott, Fear, Exclusion and Revolution, 32. 49  For the significance of the dragonnades in English publications, see Anne DunanPage, ‘Roger L’Estrange and the Huguenots: Continental Protestantism and the Church of England’, in Anne Dunan-Page and Beth Lynch, Roger L’Estrange and the Making of Restoration Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 126–130. 50   See John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 34–35. 47



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the bottom of it; then the Mask is off, then it is in plain terms the subduing of a Pestilent Heresie (for so is the true Christian Religion in the Roman Stile now-a-days) and the utter ruine of the Protestant party.’51 Toleration had become code for a Catholic conspiracy to destroy the Protestant Reformation in England. Rather than viewing the renewed persecution against Huguenots in France as an evil practice that should not be imitated in England, many English Protestants saw it as conclusive evidence that Catholics should never be tolerated in England. In 1681, English publications began commenting on the plight of French Protestants. Edmund Everard reported that physicians, professionals, and tradesmen were being excluded from practicing their crafts for no ‘other cause than their Religion.’52 The purpose, Everard presumed, was to ‘take away from them of the said Religion, all means of gaining their Lively-hood; and to condemn them cruelly to dye of hunger; as if there were left no more humanity for them neither in their hearts nor in their Spirits.’53 The alternative to such harassment and starvation was emigration. Many of the most virulently anti-Catholic texts were anonymous. One such text, penned by a ‘Gentleman at London’, focused on the persecution of Huguenots and what Catholics would try to do in England. After recounting what he had learned in letters from France, he stated that the actions of Louis XIV proved that ‘whatever pretence the Roman Catholicks make to the contrary, they have always been, and still are Enemies of the Protestants; and that the Protestants ought to look to be treated by the Catholicks as Enemies.’54 The author then proceeded to recount the many ways how Protestants were being persecuted in France, but added that he ‘should need whole weeks to tell you all.’55 In sum, there was ‘no method proper to ruine them, which is not made use of ’ including dungeons, the rack, separation from children and death ‘in the midst of torments.’56 The purpose  Clarkson, The case of Protestants, 23.   Edmund Everard, The great pressures and grievances of the Protestants in France and their apology to the late ordinances made against them: both out of the Edict of Nantes, and several other fundamental laws of France (London, 1681; Wing E 3529), 49. Everard, a former Catholic turned Whig Protestant, was an opportunist who added substantiating rumors to Oates’s accusations. His accounts certainly cannot be trusted, but his texts do represent the rhetorical use of French Protestants for English political objectives. 53  Everard, The great pressures, 49. 54  Gentleman at London, The present state of the Protestants in France in three letters (London, 1681; Wing P 3274), 12. 55  Gentleman at London, The present state of Protestants, 20. 56  Gentleman at London, The present state of Protestants, 21, 29. 51 52

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of the stories of French persecution was to emotionally connect English Protestants to their brothers and sisters in France and thus strengthen the campaign against English Catholics. And, in fact, the author related that after hearing the stories himself he could not ‘forbear taking my turn to be a little in passion.’57 Such passion only served to heighten his determination to suppress the Catholic threat in England. He then compared the persecution of Protestants in France with the executions of Catholics in England. French Catholics ‘plague and torment to death more than a million of peaceable persons, who desire only the freedom of serving God according to his Word, and the Laws of the Land, who cannot be accused of the least shadow of Conspiracy’ while in England ‘we have put to death in a legal manner, it may be twenty wretched persons (the most of which had forfeited their lives to the Law, for being found here) convinced by divers Witnesses, who were the greatest part Papists, of having attempted against the Sacred Life of our King, and the lives of millions of his faithful Subjects.’ Anyone who might describe as ‘cruelties’ what was happening to Catholics in England should ‘blush to death.’58 This was how dramatically the persecutions in France had altered the position of Catholics in England. What might have seemed unjustifiable, or at least distasteful, without the widespread persecution of French Protestants now seemed a moderate and judicious response to a threat of monstrous proportions. Some authors found a reverse type of comfort in the tales of Huguenot suffering. One anonymous penman wrote that ‘as these Persecutions on the one side fright Christians, on the other side they confirm them, putting them in mind, that Sufferings are the Livery of a Christian.’59 Presumably, the author would not have seen a similar confirmation of true Christianity in the attacks on Catholics across England during the same period. Numerous books were filled with stories about children being separated from their parents with one common rumour stating that Catholic midwives and priests atten­­ ded the birth of a Protestant child and baptized the child. When the parents later tried to baptize the child as a Protestant they were accused of sacrilege and a criminal offense for ‘rebaptizing a Catholic infant  Gentleman at London, The present state of Protestants, 30.  Ibid. 59  Anon., The horrible persecution of the French Protestants in the province of Poitou truly set forth by a gentleman of great quality, an eye witness …, in a letter to a worthy friend (London, 1681; Wing H 2862), 2. 57 58



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into heresie.’60 Parents were not allowed to teach their own children and, in some cases, children were forcibly placed with Catholic families.61 These, for readers in England, were viewed as the worst forms of persecution. It was cruel to be subjected to the dragonnades and suffer loss of income and trade, but it was the ultimate terror to lose control of one’s own children and have those children possibly lost for all eternity. In a reference to Matthew 5, this anonymous author saw the ­apocalyptic separation taking place between the sheep and the goats.62 The Catholic world had finally shown its true nature. Anything but the most committed opposition to Catholicism in England would be ‘a reproach to the People of England and the Government thereof.’63 The ‘Son of Man’ was readying his return and the end of time was fast approaching. The situation in France was rapidly heightening anti-Catholic rhetoric in England to the point where no longer was there a fear about a localized conspiracy, but rather the realization that they were witnessing the final cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil. Protestants in England needed to do two things: first, they needed to continue to resist Catholicism; and second, they needed to welcome Huguenot refugees. This author noted that in the final judgment Jesus would say: ‘For I was an hungred and ye gave me Meat, I was thirsty and ye gave me Drink: I was a Stranger and ye took me in: Naked and ye Clothed me, I was sick and ye visited me, I was in Prison and ye came unto me.’64 The naked strangers were clearly, so this author believed, Protestants fleeing French persecution. The memory of French Protestant suffering, as well as the awareness of renewed suffering in France, had thus become a central feature in the worldviews and rhetoric of English Catholics, conformists, and dissenters. Huguenots and the Rhetoric of English Dissenters We have so far looked at the development of anti-Catholic rhetoric in relation to the history and experiences of French Catholics. There is 60  Anonymous, An Abstract of the present state of the Protestants in France (London, 1682), 2: Wing A 140. 61   This was primarily to ensure that children whose parents converted to Catholicism were brought up as Catholics. See McManners, Church and Society, 584. 62  Anonymous, An Abstract of the present state, 2. 63  Ibid. 64  Ibid.

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another aspect, however, that demonstrates the complexity and importance of French Protestantism for English political and religious discourse. English dissenters found a different use for appealing to the memory and then reality of Huguenot suffering. Rather than use Catholic persecution of Huguenots as an argument against expanding toleration in England, some dissenters correlated French persecution with English conformist arguments for the ongoing persecution of English dissenters. They asked, in essence, how different really was French persecution of non-conformists with English persecution of non-conformists? How could English conformists condemn the persecution of Huguenots in France while those same Huguenots would be nonconformists and, therefore, penalized in England? Perhaps the two most prolific non-conformists were Richard Baxter and Henry Care. Along with others, including William Penn, Baxter and Care argued first for the same freedoms extended to French Protestants under the Edict of Nantes and, second, they eventually supported James II’s calls for religious toleration for dissenters and English Catholics. Richard Baxter was an independent with a particularly interesting personal history. After being associated with the Parliamentary army during the Civil War, Baxter supported and helped bring about the restoration of Charles II. He refused, however, the offer to become a bishop in the Church of England and suffered varying degrees of harassment and persecution for the rest of his ministry. Using the categories of the time period it has always been difficult to define Baxter’s theology. Where dissenting Puritans generally adopted Calvinism, especially in terms of predestination, and episcopal conformists adopted free-will Arminianism, Baxter was an oddity: a free-will, broad-minded, dissenter with Puritan sentiments and lifestyle. In 1662, when Baxter was told to stop preaching to his congregation in Kidderminster because of ceremonial nonconformity, he responded by noting that French Protestants did not stand at the sacrament.65 His point was that Protestant churches across Europe differed in ceremonial aspects and it was unfair to not allow some disparity of practice in England.66 Baxter later went further and compared the French 65   Richard Baxter, his account to his dearly beloved, the inhabitants of Kidderminster, of the causes of his being forbidden by the Bishop of Worcester to preach within his diocess (London, 1662; Wing H 2862), 39. 66   Roger L’Estrange, the royal propagandist, responded in print to Baxter that external ceremonies were ‘indifferent’ to salvation and therefore the king could enforce



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massacre of Protestants in 1572 with the laws against English nonconformists in 1662. Baxter wrote that ‘when the Act of Uniformity was passed, it gave all the Ministers that could not Conform, no longer time than till Bartholomew-day, August 24. 1662. and then they must be all cast out: (This fatal Day called to remembrance the French Massacre, when on the same Day 30000 or 40000 Protestants perished by Religious Roman Zeal and Charity).’67 The connection between 1572 and 1662, as both took place on St. Bartholomew’s Day, was unavoidable for nonconformists and strengthened their sense of righteous suffering. Many years later Baxter reflected on the fact that persecution often lead to a growth of a movement. ‘Who would have thought,’ he asked, ‘that the great French Massacre should have rather increased than diminished the Protestants?’68 In the same way, the lack of tolerance for English nonconformists had strengthened their numbers. Baxter ultimately moved to a position where he saw true Christianity among those who tolerated different opinions and a lack of Christianity among those who sought to persecute others. He wrote, ‘We take him not to have the Wisdom and Love of a sound Christian, who cannot love and bear with his fellow Christians….’69 This was increasingly to become the new dividing line between nonconformists like Baxter and the established Church. While most dissenters remained fiercely antiCatholic and despised the popish established Church, some dissenters would even begin to wonder if English Catholics should be tolerated. Following the hysteria of the Popish Plot and then the renewed persecutions of French Protestants that sent refugees fleeing into England, Baxter turned his attention to the growing French congregations in England. The situation placed the established Church in a very awkward position. To deny entry to French Protestants was almost unthinkable given the heightened anti-Catholicism in England and all conformity for decorum and civility. L’Estrange completely avoided any discussion of the French Churches. See Roger L’Estrange, A whipp a whipp, for the schismaticall animadverter upon the Bishop of Worcester’s letter (London, 1662; Wing L 1325), 39–40. 67   Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, or, Mr. Richard Baxters narrative of the most memorable passages of his life and times faithfully publish’d from his own original manuscript by Matthew Sylvester (London, 1696; Wing B 1370), 384. This text, which included a biography of Baxter and a collection of many of his writings, was published after his death in 1691. 68   Richard Baxter, The English nonconformity as under King Charles II and King James II truly stated and argued by Richard Baxter (London, 1689; Wing B 1259), 267. 69   Richard Baxter, A search for the English schismatick (London, 1681), 34: Wing B 1399.

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the texts and sermons detailing the suffering of French Protestants. Yet to allow French Protestant communities to exist in England and to conduct services outside the established Church was to allow nonconformity. This was a major problem for conformist bishops and Baxter wrote in his autobiography that ‘many French Ministers sentenced to Death and Banishment, fly hither for refuge: And the Church men relieve them not because they are not of English Diocesans and Conformity.’70 With the support of Charles II, French refugees were tolerated in England, but the vitriolic political situation placed them in a precarious position.71 Furthermore, said Baxter, the rhetoric of conformity frightened people and was unfair to the Dutch and French Churches in England, even though those churches were technically tolerated by the Crown. ‘We hate the spirit of pride and envy in Preachers,’ wrote Baxter, ‘who cannot endure to see others … preferred before them … or worship God in another place, or in other words or circumstances….’72 These prideful preachers then ‘frighten the people by their loud allarm and cry of Schism; as if all were of a different Religion or species of Communion, that differ from their book in Word or Ceremonies.’ And then, by ‘that blinding name of Different Communions, alienate the hearts of the ignorant, and make them think of the Dutch, French, and others that only differ from them in accidents, as the Papists do of us that are called by them Hereticks.’73 Naturally, Baxter was also thinking of dissenters who were not even given the consideration of being patronizingly accepted foreign churches. How could the English government treat English nonconformists with less consideration than French refugees? Baxter also asked, ‘Do not the French Protestants deserve all their sufferings then for calling the Church Bishops there Papists, and separating from so Excellent a Government?’74 If that was what really mattered, episcopal ordination, then ‘the French Protestants were better turn Papists, than to continue such Protestants as they are.’75 Baxter then invited his conformist readers to join him as a schismatic, for were they not all  Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, 199–200.  Baxter, English schismatick, 14–15. Officially, James II required conformity of French churches until the Declaration of Indulgence. 72  Baxter, English schismatick, 33. 73  Ibid. 74   Richard Baxter, The true history of councils (London, 1682), 49: Wing B 1438. 75   Richard Baxter, An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke (London, 1682), 93: Wing B 1184. 70 71



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‘Schismaticks both to Italian and French Papists?’76 If conformist high churchmen refused to tolerate dissenters then, in reality conformist clergy were really the same everywhere, whether Protestant or Catholic. They both demanded episcopal hierarchy and were prepared to persecute any who did not come into line. Baxter again turned to French Protestants: ‘Let them be Papists in France, and Protestants in England; I contend not for names. But I wonder not at these Church-men, if they unchurch the French Protestants, and condemn their Ministry and Sacraments as none.’77 English Protestants were almost by definition required to support French Huguenots and condemn Catholic persecution. In doing so, however, they became supporters of French non-episcopal dissenters. References to Huguenots thus became a highly useful tool in the arsenal of dissenter rhetoric. Prior to the renewed persecution of French Protestants, Baxter was not the only one to wonder how French Catholics could tolerate Huguenots while the Protestant church in England could not tolerate other English Protestants. One of the rhetorical attacks aimed at dissenters was that by not supporting the official church they were aiding the Catholic enemy. In essence, to be a dissenter was unpatriotic. Robert Barclay, a Quaker apologist whose anti-Catholic rhetoric we have already heard from, took great offence at this conformist argument. Dissenters, he complained, were condemned for separating their burial places from the established churches. He then noted that conformists would also then have to condemn ‘French Protestants for doing the like from Papists.’78 Particularly offensive was the conformist suggestion that dissenters were ‘advancers of the Popish Interest, because we decry their Ministery and Churches.’79 The bottom line was that Protestants should not persecute other Protestants. William Penn relied on similar logic in a 1682 letter succinctly explaining why English dissenters should not be persecuted: Because the French Protestants, who are the Dissenters from the Established Worship of that Kingdom, are gratiously Received by the King, and kindly Received and succoured by the People of England, and

 Baxter, The true history of councils, 5.  Baxter, An answer, 6. 78   Robert Barclay, William Michel unmasqued, or, The staggering instability of the pretended stable Christian discovered his omissions observed, and weakness unveiled (London, 1672; Wing B 742), 4. 79  Ibid. 76 77

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gregory dodds the French King is highly blamed for Persecuting his peaceable Subjects; and therefore much more Reason that Protestants should not persecute one another, for it is to do the same things that is condemned in others.80

For authors such as Baxter, Barclay, and Penn, it was the height of hypocrisy for English conformists to condemn the treatment of French Huguenots while continuing the persecution of English dissenters.81 One of the most opportunistic authors during the height of the Popish Plot was Henry Care. To profit from the hysteria, Care began publishing The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, which sustained a continuous attack on Catholicism. But Care, a dissenter and a Whig, also believed that the Tories, Anglican bishops and Royalists, were almost no better than Catholics. By attacking Catholics, Care was able to attack the Anglican hierarchy for being so much like the Catholics. Care’s Pacquets became a sensation and were matched by Roger L’Estrange’s Royalist weekly, The Observator. According to Lois Schwoerer, ‘L’Estrange and Care led the way in reshaping popular political rhetoric’ and Care’s ‘anti-popery writings helped to embed anti-Catholic prejudice in the national consciousness.’82 While Care would continue his critique of Catholicism he later softened his language when he accepted a court funded position and began writing to support James II’s calls for religious freedom, which included Catholics and dissenters.83 Many of his contemporaries would see this as a hypocritical rejection of his earlier views, but Care was, in essence, continuing his attack on English conformity. James, he came to believe, was authentically seeking real religious freedom that would benefit dissenters, Catholics, and foreign Protestants, such as the Huguenot refugees. During the Popish Plot, however, his anti-Catholicism was in full swing. If a Papist ever sat on the throne of England then what was 80   William Penn, Some sober and weighty reasons against prosecuting Protestant dissenters for difference of opinion in matters of religion humbly offered to the consideration of all in authority (London, 1682; Wing P 1372), 2. 81   While Baxter sought toleration for dissenters, his ultimate goal was a comprehensive national church that could contain both dissenters and current conformists. See N. H. Keeble, ‘ ‘Take heed of being to forward in imposing on others’: orthodoxy and heresy in the Baxterian tradition’, in David Loewenstein and John Marshall, eds., Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 282–305. 82   Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘Care, Henry (1646/7–1688)’, in Oxford DNB, online edn, [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4621 (accessed 15 Sept. 2009)]. 83   Lois G. Schwoerer, The Ingenious Mr. Henry Care, Restoration Publicist (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 196.



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happening in France would happen here too, for ‘in such a case (which Heaven prevent) the persecution on all sorts of Protestants would be much more bloody and cruel than that in Queen Maries days.’84 The reality of French persecution of Huguenots after 1681 made it highly difficult for Tories to argue that Catholic governments did not want to persecute Protestants.85 The plight of the Huguenots in France was also useful to Care in another way. ‘If we teaze our Protestant Brethren,’ Care asked, ‘Meerly on the Account of Non-conformity to our Ceremonies; do we not justifie the French King in Harassing those that differ from his Establisht Church, not only in Ceremonies, but most material points of Doctrine too?’86 If it was so evil for Louis XIV to persecute Huguenots, then how could the Establish Church continue to persecute English dissenters?87 Care used the anti-Catholic hysteria, part of which he was personally responsible for, to push the cause of English dissenters. That his real focus was dissenters rather than either Catholics or Huguenots would become clear in a few years when he saw non-conformists and Catholics as being on the same side in a struggle against the Established Church.88 Roger L’Estrange, the Tory polemicist and chief rhetorical rival of Care, also turned his attention to the Huguenots, but from a rather different perspective. For L’Estrange it was vitally important to defend the Huguenots while at the same time strictly adhering to the theory of royal supremacy and religious conformity.89 The situation in France

84   Henry Care, The history of popery, or, Pacquet of advice from Rome the fourth volume containing the lives of eighteen popes and the most remarkable occurrences in the church, for near one hundred and fifty years, viz. from the beginning of Wickliff ’s preaching, to the first appearance of Martin Luther (London, 1682; Wing C 521), 208. 85   Another anonymous author noted that ‘when they tell us that they remember the Persecution of the French Protestants, acknowledge the Error and wickedness of their Persecuting those of England; for till they do so, there are a Censorious sort of People amongst us who will conclude, that tho’ some of our Clergy-men, would not have the Arbitrary Power of France to prevail over them; yet that they do wish and hope, by that Power, to prevail over, and yet again to trample upon English Protestants.’ Dissenters were angry that conformists would denounce French persecution of Protestants while supporting English persecution of dissenters. See Anonymous, A midnight touch at an unlicens’d pamphlet (London, 1690; Wing M 1999). 86  Care, The history of popery, or, Pacquet of advice, 208. 87   Also see, William Atwood, A seasonable vindication of the truly catholick doctrine of the Church of England (London, 1683; Wing A 4182), 33–34. 88   See Edward Andrew, Patrons of Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006), 88–91. 89   L’Estrange liked to pretend that Huguenots in England were conformists. This was far from reality. See Gwynn, ‘Conformity’, 32–39.

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did not, he argued, justify rebellion or disobedience against a ruling monarch. According to L’Estrange it was French Catholics, not French Protestants, who were a threat to monarchical rule. Huguenots, he said, obeyed the laws and supported the king. Catholics, on the other hand, did not owe their highest loyalty to the monarch, but to the Pope. This was why Catholic France should tolerate Huguenots and why Protestants could not tolerate Catholics. Protestant Princes, wrote L’Estrange, ‘cannot allow the same toleration to Catholicks in their States, that Catholick Princes can allow to Hugonots; because Protes­ tant Princes cannot be assured of the fidelity of their Catholick Subjects, by reason they have taken Oaths of fidelity to another Prince, whom they look upon as greater than all Kings. It is the Pope; and this Prince is a sworn enemy of the Protestants.’90 The Papists were ‘themselves Antymonarchists.’91 Catholics, however, were not the only threats to a king and England had its own Protestant antimonarchists. Dissenters also were potentially seditious because they too failed to view loyalty to the king as the highest obligation. Several years earlier, L’Estrange had laid out the classic case for domestic intolerance and, in doing so, dealt with the questions raised by dissenters regarding the Huguenots. In his treatise, L’Estrange set up a colloquy between a conformist and a nonconformist. The nonconformist asked how English conformists could more ‘Tolerate a Forreign Religion, then to indulge your own?’92 No society can survive, responded L’Estrange, if its primary religion is internally divided. ‘To Tolerate One Church within Another’, he responded, ‘is to Authorize a Dissolution of the Government both Ecclesiastical, and Civil.’ He then added that ‘by Toleration, a Kingdom is divided against itself and cannot stand.’93 The issue here was not religious, but rather the pragmatic functioning of a society. Naturally, dissenters were not satisfied with such an answer and, as we have seen, wanted England to tolerate them as episcopal Catholics in France tolerated French Protestants. L’Estrange ingeniously answered that if English dissenters wanted toleration in England, such as the Huguenots had under the Treaty of

90   Roger L’Estrange, An apology for the Protestants of France, in reference to the persecutions they are under at this day in six letters (London, 1683; Wing A 3555A), 77. 91  L’Estrange, An apology for the Protestants of France, 74–78. 92   Roger L’Estrange, Toleration discuss’d, in two dialogues (London, 1679; Wing L 1316), 37. 93  L’Estrange, Toleration discuss’d, 38.



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Nantes, then Catholics should be tolerated in England, but not Huguenots. This was not what he personally desired, said L’Estrange, but ‘so it must be, if you’l have your Toleration after the French Fashion. Can you shew me that any Non-Conforming Roman Catholicks are Tolerated There? Nay; Or that those of the Religion do Subdivide,or break Communion among Themselves? Such an Instance might stand you in some stead.’94 Dissenters, of course, continued to argue that the English state and church must be charged with hypocrisy if it supported the Huguenots while suppressing English dissenters. In 1685, as James II came to the throne, William Penn wrote: The French Protestants, who are the Dissenters from the Established Worship of that Kingdome, are kindly received and succoured by England. And when the French King is highly blamed by English Protestants, and perhaps too by some English Catholicks, for Persecuting his peaceable Subjects, shall we do the same things in our Kingdome which we condemn in another? Therefore art thou inexcusable Man, whosoever thou art, for thou that Judgest another, dost the same things.95

Perhaps the greatest irony of this debate was yet to come when L’Estrange, true to his royalist principles, grudgingly accepted James II’s calls for religious tolerance. James also enlisted the support of dissenters and soon Roger L’Estrange, Henry Care, and William Penn were all writing to support the rule of James II; with the latter two producing tracts to buttress James II’s views regarding liberty of conscience. The Revocation of Nantes and the Fall of James II The history and immediate reality of French Protestantism was highly significant for conformists, nonconformists, and Catholics in England and Huguenot history and experiences provided rhetorical opportunities and problems for all three groups. As we have seen, the appeal to French persecution of Protestants was well established and a common trope well before Louis XIV began to systematically attack Protestants. The attacks by the dragonnades in 1681 and the official revocation

 L’Estrange, Toleration discuss’d, 37.   William Penn, Considerations moving to a toleration and liberty of conscience with arguments inducing to a cessation of the penal statues against all dissenters whatever, upon the account of religion (London, 1685; Wing P 1269), 3. 94 95

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of  the Edict of Nantes in 1685 fit perfectly with the story already being told in England.96 The threat to national interests and security demanded continued religious intolerance. But history lessons of Catholic atrocities from past decades could only move the argument so far. What English anti-Catholics needed, and what Louis provided in such a sensational fashion, was new persecution. Now English writers could connect Catholicism with violence and then connect tolerance of English Catholics with potential persecution of English Protestants. While it was highly unlikely that a handful of English Catholics would seek violently to persecute the English Protestant population, such arguments built on earlier episodes of anti-Catholic hysteria and effectively ended any possibility of comprehensive religious toleration in England. The events of 1688 are generally connected with the rise of constitutional monarchy, greater democracy, and expanded religious freedom. It is often forgotten how the overthrow of James II was viewed by contemporaries, which was primarily as a defeat of the Catholic threat to English Protestantism. The Glorious Revolution, until recent decades, was portrayed as an English victory for freedom and tolerance. In a sense, historians took at face value the rhetoric of Whigs and anti-Catholic polemicists. More recently, revisionist historians have followed the lead of John Miller and suggested that James II was relatively moderate and was truly seeking to expand religious freedom in England.97 James’s overthrow

96   Robin Gwynn reports that between 40,000 and 50,000 Huguenots emigrated to England during Louis XIV’s reign, with the largest numbers arriving after James’s Declaration of Indulgence in 1687: Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 44. Gwynn also notes, however, that James did not encourage emigration to England and was not particularly welcoming to those who settled there (p. 174). 97   See John Miller, ‘The Immediate Impact of the Revocation’, in Caldicott, et al., eds., Huguenots in Ireland: The Anatomy of an Emigration (Dun Laoghaire: Glendale Press, 1987), 161–203; John Miller, ‘James II and Toleration’, in Eveline Cruickshanks, ed., By Force or By Default? The Revolution of 1688–1689 (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1989), 8–27; Miller, James II, 167–88; Gary S. De Krey, ‘Reformation and ‘Arbitrary Government’: London Dissenters and James II’s Polity of Toleration, 1687–1688’, in Jason McElligott, ed., Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and Britain in the 1680s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 13–31; Mark Goldie, ‘The Political Thought of the Anglican Revolution’, in Robert Beddard, ed., The Revolutions of 1688 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 107–118; Mark Goldie, ‘John Locke’s Circle and James II’, HJ 35 (Sept. 1992): 558–9, 569, 579, 584; Eveline Cruickshanks, Glorious Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 19–21; and, Justin Champion, ‘Willing to Suffer’, in McLaren and H. Coward, eds., Religious Conscience, State and Law (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 13–28.



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was the work of Anglican Protestants determined to maintain civil and religious penalties against Catholics. Steve Pincus, however, has argued that James’s professions of support for toleration and liberty of conscience were a ruse and that his statements to French officials supporting the revocation of the edict of Nantes reflect his true feelings.98 James was determined to remake England into a Catholic nation. Pincus’s case is extensively documented and persuasive. However, we should be cognizant of three things. First, James’s views likely changed over time and his interest in moving beyond liberty of conscience to the reestablishment of Catholicism seems to have strengthened dramatically as his reign developed. Second, we should not take James’s statements to his French allies at face value. James, as proved by Pincus, was perfectly capable of telling one group one thing while another group the opposite. We must be careful deciding that we know whom the truth and lies were told to.99 Third, royal absolutism, I believe, not the liberty or coercion of conscience, was the ultimate motivation for James’s ideology and policy. The push for official liberty of conscience in England was the packaging for James’s absolutism. I suspect both that James’s thinking on the issue of toleration was inconsistent, often disingenuous, and perhaps even muddled. However, what is increasingly clear is that the rhetoric of toleration, set within the international context of France and Europe, had become a hollow language that only served to heighten fear of Catholics, especially French Catholics, for English Protestants. It is also important to note that Pincus places James’s overthrow within an international context and stresses that James’s Catholicism was an absolutist Gallican form and that it did not have the support of either the Pope or the vast majority of English Catholics. All of which brings us back to the central importance in England of Louis XIV’s determination to claim absolute religious control of France—a determination that resulted in the destruction of French Protestantism. James II came to the throne in February of 1685 and in October 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes formally ending toleration for Protestants in France.100 Within two years, however, James declared   Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 121–122.     99  Pincus, 1688, 137. 100  James understood the problem Louis XIV posed for his domestic agenda and attempted to suppress reports in England of French persecution of Protestants.     98

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full religious tolerance for Catholics and dissenters in England. The English people, therefore, were faced with a complicated picture. On the one hand, Louis XIV was pursuing a policy that Protestant propaganda had led them to expect. Persecution was the natural hidden character of Catholicism and it had now come out into the open. On the other hand, James II, also a Catholic monarch, was talking about freedom and liberty of conscience.101 Many English Protestants assumed this was part of a devious hidden plan; a plan to tolerate Catholics in order to put Catholics in positions of power to be followed by the subversion and ultimate persecution of English Protestants.102 Toleration was a Catholic fraud which had been exposed numerous times in the past and, undeniably, by Louis XIV. The birth of a male heir to the throne in June 1688 made the prospect of a Catholic dynasty now a reality. This, combined with James II’s attempts to enforce toleration by royal absolute decree, alienated large swaths of the country and led to his overthrow later that year.103 Extending religious freedom had become the centerpiece of James’s agenda, but it was made infinitely more untenable by the relentless persecution of Protestants in France. Many English Protestants were convinced that James II’s ultimate objective was the destruction of Protestantism.104 In a letter to an English dissenter, which was subsequently published in 1689, an English Protestant voiced the opinion of many by arguing that liberty of conscience could not possibly be the policy of James II given the history of Catholic treachery and violence. The author wrote, See John Miller, Popery and politics in England 1660–1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 255. For a careful analysis of what the revocation meant for James II, see Miller, ‘Immediate Impact of the Revocation.’ 101   While James II, in principle, supported religious tolerance, he distrusted the Huguenots and saw connections between them and both Monmouth’s rebellion and with William of Orange’s potential invasion. He also continued to censor their writings. See Matthew Glozier, The Huguenot Soldiers of William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution of 1688: The Lions of Judah (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2008), 92–93. 102  Richard Baxter wrote that the anti-Catholic sentiment was so strong that dissenters who supported freedom of conscience were accused of supporting Popery, or worse, being secret Papal agents. See Richard Baxter, Richard Baxter’s penitent confession, 80. 103   See Andrew R. Murphy, Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001), 134–42. 104  See John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: Religious Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and ‘Early Enlightenment’ Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 62–73.



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‘There are many things which would make a wise man suspect that there is some farther Design than Liberty of Conscience in all this zeal for repealing the Penal Laws and Test. For it would be very surprising to find a Roman Catholick Prince whose Conscience is directed by a Jesuit, to be really zealous for Liberty of Conscience.’105 As proof, the author sarcastically pointed to the ‘mild and gentle usage of the French Protestants by a King whose Conscience is directed by a tender-hearted Jesuit.’106 Just as in France, where there had once been toleration, English ‘Protestant Subjects will quickly find what a Popish liberty of Conscience means.’107 There is only one thing that is certain, he wrote, ‘that the Church of Rome is a persecuting Church, and the Mother of Persecution. Will they then be deluded by the present Sham of Liberty of Conscience; which they of that Church pretend to give? It is not in their power, no more than in their Spirit: They neither will nor can give liberty of Conscience; but with a design to take all liberty from us.’108 The author then, again, turned to France as the ultimate proof of Catholic designs against Protestants. The massacre was again brought up, but this time with proof that it was not an aberration, but rather timeless Catholic policy. In another letter an anonymous writer asked dissenters supporting James II, ‘How is it that you should not have perceived the Poison that was hid under the Liberty of Conscience offered to them?’109 This author then addressed the central point: ‘You will, it may be, tell us, that it looks ill in us, who so much complain, That we have been deprived of Liberty of Concience in France, to find fault with the King of England for granting it to his Subjects.’110 However, the real point was not toleration, but absolutism. French liberty of conscience was taken away in an absolutist and tyrannical manner, just as the English enforcement of liberty of conscience was done in a tyrannical and absolutist fashion. Furthermore, anyone who assumed that James II wanted true toleration ‘must be very little acquainted with the Spirit of Popery.’111 According to this letter, English dissenters had been

  Anonymous, ‘A Letter to a Dissenter’, in Anonymous, Fourteen Papers, 53.  Ibid. 107   Anonymous, ‘A Letter to a Dissenter’, 55. 108  Ibid. 109  Anonymous, ‘A Letter of several French Ministers Fled into Germany’, in Anonymous, Fourteen Papers, 70. For Richard Baxter’s support of toleration in 1689, see The English nonconformity. 110   Anonymous, ‘A Letter of several French Ministers’, 73. 111   Anonymous, ‘A Letter of several French Ministers’, 74. 105 106

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tricked by James and the proof was the history and experience of French Huguenots.112 In a similar vein, a published letter by the Huguenot Pierre Allix complained that ‘for the advancing of Popery, he [James II] has neither had any regard to the Laws of the Land, nor to the Oaths he had taken to preserve them. Thus much I assert boldly, that since it cannot be deny’d, but that there was a Secret Treaty betwixt Lewis XIV, and James II, we can less doubt, but that the End and Aim of the Treaty, was the Ruin of the Protestant Religion.’113 When Louis XIV talked James II into an invasion of Ireland to try to reclaim his crown, it seemed to prove true every English Protestant accusation against Catholics and James. Anyone in England who could not see the reality of these secret plots or perceive the fundamentally evil nature of Catholicism was ‘willfully blind and hoodwink themselves.’114 It is, of course, impossible to know with certainty the motives of James II. At the very least it would seem that James wanted the English people to believe he supported full liberty of conscience.115 James was undercut, however, by the history of Protestantism in France. For decades Protestants had used the memory of the St. Bartholomewe’s Day massacre in 1572 to argue that Catholics were essentially intolerant and that any present tolerance was a Machiavellian deception that would eventually give way to more attacks on Protestants. The revocation destroyed any chance that James II would be able to effectively counter anti-Catholic rhetoric in England. English Protestant authors believed that they had uncovered the anti-Christ in the person of Louis XIV and, by proxy, in the figure of James II. The anti-Christ looks peaceful and charitable, but then attacks the unwary with violence and persecution. Another necessarily 112  Gary S. De Krey argues that James did have success working with dissenters. What ruined James’s plans was his ‘impatient assault upon the Test Act.’ De Krey, ‘Reformation and “Arbitrary Government”,’ 30. 113   Pierre Allix, An account of the private league betwixt the late King James the Second, and the French king in a letter from a gentleman in London, to a gentleman in the country (London, 1689; Wing A 344), 14–15. 114  Allix, An account, 15. Also see De Krey, ‘Reformation and “Arbitrary Government”,’ 24. 115   A case for James’s authentic belief in liberty of conscience can be found in Gary S. De Krey, Restoration and Revolution in Britain (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007), 232–46. In several works, John Miller has established a foundation for reappraising James II and moving away from views of James that were established by Whigs following the overthrow of James’s government in 1688: see especially Miller, ‘James II and Toleration’, 13–14.



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anonymous author wrote, concerning Louis XIV, that ‘reasoning by the Instinct of the Devil, that if the Party of the Protestants were so considerable, that they could preserve the State, they were able as well to overthrow it, if a fair occasion should offer it self: For which reasons grounded upon Antichristian Politicks, a Resolution was taken to suppress all the Protestant Party, and to bury in Oblivion all the good Services they had done.’116 The author then proceeded, in excruciating detail, to recount stories of Catholics torturing Protestant men and women.117 Sexual violence featured prominently in these accounts. As we have seen in previous texts, this author too, argued that here, in these tortures, could be found the true fundamental nature of Catholicism. He wrote that cruelty was the ‘true Spirit of Popery’ in all ‘Ages and Countries’ and that if Protestants loved their religion, abhorred idolatry, cared for the law, were concerned about their nation, desired to ‘hold the Freedom of our Consciences’ and wanted to avoid massacres that destroyed families, then Catholics had to be kept out of England. Catholicism, so he wrote, was a ‘Diabolical Sect’ that would enslave England, just as it enslaved Protestants in France.118 The ‘true Spirit of Popery,’ was massacre, persecution, and slavery. This sums up well the English anti-Catholic sentiment and rhetoric that was fueled by the experiences of French Protestants. In reality, though, it was probably not so much the real history of the Huguenots that fueled English anti-Catholicism, but rather that reference to Huguenots had become a powerful rhetorical device for English polemicists. With the unsubstantiated hysteria of the Popish Plot, which provided a powerful anti-Catholic worldview and a rhetorical framework for Louis XIV’s real persecution of Huguenots, James was in an impossible position.119 In all likelihood it would have taken a recognizably

 Anonymous, The absolute necessity of standing by the present government, or, A view of what both church men and dissenters must expect if by their unhappy divisions popery and tyranny should return again (London, 1689; Wing A 112), 43–44. 117  For a similar work, see Gentleman of that Nation, Popish treachery, or, A short and new account of the horrid cruelties exercised on the Protestants of France (London, 1689; Wing P 2958). According to this ‘Gentleman’, the persecutions in France over the previous centuries meant that Catholics would always try to destroy Protestant England. 118  Anonymous, The absolute necessity, 46–47. 119   While I have stressed James’s personal commitment to liberty of conscience, the situation for James was complex and he had conflicting views of English dissenters. Gwynn, in Huguenot Heritage, has demonstrated how James continued to apply pressure on various dissenting individuals and communities. 116

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Protestant monarch to extend equality to English Catholics. That a Catholic monarch was attempting to do so in England while another Catholic monarch, a close ally, was brutally suppressing Protestantism in France ruined any chance of success for James. James, however, believing himself guided by providence, pushed ahead and attempted to bring religious freedom to England not through parliamentary laws, but by absolute decree. At the center of this failure stand the Huguenots and, more importantly for English sentiments, the history of the Huguenots as a rhetorical device. By focusing on the development of this rhetoric the Huguenots can be placed as one of the most central issues leading to the 1688 overthrow of James II. The interrelated concepts of history and memory were central to the anti-Catholic rhetoric of James II’s opponents. There remains a pervasive notion that the Glorious Revolution, combined with the ideas of John Locke, was a repudiation of religious intolerance and bigotry.120 It  was anti-Catholicism, however, that drove opposition to James II and at the center of this anti-Catholicism stood the history of French Protestants. I have made five interrelated points in this chapter. First, that the issue of French Huguenots was a central concern and useful rhetorical device for English Catholics, conformists, and dissenters. All three of these groups repeatedly returned to the issue of French Protestantism to make their respective cases to the English reading public. Though often ignored in studies of these decades, these rhetorical appeals go to the heart of the religious and political debates of the period. Second, until Louis XIV’s edicts against the Huguenots, English polemicists were forced to rely on French history, particularly the St. Bartholomewe’s Day Massacre, to argue that Catholics were bent on destroying Protestantism. This was a difficult argument given the ongoing persecution of Catholics in England and the relative freedom of Protestants in France. Third, English dissenters powerfully defended their dissent by contrasting French tolerance with English laws against

120  Gary S. De Krey has made a strong case for the importance of the dissenting community and therefore the rationality of James II’s attempts to form a coalition with them in order to expand religious toleration in England. ‘But the history of early nonconformity has yet to be fully freed from post-1689 perspectives that divide English Protestants into exclusively defined camps and that treat dissenting numbers as a small fraction of what the church could command…. James did not err in supposing that this broad Protestant middle might be turned towards eliminating persecution and the penal laws and providing relief, even for Catholics.’ De Krey, ‘Reformation and ‘Arbitrary Government’,’ 30.



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dissenters. It became increasingly difficult for conformists to maintain penal laws against nonconformists given, first, the situation in France and, second, the acceptance of French Protestant churches in England. Fourth, Louis XIV’s renewed persecution of Protestants in 1681, followed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, appeared to prove accurate all the accusations leveled against French Catholics by Protestant polemicists. This effectively ended attempts by English Catholics and dissenters to use French tolerance as an argument for greater English religious freedom. Fifth, the fall of James II was directly related to both the rhetorical context of Huguenot history and the reported experiences of Protestant suffering after the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685. It was simply impossible for James, a Catholic, to argue for religious toleration in England while Louis XIV was persecuting Protestants in France. His insistence on doing so, especially in an arbitrary fashion, created massive fear and distrust and led to the destruction of his government. All five of these points come together to demonstrate the singular importance of rhetorical appeals to Huguenot history and persecution. It would be possible to judge Protestant propaganda as shameless fear mongering, and it perhaps began as simply that, but Louis XIV’s persecution of Protestants and then the revocation of Nantes lent vivid credence to the accusations against English Catholics. While English Catholics were, on the whole, undoubtedly loyal and of a different mind than Louis XIV, they had little ability to proclaim their innocence in the face of Protestant suffering in France. The history, memory, and experiences of French Protestants, therefore, are linked to the failure of James’s push for liberty of conscience in England. It is possible to see in James a monarch who was attempting to chart a course that was markedly different than that chosen by Louis XIV. The accumulation, over decades, of rhetoric and texts about the history and fate of French Protestants, coupled with the policies of Louis XIV, inextricably linked Catholicism with violence in the minds of English Protestants. James was overthrown and Protestant England was saved. At the very centre of the worldviews that led to this event was the memory and rhetorical use of Huguenot history.

CHAPTER FOUR

How Dangerous, the Protestant Stranger? Huguenots and the Formation of British Identity c. 1685–1715 Lisa Clark Diller The Revocation of the Edit of Nantes had profound implications for English foreign and domestic policy. Occurring as it did in 1685, the Revocation and the resultant wave of French Protestant immigrants contributed not a little to the context of the Glorious Revolution—and the resulting tension between international Protestant loyalties and the growing nationalism of the British. The Revolution of 1688 secured a Protestant settlement for the throne, and starting with King William’s wars, began over a century of off-and-on fighting against the ‘popish tyranny’ of France. These were not primarily wars of religion, but scholars from Linda Colley to John Brewer have shown how heavily they contributed to the modern British nation-state and its identity as a bastion of Protestant liberty. The Huguenots, as French Calvinists, embodied the very paradox at the heart of this developing British national identity. They were victims of the French Catholic monarchical tyranny, and thus justified both the Glorious Revolution itself and the wars against the French. But they were still French, and, congregating in London, controlled some very lucrative elements of the merchant economy. Additionally, they were not part of the Church of England, and as dissenters, they challenged the limits of the nascent Act of Toleration. To what extent could these French strangers be incorporated into the civil society of the British nation? The possibilities for a ‘British’ identity, made more urgent by the union of the Scots and English crowns in 1707 and the settlement/ pacification of Ireland following the Revolution of 1688, were not unrelated to the larger war against Louis XIV’s universal m ­ onarchy. The large Huguenot migration to England, Ireland, and other parts of the British colonial world were part and parcel of these developments. While their integration into the British polity was not without conflict,

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Huguenots intentionally promoted the religious and economic ­affiliations they had with the British and identified themselves with the burgeoning enterprise of the empire. Ultimately they were successful at affiliating themselves with the political and cultural priorities of their host nation, but the manner in which they did this, and the reception they received, is instructive for the student of early British nationalism. The first concern on the part of Londoners and other English men and women does seem to have been with the nature of the foreignness of this large group of immigrants. To the extent that they remained distinctly ‘French’, to that extent they were a threat. Charles Davenant, whose economic theories encouraged immigration, suggested that they be scattered throughout the entire country, because ‘they may endanger the Government by being suffer’d to remain, such vast Numbers of ‘em, here in London, where they inhabit all together, at least 30000 Persons in two Quarters of the Town, without intermarrying with the English, or learning our language, by which Means for several Years to come, they are in a way still to continue Foriegners, and perhaps may have a Foreign Interest and Foreign Inclinations.’1 When they lived in large numbers together, as they did in London and Canterbury, it was disconcerting to the British who traveled through their streets that they often didn’t hear English spoken. Xenophobia also strengthened with respect to William’s non-English courtiers and fighting force (which included many Huguenot soldiers), because ‘that foreign soldiers are dangerous to Liberty we may produce Examples from all Countries and all Ages.’2 Historian John Brewer points out that ‘the Huguenot officer was a sufficiently familiar character to be parodied by Henry Fielding in Tom Jones as the soldier who had forgotten his native tongue but had also failed to acquire English.’3 The churches and their leadership were quite aware of the challenge posed by this failure to blend in and scolded their parishioners lest their deportment or excessive ‘Frenchness’ alarm the neighbors. The consistory records in 1690 warned against any entertainment or frivolity 1   Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the probable methods of making a people gainers in the ballance of trade (London: 1699; Wing D309), 28. 2  Davenant, An Essay, 29; Matthew Glozier, The Huguenot Soldiers of William of Orange and the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688: The Lions of Judah (Portland, OR & Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002), 70, 113, 114, 130, 131, 136. 3   John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688–1783 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 56.



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which might ‘scandalize the English nation which it is so much in our interests not to offend, and cause our nation to be held in poor esteem by them, which could lessen their compassion towards our poor refugee brethren and stem the flow of their charity and alms’.4 The Huguenots were rigorous in their enforcement of church discipline and their scrutiny of those newcomers who asked for aid. The disrepute of one could bring disapprobation on them all. Other Englishmen had more optimistic views on the ability of ­strangers to integrate. Daniel Defoe’s work attempted to demonstrate that with proper education immigrants could develop the character needed to contribute to a rightly ordered society. ‘Bringing [the immigrants] into the privileges and immunities of Englishmen’ would in time make them so, he explained.5 Another polemicist argued that the refugees ‘have on all occasions, shewed their Loyalty, Zeal and Affection, to the Present Government by supporting very cheerfully the Charges and Taxes of the Land and wearing Arms for the Defence of it.’6 Even though he supported a general naturalization, Charles Davenant argued that first generation immigrants should not be able to vote, but that ‘from their Sons indeed there is less to fear, who by Birth and Nature may come to have the same Interest and Inclinations as the Natives.’7 But there was definite ambivalence in English attitudes towards things French. French tastes were still seen as the height of fashion and the Huguenots literally embodied this tension as they were valued for the French artistic styles that they brought to London—keeping the English up to date on the latest in cloth, glass, gardening and interior design.8 Four-fifths of the names in Huguenot church registers around the turn of the century were in the textile trade. They dominated the fashion designers from year to year, determining the patterns of the silk weavers—five of the seven top designers in the eighteenth

4   Cited in Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement, c. 1550–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 242; Maureen Waller, 1700: Scenes from London Life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000), 268–71. 5   Daniel Defoe, Some Seasonable Queries (London: 1697; Wing S4609A), 3; Alison Olson, ‘The English Reception of the Huguenots, Palatines, and Salzbuergers, 1680– 1734: A Comparative Analysis’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 487. 6   The Case of the French Protestants Refugees, settled in and about London, and in the English Plantations in America (London: 1696; Wing C1080A). 7  Davenant, An Essay, 27. 8  Waller, Scenes from London Life, 135, 136, 244, 372.

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century were French Protestants—and founded a completely new form of hat-making. It seems the Huguenot refugees were well able to bring trade secrets with them and so added to the British economy and society. People noticed that even poor immigrants ‘decorated their houses with a taste rarely displayed by their English counterparts.’ French gold and silver smiths and glass-makers also influenced fashion.9 And the Huguenot refugee Abel Boyer was a major cultural arbiter whose works became best sellers.10 In sum, the anti-French element of British identity seems to have been embodied in the notion that the British were first of all, not subject to the tyranny of kings like Louis XIV, nor did they subscribe to his persecuting policies.11 And second, the British were not superstitious papists. However, this identity was large enough to include the English Catholics, who were generally able to distance themselves from complete association with subservience and irrationality.12 That sort of Catholicism was connected with the French and so all sides of English society (including their Huguenot immigrants) tried to avoid any link with it.13 The complicated ways in which British citizens used Protestantism to articulate their identity can, in fact, be seen in how wide a definition of Protestantism they were willing to embrace. In general, it appears that the Whig sympathies for international Protestantism and allowance for British identity in the same were not shared by those who identified with the Tories or the high church clergy. The latter felt that Anglicanism was central to the British nation. Jonathan Swift was articulating the Tory concern when he argued that ‘all the acquisitions by this [Naturalization] act would increase the number of dissenters.’14 At the end of Anne’s reign, with tensions over the Pretender and the succession plaguing the nation, occasional conformity and religious separation in education were also made illegal. The nation needed a more tightly knit unity. Some felt that was in a stronger Anglicanism,

 9   Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (London: Routledge, 1985), 67–73. 10  See chapters 7 and 8, by David Onnekink and Andrew Thompson, below. 11  Matthew Tindale, An Essay Concerning the Power of Magistrates (London: 1697; Wing T1302), 164. 12  Defoe, The Englishman’s Choice (London: 1694), 12–17. 13  Stephen Baxter, William III and the Defense of European Liberty, 1650–1702 (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1966), 207–13. 14  Cottret, Huguenots in England, 220.



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others, like Daniel Defoe, that it was in a common sense of the defence of the ‘common liberties of Europe.15’ Bishop Compton is one example of the complicated sort of reaction devout members of the Church of England might have with respect to the Huguenots. He was a good friend to them, well-known for his advocacy on their behalf, even writing to his clergy, ‘for the poor French Protestants…[I] do entreat the contribution of your charitable care.’16 It appears that his primary concern was the spread of Roman Catholicism. He therefore saw the testimonies and commitments of the Huguenots as promoting opposition to Catholicism not only in England, but abroad. Ultimately, however, his final concern was always the Church of England and not simply some sort of general international Protestantism.17 Archbishop Thomas Secker also embodied this tension Anglicans felt regarding foreign Protestants—they wanted to identify with them and protect Protestantism abroad, but felt worried about heresy and lack of orthodoxy and competition when those same Protestants came to England. Nonconformity was fine when refugees were in the colonies or elsewhere outside England—in those cases, aid and advocacy were thickly lavished. It was when they were in England and might tempt English men and women from their Anglicanism that the threat resulted in discrimination. Clearly, for these bishops, support of Angli­ can institutions and theology was central and they pursued the support of foreign Protestants only when it did not threaten those ends.18 Secker, like other bishops before him, tried to convince the Hugue­ nots to adopt the Anglican liturgy in their own language, partly by tying financial aid to those churches that conformed, often to the chagrin of the refugees.19 The newly-arrived Jacques Fontaine gave the Church the ultimate insult when he argued that tying the charity to religious observance was the core of the problem: ‘It seemed to me a very Papistical proceeding, much like what I had seen in France,–“come 15  Defoe, The Review, vol. 6, no. 7, 19 Apr. 1709 in William Payne (ed.), The Best of Defoe’s Review (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), 156. 16   Compton to Strype, 1685, BL, Add MS 5853, f. 69; see also Sugiko Nishikawa, ‘Henry Compton, Bishop of London (1676–1713) and foreign Protestants’ in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 360–362. 17  Nishikawa, ‘Henry Compton, Bishop of London’, 361. 18   Robert Ingram, ‘Archbishop Thomas Secker (1693–1768), Anglican identity and relations with foreign Protestants in the mid-18th century’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 534, 535. 19  Ingram, ‘Archbishop Thomas Secker’, 528–32.

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to Mass and you shall be exempted from Dragoons’.’ ’20 Those Hugue­ not  congregations which did not were forced to rely on their own resources.21 Clearly, in spite of the manner in which a larger, international Protestant identity might be forming, for a certain segment of the English clergy (and possibly the larger population), loyal citizenship was deeply connected to a commitment to the Church of England. The Act of Toleration in 1689 exacerbated this problem. To what extent was toleration a good thing? Devout English writers as well as Huguenot leaders wrung their hands over the mixed blessing that was toleration. Clearly not persecuting was supposed to be an important value marker for Protestants. But it also seemed to many that with toleration, religion in England had lost its moorings. The sense that people would convert to anything and change their religion to suit their interest—specifically their economic interest–was the subject of David Abercromby’s 1690 tract A Moral Discourse on the Power of Interest. He specifically used the Huguenots in France as an example, arguing that there was no doubt some of them had converted to Catholicism to save their positions and property. The power of economic interest over religious conviction and the fundamental ‘Anti-Christian’ nature of forcing people to agree in religion were themes that his audience would have understood. Closer to home, Abercomby pointed out, courtiers under James II had converted to Catholicism in order to advance themselves politically.22 Even those who supported toleration were worried about the erroneous beliefs that could spread unchecked as a result of it. Huguenots experienced this as well as Anglicans and Dissenters. Starting in 1690, the Huguenots also became very concerned about the Socinian views they were seeing among their own people. The sense of belonging to an international Protestant, even Calvinist community was perhaps heightened by the anxiety about what John Marshall has called the rise of ‘an antitrinitarian international.’ Huguenot preachers petitioned William and Mary to combat the evils of toleration and Socinianism— arguing that to tolerate Socinianism was to partake of its evil.23 20   ‘James Fontaine’ [sic], A Tale of the Huguenots or Memoirs of a French Refugee Family (New York: John S. Taylor, 1838), 129. 21  Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 95–103. 22  David Abercromby, A Moral Discourse on the Power of Interest (London, by Thomas Hodgkin, 1690), 90, 91, 158, 159 (Wing A83). 23   John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: Religious Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and ‘Early Enlightenment’ Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 432.



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The influential, if not entirely popular, Huguenot theologian, Pierre Jurieu, was staunchly against tolerationist principles. In fact, it appears that John Locke had just finished reading Jurieu’s diatribe against heresy and toleration when he wrote his celebrated treatise. Although the Huguenot concern to investigate and establish the orthodoxy of the preachers in the British isles and Holland was counter to one strain of the prevailing current in the England of rationalists like Locke and Toland and Stillingfleet, all were in agreement about the dangers of the ‘superstition of popery.’24 Anti-Catholic language, then, could bond everyone—because now Catholicism was characterized as ‘superstition’ more than in the eschatological terms of ‘Anti-Christ.’ The devout wanted to position themselves so that their own beliefs and practices could not be associated with irrational papist dogma.25 But this unity represented by the ‘Protestant Interest throughout the whole world,’ as one sermon called it, was a reformation, a turning from sin and profanity. The results of popery were debauchery, therefore the best way to continue the Protestant interest, whether in the wars on the continent or at home, was by curbing sin and pride in one’s life.26 The Huguenot experience, and the attempts of English Protestants to make sense of it, reveals the ambiguity not only about what kind of Protestantism Britain should espouse, but also how wide its oftvaunted toleration should be. If British identity was forming in opposition to Catholic persecution, which identity was part and parcel of its welcome to the Huguenots, its commitment to toleration was being constantly put to the test. It was to encourage this identity as a tolerating society, that Daniel Defoe, after the passage of the 1709 Naturaliza­ tion Act, exhorted the English to set aside their well-known xenophobia and to take on the identity of those who were a safe harbour for the persecuted: Here’s an occasion to remove the scandal, to fill all Europe with a report of your generosity, and tell the world that the reproach Englishmen have so many ages laboured under has been a mere slander, or at least that the nation has reformed the vice, and contrary to the practice of their ancestors, are become the sanctuary and relief of the distressed foreigners….. [Then] you will retrieve that reputation that you lost when the Dutch that came hither to bring over your deliverer, and indeed your d ­ eliverance  Marshall, John Locke, 422, 427; Cottrett, Huguenots in England, 209, 210.  Cottret, Huguenots in England, 249. 26   Advice to English Protestants; being a Sermon Preached November the Fifth, 1689. (London: 1689; Wing A647), 3, 16, 17, 22. 24 25

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lisa clark diller ‘were paid, and cursed, and hurried home again’… Relieving these poor people, and opening your hands and hearts to them will stop the mouth of raillery and satire upon the nation….and be an eternal honor to the nation of Britain in the ages to come. The blessing of him that is ready to perish will come upon you.27

Liberty, then, was connected to bringing those who shared in the ideals of liberty and who were persecuted elsewhere. It was the right thing to do according to the basic claims of Christianity and for those who opposed tyranny. In spite of the consistent efforts to provide for a general Act of Naturalization that would cover all the French Protestant refugees, there were many Englishmen arguing against that blanket incorporation. It appears that the primary line of reasoning against their naturalization was based on their economic threat. In what may be the most famous speech against the Act, the Bristol M.P., Sir John Knight, railed against those who would ‘sacrifice our English Liberties to a number of Mercenary Foreigners’ and proposes that foreigners would always choose to send their profits back to the land of their origins.28 This concern with respect to the drain on the finances which immigrants would pose was clearly understood by the Huguenots. Perhaps because of their minority status and self-governing communities back in France, the Huguenots had a highly organized system  for caring for their own. They developed a thick network of charitable organizations that paralleled the English ones, and the latter  seem even to have modelled themselves on the former. William Maitland, for instance, lauded the French School as an example for other English charity schools in 1739.29 They started hospitals, found jobs for new arrivals and extended loans and financial support to get immigrants settled in London, smaller cities in the countryside, and Ireland.30 27  Defoe, The Review, vol. 6, no. 56, 11 Aug. 1709, in Payne, Best of Defoe’s Review, 147, 148. 28  Sir John Knight. The Following Speech being spoke off hand upon the debates in the House of Commons. (London: 1690; Wing K686), 3. 29   Eileen Barrett, ‘Huguenot Integration in late 17th- and 18th-century London: Insights from Records of the French Church and some Relief Agencies’ in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 377–381. 30  Martin Dinges, ‘Huguenot Poor Relief and Healthcare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ in Raymond Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World, 1559–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 167–174.



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Nancy Rothstein’s study of the Huguenot weavers in Canterbury and Spitalfields reveals the extent to which they also worked hard to ingratiate themselves into the local community, forming business partnerships with English men and women–even marrying them. When weavers who were excluded from the silk-weavers company in Spitalfields banded together to demand inclusion, it was both French and English petitioners who pleaded their case.31 The wealthiest Huguenot weavers did not merely sink their capital back into their businesses, but invested their money in the Bank of England and the East India Company, like other wealthy Englishmen.32 The economic splits within the community can be seen as reflected in the way in which the wealthy were able to have individual acts of naturalization passed and to invest in the Bank.33 Indeed, Huguenots seem to have consistently acted within their economic class, rather than simply as a faith community and this appears to have aided in their integration, making them seem less of a threat.34 Clearly, however, there were ambiguities in the process of ‘assimilation.’ Often it appears, as in the memoirs written by Isaac Dumond de Bostaquet, that the Huguenots attempted to build on the shared history of persecution and Protestantism rather than on changing to become English. The Huguenots didn’t want to lose their identity— they were, in this sense, a ‘conservative’ immigrant group and tried to pass on their religious and cultural, and even political, identity to the next generation, while at the same time making themselves as minimally obnoxious as possible to the host culture. Shared Protestantism and the story telling of their persecution and forced migration helped to do this. They defined ‘Englishness’ as Protestant culture rather than in some other ethnic characteristic.35 While historians such as Tony Claydon and Steven Pincus disagree regarding whether or not Protestant identity was paramount in the wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century (and ­certainly 31   The Case of a Great Number of Silk-weavers, as well French Protestants as English…. (London: 1695; C916). 32  Nishikawa, ‘Henry Compton, Bishop of London’, 359, 360. 33  Hillel Schwartz, The French Prophets: The Study of a Millenarian Group in Eighteenth Century England (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 57. 34  Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 24. 35   Ruth Whelan, ‘Writing the Self: Huguenot Autobiography and the process of assimilation’ in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers 470–472; Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 48; Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500– 1700. (New York: Manchester University Press, 2006), 312.

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supporters of William’s war in Britain seemed as likely to use the language of opposition to universal monarchy and economic interest as that of opposition to ‘popery’), the Huguenots definitely pitched themselves to the heads of European states as people who would help in forwarding the Protestant side of that conflict.36 As part of the larger international Calvinist community, their long history of emigrating to Protestant states for refuge from persecution and maintaining ties between those immigrant communities gave them a strong sense of a Protestant network between states.37 Those who emigrated may have been more militantly committed to that Protestant identity and in many of their host countries they worked (sometimes with success) to promote a Protestant foreign policy, specifically targeted at Louis XIV.38 Certainly their status as victims of persecution allowed observers like Gilbert Burnet to self-righteously declare that even Roman Catholics in England did not think their situation was as bad as the Protestants in France.39 Ultimately, then, the Huguenots and their supporters were very skilful in continuing the high levels of emotional support for these victims by continuously releasing stories and memoirs of their persecution.40 At the same time, the English state often cared more about how these refugees blended into the foreign policy of the state itself (i.e., war with France) and less about their religious affiliation.41 William had Catholic Hapsburg allies, after all. In the fight against Louis XIV, there were reasons for people of all faiths to join together—Louis himself and his foreign and domestic policies provided that. In a typically strongly-worded diatribe Daniel Defoe claimed that the French desire to exterminate the English was so strong that ‘English papists should find little better quarter than others.’42 The war was against Louis   Abercromby, 140.  Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 38–41. This network was as much economic as it was military and religious. 38  Both Catholics and Protestants found Louis XIV a villain, and the Catholic Hapsburg allies of William kept this war from being associated only with religious elements. Craig Rose, England in the 1690s. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 117; Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 27–28. 39  Gilbert Burnet, Ecclesiastical Princes (London, 1682), 97. 40   Popish Treachery; or a Short and New Account of the Horrid Cruelties Exercised on the Protestants in France. (London: 1689; Wing P2958); An Account of the Sufferings and Dying Words of Several French Protestants under this present Persecution. (London, 1699; Wing A396). 41  Ingram, ‘Archbishop Thomas Secker’, 528. 42  Defoe, The Englishman’s Choice, 12. 36 37



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and his claims of universal monarchy, not against Catholicism or the papacy. And it was a concern about that kind of ‘papist’ invasion of their nation, and its equation with things French that caused concern among some of the English that the Huguenots were pseudo-Catholics. In 1692, one conspiracy theory involved the supposed Huguenot refugees rising for King James, declaring that ‘there were several thousands of the French who passed here for Protestants and go duly to the French Protestant churches, who are indeed good Catholics and would show themselves to be so upon King James’s landing.’ In fact, the Huguenots sometimes suspected that French Catholics stirred up trouble among the immigrants just to bring disrepute on them, knowing the English propensity to believe the worst.43 The Fontaine family dealt with constant accusations that they were secret Catholics. Jacques Fontaine reported that in Taunton he was called ‘a Jesuit in disguise, who said mass in his own house every Sunday; as well in one word, as a thousand, he is a French dog who takes the bread out of the mouths of the English.’44 This is why the Huguenots made constant attempts to remind their hosts of their status as victims in this conflict with Louis XIV. The consistent insistence within the French churches that their members reiterate their persecution stories, recant their Catholic conversions where necessary and articulate their commitment to the true faith was reinforced by their unwillingness to sponsor any of the French poor who were less than orthodox in their Calvinism.45 The Bishop of Worcester advised his clergy to promote the benefit of the French Protestants in England, spending money on the refugees instead of themselves and leading the laity by example in giving.46 And John Evelyn commended the Bishop of Bath and Wells for his sermon condemning French persecution especially because the Bishop had been accused of leaning towards Catholicism. Advocacy on behalf of the Huguenots could sometimes secure one’s reputation for being sufficiently Protestant.47

  As cited in Cottret, Huguenots in England, 193, 265.  Fontaine, A Tale of the Huguenots. 45  Cottret, Huguenots in England, 200, 201. 46   Bishop of Worcester to his clergy, Mar. 1688. BL Add 27.448, ff. 340, 341. 47   John Evelyn, Diary, vol. II, ed. E.S. de Beer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 261. 43 44

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Huguenots, then, while fighting alongside their British comrades in the war against Louis and his allies, were able to access more complex elements of solidarity than simply Protestantism. There were times when national identity and security were not made clear or established by Protestantism alone. The economist Charles Davenant, even as he argued for a greater political inclusion of the Huguenot immigrants, reminded his readers that ‘all things were not secure, because Religion was out of danger.’48 The Huguenot presence helped the English articulate that it was more than just Protestantism that they needed to be concerned about—there was the despotism of universal monarchy. However, the immigrants also understood that the opposition to the French monarch was made more emotional and strident when British citizens were reminded of his persecutory ways. French Catholic despotism that persecuted—that was the kind of ‘popery’ that they emphasized. Because of their history of owing their liberties to protection by the French monarch, Huguenots had often emphasized their commitment to royal power. The monarchs of England, too, were extremely supportive of the ‘protestant strangers.’ The support was not only political, but economic. The royal invitation from William and Mary made specific reference to English commitments to ‘support, aid, and Assist them in their several and respective Trades and ways of Livelihood.’49 And the committee established to disburse the charitable funds was almost giddy in its reporting of the numbers of churches built, refugees assisted in starting business, and migrants sent off to the colonies.50 However, this consistent statement of loyalty to monarchs went along with a fairly republican form of government within the churches themselves and a sense among observers that their social organization was almost democratic. Historian Bernard Cottret points out that these stranger churches were often the most clear about the ways in which civil and religious authority were not the same.51 In the development of British liberalism, with its established church and Act of Toleration, Huguenot tensions regarding orthodoxy and toleration,  Davenant, An Essay, 224.   By the King and Queen a Declaration for the encouraging of French Protestants to transport themselves into this kingdom (London: 1689; Wing 2505). 50   Declaration of Royal Grace and Bounty (London: 1695; Wing H2087). 51  Marshall, John Locke, 245–47; Cottret, Huguenots in England, 234–38. 48 49



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the power of the clergy and loyalty to the state, both mirrored and contributed to the national discussion regarding these issues. The influential conformist Huguenot minister, Pierre Allix, attempted to articulate this idea in his 1693 A Letter to a Friend. He argued that Christians should not spend a great deal of time worrying about whether it is lawful for them to pray for their governors who may be accused of usurpation. ‘Christians … have nothing to do with the Affairs of State, tho they may take cognizance of them as they are citizens … A stranger who is bound by his oath to his own Prince, can possess nothing in a foreign State, he hath no leave to trade in a strange country any further than he submits himself to the laws of the Society.’52 The latter sentence seems clearly targeted at assuring the English community of Huguenot loyalty. Political loyalty should be unconnected to spiritual loyalty. In the Threadneedle Street church, for instance, wealthy entrepreneurs such as Thomas Papillon set the tone for fundamental support of the English crown over and against Louis XIV. Robin Gwynn’s study of this church reveals that it seems impossible to differentiate between its members’ religious identification as persecuted Protestants and their economic commitments and loyalty to the English crown.53 And yet, many Huguenots also found that they were able to maintain what seemed often to be Whig sensibilities with loyalty to Tory governments, when necessary. Active in coffee houses and attempting to understand the party system, some Whig writers, such as Rapin Thoyras and Emmanuel de Cize, laid out the ideologies in a manner that associated Tories with the absolutism of Louis XIV.54 One of the most prolific of Huguenot political writers, Abel Boyer’s political economic publications placed him firmly in the camp of supporting the Whig party, the Bank of England, an expansive British identity and wars to promote international trade.55 And so the Huguenots consistently positioned themselves as loyal to the English state and helpful in expanding her wealth and trading relationships.   Pierre Allix. A Letter to a Friend (London: 1693; Wing A1225), 7, 12, 13.   Robyn Gwynn, ‘The Huguenots in Britain, the ‘Protestant International’ and the Defeat of Louis XIV’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 416–421. 54  Myriam Yardeni, ‘The Birth of Political Consciousness among the Huguenot Refugees and their Descendants in England (c.1685–1750)’ in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 405–6. 55   Abel Boyer, An Address to the Nobility, Gentry, Merchants and Proprietors of the National Funds (London, 1711), 3–4. 52 53

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It is at this point that the Huguenots made themselves so valuable with respect to the extension of the nascent British empire which William was developing. The connection between economic growth and population growth was increasingly popular and economists of varying stripes from Josiah Child to Charles Davenant advocated the benefits of great population growth for commercial dominance. For this reason, they urged that the French Protestants, among others, become naturalized citizens. Daniel Defoe contended, ‘have we any grievance in our trade at home but what increase of people would redress it? Is your produce of corn or cattle too great–though that be an absurd notion in the main–but is not remedied by the increase of people to consume it?’56 The Whigs were also in favour of inviting the Protestants of Europe to come enrich England, and of course, Defoe features largely in these arguments (he thought a ‘mixed’ population was best for a nation).57 This appears to have been fairly unproblematic with respect to the Huguenots, but the Palatinate refugees were discovered to include large numbers of Catholics, and thousands of them had to be sent back as unsuitable as potential English citizens.58 In fact, the arrival of the Palatines seems to have largely provoked the repeal of the Naturalization Act in 1711.59 It seems that at least one factor in the disparity in the treatment of these two groups was the ability of the Huguenots both to provide for themselves and to invest sufficiently in the burgeoning market capitalism of Great Britain. Certainly the financial revolution owed a substantial amount to the liquid capital provided by leading Huguenot merchants. John Castaing, a Huguenot, was responsible for the early list of market prices in Government loans, ‘The Course of the Exchange’, from which evolved the Stock Exchange Official List, and the French church invested its own money in the Bank of England, starting in 1695. ‘Of the £1,200,000 subscribed to the Bank of England in 1695, 123 newly arrived Huguenots provided £104,000’ and a full 10 per cent

56   Daniel Defoe ‘Refugees England’s good fortune’, The Review, vol. 6, no. 35, in Payne, The Best of Defoe’s Review, 136. 57  William O’Reilly, ‘The Naturalization Act of 1709 and the Settlement of Germans in Britain, Ireland and the Colonies’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 494, 495; Oxford DNB, s.v. ‘Josiah Child’, ‘Carew Reynell’, ‘Charles Davenant’; Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 59. 58   O’Reilly, ‘Naturalization Act of 1709’, 496. 59  Olson, ‘English reception’, 481; Michael Duffy, Englishman and Foreigner (Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healy, 1986), 16.



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of the investors in the Bank were Huguenot immigrants or their children.60 Defoe, who was a great defender of the Huguenots, also articulated the idea that the primary goal of the state should be the increase of wealth, for which people were needed, and that a larger British identity was crucial for that.61 And further, he contended that Ireland could be made profitable if there would be ‘a great inducement to foreigners to go and fill that country who would in time by marrying into English and Scotch families become British.’62 He was not alone. William Petty seems to have been especially thinking of the Huguenots when he argued in a tract published in 1690 that to ‘sell land to foreigners, increaseth both money and people, and consequently trade. Wherefore it is to be thought that when the laws denying strangers to purchase, and not permitting them to trade without paying extraordinary duties, were made; that then the public state of things and Interest of the nation were far different from what they are now.’63 At this point, the connection came to be overtly made between the challenge of the Huguenot integration and the need to govern and cultivate the expanding colonial territories. The French Protestant Durand Dauphiné’s memoirs were written explicitly to encourage settlement in the colonies (although he preferred Virginia to Carolina, much to the chagrin of his sponsors). While he was traveling, he was deeply impressed by the Frenchman who accompanied the ship to the Amer­ icas as a ‘factor of rich London Merchants who were sending him over with merchandise in order to try to establish trade with that country.’64 In general, Dauphiné’s gushing over the wealth and richness of Virginia led him to advocate that it was wide open for the refugees to cultivate and would replace their lost countryside quite effectively. This promotion of the sort of empire and extension of English commerce was exactly what the English were happiest about with regards to the Huguenot immigrants.  Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 155, 156; Schwartz, The French Prophets, 60.  Defoe, The Review, vol. 6, no. 41, 7 July 1709, in Payne, The Best of Defoe’s Review, 141, 142. 62  Defoe, Some Seasonable Queries (London: 1697; Wing S4609A), 4. This is echoed by the Irish Protestant Richard Cox in Some thoughts on the bill depending before the right honourable the House of Lords… (Dublin: 1698; Wing C6725), 12. 63  William Petty, Political Arithmetic (London: 1690) in George Aitken (ed.), Later Stuart Tracts (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903), 66. 64   Durand Dauphiné. A Huguenot Exile in Virginia (New York: Pioneer Press, 1934), 176, 177. 60 61

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John Locke and other Whig proprietors of the Carolina colonies intentionally recruited Huguenots as a way of fulfilling the dual needs of international Protestantism and the mercantile interests of Britain. Locke, according to historian Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, very consciously formulated a naturalization policy that was more contractual and voluntary than had been the case in England during the earlier part of the seventeenth century. Locke believed that these naturalized citizens would be ‘perfect Englishmen as those that have been here since William the Conquerers days & came over with him.’ Then, sounding a bit like Defoe, he added ‘for tis hardly to be doubted but that most of even our Ancestors were Forainers.’65 The liberal Whigs, then, looked to the Huguenots as secure partners in furthering their imperialist and mercantilist ideals. The use of Huguenots to settle the colonies reveals a great deal about what kind of polity England desired to become and to rule. As part of her economic expansion, and as committed Protestants, the Huguenots were crucial. But they were also not-quite English, and it was safer for the liberal state to use them in growing their empire rather than try to assimilate them during a time when the economy might not be able to handle them.66 Their strong military contribution to the Williamite settlement, first in battle and then especially as settlers in Ireland, made it possible for their later participation in banking and manufacturing and trade to bear fruit.67 Certainly, in their military service and subsequent integration into the empire, Huguenots appear to have started a long tradition whereby immigrants have demonstrated their commitments and worthiness of citizenship by fighting for their host government. In fact, it has been argued that the years of relative ethnic peace within the British leading up to the American Revolution were at least partly made possible because the English could export their ethnically problematic immigrants. Thus, they essentially passed on the problem of ‘what it meant to be English’ to the American colonies.68 Huguenot attempts to integrate into the English political economy demonstrate the ways British citizenship was being defined in the late

65   Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, From New Babylon to Eden: The Huguenots and Their Migration to Colonial South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006), 167. 66   O’Reilly, ‘Naturalization Act of 1709’, 496, 498. 67  Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 5. 68   Olson, ‘English Reception’, 488.



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seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Linda Colley has argued for a ‘nationhood’ that was Protestant, not-Continental and not-­ colonial. The Huguenot experience demonstrates that even continental influences would be welcomed with the right packaging. Expressing and enacting their commitment to the same causes as the English elites allowed Huguenots to prove their worth. They invested heavily in the Bank of England, played significant roles in the armed forces, and joined Anglicans and Dissenters in the Reformation of Manners movement. They were also intentional about articulating their status as a beleaguered religious group, who had suffered righteously under Cath­ olic tyranny. In fact, they published and popularized the ­narratives of their persecution, knowing just how important such stories were for their English hosts and helpers. Clearly, their Protestant credentials eased the concern British men and women often had for outsiders. Welcoming those who share the identity and values of the host country and who can add to its economic power seems obvious. Liberalism remains committed to seeing to the economic well-being of its citizens. Early in the formation of liberalism within England, however, tension arose between those who saw their essential quality as that of Protestantism clashed with those who saw the attribute that set England apart from others as its humaneness.69 Both myths would eventually contribute in fundamental ways to the myth of liberalism, progress and Anglo-American exceptionalism. In spite of all this, however, it wasn’t a simple case of English Protestants recognizing their benighted brethren and welcoming them with open arms. The debates over their proposed naturalization expose the fluid and sometimes-conflicting boundaries regarding who should be part of the British political community. William and Mary offered the legal rights of voting and office-holding to individual Huguenots, but during this period Parliament never passed a lasting general naturalization act giving all Huguenots these privileges. Many churches and charities worked with and helped financially support the newcomers. On the other hand, mobs (most of them English artisans who would have seen their strong influence in the cloth trade as an economic threat) demanded they be deported. In fact, there were constant complaints about Huguenot immigrant competition with English craft workers. Their own attempts to maintain their identity, their different   Olson, ‘English Reception’, 484, 485.

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patterns of eating and dressing, not to mention their bilingualism, contributed to the tensions. It was sometimes even rumoured that they were secretly Catholics. The debate was not solved, and during times when wars were going badly, the succession seemed unsure, or the economy was failing, the more narrow definition, the fear-filled position, could dominate. But as this debate over the Huguenot experience shows, even in the earliest days of liberalism, there were those arguing for a wider identity, for a Protestant unity that could transcend ethnicity, for a commitment to a liberty that encompassed Europe as well as England. I argue that the Huguenots provide us with first modern case of the debate about immigration and national identity—just at the time when citizenship and the nation-state were being formulated. They functioned in the same way that immigrants often have for liberal democracies. They were important to fulfilling English ideals of themselves as the freedom-loving Protestants fighting against international Catholic tyranny and they provided useful economic skills. They worked hard to demonstrate their commitment to English political and economic institutions, developing a rhetoric that emphasized their common concerns. But they also created structures that reinforced their own identities and supported their sense of community, which provoked questions about their fitness for naturalization. They thus provided a flash point for English anxieties. In the Huguenot experience between the Glorious Revolution and 1715, we find many of the early patterns for liberalism’s response to the economic and political complexities of immigration and citizenship in the national community.

CHAPTER FIVE

Strains of worship: the Huguenots and NON-CONFORMITY Robin Gwynn The Huguenots who came to Britain in the 1680s and 1690s were religious refugees. To remain undisturbed in their homeland, they had simply to sign a statement abjuring the errors of John Calvin. Many refused to do so, or felt so guilty at what they had done that they chose to run the loss and dangers inherent in illegal flight in order to renounce abjurations they had signed under duress. Their actions speak eloquently of their religious determination, yet some who found themselves stranded across the Channel on British shores found they were expected to conform to an unfamiliar kind of Protestant worship based on more Anglican ways than was their custom. This paper opens by analysing three early cases where conforming congregations ran into difficulties. It goes on to show that while there were many practical advantages for the refugees in conforming, their memory of their French roots was often too vivid to allow it, so that there is an unmistakable movement back towards non-conformity when opportunity permitted. The essay then examines the variety of opinion and practice cloaked by the word ‘conformity’, noting how the problematic relationship of conformity and non-conformity was not confined to England and extended well into the eighteenth century. *** As they fled, the refugees needed to decide where to make their new home. Britain looked promising. Potentially, England was the most powerful Protestant country. London was the largest Protestant city in Europe, offering excellent employment opportunities. French Protestant churches were already based in the city and in Westminster. Other French-speaking churches around the country, at Canterbury and Norwich and Southampton, shared with the Threadneedle Street church in London an existence and a Calvinist type of church discipline and organization that dated back to the sixteenth century. Following the onset of the dragonnades in 1681, Charles II was

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r­ emarkably prompt and generous in the invitations he issued and the concessions he offered. Many of the refugees of 1681 therefore headed across the Channel. Once in England, however, they came to understand unsettling currents in their new homeland which they had not appreciated before their arrival. Potential causes for alarm included the persecution of English Nonconformists, political uncertainty in the aftermath of the Exclusion crisis, an avowedly Roman Catholic heir to the throne, and Crown financial dependence on subsidies from Louis XIV. Among royal policies which refugees could not have anticipated while in France was Charles II’s determination that any new French congregations in England should conform to the Anglican liturgy translated into French. Charles’s decision had a long historical background. Archbishop Laud had been a bitter enemy of the French congregations in the country in the 1630s, and in the Civil War they were mostly Parliamentarian – sometimes outspokenly so. Moreover there  was obvious discordance between the persecution of English Nonconformists after the Restoration and the welcome offered to French refugees who shared very similar beliefs. If the new refugees would conform, that dilemma would be resolved. The gentry and clerical leaders of the refugees, and those managing existing French congregations in England, appreciated the need not to antagonize the Court at a time when Huguenots were under such threat in their homeland. Many refugee clergy could see personal advantages, greater opportunities and a strengthened social position, if they conformed. In any event, the prime need in the immediate aftermath of the dragonnades was urgent action to relieve need and settle the refugees. So the issue of conformity was not confronted head on. Instead, the situation took months to clarify. What exactly did ‘conformity’ mean? How were terms like ‘Consistoire’ and ‘Ancien’ to be interpreted when translated into English as ‘Vestry’ and ‘Churchwarden’? How strictly was conformity to Anglican ways to be enforced? Just how attached were the Huguenots to their structures and their memory of how they had worshipped in France? These questions surfaced and evoked debate and stress in the refugee community in the years after 1681. *** Between 1681 and 1687, numerous new conformist congregations were successfully established in England outside the London/ Westminster conurbation. Earliest were those at Ipswich (Suffolk) and

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity123 Rye (Sussex), founded in the immediate aftermath of the dragonnades. They were followed by others: at Plymouth, Stonehouse, Barnstaple, Bideford, Exeter and Dartmouth in Devon; at Thorpe-le-Soken and Colchester in Essex; at Faversham and Preston, and Dover, in Kent; at Wandsworth and Greenwich, now in Greater London; and at Bristol. All of these survived into the eighteenth century.1 There were also a handful of other foundations which failed to take root. Their ephemeral nature means that little is known of most of these, but there is one exception for which we have enough evidence to analyse the reasons for its failure. This was an attempted Huguenot colony at Bocton Malherbe (now Boughton) and subsequently Hollingbourne, near Maidstone. The community’s failure has been little studied, and an earlier historian working through Archbishop William Sancroft’s papers in the Bodleian Library dismissed its internal bickerings as no more than a ‘storm in a Kentish teacup’.2 However the colony is of real interest because its beginnings seemed unusually auspicious, so it is worth reading the tea-leaves to see if they have more to tell us. The original settlement was the third major effort to settle new refugees away from London. The two previous attempts, organized from the non-conforming Consistory of Threadneedle Street although the resultant congregations were conformist, seemed to be working: one at Rye, for fishermen, and the other at Ipswich, for linen weavers.3 Now a colony of a hundred persons was deliberately planted by the Marquis de Venours at Boughton, on land he had purchased from the Earl of Chesterfield.4 As with the community at Thorpe-le-Soken in Essex, which was developing at around the same time, the intention was probably to cater for refugee agricultural workers. The Marquis provided not only land, but an element of social leadership the other settlements could not match. Charles Gourjault, Marquis de Venours, was a leading Huguenot nobleman with estates in Poitou which were forfeited and given to a son who stayed in France and became Roman Catholic. He was one of the handful of leaders who consciously sought to give international direction to the Huguenot diaspora, becoming involved in negotiations for settling and s­ upporting 1  Gwynn, ‘Conformity’, 29–30; Robin D. Gwynn, ‘The Distribution of Huguenot Refugees in England’, HSP 21 (1965–70), 404–36. 2   C.R.L. Fletcher, ‘Some Troubles of Archbishop Sancroft’, HSP 13 (1923–29), 240. 3  Gwynn, ‘Distribution’, 417–8, 424. 4   Bodl., Tanner MS cxxiv, f. 225.

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the refugees not only in England but in the Netherlands, where he assisted with the foundation of sanctuaries for Huguenot gentlewomen at Haarlem and Amsterdam, and in Germany, where the church at Berlin charged him to visit Hamburg and Denmark. He died in Berlin in 1692.5 There was other significant backing for the Bocton venture. The conformist Savoy church supported it. Charitable funds collected nationally for the Huguenots provided some financial input, and in February-March 1682 De Venours, Moses Charas and Daniel Poulveret or Poulverel were paid £32 to discharge the charity for 43 French Protestants sent there. The Archbishop of Canterbury was also involved and supportive, appointing Jacques Rondeau as the minister for the colony and requiring the local rector to allow the Huguenots the use of his church.6 However the Boughton settlement proved too remote, and there was no suitable market.7 Moreover there were divisions between the colony’s founders, with trouble erupting between De Venours, Charas and Poulveret. Rondeau reported to Sancroft that he had nothing to do with these divisions but tried to keep the peace, and on one occasion prevented the Marquis and Poulveret from fighting and perhaps killing one another ‘dans une des galleries de Bocton’.8 When the settlement failed, Rondeau encouraged its removal to Hollingbourne, which although nearby was significantly nearer to Maidstone and to the River Medway. According to the minister some thirty communicants, mostly from Picardy, went to Hollingbourne, where they formed a properly constituted church with elected elders.9 Although the number was small, the congregation should have been 5   HSP 7 (1901–04), 145; Eugène et Émile Haag, La France Protestante (ou Vies des Protestants Français…), 10 vols. (Paris: E. Thunot, 1846–59), s.n. ‘Gourjault’; Mme Alexandre de Chambrier, Henri de Mirmand et les Réfugiés de la Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes, 1650–1721 (Neuchâtel: Attinger Frères, 1910), 108, 115–8, and appendix p. 46; H. D. Guyot, Le Marquis de Venours (Groningen: n.p., 1906); HSQS, LVIII (1994), 75. 6   HSQS, XLIX (1971), 16; HSP 7 (1901–04), 143–4; Corporation of London Record Office [hereafter CLRO], ex-Guildhall MS 346, no. 260. Moise Charas, apothecary to Charles II, was a former Paris physician, endenized in 1682: see Baron F. de Schickler, Les Églises du Refuge en Angleterre (3 vols., Paris: Fischbacher, 1892), II, 313; HSQS, XVIII (1911), 130–1. Daniel (de) Poulveret or Poulverel or Pulveret came from Marennes, where he had been a naval officer in a French man of war (HSQS, XLIX (1971), 161); he too was endenized in 1682 (HSQS, XVIII (1911), 151, 159). 7   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 143r. 8   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 137r. 9   Bodl., Tanner MSS xcii, ff. 137–8, and cxxiv, f. 225.

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity125 viable. The minister’s stipend of twelve shillings a week in what he called ‘a very deare countrey’ was not large, but Rondeau would have had few other openings and was fortunate in that he had left France comparatively early and so had been able to take resources with him when he went. Poulveret complained that Rondeau received assistance when he was richer than any other refugee minister. That may have been exaggeration, but it also contained at least a grain of truth, since Rondeau acknowledged he was not destitute and he apparently held bank stock in the 1690s.10 Rondeau was a cultivated man, fluent in Latin as well as French, and he also had the support of English parishioners. Sir Thomas Culpeper (1626–97), who owned the nearby manor of Greenway Court and was a writer on various subjects, most notably against usury, wanted Rondeau to be able to preach at Hollingbourne. His and other English families (Meredith, Cage, Herlackinden) were willing to contribute ‘our best endeavours towards his encouragement’,11 while Sir Thomas wrote strongly on his behalf to Archbishop Sancroft on 12 December 1684 that though [Rondeau] cannot sue you, yet on his behalfe I shall alwayes sue your Grace, as in a Petition of Right wee do to our gracious Soveraigne, till you have purchased even your quiet by granting my humble and just sute for him, the summe whereof is no more then this, that hee bee not sleighted for his frank conformity, nor starved for his too much modesty.

Another letter, presumably later but undated, continued to upbraid Sancroft for ‘your coldnesse to poore Monsieur Rondeau’.12 Unfortunately the good will of the English did not extend to the local Anglican vicar, Mr Thomas. He felt very strongly that those taking services should wear the correct garb in church: so strongly, indeed, that he was willing to risk the wrath of the local rural dean and the Archbishop of Canterbury himself to ensure he had his way. And for their part, the members of Rondeau’s French congregation felt equally strongly on the same matter, although they had a diametrically opposed 10   Bodl., Tanner MSS xcii, ff. 145, 137, and cxxiv, f. 225; HSP 19 (1952–58), third pagination, 36, 39. 11   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 143r; for Culpeper, see Anita McConnell, ‘Culpeper, Sir Thomas (1625/6–1697?)’, Oxford DNB, online edn [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/ article/6884, accessed 5 Oct. 2009]. 12   Bodl., Tanner MS cxxiv, ff. 227–8.

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idea of what the correct garb should be. This was the issue that broke the Hollingbourne settlement. The first shots in this ecclesiastical skirmish were fired when the congregation’s reader, a Monsieur de la Contie, was shut out of the church. James Wilson, the local rural dean, investigated and reported back to Sancroft on 10 May 1683 that it was not Rondeau who had excluded him, but Thomas, who objected to the fact that here was a layman officiating in his church wearing a cravat and grey coat. (It was also alleged that De la Contie had behaved badly at Boughton, but it was his dress that was at the heart of the matter.) Rondeau was now acting as reader in addition to his other duties which, Wilson noted, he performed ‘decently and reverently, with allowance onely for that which is naturall to all French men, who seem to doe all things in hast’.13 Rondeau may not have been too unhappy with de la Contie’s exclusion, since he had little positive to say on his behalf.14 However Thomas was still not satisfied, and early the following month Wilson was again writing to Sancroft, this time to warn the Archbishop that Thomas designed to shut the church doors against Rondeau unless he wore a surplice. Wilson added that he had advised no action should be taken without Sancroft’s prior permission, since it was the Archbishop who had authorized the congregation. However this warning came a little late, for Thomas had already acted. By the vicar’s account, Rondeau refused to wear a surplice, and he therefore gave order that Rondeau was not to be admitted to the church without it. ‘I conceive that he is bound to doe it as a priest episcopally ordained’, according to the laws of the Church of England, Thomas informed Sancroft. ‘It gives great offence to severall of my parish who complained to me.’ Thomas argued that it might cause public disturbance and undermine loyalty and obedience if Rondeau was allowed to continue in his practice.15 Rondeau’s own account, in Latin, is slightly different. He told Sancroft that he conformed exactly as did the ministers of the Savoy church in Westminster. They used only a black gown (toga pullata), with no surplice (superpelliceo). So did he. He had told Thomas that if Sancroft positively ordered him to wear a surplice, he would do so. But Thomas had shut the doors against him anyway.16   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 144.   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, ff. 147–8. 15   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, ff. 134, 136. 16   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 136r. 13 14

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity127 It is unlikely that the surplice issue meant too much to Rondeau personally. He was not the stuff of which martyrs are made, and he probably viewed the matter as a thing indifferent. On this occasion he accepted the requirement to wear the surplice; on another, he explained he was open to making the sign of the cross in baptism.17 As he told the Archbishop, he accepted the right of individuals to hold personal opinions on points of religion, whether concerning matters of faith or of practice, a position confirmed by his actions in the 1690s when he was first a covert, finally (after a letter exposing his position was intercepted) an open Socinian leader.18 In any event, whatever the depth of his personal views, Rondeau showed himself a good judge of how his congregation was likely to react when he resisted the wearing of a surplice for as long as he could. He knew his people well. He had been minister of du Plessis-Marly 1679–82, and was allowed to leave his church by the Synod of the Ile de France held at Lisy, Picardy, on 20 February 1682.19 Since most of the Hollingbourne congregation came from Picardy, it is likely that it included Huguenots who had known him in France and re-grouped around their minister in England, a common phenomenon of the Huguenot refuge. But however well they knew Rondeau, their memory of services in their French homeland told them that wearing a surplice could not be right, and some were as obstinate in their views as Mr Thomas was in his. Rather than hear Rondeau in such a garment, they were prepared to travel twenty miles to Canterbury, and twenty miles back, presumably on foot or by cart on bumpy roads, to join in worship at the French church there. It was inconvenient, tiresome and doubtless expensive for them. It meant they had to leave Hollingbourne on Saturday, and return on Monday. But they voted with their feet to express their determination that services, even if they were in the words of the Anglican book of common prayer translated into French, should as far as possible be taken as they had been in France.20 The congregation languished, and while Rondeau hung on for a few years with the aid of financial assistance from public collections and

  Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 137.   LPL, MS 1029, no. 65. The minutes of the Consistory of the French Church of Canterbury (Canterbury Cathedral Library, U47-A-7 sub 23 Feb. 1699) describe Jacques as ‘ministre hetérodoxe’ and leader of the schismatic Socinian group set up in Canterbury by his brother, the silk merchant Claude Rondeau. 19   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 76r; Schickler, Les Églises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, 331. 20   Bodl., Tanner MS cxxiv, f. 225r. 17 18

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doubtless from his English friends in the locality, he had retired to London before the end of 1689.21 *** Around the same time as Rondeau was being deserted by part of his congregation, another refugee minister was clashing with his flock some twenty miles to the south, at Rye in Sussex. However, their situations were not the same. Rondeau allowed for different thinking and sought a middle way, but had been undone by orders from the local Church of England vicar. In contrast his colleague at Rye, Paul Bertrand junior, showed the zeal of a new convert in enforcing Anglican ways in his church and in consequence created division with no external assistance. Bertrand came from a family background of Protestant ministry, his father having been pastor of Cozes. He was well educated, holding a master’s degree from the Academy of Saumur, and articulate. He threw himself heart and soul into the Anglican Church, and was appointed to Rye immediately after being ordained by Bishop Compton of London in December 1681-January 1682.22 When he appointed Bertrand, Compton knew him to be ‘an honest man and firme to the Governement’. He assured Secretary of State Sir Leoline Jenkins – quite rightly, as events were to prove – that Bertrand would not ‘go a hairs breath less than the Service of the Church of England in the Liturgy etc’.23 Rye, in close proximity to the south coast near the narrowest part of the Channel, was a town of heightened security requirements; Compton probably believed he had found the ideal man for the job, someone on whom the local state and Anglican authorities could rely. Unfortunately, Bertrand had ideas not at all in keeping with those of either the Consistory of the Threadneedle Street church, which had organized the new settlement and maintained contact with it, or the poor fishermen of whom it was primarily composed. Indeed by any standard, his thinking seems extraordinary. A French Catholic bishop supporting the actions that would lead to the Revocation of the Edict 21   CLRO, ex-Guildhall MS 346, no.68, and ex-Guildhall MS 279 sub 3 Oct. 1683 and 27 Sept. 1684; The Huguenot Library, University College, London [hereafter HL/ UCL], Bounty MS 2, pt. 5, account no. 12, and Bounty MS 6, 4 Dec. 1689. He returned to the Hollingbourne area to serve the chapel of Huckinge 1690–97 as curate to the Vicar, before moving to Canterbury: HSP 7 (1901–04), 145. 22  Schickler, Les Églises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, 331. 23   PRO, SP 29/417, no. 275.

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity129 of Nantes in France the following year might perhaps be expected to write in 1684 that he was confirmed ‘in the widely held belief that a Calvinist is one of the most dangerous subjects a monarchy can have’, but it is a shock to see such a sentiment penned by a minister to a Huguenot refugee congregation.24 As Bernard Cottret has suggested, it makes one wonder whether a crisis existed in French Calvinist society even before the Revocation: ‘there had been growing tensions between the Christian flock and their betters whom they suspected of lacking zeal’.25 In the case of Boughton and Hollingbourne, we can review what happened through a number of different eyes. Rye housed a s­ ignificantly larger settlement – local registers show that over a hundred French people were buried there in the decade from 1682 to 169126 – but we know about its internal troubles from only two documents. Both were written from the same Anglican Tory perspective. The first is a letter from Heneage Finch, Earl of Winchelsea, to Archbishop Sancroft in February 1683. At the French congregation’s first settling in Rye, he wrote, there hath bin greate endevors and artifices used by the English fanaticks there to pervert the French congregation, hoping to maike them as factious against the King and Church as themselves are, by endevoring to perswade them to set up presbitery and not to comply with the Church of England, which did cause some disputes between Monsieur Bertrand and his congregation, wherein Monsieur Bertrand behaved himselfe verie well, and by the prudence of the Lord Bishop of London [Henry Compton] they are all reconciled, and have submitted themselves to the Church of England. If the like care be taken in all other parts, the more French that come over the more it will be to the riches and advantage of the King and Kingdome.

It is likely enough that local English Dissenters were glad to see the new settlement. They may well have hoped for a return to happier days, for there had been previous Huguenot refugee colonies at Rye in the Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and they had been non-­conformist.27

24   ‘…un Calviniste est un des plus dangereux sujets qu’une monarchie puisse avoir’; Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.984, f. 51v. 25   Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement c.1550– 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 163. 26  William Durrant Cooper, ‘Protestant Refugees in Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, XIII (1861), 202–3. 27  Schickler, Les Églises du Refuge en Angleterre, I, 291–302; W.J. Hardy, ‘Foreign Refugees at Rye’, HSP 2 (1887–8), 406–27.

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The Earl urged that great care be taken when any new refugee colony was settled, and that action be taken against those English ‘turbulent fanaticks, who do not only every day disturb our church, but would alsoe pervert those French that would willingly comply with the Government’. Once the French saw the laws against English Dissenters severely enforced, he believed, ‘they will for feare of the like punishment acquiesce more willingly from faction’. He went on to bemoan the failure to seize the opportunity of the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 to force the Presbyterian French churches at Threadneedle Street and Canterbury to conform, a failure he saw as ‘the chiefe root from whence all these evills spring’.28 The second document is a letter from Paul Bertrand himself, sent a year later in April 1684 to Charles Mossom,29 secretary to the committee responsible for administering public charitable funds for the Huguenots (and therefore paying Bertrand’s salary). This angry and indignant retort to rumours circulating in London that he neglected his ministerial duties is now in the Rawlinson manuscripts in the Bodleian Library,30 evidence that Mossom referred it to Bishop Compton. The particular target of Bertrand’s vitriol was the Consistory of the French Church of London, whose representatives on the Committee had doubtless passed on the rumours. While the church at Rye was conformist in accordance with royal orders, and the congregation met in the parish church,31 the non-­ conformist French Church of London had been largely responsible for its foundation. In November 1681, the committee of which Mossom was secretary urged the Threadneedle Street Consistory to consult key members of the church and develop ideas for settling the recent arrivals who had flooded in since the onset of the dragonnades. Within a fortnight one of the elders, Abraham Carris, had gone down to Rye with the fishermen, and reported back that the magistrates agreed to take them. A week later, the deacon Michel Savary was authorised to buy provisions for their voyage, and the first two boats, with 37 people, left on 6 December. Five further boats left for Rye later in the month, and another elder, Matthieu Hebert, was sent to help the colonists   Bodl., Tanner MS xxxv, f. 210.   Also referred to in various manuscripts as Mosom, Masson and Mosson, but it is as Charles Mossom that the name appears in the printed Account of the Disposal of the Money… (Wing M2858) in 1688. 30   Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.984, ff. 51–2. 31   CSPD, 1682, 197. 28 29

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity131 ­settle in.32 Yet another church officer, the deacon Daniel Brulon, undertook to convey the entire fishermen’s catch to London and Westminster, for which he was granted the freedom of the city of London. The government supported the venture, encouraging the local authorities in their reception of the settlers and ordering that Brulon’s agents were not to be molested or hindered.33 Bertrand made no acknowledgement of this background, but he told Mossom in no uncertain terms that he did not expect to be instructed on the duties and cares of a minister by the merchants or wool carders of the London church. The real trouble, he said, was that he wasn’t Calvinist enough. He baptized sick children in their homes and exhorted his flock to use the splendid Anglican prayers, but that was not well received. If on the other hand he were to preach Independency or at least prophesy ‘happy deliverance from the ever tyrannical yoke of the bishops’, he would be the best man in the world. He described the spirit of Calvinism as impudent and impassioned, full of the indiscreet zeal of a ridiculous form of government.34 Yet that was precisely the form of government that his congregation had chosen exile to preserve; Bertrand had put himself out on a limb, and few if any refugees wanted to follow. While he suggested in 1684 that discord at Rye was a thing of the past in his congregation, such a claim hardly squares with his own words. In any event, he seems to have left Rye by the middle of the following year, when he was in London, and he departed English shores in late 1685 to exercise his ministry in the New World, in Maryland. His replacement, Pierre Benech, was appointed to Rye in 1686.35 *** In the course of his diatribe Bertrand briefly mentioned the examples of Ipswich and Wandsworth as further demonstrating that wherever the spirit of Calvinism insinuated itself, nothing escaped its venom. The reference to Ipswich is interesting, because the documents concerning that settlement talk about economic rather than religious difficulties, although it seems from an early newsletter of 3 September 1681 that the earliest suggestions of an Ipswich colony had expected it   HSQS, LVIII (1994), 68–9.   PRO, SP 44/66, p. 100. 34   Bodl., Rawlinson MS C984, f. 51. 35   HSQS, LVIII (1994), 148; Schickler, Les Églises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, 335; Bodl., Rawlinson MS C984, f. 72. 32 33

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would be non-conformist (‘within the patent of the French churches at London and elsewhere’).36 If Bertrand was right and there was indeed tension between non-conformists and conformists at Ipswich, then all the earliest conformist establishments in the wake of the dragonnades experienced disruption. For Wandsworth, there is clear evidence of a clash, or at least of a reluctance on the part of the refugees to embrace conformity with the enthusiasm their bishop would have liked. Wandsworth has long since been swallowed up by the expansion of London, but at the time £20 was paid to Nicolas Lichere, an elder of the congregation, ‘towards the fitting a place there for the publick worship of the French Protestants’ in mid 1682,37 it was separated from the London-Westminster conurbation by countryside, and fell within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Bishop of Winchester. The bishop at the time was George Morley (1597–1684), who plays a central part in the Wandsworth story. Morley was twenty years older than Sancroft, 35 years older than Compton, and his career had taken him down different paths so far as French Protestants were concerned. In the 1630s he had been one of the central members of the ‘Tew Circle’ which included Edward Hyde, later Earl of Clarendon, and Gilbert Sheldon, later Bishop of London and Archbishop of Canterbury, who were to sponsor him into the episcopacy immediately after the Restoration.38 A canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and a Doctor of Divinity before the Civil War, Morley was ejected in 1648 and became one of over a hundred Church of England émigré clergy in exile in the 1650s. He was happy to obtain support for episcopacy from individual Huguenot divines like Samuel Bochart, a defender of the divine right of kings. However as a strong vindicator of the Anglican episcopal tradition, he was ambivalent with regard to the foreign Protestant churches, refusing either to admit or to disown them as true churches. With Clarendon and others of their sentiment, Morley’s refusal to worship at Charenton left a legacy of lasting bitterness amongst the Huguenots in Paris. In justifying his actions, he explained that even if French Protestants

  CSPD, 1681–2, 437.   CLRO, ex-Guildhall MS 346, no. 261. 38   B.H.G. Wormald, Clarendon: politics, history and religion 1640–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1951), 244, 262; Walter G. Simon, The Restoration Episcopate (New York: Bookman Associates, 1965), 211. 36 37

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity133 did not favour and encourage, yet they did not, at least they had not hitherto, condemned nor reproved the scandalous and rebellious proceedings of their Presbyterian brethren in England, against the King and against the Church: which until they should do by some public act or manifestation of their judgement to the contrary, I could not choose but think they approved; or at least did not dislike what our Presbyterians in England had done, and were still doing.39

After being transferred from the bishopric of Worcester to Winchester in 1662, Morley inherited specific problems regarding French Protestants at Southampton and in the Channel Islands. The Channel Islands had been stranded in a curious situation following the English Reformation, being French speaking and dependant on France for ministers and having a Calvinist structure of Consistories, Colloquies and Synods, yet being ruled by a country whose church was governed by bishops. Steps were taken to bring Jersey into line with Anglicanism in the 1620s and 1630s, but Guernsey remained Calvinist until the Restoration.40 Morley therefore needed to nurture a still insecure Anglicanism in the Channel Islands, and from his perspective the French church at Southampton was a thorn in his side. The French-speaking Southampton congregation, consisting of Walloons and French, had been founded in 1567. Right from its origins, it had always had close mercantile and ecclesiastical ties with the Channel Islands.41 These ties persisted, were indeed maintained until the nineteenth century.42 Although the Southampton congregation was at a low ebb around the time of Morley’s appointment to Winchester, its links with the Channel Islands remained unmistakable. For example, the ten burials recorded in its register between 1660 and 1664

39   Robert S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement (London: Dacre Press, 1951), 49, 83–4, 128–9; C.E. Whiting, Studies in English Puritanism from the Restoration to the Revolution, 1660–1688, (London: S.P.C.K., 1931), 354. 40   See Schickler, Les Églises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, chaps. 17–21; G.R. Balleine, A History of the Island of Jersey (London: Staples Press, 1950), especially chap.10; D.M. Ogier, Reformation and Society in Guernsey (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1996). 41   Andrew Spicer, The French-speaking Reformed Community and their Church in Southampton, 1567–c.1620, Huguenot Society, New Series, 3 (1997), 19–20 and elsewhere. 42   Edwin Welch (ed.), The Minute Book of the French Church at Southampton 1702– 1939, (Southampton: Southampton University Press, 1979), 1. Even the title subsequently given to the church register is significant: ‘Registre des Baptesme, Mariages et Mortz, et Jeusnes, de leglise Wallonne et des Isles de Jersey, Guernesey, Serq, Origny etc, etablie a Southampton…’.

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included Elizabeth Gobey, native of Guernsey; Thomas Careye, son of Mr Blanchelande of Guernsey; Mr Jean Baillehache of Jersey; and Damoiselle Elizabeth Le Montais of Jersey.43 Little wonder, then, that in 1668 the Bishop summoned the French minister at Southampton, Jean Couraud or Courauld, to appear in person before him to explain by what authority he undertook the cure of souls and preached in his diocese. It was a difficult question for the minister to answer, since Southampton like many of the other sixteenth century foreign congregations did not have specific authorization but claimed the right to exist through an extension of the 1550 letters patent granted to ‘Germans and other foreigners’ (‘Germanorum et aliorum peregrinorum’) that had enabled the foundation of the Dutch and French churches of London. Faced by Morley’s challenge, the Southampton church sought the advice of Coetus, a meeting of those two London foreign churches.44 The tricky nature of the situation rapidly became clear. Coetus learnt that Morley was arguing that the exemptions in the 1662 Act of Uniformity did not apply to the Southampton congregation because its members were natural born subjects of the Crown.45 This was a dangerous attack, and a direct throwback to the actions of Archbishop Laud in the 1630s. The 1662 Act provided that its penalties directed against English Nonconformist congregations ‘shall not extend to the foreigners or aliens of the foreign reformed churches allowed, or to be allowed, by the King’s Majesty, his heirs and successors in England’.46 Laud’s opening attack on the foreign congregations in England had been to order the churches of Canterbury, Southampton and Maidstone to instruct their English-born members to retire to their local Anglican churches.47 Now Morley was similarly arguing that the members of the   Humphrey Marett Godfray (ed.), Registre…, HSQS, IV (1890), 116.   Joannes H. Hessels (ed.), Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum. Tomi Tertii, Pars Secunda. Epistulae et Tractatus cum Reformationis tum Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Historiam Illustrantes (4 vols. in 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1887–97), III, ii (1897), 2554. 45   French Church of London [hereafter FCL], MS 5, p. 537, and MS 45, sub 21 Sept. 1668. 46   A. Browning (ed.), English Historical Documents 1660–1714 (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1953), 381. 47  Schickler, Les Églises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, 23–24. Laud argued that ‘the permission of the forraigne Churches and discipline was the occasion of many factious persons in his Diocese’: J[ohn] B[ulteel], A Relation of the Troubles of the Three Forraign Churches in Kent. Caused by the Injunctions of William Laud…, (London: 1645; Wing B5452), 10. 43

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strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity135 Southampton church could no longer be considered ‘foreigners or aliens’. Coetus advised delaying in the hope that Morley would drop the matter, but it quickly became apparent that would not happen. It then provided Couraud with a letter reminding the Bishop of the new King Charles II’s promises to continue the foreign congregations in their former liberties, and asking him to allow the Southampton church to continue to meet as it had done for over a century. In the end, faced by Charles II’s recently granted privileges to the foreign community at Norwich ‘even to those…born in the kingdom’, Morley backed down.48 The bishop, then, was probing the weak points of the refugee churches in England from the early years of his episcopacy, and probably had a clearer idea than any other member of the Anglican establishment exactly why he viewed them with askance. His stance was founded in his memory of the 1630s and 1640s, when Laud’s attack on the foreign congregations in England was one of the charges that led to the Archbishop’s impeachment, many members of the French churches had been hostile to Charles I during the Civil War, and the continental Protestant churches had failed to condemn the execution of King Charles I as strongly as Morley would have liked. So when he was confronted by the new refugees of the early 1680s, he was hardly enthusiastic in their support. He was widely known as a charitable man,49 but explained to Bishop Compton that he could not recommend a French gentleman to a demy’s place at Magdalen College, Oxford, and that the Hampshire collection for the 1681 brief was very small (although, he added, he did what he could through his letters and example).50 Since Compton continued to recommend refugees to his consideration, when Morley agreed in November 1683 to do what he could for a minister, Brevet,51 and his wife and daughter, he took the opportunity to spell out his reservations: to deal plainly and truly with your Lordship, many even of the most zealous for our own Church, doe seem to apprehend, that the cherrishing of those that are come in, and consequently the encouraging of more of

 Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, III, ii, 2554–7.   Samuel Pepys, The Diary: A New and Complete Transcription, ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews (11 vols., London: G. Bell & Sons, 1970–83), III, 293 n.2. 50   Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.983, ff. 54–55. 51   Elie Brevet, pastor of Bourgneuf until 1681, re-ordained in the Church of England 1682, later minister at the conformist French church of Greenwich 1693–95. 48 49

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robin gwynn those to come in that were the beginners and are the maintayners of the Presbyterian Discipline, may be dangerous to ourselves by theyr joining (at least in opinion) with the most inveterate and most irreconciliable of our enimies amongst ourselves here at home, I mean our Presbyterians; who from a liberty allowed at first to a few strangers (especially French and Dutch) to woorship God theyr own way, are grown to soe formidable a number amongst us, that they have once allready shut us out of our own churches, and will doe soe againe, if God suffer us for the punishment of our sins against him, to suffer them to grow up amongst us againe…

Morley expressed the hope, therefore, that the only Huguenot ministers to be allowed into England should be ‘such as Monsieur d’Ortye52 and those of the Savoy-French Church are’, while the others could go to such places as Holland and Germany where they could be safe and could be assisted without risking harm to ourselves. He also argued that refugees should have to conform, noting that even in liberal Holland, when the state contributed to the meeting place, worshippers had to conform to the established religion.53 To give steel to his argument, Morley enclosed with his letter another that he had just received from the Mayor and two other Southampton leaders, asking Compton to discuss it with Archbishop Sancroft. The Southampton authorities complained that the English Dissenters ‘believe the French Chappell here an Asylum and that theire resorting thither protects them against the Law, it being the generall excuse of those who are questioned by the Justices on the Statute of 3 K: Jac: 4 which wee now are putting in Execution’. They asked that the French church be forced to conform to the Church of England liturgy or to admit only aliens. The Mayor’s letter added that ‘severall persons of quality’ in the Channel Islands complained that when their countrymen returned from Southampton, ‘they come home debauched from the Liturgy of our Church’ and some have then ‘endeavoured to sett up private meetings there’; which the complainants ‘justly impute to the liberty and

52   André (de) Lortie, pastor at La Rochelle 1674–80. While he was still in France, in 1677, his treatise on communion had been translated by Compton (Edward Carpenter, The Protestant Bishop: being the life of Henry Compton…, (London: Longman, Green & Co., 1956), 327). Re-ordained in 1682, Lortie was minister of the French church of the Savoy in 1682–83 and was appointed rector of Paglesham, Essex, in 1683. 53   Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.984, f. 50.

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity137 practice of this Chappell, to which the Islanders all resort, whilst they are here’.54 These were serious accusations, especially at a time when Dissent was under severe persecution, and Morley’s unease is palpable. It is therefore no surprise that he moved strongly to ensure that the new congregation at Wandsworth, at least, should be forced to conform to the letter of Anglican law. We do not know a great deal about the earliest months of the French church of Wandsworth. There is no evidence that it was deliberately founded in the same way as Ipswich, Rye and Boughton Malherbe, with an existing church or prominent individual as sponsor. Like those settlements, though, it had a particular trade at its heart, in this case felt and hat making and dyeing. Wandsworth had a long connection with hat making extending back to the Middle Ages. Its particular advantage for the refugees was probably that its proximity to London meant that a market was readily to hand, yet it was far enough away from the capital to escape effective control by the recently chartered Feltmakers’ Company.55 Individual French Protestants lived there long before the Revocation, notably Nicolas Tonnet, who settled in Wandsworth around 1630 and prospered there for the next fifty years.56 It is plain that Wandsworth was conformist from its foundation. Under the policy pursued by the government and the crown in the early 1680s, nothing else was acceptable, and it was only its conformity that allowed the congregation to claim financial support from the collection made under the 1681 brief. Since the Savoy church minutes have not survived, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its early influence. As one would expect, the Wandsworth congregation made much of its conformity when seeking Anglican support and financial assistance, mentioning the Savoy in the process. There are two relevant  documents, both unfortunately undated which has only added to  ­confusion caused by researchers and cataloguers assuming that ‘Wansor’ or ‘Winsor’ must be ‘Windsor’ whereas it is in fact Wandsworth.   Ibid., f. 48.   John Traviss Squire, ‘The Huguenots at Wandsworth in the County of Surrey…’, HSP I (1885–6), 237–8; Norman G. Brett-James, The Growth of Stuart London (London: London & Middlesex Archaeological Society and George Allen & Unwin, 1935), 491–2. By the early 1690s observers noted the recent establishment of ‘a great manufacture of hats…(as at Wandsor, Putney)’: Henry Horwitz (ed.), The Parliamentary Diary of Narcissus Luttrell 1691–93 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 286. 56   Squire, ‘Huguenots at Wandsworth’, 232–3; HSQS, LVIII (1994), 36. 54 55

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The earlier of the two is a memorial requesting Bishop Compton to license a minister and a reader, and must predate the mid-1682 £20 grant for a place of worship. Signed by 21 people, it explains that it was expensive and inconvenient for them to get to the Savoy, and that they mostly spoke only French.57 The second, later, document is addressed not to Compton but to Archbishop Sancroft, and is almost certainly from 1686 when Compton was suspended but while royal policy still strongly supported Anglicanism. It relates that Many French persecuted Protestants…did settle in this parish, but having not the conveniency of a church did propose to the Lords of the Comittie appointed by his Majestie… that all of them were so much disabused of the prejudices and misreports that the enemies of the Church of England did, at their first coming as well as in their native countrey, did [sic] endeavour to infuse in their mind, that they did heartily desire to conforme themselves to the discipline and rites of the Church of England.

The Lord Mayor and Bishop of London gave order that they should have £20 ‘for making unto us a fitt place for the service of God, and twelve shillings a week for a minister conformable to the Church of England’. A place was rented at £5 p.a., and a carpenter hired, but the total cost was over £140. Financial assistance was sought from individuals ‘by the means of Mr Dumaresq, minister of the French Church of the Savoye’, and the petitioners now asked help with the £25 balance outstanding.58 A further indication that the Savoy kept an eye on Wandsworth can be found in its deputation to Threadneedle Street in 1685 to protest that Mr Carron, hatter, was prosecuting others of his trade there.59 Yet non-conformist Threadneedle Street also had more friendly contacts with Wandsworth. One of the earliest gravestones surviving in the ‘Mount Nod’ graveyard at Wandsworth is that of Mr Andrew Mayer, a Huguenot who died aged 33 on 11 March 1692. His legacies included nothing to the Savoy, but £20 to the poor of the Threadneedle Street church and £6 to one of its ministers.60

  Bodl., Rawlinson MS C984, f. 258.   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 114. 59   HSQS, LVIII (1994), 143. Carron replied he had not begun any lawsuits and promised not to be involved in any way. 60   Squire, ‘Huguenots at Wandsworth’, 283, 307. 57 58

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity139 Whoever influenced the new Wandsworth foundation, and despite its emphasis on its conformity, Bishop Morley clearly found the organization of the congregation unacceptable. On 10 August 1683 he issued a sharp order respecting its government, insisting that Whereas the French Church settled at Wandsworth under our Juris­ diction has beene lately in some disorder for want of a due regulation: We doe therefore appoint and ordaine that henceforward there be no Consistory, but for supply thereof that they yearly chuse two Church­ wardens, the one nominated by the Minister, the other by the heads of Familyes, who are to be regulated by the Canons and our Articles of Visitation in performance of theire duty; and that they call a Vestry consisting of the heads of Familyes soe oft as occasion shall require, according to the usage of the Church of England.61

However determined he may have been, Morley’s age was against him, and he died the following year. It is not known how long his order was effective, but it did not last, which can only reflect the determination of the congregation to preserve the type of government which it remembered from France and with which it was comfortable. The registers of the church of La Patente, Soho describe Creuzé as ancien et secrétaire of the Wandsworth church in 1692.62 A congratulatory letter to newly appointed Archbishop Wake in 1716 is signed by two Wandsworth ministers and three ‘anciens or churchwardens’.63 In 1728/9 Peter Ribot, Claude Baudouin, Peter Ruffe and Stephen Mahieu signed as ‘anciens’, Mahieu also as ‘secretaire’.64 The church was being governed by Consistory, not according to ordinary Anglican rules. *** We have reviewed three of the earliest refugee churches founded in the aftermath of the dragonnades of 1681, Boughton Malherbe/ Hollingbourne, Rye and Wandsworth. The leading agents of controversy differed: in one an Anglican vicar, in another a French minister, in the third a bishop. The flashpoints also varied: garments that the minister should or should not wear, lay control of the minister, churchwardens or elders. But each case involved trouble over the notion of conformity and what that involved. Moreover if we accept   Bodl., Rawlinson MS C984, f. 213.   HSQS, XLV (1956), 52. 63   Christ Church Library, Oxford, Wake MS xxviii, 31 Jan. 1716. 64   R.A. Shaw, R.D. Gwynn and P. Thomas, Huguenots in Wandsworth (London: Wandsworth Borough Council, 1985), 28. 61 62

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Paul Bertrand’s word, there were also difficulties at Ipswich, while at ­Thorpe-le-Soken the opening of the Consistory register again suggests dissatisfaction amongst the refugees as it notes the arrangements made to satisfy the Anglican regulations ‘à laquelle nous sommes obligez de nous conformer’.65 In each case the fresh memory held by the refugees of their traditional methods of worship made them reluctant to embrace Anglican ways. They accepted that the Church of England was a Protestant church; the continental churches had never been prepared to condemn it or its liturgy.66 They were grateful for the refuge that had been offered. They were prepared to accept episcopal leadership - after all, bishops were already, at least nominally, superintendents even of the nonconforming French churches in their dioceses.67 Some ministers might have been deterred from conforming by the requirement that they be re-ordained to serve as Anglican clergy, believing it to be an insulting denial of their past ordination.68 Doubtless lay refugees also did not like the fact that their ministers had to be re-ordained, but it was not something that directly affected them as individuals. It was when their customary ways of congregational organization and worship were attacked that their feelings erupted into open discontent. We can better understand the clashes that developed if we recall that we are dealing here not with one memory, but with two. The Huguenot memory of the early 1680s was immediate. It was only months since the refugees had fled their homeland. They had no doubts about the proper form of worship they had fled to preserve. The pain of the dragonnades and the disruption of their communities were sharply defined in their minds’ eyes. In many cases the anguish of guilt at having betrayed their faith by signing an abjuration was still raw. But against that sharply focused, immediate memory was set another, more blurred by the passage of time yet equally real and pressing to those who held it: the memory within the Church of England of Civil War, of the

  HL/UCL, Burn Donation MS 28, p.2.   J. Durel, A View of the Government and Publick Worship of God in the Reformed Churches beyond the Seas (London: 1662; Wing D2695), 76–91. 67  Guildhall Library, MS 7412, vol. I, pp. 81–2, 87–8, 93–4. The situation, however, was ambiguous; as one ally put it, ‘you will finde upon the whole, that by the Kings speciall favour they are exempt from Episcopall jurisdiction’ (Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 158v). 68   John-Armand Dubourdieu, An Appeal to the English Nation… (London: 1718), 81–2. 65 66

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity141 e­xecution of the sovereign, of bishops disestablished, of the world turned upside down. It was that historical memory that had led to the persecution of Nonconformity taking place in the 1680s, and it did not sit easily with the welcome now offered to Huguenot refugees. Only anti-popery, common to both memories and the strongest single ideology in the Britain of the day, encouraged their accommodation. Once potential refugees from the continent became aware that Charles II (and James II until 1687) insisted that any new foundations of French churches in England must conform, many simply stayed away. That became clear when the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685 and far more Protestants left France than the flood in 1681 who had introduced the very word refugié or refugee into the English language. In 1685–86, though, the new wave largely bypassed an England that was now ruled by a Roman Catholic King and must have appeared unsettled in the aftermath of Monmouth’s Rebellion. The startling difference between the timing of new arrivals going to London and to a key city of the refuge in the Netherlands, Amsterdam, has recently been highlighted: Table 1.  Arrivals at amsterdam and threadneedle street, 1681–168669 Total ‘settlements… for the Walloon community at Amsterdam’ 1681 1682 1683 1684 1685 1686

    475     331     195     118     675 1,246

Total arrivals at French Church of London, Threadneedle Street 1,182     691     339     208     283     607

Then in April 1687, this situation changed dramatically overnight when James reversed his previous policies and issued his Declaration of Indulgence for Liberty of Conscience. Hundreds of Huguenots at once crossed the Channel, and thousands more followed later in the year: 69  Gwynn, ‘Conformity’, 25. The Threadneedle Street church is the only one in London for which we have full enough records to be sure of the picture.

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Table 2.  Arrivals at amsterdam and threadneedle street, 1687–1688 1687 1688

Amsterdam

Threadneedle Street

    1,067             989

      2,497            715

These figures underline Huguenot reluctance to be forced into conformity with Anglican ways. They also show the attraction of England, with its offer of employment opportunities and comparative safety from Louis XIV across the Channel, both before the royal policy insisting on conformity had become widely understood in 1682–83, and then again once that stumbling block had been removed in 1687. By the end of the next decade, following the Revolution of 1688–89, London housed by far the largest concentration of refugees in Europe, and in numerical terms at least England had become the single most important country of refuge.70 Notwithstanding the Declaration of Indulgence, there remained strong practical reasons why Huguenots in England might wish to conform. Three in particular stand out. First, conformity had the support of many natural leaders of the refugee community. Conformist lay leaders like the Marquis de Venours or the Marquis de Ruvigny were important sources of patronage and in turn had valuable social, political and Court connections; and most refugee gentry conformed. Refugee ministers had more opportunities for employment or impro­ ved pensions within the Church of England fold than outside it, and others besides Paul Bertrand were attracted by the thought of shaking off the shackles of lay control in the Consistory. Since pastors played an important role in the refuge and were often sought out by members of their flocks escaping France, their influence could be very significant. Second, it was a specific condition of the public financial collection made for them after the Revocation, that refugees were only to benefit if they lived ‘in entire conformity and orderly submission to our government established in Church and State’.71 No such condition had applied to the earlier collection made at the time of dragonnades started  Gwynn, ‘Conformity’, 40–1.   BL, 190.g.13 (394).

70 71

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity143 in 1681. It appears that King James II and Lord Chancellor Jeffreys intended the phrase to mean that only conformists were to receive any relief,72 but English public opinion was so opposed that a compromise was reached: it was interpreted instead as requiring all recipients of assistance to produce a certificate that they had received Holy Com­ munion according to Anglican usage. This forced an unpopular form of ‘occasional conformity’ on non-conformist refugees, who generally viewed it as a necessity which, though objectionable, could be borne since the French reformed church accepted the Church of England as Protestant and the Threadneedle Street Consistory urged that it ‘should be held in high regard by all true Christians’.73 If nothing else, the need to produce the certificates meant that all those who accepted assistance had no choice but to understand government preferences and experience a conformist service. Third, and in the long term most important, only c­onforming churches received assistance from public funds for the support of their ministry. That certainly encouraged pastors to look seriously at the conforming option, and for ordinary laity it meant less financial p ­ ressure if they worshipped in an Anglican manner.74 It rendered small, struggling non-conforming churches particularly vulnerable. During the eighteenth century, as the descendants of the refugees of the 1680s and 1690s assimilated into the host population and the size of congregations declined, the pressure towards conformity increased. These important practical matters weighted the scales in favour of those French congregations in England which chose to conform to Anglican ways. Yet despite the advantages of conforming, most first generation refugees clung tenaciously to their French background and tradition. Their memory did not fade, if anything grew in significance in their minds, and they increasingly reverted to non-conformity after 1687 once they had freedom of choice. In round terms, in the 1680s, for every three non-conforming French Protestants in London, there were two that conformed. But by 1700, for every three non-­conforming French Protestants in London, there was only one that conformed.75

72   The Entring Book of Roger Morrice (6 vols., Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), III, 54. 73   FCL, MS 135, ff. 1–2. 74  A similar situation existed in Ireland following legislation in 1695; Susanne Lachenicht, ‘Differing Perceptions of the Refuge?’ in Dunan-Page, Religious Culture, 44. 75  Gwynn, ‘Conformity’, 35.

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Between 1681 and 1687, during the years when royal policy dictated the necessity for conformity as the price for establishment, all substantial new French congregations in England were conformist. In the 1690s, when there was freedom of choice, there was a total reversal: all new foundations were non-conformist. Nor is it only in the capital that one can see the trend to non-conformity. Two cases in the west country are particularly striking. The Dartmouth congregation, founded as conformist, forced out its re-ordained minister and turned to nonconformity in 1691 even though that meant the loss of the £22 p.a. stipend the conformist minister had been receiving. And at Plymouth, where a conforming refugee congregation already existed, a non-conformist alternative was founded in 1689 and rapidly became much the larger of the two.76 *** Until this point, we have been viewing ‘conformists’ as if they were a group of people uniformly willing to adopt Anglican ways. In reality, that was far from the case. Indeed when James II and Jeffreys wished to restrict assistance only to refugees living ‘in entire conformity and orderly submission to our government established in Church and State’, it is just possible that they were proposing to exclude not merely non-conformists, but also conformists such as those at the Savoy whose degree of conformity was suspect in the eyes of Anglican leaders of the Morley school. No such argument has ever previously been advanced, so this suggestion requires some justification. The Savoy church was the first of its conformist kind. At the time of the Civil War, a group based in Westminster had broken away from the Threadneedle Street church. After 1660, both sides petitioned the restored monarchy, and Charles II licensed the members of the Westminster congregation to continue to worship provided they submitted ‘to the Church of England, under the imediate jurisdiction of the Bishop of London…and use the booke of common praiers by law established in their owne French language, according as it is used in the Island of Jersey’. They were allowed ‘as many ministers to performe holy ordinances as shall be thought fitt provided theire names be first 76   HL/UCL, Bounty MS 7, Reglement of Nov. 1689; Alison Grant and Robin Gwynn, ‘The Huguenots of Devon’, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts, 117 (1985), 167; Gwynn, ‘Distribution’, 413, 422.

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity145 brought unto us and the persons presented by the Church-Wardens of the said French congregation to the Bishop of London their Ordinary to be by him instituted’.77 The licence was reward for a position far more supportive of the royalist cause than that of Threadneedle Street at the time of the Civil War. Once granted, it was not easy to amend when both the Savoy’s Jersey-based organization, and the translation of the Book of Common Prayer being used, came to trouble the Anglican authorities. Ministers in Jersey at the time of the Restoration did not make the sign of the cross; nor did those at the Savoy. They did not wear surplices; nor did those at the Savoy. Their congregations received communion standing, not kneeling. When such differences between the conformity of the Savoy and normal Anglican practice are taken into account, it becomes easy to see why attempts to settle ‘conformist’ refugee congregations around the country in the 1680s ran into difficulties. It was from the conformist Savoy church, not non-conformist Threadneedle Street, that the settlement at Boughton Malherbe was organized; the first 25 settlers are specifically recorded in relief records as ‘de la Savoye’.78 But the local Vicar’s insistence that their minister should wear a surplice was just as objectionable, just as foreign to them as it would have been to nonconformists. Rondeau told the Archbishop nothing but the truth when he explained that he conformed exactly as the Savoy church ministers did – and it was not good enough for the local Anglican authority. Similarly the refugees at Wandsworth, even if their connections were with the Savoy rather than Threadneedle Street, would have expected to be governed through a consistory, which was the issue on which Bishop Morley focused. The earliest surviving regulations for the Savoy, dating from 1721, show it then had a consistory which met weekly, with pairs of elders (whom the English called ‘churchwardens’) taking turns to serve for a month at a time.79 Perhaps the newly formed Wandsworth church set up a similar arrangement? If so, once again it would have been conforming as the Savoy did – but it was not good   Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.984, f. 5.   HSQS, XLIX (1971), 16, 226. 79   LPL, Fulham Palace MSS, Ruling for the Savoy Church approved by the Bishop of London, 23 Nov. 1721, ‘Des Anciens’, articles 1 and 4, and ‘Du Consistoire’, article 1. Another, undated paper in LPL, Fulham Palace MS 124, states there were about 24 elders (serving the daughter churches of Des Grecs and Spring Gardens as well as the Savoy itself). 77 78

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enough for the Bishop, who wanted no consistory, but two Church­ wardens, with one of them nominated by the minister. Not all Anglicans thought alike on these matters. The Savoy found a particularly staunch defender in Bishop Compton, who informed Archbishop Sancroft in May 1686 that he felt it would be an insolent demand in me, to require more of the French Church in the Savoy, then the late King himself did in his constitution of them. Which only requires their conformity according to the usage of Gernsey and Jersey, where never surplice or sign of the Cross were ever used or required: and where they have alwaies taken care of their churches by way of Consistory.80

The fact Compton was obliged to put pen to paper is sure indication he was being pressured to act to regulate the Savoy and push it in a more precisely ‘Anglican’ direction. Later in the same letter, he revealed the source of that pressure. Unable to defend himself because he was already unwelcome at Court although not formally suspended from his bishopric until September, he requested Sancroft to ‘do me the favour to acquaint the King and my Lord Chancelour with thus much’. We know, then, that in early 1686 the Court was seeking better control of the Savoy, and also that it wished to restrict assistance to refugees from public collections only to those living ‘in entire conformity and orderly submission to our government established in Church and State’. And at the same time, it was proposing to ensure that the refugees were offered the purest possible model of Anglican worship in French by lending its backing to Dr Pierre Allix. Allix was an eminent and well-connected Huguenot pastor who had been at Charenton before the Revocation. He was a Doctor of Divinity of both Oxford and Cambridge, and he was very willing to conform. In June 1686, King James II licensed him to conduct a church at Jewin Street without Aldersgate or any other convenient place for worship ‘in the French tongue, butt in all things else exactly according to the use of the Church of England’. Control of the church, including its furnishings and adornments, was taken out of the Bishop of London’s hands and put in those

80   Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 120. For Compton’s welcoming attitude towards the Huguenots see Sugiko Nishikawa, ‘Henry Compton, Bishop of London (1676–1713) and Foreign Protestants’, in Vigne a& Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 359–65, and Carpenter, Protestant Bishop, chap. XVII.

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity147 of the Archbishop of Canterbury, ‘for to his care and inspection alone…, wee do think fitt to recommend and committ the establishment and regulation of the said French congregation’. Comparison of the draft and final grant suggest close government involvement in the steps that were taken.81 So do Jeffreys’s amendments to Sancroft’s draft of the brief for the collection, and the very generous provision of £500 from charitable funds for the establishment of the Jewin Street church.82 Perhaps, then, it was not mere coincidence that the grant to Allix was for refugees who ‘represented…their firme resolution to live in entire conformity and orderly submission to our government both in church and state’. Does the use of the precise same wording as in the brief indicate that James’s government would have liked to confine charitable funds to one approved type of conformity? Was that why Lady Rachel Russell, who was well-informed through her close connections with the Ruvignys, reported that Jeffreys was so strict about the qualifications of those who might receive help that many left him with ‘sad hearts’?83 Allix had the support of Sancroft, Bishop Turner of Ely, and at least one other, unnamed, bishop. To the last of these he wrote some years later, ‘I must come back to my settlem[en]t in a french congregation by the help of your Lordship and of the late Archbishop. You thought I could help our people to comply more with the Church than with the dissenters: I did what I could in that business.’84 Allix drew around him a network of respected ministers: Jean Lombard of Angers, Claude Grostête de la Mothe of Lizy, Jean Graverol of Lyons and Jacob Asselin of Dieppe.85 The church he founded, which later became based at St Martin Orgars, survived until 1823. However despite all its advantages, it never developed as James and his Lord Chancellor would have liked. It never grew to challenge the Savoy, let alone Threadneedle Street which remained much larger than either, whether in size or prestige. The refugees’ memory of their worship tradition was simply too strong. In fact, as we have seen, the total percentage of conformists   Compare PRO, SP 44/337, pp. 36–7, and SP 31/3, f. 336.  In HSP 7 (1901–04), 175–7; HSQS, XXXVII (1935), xiv. 83   Lois G. Schwoerer, Lady Rachel Russell: ‘One of the Best of Women’ (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 159. 84   Allix papers currently on deposit in HL/UCL, folio volume, no.194. The unnamed bishop was another of the seven bishops tried in James II’s reign. 85   HSQS, XXXVII (1935), xi. 81 82

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as against non-conformists declined sharply for the remainder of the seventeenth century. *** Plainly, there were degrees of ‘conformity’, and it cannot simply be equated with Anglican orthodoxy. The extent to which conformist consistories could exercise their ecclesiastical discipline varied and is  hard to assess because too often we lack sufficient detailed evidence. Yet while it may be simplistic just to divide refugees into ‘conformist’ and ‘non-conformist’, that broad division remained highly meaningful. A striking feature of the early 1690s was the failure of strenuous efforts by the Huguenots’ most outstanding leader, Henri Massue de Ruvigny, later first Earl of Galway, to achieve unity across the divide. He tried,  and failed, on both sides of the Irish Sea. In England in 1690, he found the Threadneedle Street church unshakeable in its determination ‘de donner les mains à une union de charité, mais non pas de ­gouvernement et de dependance’.86 In Ireland, three years later, he ‘expended a lot of his prestige and powers of persuasion’ into promulgating articles intended to weld the two sides into one communion, but suffered a ‘stinging defeat…that defined the limitations of his ­leadership and certainly weakened the ideal of a united Corps du réfuge in Ireland’.87 Memory of the form of worship in their lost homeland may not have been the only factor in the desire of first generation refugees to maintain their traditional organization and church practices. The question of conformity versus non-conformity may be more than religious. The acceptance of conformity could imply that hopes of return to France had been abandoned. Taking this further, could non-conformists have seen their stance as one way of expressing support for those like Claude Brousson who were willing to put their lives on the line to maintain Calvinism within France and attack the Catholic church in graphic language?88 Raymond Hylton suggests that just as there had always been an unresolved dualism in France between Huguenots who would resist openly and politiques prepared to accept some degree of compromise, so this dualism endured in exile, with ‘the Conformist and   FCL, MS 7, p. 500; HSQS, LVIII (1994), 327–8.   Raymond Hylton, Ireland’s Huguenots and their Refuge, 1662–1745: An Unlikely Haven (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 188–9. 88   For Brousson, see Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove. 86 87

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity149 ­Non-Conformist worshippers adhering, in rough fashion, to the respective philosophy of passivity and that of resistance’.89 The matter of conformity also impacted on the social and political role people could play in their host society. The comparatively small French community at Southampton in the early eighteenth century provides a good example of the range of motivations involved in the decisions that were made. The congregation there was of long standing, and we have seen it overcome both Bishop Morley’s attempts to make it conform in 1668 and later complaints about its non-conformity in the early 1680s. A generation later, though, the major part of the congregation did conform. The first thoughts in that direction came about shortly after the turn of the century, in 1703. The minister, Antoine Cougot, was already re-ordained and held an Anglican rectory, and his congregation included well-integrated men of significant social rank including Elias de Gruchy, who had served as Mayor, other members of the town corporation, and the Duke of Marlborough’s right-hand man, Adam de Cardonnel. However there was also opposition to conformity, and no action was taken at the time. Then in 1711 the Occasional Conformity Act was passed, disqualifying civic officers who took communion in their parish church in order to qualify. The result was a meeting of heads of families which decided by majority vote to conform. The minority refused to accept the action and seceded, resulting in there being two congregations in the town, one conformist, the other non-conformist. The schism underlines that the more wealth and social status, the greater the need individuals might discern to conform in order to take their rightful place in society. Cougot was happy to follow the Savoy model, and the resulting conformist church elected elders rather than churchwardens. Then, a few years later, another minister, de St Denis, wanted a more complete degree of conformity and introduced churchwardens on the Anglican model. The result was to split the congregation once again, resulting in three different worshipping French communities in Southampton for a period in the mid-1720s. The non-conformist congregation survived for at least twenty years.90 ***  Hylton, Ireland’s Huguenots, 180.  Welch, Minute Book, 6–8, 160ff; Andrew Spicer, ‘The Consistory Records of Reformed Congregations and the Exile Churches’, HSP 28:5 (2007), 645; HSQS, IV (1890), 133–4. 89 90

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This essay has been confined to the first generation of the refuge, when memory of the French background was most acute; and it has dealt only with England. However, the question of conformity was a key issue wherever the Anglican Church and Huguenot non-conforming congregations co-existed, and it continued to be so well into the eighteenth century. Hylton is particularly clear about the significance of the divide for Ireland: Just as it would be inconceivable when discussing the Huguenots that the religious motivation should be downplayed; it is equally mistaken to neglect or fob off the very intense differences of opinion that existed within the French Protestant exilic communities over Conformity to the Established church against the desire to resist conformity to maintain the purity of the Calvinist faith. Many Huguenots – in fact the majority of those in Dublin, Portarlington and Cork – (the three largest Huguenot settlements in Ireland) in effect joined the tide of Dissent. Yet this is ­precisely what has been denied for the better part of two centuries… The  occasion of friction within the Huguenot community between Conformist (‘Anglican’) and Non-Conformed (‘Calvinist’) elements was either studiously ignored or else minimized into insignificance… In view of the misrepresentations of the past it is necessary to state firmly that the place occupied by the Huguenots, as regards religion, in the life of Ireland would revolve around this question of Conformity vs. Dissent.91

Across the Atlantic in the New World, the same frictions, the same range of different motivations for the choice of whether or not to conform, the same questions about what ‘conformity’ entailed, are all evident. For example, Bertrand Van Ruymbeke has argued with regard to South Carolina that concern for full citizenship encouraged refugees (outside Charleston) to conform in 1704–6,92 while Paula Wheeler Carlo sees sheer poverty as the driving force behind conformity at New Rochelle in colonial New York. Both writers show the continuation of Calvinist practices. The conformist church at New Rochelle described by Carlo was a plain building with rough unhewn stone outside, unadorned whitewashed walls internally, and plain, unpainted pews. Surviving sermons of its minister between 1725 and 1741 were still deeply Calvinist, made frequent mention of the Elect, were ‘generously peppered with anti-Catholic virulence’, and did not recommend that  Hylton, Ireland’s Huguenots, 178–9.   See his From New Babylon to Eden. The Huguenots and their Migration to Colonial South Carolina, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006). 91 92

strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity151 prayers should conform to or emulate the Book of Common Prayer. The minister also rejected the use of the sign of the cross. So Carlo views the conforming French churches as ‘halfway houses between Anglican beliefs and practices and Huguenot traditions’ which practised ‘a hybrid Anglican-Huguenot faith’.93 In recent years this same set of issues surrounding conformity has arisen simultaneously in the historiography of all the Anglo-Saxon countries where the refugees settled. Clearly it is going to need closer examination in years to come. In particular, more studies are needed to show how assimilation took place during the eighteenth century; the nature of the English-speaking congregations in which the descendants of refugees ended up; and how the strong memory of the first refugees was dulled and (in some cases) their resistance to conformity gradually eroded.

93  Paula Wheeler Carlo, Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York: Becoming American in the Hudson Valley (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 57, 59, 84, 89, 91, 93–4.

Chapter SIX

The Huguenots and the European Wars of Religion, c.1560–1697: soldiering in national and transnational context* D. J. B. Trim Much of the history of French Calvinists is military history, but historiography has not sufficiently done justice to the Huguenot penchant for military service. There is still no overall history of the Huguenot war effort in the French Wars of Religion (1562–1629), though this partly reflects the destruction and dispersion of Huguenot archives.1 But while there are some studies of sixteenth– and early seventeenth– century Huguenot military activity, they are relatively few in number and most are short.2 In contrast is the body of scholarship on the * The author gratefully acknowledges grants in the 1990s from the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the University of London Central Research Fund, the Royal Historical Society, and the British Academy, which made possible the archival research in Paris on which much of this chapter is based. Earlier versions were given at the conference ‘Huguenot Soldiering 1660–1780’, London, 11 Nov. 2002, as the annual ‘Friends of the Walter C. Utt. Endowment’ lecture at Pacific Union College, 17 Apr. 2009, and published as ‘Huguenot Soldiering c.1560–1685: The Origins of a Tradition’ in Matthew Glozier and David Onnekink (eds.), War, Religion and Service: Huguenot Soldiering, 1685–1713 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 9–30—this is a revised and considerably expanded version of that chapter. 1   I adopt here the periodisation of Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion 1562– 1629 (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), rather than the more traditional one of 1562–98, although the hostilities of the early seventeenth century were more limited both geographically and demographically, and did not involve as large a portion of the Huguenot community, as the wars of the sixteenth century. 2  Jean de Pablo, ‘Contribution a l’étude de l’histoire des institutions militaires huguenotes’, ‘i. L’armée de mer huguenote pendant la troisième guerre de religion’, and ‘ii. L’armée huguenote entre 1562 et 1573’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 47 (1956), 64–76, and 48 (1957), 192–216; B. Dietz, ‘Privateering in North–West European Waters, 1568 to 1572’, Ph.D. thesis (University of London, 1959); essays in L’Amiral de Coligny et son temps (Paris: Société de l’histoire du protestantisme français, 1974); and in Avènement d’Henri IV, vol. I, Quatrième centenaire de la bataille de Coutras (Pau: Association Henri IV, 1988); Ronald S. Love, ‘ “All the King’s Horsemen”: The Equestrian Army of Henri IV, 1585–1598’, SCJ 22 (1991), 511–33; Martine Acerra and Guy Martinière (eds.), Coligny, les protestants et la mer (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris–Sorbonne, 1997); Mark Greengrass, ‘Financing the Cause: Protestant Mobilization and Accountability in France (1562–1589)’,

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s­ ervice of French Protestant immigrants in the armies of the Maritime Powers in the last two decades of the seventeenth century and first decade of the eighteenth.3 However, these studies have tended to create an impression that the history of Huguenot soldiering is essentially the history of Huguenot émigrés in the armies of Britain and, to a lesser extent, the Dutch republic in the Nine Years’ War (1688–97) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13). Yet the contribution of Huguenot soldiers to the wars against Louis XIV was not restricted to British and Dutch armies.4 Nor was it groundbreaking in character (as opposed to numbers); Huguenot service in foreign armies already had a history of 120 years when they went with William of Orange to England to overthrow James II in 1688. The French Reformed military experience was frequently a foreign one throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many Huguenots served in foreign armies even during the Wars of Religion. In particular, they developed a very close relationship with the rebellious provinces of the Netherlands and their leader, William I, Prince of Orange, which continued after his death in 1584 and the emergence of a new nation, the Dutch republic (more formally, the United

in Philip Benedict et al (eds.), Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the Netherlands 1555–1585 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Verhandelingen: Afd. Letterkunde, [new series], no. 176, 1999), 233– 54; D. J. B. Trim, ‘Edict of Nantes: Product of Military Success or Failure?’ in Keith Cameron, Mark Greengrass and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Adventure of Religious Pluralism in Early Modern France (Oxford, Bern, New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 85–99; idem, ‘Huguenot Soldiering’; Alan James, ‘Between “Huguenot” and “Royal”: Naval Affairs during the Wars of Religion’, ibid., 101–12; idem, ‘Huguenot Militancy and the Seventeenth-century Wars of Religion’, in Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World 1559–1685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 209–23. 3   Space does not permit the full bibliography (which includes many articles in periodicals) to be cited here, but see esp. Glozier and Onnekink, War, Religion and Service, chs. 2–8; Robin Gwynn, ‘The Huguenots in Britain, the “Protestant International” and the Defeat of Louis XIV’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 412–24; and Matthew Glozier, The Huguenot Soldiers of William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution of 1688: The Lions of Judah (Brighton & Portland, Oreg.: Sussex Academic Press, 2002). See also Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (2nd edn, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), esp. ch. 9; and the articles collected and repr. in Randolph Vigne and Philip Rambaut (eds.), Britain’s Huguenot War Leaders (London: Instructa, 2002). 4   See Gozier and Onnekink, War, Religion and Service, chs. 9–14, on Huguenot soldiers in the service of Brandenburg–Prussia, Brunswick–Lüneburg, Savoy, and Russia.



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Provinces of the Netherlands). Throughout the seventeenth century, a large French (and overwhelmingly Protestant) contingent was an important part of the army of the United Provinces, playing a key role in Dutch campaigns; but Huguenots also served as individuals or in small groups in armies across Europe. In a very real sense, then, Huguenot soldiering was always carried out in both national and transnational context; after 1685 there was probably a quantitative change in Huguenot soldiering (for it seems likely that the numbers of Huguenot soldiers in foreign service increased), but not a qualitative one. The long–term history of Huguenot soldiering is important because it can help to answer some of the obvious questions about the French Calvinist military experience, including in its golden age at the end of the seventeenth century. How were Huguenots mobilised by foreign armies? In what countries did they prefer to serve and why? This may, in turn, give an insight into why so many served. What was the social composition of Huguenot units? And what explains their combat effectiveness? The Huguenots were a significant group in the European mercenary market for so long partly because of their fighting qualities, but also, in part, because they were relatively easy to mobilise. This reflected, firstly, the great influence of the nobility on the Calvinist movement; secondly, the fact that the Huguenots—partly due to the military threat they faced in France throughout the sixteenth century and partly, perhaps, to the nature of Calvinism—were a heavily militarised group within French society; but also, thirdly, that the Huguenots in the sixteenth century developed a long pattern of service in foreign Protestant armies, especially that of the Netherlands, and this heritage helped shape the choices of subsequent generations—history and memory, as well as culture, directed Huguenots, especially those of the middle and lower nobility and their followers, towards soldiering. Fourthly, the clientage ties of nobles and the Presbyterian structure of church organisation both leant themselves to military mobilisation; this was especially true in France during the wars of religion, but was also true for French Calvinists in foreign armies. Finally, the Huguenots’ confessional zeal made them exceptionally fine combat troops. They generally served only Protestant powers and showed great commitment and zeal in opposing the expansionist design of the Habsburgs and, later, the ‘Sun King’ of France.

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Huguenot soldiering originated around the year 1560, which was also when the term ‘Huguenot’ first was used; its derivation was obscure even at the time but it originated as an insult used by their enemies, but one that soon the followers of ‘la Religion reformée’ applied to themselves.5 Individual Huguenots served (some with distinction) in the French royal armies during the Italian (or Habsburg–Valois) Wars in the 1540s–50s, but there was no such thing as ‘Huguenot soldiering’ as a group experience until after the emergence of the Huguenots as a clear, distinct and powerful group amongst the French nobility. This occurred after the death of Henri II in July 1559. It is notable that, whereas Calvinists were at most some 10–12 per cent of the total population of France, they may have comprised almost a third of the provincial nobility, including a goodly number of greater nobles and princes of the blood. They were not distributed evenly across the country: whereas only one in a hundred of the noblesse of northern Mayenne was a Calvinist, it was one in four of the nobles of the Beauce region in northern France, more than one in three of those of the province of Quercy, and 40 per cent of the nobility of both the province of Saintonge and of the election of Bayeux in Normandy.6 The Huguenot nobles ‘came out’ in the three years after Henri II’s death as protectors of their common co–religionists against local persecutors and Catholic mobs. In 1560 the Calvinist Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de Condé, led an aristocratic conspiracy to seize, by force if necessary, control of the regency of the boy–king Francois II, which was dominated by the ultra-Catholic duc de Guise. The plot failed and Condé was briefly imprisoned, but Francois’s untimely death, succession by the still younger Charles IX and the consequent fall of the regency resulted in Condé’s release.7 Calvinism’s ability to attract   Jean Crespin, Actes des martyrs (Geneva: 1564), 994–95.  David Potter, ‘The French Protestant Nobility in 1562: The “Associacion de Monseigneur le Prince de Condé” ’, French History 15 (2001), 310; Jean–Marie Constant, ‘The Protestant Nobility in France during the Wars of Religion: A Leaven of Innovation in a Traditional World’, in Benedict et al, Reformation, Revolt and Civil War, 70–1; Stuart Carroll, Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 101; and see Philip Benedict, ‘The Dynamics of Protestant Militancy: France, 1555–1563’, in Benedict et al, Reformation, Revolt and Civil War, 37. 7   Benedict, ‘Dynamics’, 42–43; N. M. Sutherland, ‘Calvinism and the Conspiracy of Amboise’, History 47 (1962), 111–38. Huguenot claims (e.g. Crespin, Actes des 5 6



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nobles and its organized nature made its adherents a political force that could not be swept away through repression. Furthermore, not only did the Reformed faith attract nobles, but in addition probably a majority of them were drawn from the noblesse d’épée (the nobility of the sword)—almost 90 per cent of Calvinist nobles in the Beauce, for example.8 This preponderance ensured that French Calvinism was militant and militarised, and thus that it could not simply be suppressed by persecution, as were nascent Protestant movements in Spain and Italy. This became evident during the first episode in the history of Huguenot soldiering, which came in 1562 with the outbreak of the first of eight wars of religion that were to occupy most of the succeeding 36 years. In the first war (1562–3) the Huguenots were able to muster troops sufficient for both a main army in the Loire valley, under the Prince de Condé and Gaspard II de Coligny, seigneur de Châtillon and Admiral of France, and a secondary force, operating in Normandy, under the comte de Montgommery. Added to these were some regional defence forces. The infantry units were composed mostly of volunteers raised through the various local reformed churches. As J. W. Thompson observes, the Huguenot ‘hierarchy of religious assemblies … through consistories, colloquies, and provincial synods’ not only helped unite them ‘into a national body’ ecclesiologically and theologically. It also ‘served to unite their forces’, for the ecclesiastical framework was turned to military purposes. Condé requested the reformed consistories of France in April 1562 each to ‘use such means as you have promptly to furnish soldiers’; and the regional synod of Guyenne, for example, ‘resolved to have each church form an enseigne [company of foot] … and to group these into regiments by colloquys’.9 martyrs, 994) that Condé was innocent, and the victim of a conspiracy by Guise, are propaganda. 8   Constant, ‘Protestant Nobility in France’, 72. 9   Condé to églises réformées de France, 7 April 1562, in Mémoires du Prince de Condé, in J.-F. Michaud and J.-J.-F. Poujoulat (eds.), Nouvelle collection des mémoires pour servir à l’histoire de France, depuis le XIIIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XVIIIe, series 1 (Paris: 1839), VI, 629. See James Westfall Thompson, The Wars of Religion in France 1559–1576 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1909), 473; Benedict, ‘Dynamics of Protestant Militancy’, 42–44 (at 43); André Thierry, ‘L’Homme de guerre dans l’œuvre d’Agrippa d’Aubigné’, in Gabriel–André Pérouse, André Thierry, André Tournon (eds.), L’Homme de guerre au XVIe siècle (Saint–Etienne: Université de Saint– Etienne, 1992), 145; André Corvisier, ‘Les Guerres de Religion, 1559–1598’, in Philippe Contamine (ed.), Histoire militaire de France, vol. I (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), 319.

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In addition, however, the Huguenot forces drew heavily on the affinities of the nobles—especially for their cavalry. An ‘estat’ from 1562, of the ‘princes, lords, knights, gentlemen and captains with the Prince de Condé who have resolved to live and die together to maintain the gospel in France’, indicates that Condé had some 4,000 nobles with him, mostly in mounted units.10 Similarly, in the second civil war (1567–8), the Huguenot army was distinguished by its high proportion of nobles.11 Several of the Protestant leaders were captains of their own companies of gens d’armes—the elite, aristocratic heavy cavalry that was the hard core of France’s standing army. The rank–and–file of these compagnies d’Ordonnance (or gendarmerie) were mostly a captain’s friends, extended family and clients.12 Some were formal members of the captain’s (or his family’s) affinity. ‘They worse his livery and were forbidden to remove it or to enlist in another company without his consent.’ In other cases, recruits were drawn from the wider, informal aristocratic affinity: studies of compagnies indicate that 75 per cent of the rank-and-file were drawn from the captain’s area of origin or areas where he held government office; such men were attracted by his ‘name [and] reputation’.13 As a result, such men tended to stick together; thus, the Huguenots were able to draw off a few entire units of the royal army.14 Even when they were not so tightly bound together, 10   ‘Estat de partie des princes, seigneurs, chevalliers de l’ordre, gentishommes, capitaynes de l’associacion de Monseigneur le prince de Condé qui ont resolu de vivre et mourir ensemble pour maintainir l’evangille en France’, 7 Sept. 1562, PRO, SP 70/41, ff. 50–56, printed in Potter, ‘French Protestant Nobility’, 313–28 (collated with BL, Lansdowne MS 5, f. 181). 11   E.g., ‘Sommation … du Roy a ceux de la nouvelle relligion qui estoyent en armes a s[ain]te Denis’, Dec. 1567, and undertaking of Charles IX with Huguenot nobility Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris, MS 2620, f. 17 and MS 2619, f. 35 (the latter is undated but almost certainly from March 1568: cf. Wood, King’s Army, 21). 12   Robert J. Knecht, ‘The French and English Nobilities in the Sixteenth Century: A Comparison’, in Glenn Richardson (ed.), ‘The Contending Kingdoms’: France and England 1420–1700 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 74. 13   See Kirsten B. Neuschel, Word of Honour: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth– Century France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); Robert R. Harding, Anatomy of a Power Elite: The Provincial Governors of Early Modern France, Yale Historical Publications, Miscellany, 120 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1978), 20–1; Sharon P. Kettering, ‘Patronage and Kinship in Early Modern France’, FHS 16 (1989), 409–10, 418; Wood, The King’s Army, 139; and, e.g., the ‘roolle de la montre’ (muster roll) of the gendarmerie company of Charles de La Rochefoucauld, 9 June 1567, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris, Manuscrits français [hereafter BN, MS Fr.], 25801, no. 185. 14   Certainly in the first civil war: see Potter, ‘French Protestant Nobility’, 308–9, 309 n.12, citing CSPF, V (1562), 279, no. 571; see also the summary of gendarmerie



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they sometimes took the bulk of a unit, as for example in 1568, when Henri–Robert, duc de Bouillon joined the Huguenot army: he evidently was followed by 70 per cent of his compagnie de gendarmerie of 100 lances, as a new company of 30 was put in its place on the royal establishment.15 In addition, great Protestant nobles were able to draw on their affinities to create new units, of both cavalry and infantry.16 Furthermore, many reformed–leaning aristocratic rank–and–file of the gendarmerie chose to serve the Calvinist cause, leaving their companies to join the Protestant forces as individuals.17 Catholics would have called this desertion; the men in question, however, doubtless believed they were simply obeying higher orders, those of God, rather than of men (as Acts 5:29 enjoins). Such veterans, together with individual volunteers, whether from churches or noble affinities, had to be formed into new units—potentially a difficult task, but one that, in practice, occurred swiftly. This suggests that most, or at any rate many, men in each unit knew each other already, as members of the same local church and/or of the same noble affinity. II How the first Huguenot soldiers were mobilised in the first and second civil wars in France during the 1560s is important because it set a pattern for Huguenot soldiering in Europe for the rest of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Of course, French Protestant soldiering was initially against the French crown and this indicates why Huguenot soldiering was mostly mercenary soldiering—there was consistently a musters, April–June 1563, in BN, MS Fr. 3185, ff. 73–4, which shows that, within weeks of the end of the first civil war, Huguenot nobles (including Condé, Coligny and La Rochefoucauld) had their ‘compaignies de gendarmerye’ again, so that probably the latter had served under their captains’ command throughout the first war. The Huguenot captains retained their companies to the beginning of the second civil war and they were again placed on the royal establishment after both the second and third wars. 15   ‘Estat du paiement des Compagnies du gendarmerie’, Jan. 1568, BN, MS Fr. 3193, f. 198. The duc de Bouillon’s status as a Huguenot is discussed below, p. 168. 16   Potter, ‘French Protestant Nobility’, 309–10, 313–23 passim; and cf. also, e.g., ‘estat’ of garrison of Dieppe, Dec. 1562, PRO, SP70/47, f. 197v: in two companies of arquebusiers commanded by the comte de Montgommery, 52 out of 460 men were ‘gentilshommes’. 17   E.g., at the start of the third civil war, Jehan de Saint–Jehan left the company of Philip de La Roche and went to England: see the company muster roll of 15 Sept. 1569 BN, MS Nouvelles acquisitions françaises 8628, f. 37.

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strong incentive for Huguenots to go abroad. Mercenary service was a good way to make a living, but it was especially à propos for members of the nobility, whose raison d’être was making war. For much of the last four decades of the sixteenth century (and again at times in the first three decades of the seventeenth century), the Huguenots fought against the Valois and Bourbon monarchs for the right to practice their religion. Even during this period of focus on their native land, however, their military endeavours were still connected to wider international and Protestant war efforts: first, in France the Huguenots frequently fought alongside foreign Protestant forces—German, English, Welsh, Scottish and Swiss; second, throughout this period, French Protestants served not only in France, but also in other theatres of war. In the first war of religion (1562–3) the Huguenots were aided by English troops sent by Elizabeth I; in the first war, too, François de Coligny, seigneur d’Andelot (brother of the Admiral de Coligny) raised a large German force, and thereafter the Huguenots regularly hired large numbers of German mercenaries, in each of the second, third, fifth and eighth civil wars.18 However, arguably the most important chapter in the history of mutual co–operation and military interchange with foreign Protestants began in 1569. William I, Prince of Orange, leader of the revolt of the Netherlands, had been badly defeated by the Spanish in 1568; the end of his campaign overlapped with the outbreak, in the late summer, of the third war of religion (which was to last until August 1570). William’s army was mostly German and Dutch in composition, but it included a Huguenot continent of around 12 companies of horse and 2,000 foot, led by Jean de Hangest, seigneur de Genlis (a cousin by marriage of William), and Louis de Lannoy, seigneur de Morvilliers, who had held an important command in Normandy in the first civil war.19 The following spring, in 1569, William took the remnants of his army into France and joined the main Protestant field army under Condé and Coligny. William’s brother, Louis (or Lodewijk) of Nassau, took command of the fleet of Huguenot privateers based at La Rochelle. He remained in command not only until the end of the war in August 1570 but also thereafter; indeed, it   Elector Palatine to Henry Knollys and Christopher Mundt, 1 Sept. 1562, CSPF, V (1562), 276, no. 561; Corvisier, ‘Guerres de Religion’, 320. 19   Edward Grimeston, A Generall Historie of the Netherlands: continued unto 1608, out of the best authors (London: 1609), 456–57. Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Allen Lane, 1977), genealogical table I. 18



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was he who gave the ultimate order to the fleet to disarm two years later.20 During the brief period of peace between the third and fourth wars of religion, there was a renewed Turkish threat in the Mediterranean. A force of Huguenots served the Venetians against the infidels in 1571 and French Protestants may have been among the French troops that fought for the Spanish in the crusade of Lepanto.21 In May 1572, William and Louis of Nassau launched a renewed revolt in the Netherlands. Louis was responsible for leading an uprising in the south: he took Valenciennes and Mons with an army made up of Huguenots, Walloon exiles, English volunteers and some German mercenaries, with three Huguenots as his deputies: Genlis, the sieur (or seigneur) de Poyet, and the celebrated François de La Noue.22 Louis’s troops included almost 200 Huguenot gens d’armes, in three companies, and 612 Huguenot infantrymen in seven companies.23 Genlis, as we have seen, had served with the Nassaus in 1568 in the Netherlands. In the 1560s Poyet had been lieutenant of one of Andelot’s two companies of Gendarmerie; Louis made him Governor of Mons in June 1572.24 It had been an integral part of the plan that Louis’s army in the southern Netherlands would soon be reinforced by a larger Huguenot contingent, which Genlis returned to France to lead; and that this would be a prelude to what Coligny, briefly chief adviser of King Charles IX, planned would be a French declaration of war on   Acte, 15 May 1572, BN, MS Fr. 18587, f. 539.   Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II, trans. S. Reynolds, 2 vols. (London: Collins, 1973), II, 1105. 22   Guillaume Baudart, Les Guerres de Nassau, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: 1616), I, 96, and 131 where Poyet is called ‘sieur’; Roger Williams, A Briefe discourse of Warre (1590), 21, and idem, The Actions of the Lowe Countries (1618), 83–84, 98: page nos. are in The Works of Sir Roger Williams, ed. John X. Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) [hereafter WRW]. Cf. A. E. C. Simoni, ‘Walter Morgan Wolff: An Elizabethan Soldier and His Maps’, Quaerendo, 26 (1996), 66–8. Poyet is called ‘seigneur’ in Jean–François Le Petit, La grande chronique ancienne et moderne, de Hollande, Zelande, West–Frise, Utrecht, Frise, Overyssel et Groeningen, 2 vols. (Dordrecht: 1601), II, 266. Standard biographical and genealogical works shed little extra light on him and none on his actual title. 23   These are peak strengths: see ‘Estat et compte de la recepte et mise faicte […] pour le service de […] Conte Ludoviq de Nassau’, 1 June–8 Oct. 1572, in P. J. Blok (ed.), Correspondentie van en betreffende Lodewijk van Nassau en andere onuitgegeven documenten, Werken van het Historisch Genootshcap te Utrecht, nieuwe serie, 47 (1887), 91–7; cf. M. Barroux, J. Balteau, M. Prevost, et al (eds.), Dictionnaire de biographie française, 19 vols. to date (Paris: Librairie Letouzey & Ané, 1936–[2001]), V, 1102–3. 24   Andelot to M. de Montmorency, 30 May 1567, BN, MS Fr. 3179, f. 39; ‘Estat et compte’, 1 Jun.–8 Oct. 1572, in Blok, Correspondentie van en betreffende Lodewijk van Nassau, 93. 20 21

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Spain and the despatch of a royal army into the southern Netherlands. Genlis’s force was estimated at 40 ensigns of foot and 1500 horse, by a Spanish soldier, who was part of the force that intercepted and engaged it. But Genlis was defeated by the Spanish, taken prisoner, and later ignominiously strangled in his cell.25 Charles IX lost his nerve, fearing a Spanish invasion and a Catholic rebellion if he persisted in the planned invasion of the Netherlands, and a Huguenot rebellion if he now defaulted on the plan. The result was the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre (analysed in chapter 2). The death or imprisonment of most of the Huguenot leaders ensured that, for the next few years, the Huguenots could only fight to survive. Without French assistance, William of Orange, leading a German mercenary army to aid his brother, was driven back into Germany; the garrison of Mons was thus cut off and—eventually—forced to accept terms. But the mostly Huguenot garrison, despite their isolation, facing élite Spanish troops, made a defiant and resolute defence, that was preserved in French Protestant memory, both in France and in the countries of ‘the Refuge’. Over a century later, a Huguenot author recalled how ‘the brave Defence of Count Lodowick, assisted by Mounsieur [sic] de La Noüe … and many of the French Nobility, made the Siege of Mons very long and difficult.’26 This southern extension of the second Dutch revolt of 1572 demonstrates well how Huguenots, Dutch and English co–operated towards a common end. Although the grand design failed, it was French troops, both in the planning and execution, which formed the major ­element of Louis of Nassau’s army. Huguenot troops also rallied to Flushing, after it rebelled and formed part of the forces serving the State of Zeeland.27

25  Baron J. Kervyn de Lettenhove (ed.), Relations politiques des Pays–Bas et de l’Angleterre, sous le règne de Philippe II, 12 vols. (Brussels: Académie Royale, 1882– 1900), no. 2443, VI, 468–71 (at 468); cf. anon., ‘Discours de la deffaicte des troupes du S[eigneu]r de Genlis’, BN, MS Fr. 18587, ff. 541–3; Williams, Actions, in WRW, 92–94; Dictionnaire de biographie française, XVII, 577–79. 26   L. Aubery du Maurier, The lives of all the princes of Orange, from William the Great, founder of the Common–wealth of the United Provinces (1682), trans. T. Brown (London, 1693; Wing A4184), 32. Cf. Williams, Actions, in WRW, 87–92; and D. J. B. Trim, ‘Fighting “Jacob’s Wars”. The Employment of English and Welsh Mercenaries in the European Wars of Religion: France and the Netherlands, 1562–1610’, Ph.D. thesis (University of London, 2002), 112. 27   E.g., anon. reports to Lord Burghley, 12 and 16 July 1572, and convention between Magistrates of Flushing and Colonel Gilbert, 15 July 1572, in Lettenhove, Relations politiques, nos. 2435, 2438, 2437, VI, 454, 458, 457.



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Later, Dutch recruiters targeted Huguenot émigrés fleeing the St Bartholomew’s massacre.28 The following year, in the spring of 1573, the comte de Montgommery mustered an Anglo–French expedition in Plymouth to intervene in the fourth civil war (precipitated by the Saint Bartholomew’s Massacre). When peace in France was concluded in the summer of 1573, Montgommery sent some of his Huguenot and English troops, under his eldest son, to the Netherlands to aid William of Orange, who was facing a crisis. They arrived in July 1573; so, separately, did some other volunteers from France, including Poyet. All went straight into action, either in the garrison of the hard–pressed city of Haarlem, or in the army William was leading in operations intended to raise the Spanish siege of the city.29 Its capitulation in August, after William had been held off, was a major blow to the Dutch cause. Meanwhile, the prince had made Poyet his maître de camp general—commander of a separate field army. On the last day of August, less than a month after the fall of Haarlem, Poyet and his force stormed the city of St Geertruidenberg with a force of ‘English, Scottish, French and Flemish companies’, as one of his Welsh soldiers later recalled. It was the first city captured by the rebels for a year and a major boost to their morale.30 Poyet retained command of a separate force that included Huguenot troops; under his command it operated in the province of Zeeland, enjoying other successes over the Spanish, until his return to France in May 1574 (where the fifth war of religion had just broken out). As a Dutch historian recently argued, in 1572–73, Orange’s best troops

  Haultain and others to Burghley, 27 Sept. 1572, CSPF, X (1572–74), 181, no. 575.  D. J. B. Trim, ‘Immigrants, the Indigenous Community and International Calvinism’, in Nigel Goose and Lien Luu (eds.), Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart England (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 212; La Mothe Fénélon to Charles IX, 27 Feb. and 19 Mar. 1573, in A. Teulet (ed.), Correspondance diplomatique de Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fénélon: Ambassadeur de France en Angleterre de 1568 à 1575, 7 vols. (Paris & London: Bannatyne Club, 1838–40), nos. 303, 307, V, 263, 281; ‘Rekening’ of payments made to units of William of Orange’s army, 1572–5, Regionaal Archief Leiden [hereafter RAL], Archief der Secretarie 1033, ff. 12r, 43v; Le Petit, Grand chronique, II, 253–54; William of Orange to Poyet, 3 July 1573, Koninklijk Huisarchief, Den Haag [hereafter KHH], A 11/XIV I/12, f. 341r; Williams, Actions, in WRW, 135. 30   Commission to Poyet, 1 Aug. 1573, KHH, A 11/XIV I/12, ff. 2r–v; Williams, Actions, in WRW, 135–36, 138, 143, 240n.; Le Petit, Grand chronique, II, 266; Baudart, Guerres de Nassau, I, 131–32; Thomas Morgan to Lord Burghley, 13 Sept. 1573, in Lettenhove, Relations Politiques, no. 2625, X, 811–12; cf. Evans, ‘Commentary’, in WRW, 240. 28 29

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were his Huguenot soldiers.31 Their attachment to the prince’s cause is reflected in the fact that not all Huguenots left for home on the outbreak of the fifth civil war. Further north, in Holland, Huguenot companies served in William’s multi–national army, which operated in 1574 against the Spanish besiegers of Leiden; the successful defence of the city proved a decisive turning point in the history of the Dutch Revolt.32 Huguenot companies were still in service with the rebels when the mutiny of the Spanish army in the autumn of 1576 led to all the provinces of the Netherlands joining Holland and Zeeland in revolt against Spain. At this point the companies employed by the province of Holland had their own maître de Camp des compagnies françoises, one Antoine de La Garde, who had first served in the province’s pay in 1572.33 Thereafter, Huguenot soldiers would be in the service of a new entity, created in January 1577: the United Provinces of the Netherlands. Huguenot participation in the campaigns in the Netherlands during 1572–6 was the start of a close association with the Dutch rebels–cum– republic that lasted till the War of the Spanish Succession. French and Dutch Calvinists regarded the wars in France and the Netherlands, waged against the often–allied Catholic French and Spanish monarchies, as essentially the same conflict against idolatrous, anti–Christian religion. The Spanish had sent troops from the Netherlands to aid the crown in the first war of religion, so it was also in the French Protestants’ best interests to aid their fellow Calvinists in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the Netherlandish and Huguenot nobility were extensively intermarried. At the highest level, the Counts of Egmont, Lalaing, Hornes and Rennenburg and the Prince of Épinoy were all part of the extended Montmorency family, one of the greatest noble clans in France, and their cousins included such Huguenot leaders as the seigneur de Genlis and Admiral de Coligny, and possibly the Prince de Porcien. William of Orange married as his fourth wife Louise de 31   Le Petit, Grand chronique, II, 267; Williams, Actions, in WRW, 138, 142–43, 148; Baudart, Guerres de Nassau, I, 126; William of Orange to officers of Poyet’s army, 15 May 1574, KHH, A 11/XIV I/12, f. 396. K. W. Swart, Willem van Oranje en de Nederlandse Opstand 1572–1584, ed. Raymond Fagel, Henk van Nierop and M. E. H. N. Mout (Den Haag: Sdu, 1994), 70. 32   Huguenot companies: e.g., receipts of payments to Captains Duran and d’Aultrain, Leiden, 1574, RAL, Archief der Secretarie 1334 (unnumbered). 33  Muster rolls of companies of La Garde and Captain Duran, Nov. 1575, Het Nationaal Archief, Den Haag [hereafter NA], Collectie Ortell 35; F. J. G. ten Raa and F. de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger 1568–1795, vols. I–IV (Breda: Koninklijke Militaire Academie, 1911–18), I, 28.



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Coligny, the admiral’s daughter, having earlier wed (and buried) as his third wife, Charlotte de Bourbon, a cousin of Louis de Condé and Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre.34 But ties of kinship were also common at lower levels of the aristocracy; as David Potter shows, there were numerous lineages ‘which straddled the artificial divide between France and the Low Countries in the sixteenth century’.35 For ideological, strategic and familial reasons the Huguenots identified the Dutch Revolt as a cause worth fighting for, and the Netherlands drew many Huguenot soldiers. III The newly United Provinces of the Netherlands still had need of an army to fight Spain. Huguenots provided a ready source of recruits, especially since there was a relatively prolonged period of uneasy peace in France after the sixth war of religion concluded in 1577. With peace at home, some French soldiers found employment in Muscovy, though their confessional allegiance is uncertain.36 However, the majority of Huguenots who served abroad did so in Dutch pay. Three new companies of Huguenot infantry joined the Dutch army in the autumn of 1577 and a steady stream followed thereafter. From 1579, two French infantry regiments were in Dutch pay. In the summer of 1580 the number of Huguenots serving in the Netherlands briefly increased when Henry de Bourbon, Prince de Condé (who had succeeded his father, Louis, as prince of Condé on the latter’s death in battle in 1569, during the third war of religion), made a visit to the Netherlands for meetings with William of Orange. Condé and his entourage fought in one battle in northern Flanders before moving on to discuss affairs of state with Orange, after which he returned to France. For most of 1579 and 1580, François de La Noue 34  Parker, Dutch Revolt, 271, 273, genealogical tables I, III; Potter, ‘French Protestant Nobility in 1562’, 313 n.3: the title of Prince de Porcien was used by Antoine de Croy, who was, presumably, related to the great Netherlands’ noble family of Croy. 35  David Potter, ‘The Private Face of Anglo-French Relations in the Sixteenth Century: the Lisles and their French Friends’, in David Grummitt (ed.), The English Experience in France c. 1450–1558: War, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange (Burlington, Vt. & Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 208–9 at 208. 36  Graeme P. Herd, ‘General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries—A Scot in Seventeenth–Century Russian Service’, Ph.D. thesis (University of Aberdeen, 1993), 135.

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was the senior French captain in the Netherlands and indeed one of the most senior commanders in the Dutch army. La Noue rivals Coligny and Montgommery for the status of greatest Huguenot soldier of the sixteenth century. He had been one of the chief captains under Louis of Nassau at Mons in 1572, and arrived in the Netherlands as colonel of the first of the Huguenot infantry regiments, of 12 companies. Antoine de La Garde commanded the second, of 10 companies plus a company of horse. The total Huguenot establishment in Dutch pay was 2,500 men in the two regiments of foot, plus 400 horse, of which half were described as edelen or noblemen.37 In August 1578, de La Noue was appointed maréchal–de–camp by the States General and made commander–in–chief of the States’ forces in Flanders later that year; La Garde was La Noue’s sergeant-major and, like his superior, was appointed to the States’ Council of War. La Noue held command of the Dutch army of Flanders until his capture by the Spanish in the late spring of 1580. La Noue was regarded highly by his employers who, in addition to appointing him to senior army command, consulted him on wider strategic and political issues. He was seen by the Spanish as sufficient a threat that, after they captured him in May 1580 at the Battle of Ingelmunster, they held him in exceptionally harsh conditions. La Garde, meanwhile, commanded the defence of Breda in 1581, and for his efforts there was made governor of the important fortress of Bergen–op–Zoom. He held this post until he took the field in 1583 as Maistre de l’Artillerie of an army operating in northern Brabant and was killed by a cannon ball. Over thirty years later, La Garde’s services lived on in memory. A Dutch chronicler (in a work published in French and thus probably aimed partly at a Huguenot readership) called La Garde ‘one of the most valiant, wise and prudent Captains who was ever employed in the wars of the Low Countries’, one who ‘understood well the making of policy as well as the art of war’; he ‘remained faithful until death’.38

37   Le Petit, La Grande chronique, II, 410–11, 424. Prince of Orange to States General, 4 Jan. 1580, RAL, Stadsarchief 3021; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, I, 56–57, 61, 160. 38  See Henri Hauser, François de La Noue (1531–1591) (Paris: Hachette, 1892), 95–125; P. Kervyn de Volkaersbeke (ed.), Correspondance de François de La Noue, surnommé Bras–de–Fer, accompagnée de notes historiques et précédée de la vie de ce grand capitaine (Ghent, Brussels & Paris: n.p., 1854), 56–210 passim; La Noue to States General, 27 Dec. 1577, Archives des Affaires Étrangères, Paris, Mémoires et Documents Français [hereafter AAE, MDF] 242, ff. 32r–37r; Le Petit, La Grande



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La Garde died serving under a French Catholic soldier, the maréchal de Biron. This was because in early 1582 and then again in 1583 there was a great influx of French Catholic soldiers to Dutch service when the duc d’Anjou, the French king’s younger brother, briefly allied with the States General. Anjou eventually fell out with them over religious, political and financial issues, but the French troops he brought with him included some companies of Huguenots, under Jacques de Lorges, count de Montgommery (who, as seen earlier, had served William of Orange in 1573) and the count de Rochefoucault.39 In addition to this largely Catholic French army, there remained in Dutch pay, throughout Anjou’s time in the Low Countries and on into 1585, Huguenot companies, among them one of 100 lancers under de La Noue’s son, Odet, sieur de Téligny, who remained in the Netherlands until 1585, becoming ‘the terror of the Spanish’, as one historian puts it; he held from July 1584 the rank of general of the cavalry.40 In the early 1580s, Huguenots contributed to the efforts made by Dom António, pretender to the Portuguese throne, to oust Philip II of Spain—the chance to weaken the Habsburg king was an attraction to the Calvinist soldiers and sailors who took part. Much of this effort was naval, but in 1582–3 Huguenots served in the amphibious expedition led by Philippe Strozzi (who, ironically, in the third civil war had commanded royal troops against the Huguenots), which unsuccessfully attempted to seize the Azores for António. The expedition was partly mounted from La Rochelle, where António was based later in 1585.41

chronique, II, 410; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, I, 51, 244–5; Baudart, Guerres de Nassau, I, 438–39 at 439 (translation mine). 39   Lord Cobham to Sir Francis Walsingham, 6 June 1582, Thomas Doyley to idem, 22 June 1582, John Cobham to idem, 4 Sept. 1582, Sir John Norreys to idem, 2 Dec. 1582, Thomas Stokes to idem, 2 Dec. 1582, CSPF, XVI (1582), 68, 180, 302, 482–83, nos. 74, 180, 492–93. In light of the cross-border intermarriages highlighted above, it is possible that there were also some Huguenot officers in the regiment of Picardy (the French province bordering the southern Low Countries), which was sent to the United Provinces in the summer of 1583: Cobham to Walsingham, 3 July 1583, PRO, SP 78/10, f. 1r. 40  Hauser, François de La Noue, 124–25 (at 124); Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, I, 63–64, 108, 173, 183. 41   See Dietz, ‘Privateering in North–West European Waters, 424, 426, 428; Jean– François Dubost, La France italienne (Paris: Aubier, 1997), 203; Lord Cobham to Walsingham, 26 July 1582, CSPF, XVI (1582), 188, no. 187; António to Pope Sixtus V, Aug. 1585, BN, Collection Dupuy, MS 500, f. 152.

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In 1584, the wars of religion had resumed and from 1585 to 1598 the Huguenots’ attention was fixed on France, where Henri de Navarre battled to become Henri IV of France and to settle the civil wars. Few Huguenots served in foreign armies in these years; some fought with German forces, but only when they intervened in France. In 1587, Guillaume–Robert de La Marck, duc de Bouillon and sovereign Prince of Sedan, was joint commander of a large army, paid for largely by Elizabeth I of England, that entered France to aid Henri de Navarre and the Protestant cause. Ultimately defeated by Catholic forces under the duc de Guise, the army consisted mostly of mercenaries. First among them were Germans, led by Baron Dohna, both cavalry (the reiters, whose fame lent their name to the entire force in contemporary French usage) and infantry (landsknechts). There were also Swiss infantry, led by Bouillon; but some Huguenots served with them.42 Bouillon’s own status—German or Huguenot—is debateable. Sedan was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire (and Bouillon was disputed between France and the Empire), so he could be regarded as German. In practice, however, the rulers of the several small sovereign principalities on the borders of (or actually within) France were regarded by contemporaries as ‘foreign princes in France’: among them Guise, Bouillon and Navarre, but there were others as well. These princes were well–integrated into French aristocratic kinship networks, typically owned large estates within France, commanded French armies, served as gouverneurs of French provinces, and were integral members of the French court and political scene. Bouillon was himself a Calvinist (like his father before him); he was a cousin of Navarre and brother–in–law of one of the Huguenot military leaders, Henri de La Tour (who inherited the duchy on Guillaume–Robert’s death in 1588). Bouillon effectively was a Huguenot himself, not a German.43 In any event, the presence of French Calvinists serving 42   ‘Estat de larmee des reistres’ and ‘articles et capitulation’ of the army of the Prince de Conty, duc de Bouillon and Baron d’Hone (Dohna) [1587], and Bouillon to Henri de Navarre, 20 Aug. 1587, BN, MS Fr. 704, ff. 69–70, 86, 72; Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada (London: 1959), 146, 149–54. 43   E.g. ‘Princes estrangers en France’, AAE, MDF 28; ‘Mémoires sur les Maisons de Savoie, Lorraine, la Tour–Bouillon et Rohan’, AAE, MDF 186. Cf. David Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and French Army’, in Joseph Bergin and Laurence Brockliss (eds.), Richelieu and His Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 136–9; Arlette Jouanna,



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alongside his mercenaries does not invalidate the point that Huguenot soldiering from the mid–1580s was for 15 years occupied with France itself. When Huguenots and Dutch were in combat alongside each other, it was because the Dutch were intervening to aid their confreres in France.44 In 1598 the Treaty of Vervins ended the war with Spain and the same year the Edict of Nantes guaranteed freedom of religion for the members of France’s reformed churches and provided royal salaries to pay Huguenot pastors; it also, as a guarantee against persecution by future kings, created a state within a state, allowing the Huguenots the right to maintain troops in some 200 towns, 100 of which could be fortified and their garrisons paid by the crown. Although very controversial, the terms of the Edict induced both Huguenots and Catholics to stop fighting.45 With peace at home, the attention of Huguenot soldiers once again turned outwards. Some may have served alongside Catholics in one of two French contingents under the Holy Roman Emperor against the Turks: one recruited in 1597, the other (made up entirely of noble volunteers) in 1599.46 Huguenots may also have been among the French troops who served in Muscovy in the early 1600s: one French company distinguished themselves in the service of Boris Gudunov (c.1605); a corps of 5,000 Scots, French and Swedish soldiers served the Muscovite government from 1608 to 1611. That the Scots and Swedes would have been Protestants may give a clue about the confessional allegiance of the French.47 As in the 1570s and 1580s, there is no question that most Huguenot soldiers preferred to fight for fellow Protestants: from 1599, the Netherlands once again drew them.

Le devoir de révolte: La noblesse française et la gestation de l’État moderne (1559–1661) (Paris: Fayard, 1989), 156, 171; Carroll, Noble Power, 14–23, 39, 50–51, 99; Frank Delteil, ‘Henri de la Tour, duc de Bouillon: Recherche récente et compléments’, Bull. SHPF 132 (1986), 79–98. 44   Odet de La Noue to Turenne, 8 May 1591, Bibliothèque de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, Paris, MS 7562, f. 21r; Howell A. Lloyd, The Rouen Campaign, 1590–1592 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 184. 45   See the discussion in Holt, French Wars of Religion, 166–70. 46   Trim, ‘Huguenot soldiering c.1560–1685’, 19. 47   Herd, ‘General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries’, 138–41. The captain of the Frenchmen serving Boris Gudunov was one Jacques Margeret (ibid., 139)—the Margerets may have been a Calvinist family as in 1713 one Paul Margarett was a surgeon in Colonel Bland’s regiment of Horse in England: C. E. Lart, ‘The Huguenot Regiments’, HSP 9 (1911), 527. (I am indebted for this reference to Matthew Glozier).

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The surviving rebellious provinces of the Netherlands had in the preceding 15 years become firmly established; their considerable financial muscle would allow the Dutch republic to punch above its weight and maintain a disproportionate war effort for the next 120 years. Indeed, in the 1590s Dutch troops had aided Henri IV in France, against the Catholic League and its Spanish allies.48 The republic also, in the 1590s, reorganised its army under the guidance of Maurice of Nassau, William of Orange’s son and eventual successor as commander–in– chief. Maurice’s reforms were administrative, logistical and tactical and made the Dutch army—the staatse leger—a model for the rest of Europe. But the northern Netherlands lacked the population base necessary to recruit enough troops for its military purposes and so the United Provinces made up the difference with mercenaries. English, Scottish and German mercenary contingents were key elements of the staatse leger throughout its history.49 And with the settlement of the Wars of Religion by the Edict of Nantes, French mercenaries, too, became an integral part of the States’ army. In 1596 the States General had sought a ‘French nobleman of quality [and] of the religion’ to raise a regiment in France whose ‘officers and soldiers … shall profess the religion’, but conditions then obtaining in France made recruiting this regiment impossible.50 By 1599, circumstances had changed and the Dutch found the men they wanted: a Huguenot infantry regiment numbering some 1,500 men, commanded by Odet de La Noue–Téligny (who, thus, resumed service in Dutch pay), was shipped into the Netherlands.51 Téligny and his men distinguished themselves the next year in fierce fighting on the strategically vital island of Bommel.52 In January 1601, command of the French   Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 23, 307 et seq.   Trim, ‘Fighting “Jacob’s Wars” ’; H. L. Zwitzer, De militie van den staat: Het leger van de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden (Amsterdam: Van Soeren, 1991), ch. 3, esp. pp. 39–42. 50   Quoted in Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 41 (‘Franchois Edelman van qualiteyt, die religie’; ‘officieren ende soldaten … daerse professie doen vande religie’). 51  States General summary of extraordinary military expenditure, 1599, NA, Collectie Aanwinsten 879, ff. 6v, 11r; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 51 164, 352–3. 52  Guillaume–Louis of Nassau to Jean of Nassau, 26 June and 10 July 1599, in G. Groen van Prinsterer (ed.), Archives ou correspondance inédite de la maison d’OrangeNassau, séries 2, vol. 1, 1584–1599 (Utrecht: Kemink, 1857), 432–34; Jan Orlers, 48 49



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regiment passed to Henri de Coligny, seigneur de Châtillon–sur–Loing (grandson of the Admiral de Coligny).53 In August that year Henri de Châtillon commanded a detached, multi–national force of 20 companies (of which only six were French) sent to reinforce the besieged fortress of Ostend.54 The French contingent, which included many ‘persons of quality’, suffered heavy casualties, including Châtillon who, in the autumn of 1601, was decapitated by a canon ball.55 Command of the French regiment passed to Léonidas de Béthune, seigneur de Congy, though that of the Huguenot troops in Ostend seems to have been exercised by Jean de Sau, Châtillon’s lieutenant– colonel. Also commanding was Jacques de Rocques, baron de Montesquieu, who won the praise of the Governor of Ostend, General Sir Francis Vere, for his ‘worth and valour’. Meanwhile, recruiting was stepped up in France to replace the losses—and so successfully were Huguenots enlisted that by the spring of 1602 there were 21 infantry companies, with a total establishment of over 3,000 men. The French regiment was, therefore, split in two, with Guillaume d’Hallot, seigneur de Dommarville et Guichery, colonel of the new regiment.56 French companies were rotated in and out of Ostend throughout the three– year siege of the city, until it eventually fell in the autumn of 1604. Command of the Huguenot contingent in the beleaguered fortress was exercised in 1602 by Captain Jacques du Fort; in 1603 by Captain Brusse; and in 1604 by Lieutenant–Colonel de Rocques. Huguenots also served the garrison as engineers and gunners.57 Meanwhile, Den Nassauschen Lauren–crans: Beschrijvinge ende af–beeldinge van alle de Victorien, so te Water als te Lande, die Godt Almachtich de […] Staten der Vereenichde Neder– landen verleent hefte (Leyden, 1610), 129; Agrippa d’Aubigné, L’Histoire universelle (3 vols., Maillé: 1620), III, 526. 53   State van oorlog (military budget), 1601, NA, Archief Raad van State 1226, ff. 132r, 135v; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 356–7. 54  J. Holcroft to Robert Cecil, 16 Aug. 1601, in HMC, Salisbury MSS, XI, 346; Francis Vere et al, The Commentaries of Sir Francis Vere, ed. W. Dillingham (1657), published in E. Arber and T. Seccombe (eds.), Stuart Tracts 1603–1693, intro. C. H. Firth (New York: Cooper Square, 1964), 178. 55  Anon., Histoire Remarquable et veritable de ce qui s’est passé par chacun jour au siege de la ville d’Ostende, de part & d’autre jusques à present (Paris: 1604), 17r (‘personnes de qualité’), 29v; Vere, Commentaries, 177, 192, 202; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 165. 56   Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 164–6; Vere, Commentaries, 202; States General accounts for extraordinary military expenditure, 1602, NA, Aanwinsten 879, f. 30r; States General, warrant, 23 Nov, 1602 and States General to Henri IV, Feb. 1603, in Resolutiën der Staten–Generaal van 1576 tot 1609, ed. H. Rijperman (The Hague: Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, 1950), XII (1602–1603), 187, 489. 57   Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 276–9.

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in  August 1603, Léonidas de Béthune had been killed near St Geertruidenberg in tragic circumstances—if not exactly by ‘friendly fire’, by ‘friendly force’: a pike thrust from an English soldier, while Béthune was trying to break up a quarrel between members of his regiment and one of the States’ English regiments. This was not the first time there had been quarrels between the two ‘nations’ of English and French in the States’ army, but Béthune was the highest-profile casualty. In the autumn, he was succeeded as colonel of the first French regiment by Gaspard III de Coligny, brother of the late Henri and his successor as seigneur (and later duc) de Châtillon. Châtillon’s close cooperation with English troops in a campaign around Sluys the following spring surely helped to heal the wounds of Béthune’s death. The following year, when Guillaume d’Hallot was killed at the Battle of Mulheim (9 October 1605), he was replaced as colonel of the second regiment by Syrius de Béthune, Léonidas’s son.58 Thereafter, there was consistently a strong Huguenot presence in the States’ army. In 1608–9 the United Provinces negotiated the Twelve Years’ Truce with Spain and took the chance to retrench many mercenary units; that the French regiments were kept in pay, with the same number of companies, is testimony to their value to the Dutch army.59 Gaspard de Coligny–Châtillon was appointed Colonel–General of the Infantry in 1614, an office he held until 1638.60 In 1613, Syrius de Béthune was replaced as colonel of the second French regiment by his lieutenant–colonel, Jean Antoine de Saint–Simon, baron de Cour­ tomer; in 1615, a third Huguenot regiment was added, under the command of François de Laubespine, sieur d’Hauterive and marquis de Châteauneuf.61 Further, the Huguenot regiments are known to have kept their strength up by recruiting in France, so that any dilution of their ranks with locals must have been small—these were, and they 58   William Browne to Robert Sidney, 30 July and 10 Aug. 1603, in HMC, Dudley & De L’Isle MSS, III, 44, 48; Orlers, Nassauschen Lauren–crans, 130; States General resolution, 14 Nov. 1603, in Resolutiën der Staten–Generaal, XII, 517; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 83, 166, 367; David Parrott, Richelieu’s Army: War, Government and Society in France, 1624–1642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 29; Anon., Reduction de la ville de l’Escluse (Paris: 1604), 5; Dictionnaire de biographie française, VIII, 802. 59   Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 164. 60   Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, III, 187; Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 29. 61   Not Bertrand de Vignolles, Seigneur de Casaubon (pace Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 29): see Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, III, 187–8; and ‘The forme of battaile of horse and foot … ordered by … Prince Maurice, before Dornick’, 11 Sept. 1621, in John Cruso, Militarie Instructions for the Cavallrie (Cambridge: 1632), pt. iv, ch. 8, fig. 14.



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remained, French regiments, because Frenchmen constantly enlisted to serve in them.62 For the Huguenot nobility, it became virtually the done thing to visit the Netherlands and serve at least a season: from 1600 on with Maurice; and, after his death in 1625, with his brother and successor, Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange. Henri IV actively encouraged this. An English colonel with many years in Dutch service observed that the king regularly urged his nobles to gain military experience by serving the Prince of Orange; consequently, ‘he made the Low Countries swarm every year for three or four months with his Princes, Nobility and his Gentry’.63 And the pattern set in Henri IV’s reign outlasted him. To be sure, from the late 1610s, Catholics were among the French troops in Dutch pay; but Calvinists predominated.64 Henri, duc de Rohan, colonel–général of the Swiss Guards, and his younger brother, Benjamin, visited the Netherlands in the summer of 1606 to fight for Maurice. This did incur Henri IV’s displeasure for France was supposed to be neutral, so one of the grands (and an important official of the French army) serving against Spain was extremely provocative. Yet Rohan did not return home until the campaign season had concluded, leaving only in November.65 Frédéric–Maurice de La Tour, the new duc de Bouillon and a nephew of Maurice of Nassau, after whom he may have been named (their mother was Maurice’s half-sister, Elizabeth of Nassau), served in the States’ army from 1621 to 1635; his service included holding the important office of Governor of Maastricht, a post occupied during the Spanish siege in 1634. Bouillon’s younger brother, Henri de La Tour, vicomte de Turenne (later the celebrated maréchal de France) also started his military career under Maurice of Nassau. Many other young French nobles either did likewise, or served 62   E.g., extraordinary military accounts, 1605, NA, Aan. 879, f. 68v; Browne to Lisle, 15 June 1606, in HMC, De L’Isle & Dudley MSS, III, 282; and this was standard practice for foreign regiments in the staatse leger, cf. Trim, ‘Fighting “Jacob’s Wars” ’, ch. 7. 63   Lord Wimbledon, ‘The Demonstrance of Cavallerye’, BL, Royal MS 18.C.xxiii, f. 74, printed in Charles Dalton, Life and Times of General Sir Edward Cecil, Viscount Wimbledon (2 vols, London; Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1885), II, 329. Henri IV’s deliberate encouragement of French service in the Dutch army was also recognised by contemporary Catholic soldiers, e.g. cf. ‘Articles concernant le service du roy et l’estat et necessité de ses affaires en son armée’, 17 Sept. 1621, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris [hereafter BSG], MS 847, f. 108v 64  Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 31. 65   Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army’, 170; Browne to Lisle, 12 Nov. 1606, HMC, Dudley & De L’Isle MSS, III, 329; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 83.

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in the staatse leger at some point, including the authors of many influential military treatises published from the 1610s to the 1640s. A strong aristocratic component was typical of the Huguenot units in Dutch pay; so, too, was the presence of sons and grandsons of men who had fought for William in the 1570s and 1580s (including Téligny and the grandsons of the Admiral Coligny). There were particular influxes of such volunteers in 1606–7, when the Dutch republic was threatened by a great offensive directed by the celebrated Spanish general, Ambrogio Spínola, and increased its army in response; and in the early 1620s, following the resumption of hostilities between the United Provinces and Spain at the end of the Twelve Years’ Truce.66 The strong family connections and high aristocratic component suggest that, as with the Huguenot units of the 1560s, recruiting for Huguenot units in Dutch pay in the seventeenth century was done via affinity connections, including kinship networks and ‘extended clienteles’.67 VI Meanwhile back in France, the Huguenot parallel state was a major irritant in the French body politic. The regents of the young Louis XIII and then the king himself (after reaching his majority) sought to restrict the political and military rights of the Huguenots as part of a general programme of increasing royal power. Huguenots repeatedly took up arms but unlike in the period 1562–98, never with the complete support of French Calvinists; the scale of Huguenot mobilisation and military activity in the seventeenth century did not match that of the sixteenth century and, as Alan James suggests, the history of Huguenot warfare in France in this period is ‘largely one of internal divisions, impotence and futility.’ In the 1610s, Rohan, with his brother, 66   Cf. Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 28–30, 37; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 83, 277, 279 n.31, 364–5; Trim, ‘Fighting “Jacob’s Wars” ’, 188, 337–8; Browne to Lisle, 15 June 1606, HMC, De L’Isle & Dudley MSS, III, 282; list of French captains in the 1607 state van oorlog, NA, Archief Staten-Generaal, 8043, unfoliated; entries in album amicorum of Bernard ten Broecke Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, MS 133.M.63; William Crosse, A generall historie of the Netherlands. Newly revewed, corrected, and supplied with observations omitted in the first impression, by Ed. Grimeston. Continued from the yeare 1608 till the yeare 1627 by William Crosse. The second impression (London: 1627), 1436; Carleton to Chamberlain, 11 July 1623, in Dudley Carleton to John Chamberlain, 1603–1624: Jacobean Letters, ed. M. Lee, Jr. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 305. 67  Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 29.



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Benjamin, seigneur de Soubise, and other Huguenot warrior–nobles, including the duc de La Force, acting against Bouillon’s advice, led the Huguenots in ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against the regents for Louis XIII, their conflict becoming part of a wider period of civil war, the so-called ‘revolt of the princes’ (which include Henri II Bourbon, Prince de Condé who had, however, abjured his faith as a young child).68 In the 1620s Rohan led the Huguenots in three more wars against the encroaching power of crown. The first, from 1620–22, ended with the Treaty of Montpellier in October 1622 (and Rohan’s brief imprisonment in 1623); though not the last war, it ‘broke the back of the Protestant state and army.’ Nevertheless, in 1625 Rohan and Soubise persuaded the citizens of La Rochelle to defy the king and a wider rising ensued in the west of France and in Languedoc; a short-lived peace in 1626 was followed in 1627 by more sustained hostilities that revolved around the siege of La Rochelle (1627–8); Soubise commanded in the city in 1625-6 and commanded a Huguenot contingent as part of English operations (ultimately unsuccessful) to relieve the siege of La Rochelle. The city’s capitulation on 1 November 1628 was not quite the end of the war, for, in Languedoc, Rohan and his troops and the garrisons of some Huguenot towns held out until Rohan and the French Reformed Churches finally submitted to Louis by the terms of the Peace of Alès, on 27 June 1629. But the English failure to relieve La Rochelle and the city’s fall effectively marked the death knell of Huguenot armed resistance within France. Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, having destroyed the political and military rights of the Huguenots, nonetheless continued to allow a limited right of public worship as well as liberty of conscience; however, when the crown eventually decided some decades later to revoke the Edict of Nantes, the Huguenots no longer had the means to resist.69 Huguenot soldiering was henceforth outside France, but even in the 1620s Huguenots continued to soldier in foreign armies, not least 68  James, ‘Huguenot Militancy’, 210, 215–16; Holt, French Wars of Religion, 179–81. 69   See papers concerning Rohan’s imprisonment in Montpellier, Feb.–Mar. 1623, Soubise to the inhabitants of La Rochelle, 13 Jan. 1625, and papers concerning the resistance and final capitulation in Languedoc, Mar.–June 1629 (including copy of the articles of the Peace of Alès), LPL, MS 3473, ff. 71r–78r, 112r, 210r–17r; Holt, French Wars of Religion, 182–88 (at 187), 190–93; Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army’, 170; James, ‘Huguenot Militancy’, 211–13, 216–23.

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because many French Protestants believed Rohan’s resistance was futile and would only poison the king and cardinal against their Reformed subjects. In the 1620s, the Dutch republic was on good terms with the French crown which, under Richelieu, was increasingly anti–Spanish. This coincidence of interests meant that when, in 1627–8, English naval squadrons and troops aided the defenders of the great Huguenot stronghold of La Rochelle in the last of the wars of religion, they did so against the urging of their Dutch allies. The Dutch supported the French crown against Calvinist militants, because civil war in France reduced the support France could lend the republic against the common Habsburg enemy. Nevertheless, the Dutch were no less committed to the Protestant cause (‘the common cause’ as Protestant writers of all nationalities regularly referred to it) and continued to recruit heavily from among the Huguenots, who, back in France, increasingly faced restrictions on their right to worship. Significantly, for those Protestants in the French army, there were obstacles in the path of promotion. It is true that Richelieu appointed Châtillon, Rohan and Bouillon, and other Huguenot nobles (including La Force and Charles de Blanchfort de Créqui), to high commands in the French army. Châtillon, Créqui and La Force each became Marshal of France. In the autumn of 1629 command of two ‘of 3 great Armies’ assigned to the Italian front were vested in Créqui and La Force; Châtillon and La Force were (as we shall see) given army commands on the northern frontier in 1635 and 1638; and Châtillon was valued enough that he was granted 50,000 livres by the crown in 1636. Now, none had a good record in command of French armies (as opposed to French troops serving in or with the Dutch army): in 1635 Viscount Scudamore, the English ambassador in Paris, reported home that Châtillon and La Force, then in joint command of an army operating in alliance with Prince Frederick Henry, had sought excuses to avoid taking the field. The same two (or so a contemporary alleged), when facing an invading Spanish army in 1638, ‘stood with arms folded a mile and a half from their enemies and did nothing with twenty–two thousand foot and seven thousand horse’.70 Thus, it may seem, on the face of it, that elite Huguenot soldiers, at any rate, faced no penalties for 70   Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army’, 145, 157, 163, 170; Thomas Edmondes to Elizabeth, Electress Palatine, 29 Oct. 1629, Folger Shakespeare Library [hereafter FSL], MS X.c.60, fo. [2r]; Scudamore to the Secretary of State, 18 Sept. 1635 and early Oct. 1635, BL, Add. MS 35097, ff. 5r, 7r.



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their faith, or at least received only their just deserts from the French government. In fact, however, none of the Huguenots appointed to army command ever received Richelieu’s full trust. The elevation to army command of Bouillon simply reflected the fact that he was a sovereign prince and could not be ignored; his younger brother, Turenne, one of the most celebrated French generals of the seventeenth century, had to wait until after Richelieu’s death in 1642 to receive a full command and be made maréchal. Châtillon’s son, Gaspard IV de Coligny–Châtillon, only received high military office after he abjured his faith in 1643.71 Although Rohan was employed as an army commander by Richelieu in 1635–6, the cardinal continued to distrust him. In March 1637, he was held responsible for the collapse of the French army in the Valtelline, although David Parrott shows that, in fact, royal officials who starved it of money were more culpable than Rohan. The criticism of Châtillon and La Force in 1638 was equally harsh, because their army was much weaker than its establishment strength; thus, as Parrott argues, their cautious strategy had been, ‘in the circumstances … entirely justified’.72 Clearly, however, neither had received unqualified support. As for Châtillon’s ‘gift’ from the king in 1636, it was actually a reimbursement (and probably only a partial one) of his own expenditure on the army under his command (with La Force as his deputy) in Flanders in 1635—when, contrary to Scudamore’s claims of inactivity or reluctance, the French force, with their Dutch allies, had been active enough ‘to fill the residents of the southern Netherlands with fear’.73 It is impossible to know how many of the 12,000 French troops were Huguenots, but Châtillon’s men joined the Dutch in a wave of looting

 Thomas de Longueville, Marshall Turenne, intro. Francis Lloyd (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1907); Dictionnaire de biographie française, VIII, 804; Mark Bannister, Condé in Context: Ideological Change in Seventeenth-century France (Oxford: Legenda, 2000), 47–48 72   Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army’, 157, 163–4 (at 163), 170. For the army’s strength, see Bernhard Kroener, ‘Die Entwicklung der Truppenstarken in den franzosischen Armeen zwischen 1635 und 1661’, in Konrad Repgen (ed.), Forschungen und Quellen zur Geschichte des Dreißigjährigen Krieges, Schriftenreihe der Vereinigung zur Erforschung der Neueren Geschichte, 12 (Munster: Aschendorff, 1981), 202. 73   Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army’, 170–71, 145; René Vermeir, In staat van oorlog: Filips IV en de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, 1629–1648 (Maastricht: Shaker, 2001), 117. 71

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and plundering that drew anguished (and overstated) contemporary complaints about the ‘horrible sacrileges, tyrannies and inhumanities, practiced against men, women, girls and nuns, such as posterity will be able to never believe that had been perpetrated among Christians in any century’.74 It is noteworthy that both French and Dutch troops profaned and then burned Catholic churches and other sacred sites and particularly targeted icons of the Virgin Mary, and that the two Huguenot commanders of the royal French army apparently made no attempt to check their men.75 This suggests enduring Calvinist proclivities, and thus may explain why they were not fully trusted. Indeed, Châtillon’s preferment to command in 1635 in Flanders reflected the fact that he had been the successful commander of the large (and mostly Huguenot) French contingent in Dutch employ, including in the Spanish Netherlands, and continued to be on good personal terms with the Prince of Orange. The French government could hardly do other than appoint him to command an army operating with Frederick Henry against the Spanish army of Flanders.76 His appointment also reflected Châtillon’s bitter, inherited feud with the Guise clan (dating back to the 1560s), while the appointments of La Force and Créqui also reflected the notorious antipathy between the Guise and the Huguenot nobility in general. Richelieu had his own inherited feud with the Guise and consistently made appointments to high military command in order to keep them marginalized. Richelieu’s appointments of Huguenots to senior army rank reveal, not generosity to Huguenots, but instead the cardinal’s acceptance of military reality and his strategy to exalt himself and diminish his rivals.77 Increasing religious repression in France led to a gradual but intensified trend amongst the Huguenot nobility of conversion to Roman Catholicism, not least among those who wanted the nobleman’s traditional military career, with its opportunities for gain both intangible (acquiring an honourable reputation) and tangible (appointment to lucrative offices, plunder, etc). But progression in the military h ­ ierarchy was increasingly difficult for those who persisted with Protestantism. 74  Quoted in Vermeir, In staat van oorlog, 117; see Kroener, ‘Entwicklung der Truppenstarken’, 197–98. 75  Vermeir, In staat van oorlog, 117. 76   Frederick Henry to Châtillon, 18 March 1635, and Châtillon to Frederick Henry, n.d., BSG, MS 3338, ff. 8r, 249r. 77   Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army’, 155–8, esp. 157; Carroll, Noble Power, 124–37.



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We have seen that Gaspard IV de Coligny-Châtillon and Turenne were among those who converted, but there was also considerable pressure on minor and middle-ranking Huguenot nobles who wanted to serve as soldiers; this is well brought out, along with the dynamics of abjuration or ‘passive conversion’, and how these could divide families, in R. A. Mentzer’s careful study of the Lacger family of Langudeoc.78 But while many Calvinist nobles converted, many others were still unwilling to give up either their faith or a military career. With promotion opportunities in the king’s army dwindling, the staatse leger provided an admirable alternative, not least since the States’ recruiting increased hand–in–hand with the intensification of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48). In the spring of 1625 the Dutch took on a fourth French infantry regiment, when a unit commanded by Henri de Nogaret de La Valette, comte de Candalle, which had been in Venetian service, was taken into the United Provinces’ employ. A fifth regiment was added in 1634, under the command of Hercule, baron de Charnacé. In the mid–1630s the French corps commanded by Châtillon, serving in the main Dutch field army in Flanders, consisted of all five infantry regiments, plus four cavalry squadrons.79 This was the high water mark of the Huguenot contribution to the Dutch army; throughout the 1640s, as the war wound down, and then after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the staatse leger’s strength was consistently and considerably condensed. The Huguenot regiments were all kept in service, but the unit establishments were reduced. The baron de Courtomer had been replaced as colonel of the second regiment in November 1629 by Isaac de Perponcher, sieur de Maisonneuve; he was replaced in turn by Charles de Rechine–Voisin, sieur des Loges in April 1645. The sieur d’Hauterive kept command of the third regiment throughout the Thirty Years’ War, but in April 1639, Candalle was succeeded as colonel of the fourth regiment by Philippe– Henri de Fleury de Culan, sieur de Buat (who was replaced in turn, two years later, by Louis d’Estrades). Charnacé ceded command of the fifth regiment in November 1637 to Louis du Plessis, sieur de  Raymond A. Mentzer, Jr, Blood and Belief: Family Survival and Confessional Identity among the Provincial Huguenot Nobility (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1994), 74–80, 168–76. 79  ‘Estat des Troupes de l’armée de Messieurs les Estats’, BSG, MS 3338, ff. 179v–82v. 78

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Douchant. Finally, Gaspard III de Coligny–Châtillon was colonel of the first regiment until his final retirement from Dutch employ in 1638; the command passed initially to Maurice de Coligny, before the Colonel–General’s son, Gaspard IV de Coligny–Châtillon became colonel in 1644 (having by this time, as noted above, converted to Catholicism).80 The Perponcher–Maisonneuve and Hauterive families retained command of two regiments into the 1670s.81 Huguenot soldiers also served the Dutch outside the staatse leger. In the 1630s there were many French troops in the employ of the Dutch West Indies Company. This private trading company was charged with conducting Dutch operations against the Portuguese and Spanish possessions in the New World; a large garrison in Pernambuco was definitely Huguenot, not just French, as we know from the correspondence of its chaplain, part of which has survived. To serve these Huguenot troops in South America, French churches were built in Pernambuco and Recife.82 VII The Dutch Republic was the biggest seventeenth–century employer of French Protestants up to 1688. Huguenot soldiers did not, however, serve only the States–General. In 1610 the United Provinces and France had successfully waged the brief Jülich succession war to install a Protestant (and thus anti–Habsburg) claimant as Duke of Cleves– Jülich; the French corps, which included (though it was not composed only of) Calvinists, had been commanded by Henri, duc de Rohan. (The Dutch corps also included some 3,000 Huguenots, in the regiments of Châtillon and Béthune—the latter under its then lieutenant– colonel, de Courtomer).83 In the early 1620s, Huguenots fought for the Elector Palatine in his unsuccessful struggle against the Holy Roman

  Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, III, 188–90, IV, 246–50.   John Stapleton, Jr, ‘Forging a Coalition Army: William III, the Grand Alliance, and the Confederate Army in the Spanish Netherlands, 1688–1697’, Ph.D. diss. (The Ohio State University, 2003), 260n. The Perponcher family ultimately settled in the Dutch Republic, becoming naturalized: ibid., 261n. 82   B. N. Teensma (ed.), Dutch–Brazil (Rio de Janeiro: 1999), vol. III, Vincent Joachim Soler’s Seventeen Letters 1636–1643, passim, but esp. 7, 84, 124–5. 83   Simon Stevin (Dutch military engineer), treatise on Jülich campaign, c.1611, BN, MS Fr. 654, ff. 7r–45 at 24v–25v; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, III, 14. 80 81



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Emperor.84 In the late 1620s and on into the 1630s, others served King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the Republic of Venice, and the Protestant prince and military entrepreneur, Bernard, Duke of Saxe– Weimar. Among those who served Gustavus Adolphus were the sieur d’Aurignac, later the author of an influential military treatise, the Livre de guerre. Venice recruited one Huguenot regiment in the mid–1620s, and Rohan and his entourage served the Serene Republic in 1630— Rohan contracted to raise a 6,000–strong corps in France for the Serene Republic’s service; in the end, he was unable to meet his obligations, but he and his entourage were in Venetian service through the campaign seasons of 1630 and 1631. Rohan ended his long and varied military career as a gentleman volunteer with Saxe–Weimar, being mortally wounded at the battle of Rheinfelden (28 February 1638).85 The Elector Palatine’s younger son, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, took several Huguenot officers with him to England in the 1640s, where they served in the English Civil War. Other Huguenot soldiers joined the army of Charles II after the Restoration, among them Louis Duras, a nephew of the great Turenne. Although his uncle (and brothers) had eventually converted to Catholicism, Duras maintained his Protestant faith, which explains his taking service in Protestant England. His military experience stood him in good stead in England and he held a number of offices, eventually rising to become commander-in-chief of the army. He was ennobled as Earl of Feversham and in 1685, while the Edict of Fontainebleau deprived his fellow Protestants in France of the rights granted by the Edict of Nantes, Feversham superintended the successful campaign against the Duke of Monmouth’s rebellion; contemporary opinion differed as to his contribution to the eventual victory, but he did bear responsibility for the campaign.86 He was James II’s commander-in-chief during William III’s invasion of England in the autumn of 1688, but quickly wrote to William to assure him that

84   Probably seconded from the French regiments of the staatse leger: cf. Olivier Chaline, ‘La bataille de la Montagne Blanche 8 novembre 1620’, in Lucien Bély and Isabelle Richefort (eds), L’Europe des traités de Westphalie: Esprit de la diplomatie et diplomatie de l’esprit (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), 318. 85  Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 29, citing Aurignac, Livre de guerre (1663), as P. Azan (ed.), Un tacticien du XIIe siècle (Paris, 1904); H. Layard, ‘The duc de Rohan’s Relations with the Republic of Venice, 1630–1637’, HSP, 4 (1891–93), 218–24, 290; Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army’, 170. 86   Philip Rambaut, ‘A Study in Misplaced Loyalty: Louis de Durfort–Duras, Earl of Feversham (1640–1709)’, in Glozier and Onnekink, War, Religion and Service, 47–58.

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he would not oppose the Prince’s advance.87 Perhaps Feversham’s greatest contribution to British history was his order to James II’s army to disarm and disband in the face of William of Orange’s invasion, which played a key role in ensuring that the ‘Glorious Revolution’ was almost bloodless. By the 1660s and 1670s, individual Huguenot officers had also begun to find employment, if only short–term, in the armies of German and Scandinavian Protestant princes. Others are known to have served, briefly, in Hungary, combating a renewed Turkish threat. This trend reflected the increasing difficulties of both French Calvinists in general, and the Huguenot nobility (with its traditions of military service) in particular, in the face of an ever more repressive religious regime, though not all those who took up service abroad had faced sanctions in the French army because of their confessional stance, or at least not directly.88 However, in the 1650s through to the early 1670s, foreign employment of Huguenots seems to have been mostly of individual officers and specialists with the exception of those in Dutch pay. Meanwhile, the power of the French monarchy had been greatly expanded by a new king, Louis XIV, who in 1685 was to revoke the Edict of Nantes, ending France’s less than nine decades of confessional pluralism. By then, Louis and his two great ministers, Louvois and Colbert, had already reshaped the French army and navy, making them into the most powerful in Christendom. France first flexed its new military muscles in 1672, when it invaded and nearly overwhelmed the Dutch republic. French Protestants were finding life in France ever more difficult, even though the Revocation was still thirteen years off; for them, it was a bitter blow to see their traditional ally brought low by the same army that supplied the persecutors of the dragonnades. For European Protestants at the time, it seemed an awful blow. Gilbert Burnet, a Scottish bishop who became one of the counsellors of William of Orange, later recalled that Louis XIV and his army poured through the Dutch defences ‘like a land flood.’ With collective memory of the Reformation informing his views, Burnet, a few years

87  Feversham to Dartmouth, 13 Dec. 1688, encl. Feversham to Orange, Yale University, Beinecke Library, MS Osborn fb.190, vol. 4, no. L.345. 88   E.g., Brian Strayer and Walter C. Utt, ‘Un “Faux frère”: le sieur de Tillières et les réfugiés huguenots aux Provinces Unies, 1685–1688’, Bull. SHPF, 150 (2004), 507–16 (at 509), which is to be preferred to the brief account of ‘Tellières’ [sic] in W. A. Speck, ‘The Orangist Conspiracy against James II’, HJ 30 (1987), 453–62 (at 457–9).



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later in the early 1700s, wrote that ‘this was the fifth great crisis, under which the whole Protestant religion was brought’.89 Although Turenne, veteran of Dutch service but by this time a convert to Catholicism, ‘assisted’ Louis in command in the field, it is notable that numerous Huguenots deserted from the French army during the invasion. In its aftermath the Dutch were shaken out of their complacency and realised that citizen militias could not protect them from a large modern army. There was once again a large–scale employer wanting to recruit Huguenots. Five Huguenot infantry regiments fought against their king during the Franco–Dutch War (1672–8). Although after the conflict these dedicated French regiments were disbanded, many French officers and men remained in the States’ service in nominally Dutch regiments. A good example is Jacques–Louis, comte de Noyelles, who began his military career as an ensign in William of Orange’s élite Blue Guards regiment. In 1674 he was promoted captain in the same regiment and, in 1681, became its colonel. He eventually rose to the rank of general, becoming a naturalized Dutch citizen.90 Of course, a new wave of military emigration followed the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes; common religious sympathies ensured that the refugees found a ready welcome in the Dutch Republic, albeit employment opportunities in the Dutch army remained limited until 1688—the year of the Glorious Revolution, but also the first year of the Nine Years’ War. Nevertheless, recent revisionist attempts to play down the significance of the Huguenot component of the Dutch army in 1685–88 probably go too far, for, as we have seen, there were already in 1685 Huguenots serving in nominally Dutch regiments, who must be added to the post-1685 émigrés who did find Dutch employment.91 These included three specifically French companies of nobles, raised in 1686; but most Huguenots, again, served in Dutch regiments, including eighty-eight of the officers in William’s elite regiments of Blue, Red, and Life Guards.92 89   Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History of his own Time: From the Restoration of King Charles II, to the Conclusion of the Treaty of Peace at Utrecht, in the Reign of Queen Anne, 4 vols. in 6 (London: R.H. Evans, J. Mackinlay, W. Clarke, and R. Priestley, 1809), I, ii, 449, 433. 90   Stapleton, ‘Forging a Coalition Army’, 111, 259–61; Burnet, History, I, ii, 450. 91   See Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall (corr. pb edn, Oxford, 1998), p. 840; cf. Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 52–54. 92  Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 53–54, 63–65.

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The perception within the Dutch republic was that James II of England was in league with Louis XIV, who had almost conquered the United Provinces in 1672 and whose latest war was threatening the republic’s prosperity. Thus, William’s invasion of 1688 was regarded in the republic as being directed as much against the Sun King as the hapless James Stuart. This made the Huguenots particularly appropriate to use in the powerful invasion army, which was made up of 15,269 of the best troops of the staatse leger (including the Blue Guards and Horse and Life Guards).93 The number of Huguenots who took part in the invasion is impossible to calculate because we do not know how many were in regular Dutch regiments, though certainly the army’s generals of horse and artillery and its chief of engineers, three of William of Orange’s personal aides-de-camp, and fifty-four officers in the Blue Guards were French. But in addition to the troops in the regular regiments of the staatse leger there were some 5,000 English, Scottish and Huguenot volunteers (so that the invasion army had an actual total strength of about 21,000 men); of these at least 800 were Huguenots.94 The Huguenot contribution to William III’s ‘conquest’ of England was the culmination of twelve decades of military service to the Dutch. Thereafter, however, the Huguenot military experience was no longer centred on the Netherlands and was to diversify considerably. VIII This survey hopefully conveys a sense of the long Huguenot heritage of military experience before the diaspora of final years of the seventeenth century. This heritage is important, because the identification of Huguenot soldiers with foreign armies had led to the creation of a transnational, confessional, military identity that to some extent transcended French identity. This must not be exaggerated, as many of the elite, in particular, looked back to France for personal and family advancement. This led many to convert to Catholicism. Nevertheless, the extent to which Huguenot military service, well before the late 93   See Israel, Dutch Republic, 845–49; and Stapleton, ‘Forging a Coalition Army’, 115n., 208–9, the source for the figure given above, which must supersede the figure ‘of 14,352 regular Dutch troops’ given by Israel, Dutch Republic, 849 and Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 105, because Stapleton uses more detailed archival sources for the army. 94  Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 53, 105–6; Stapleton, ‘Forging a Coalition Army’, 115n., 208.



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1680s, was foreign and helped shape the identity of the families from which recruits were drawn, and of individual soldiers themselves, has not been sufficiently acknowledged or examined. Likewise, the employment of French Calvinists abroad for a century–and–a– quarter before the Revocation and concomitant mass emigration constitutes an important and generally overlooked foundation for the emergence of transnational Huguenot identity in the decades after 1685. A number of other issues emerge as important. One is the role of the nobility, not only as generals, but also as officers and in the rank–and– file. This is worth emphasising since modern historiography tends to portray mercenaries as being drawn, mostly, from the scum of the earth, albeit sometimes captained by nobles.95 It has already been seen that, at the beginning of the wars of religion, the Huguenots recruited through aristocratic affinities. A high proportion of noble volunteers (‘glittering Frenchmen’ in the words of one English observer)96 was characteristic of Huguenot units at least until the mid–seventeenth century, reflecting wider French practice; as David Parrott observes, the French armies that fought the Thirty Years’ War were recruited through ‘the clienteles and influence of the nobility, especially the provincial aristocracy. They had access to a system of subcontracting through relatives and lesser noble supporters, who could themselves carry out the local recruitment of units of soldiers.’97 This recruitment via affinities was one of the factors that made the Huguenots attractive to the Dutch.98 Into the 1680s, kinship and friendship networks provided the basis for much of the recruiting for William III’s Huguenot units.99 Moreover, Huguenot nobles not only recruited through their solidarité connections: they also themselves served in the ranks. Thus, like English and at least some Scottish, Irish and Italian mercenaries, French Protestant soldiers were often nobles or their immediate

  Cf. discussion in Trim, ‘Fighting “Jacob’s Wars” ’, 64–7, 69–71.   Carleton to Chamberlain, 11 July 1623, in Jacobean Letters, 305. 97   Parrott, ‘Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army’, p. 143; cf. idem, Richelieu’s Army, chs. 3, 5. 98   States General resolution, 15 Aug. 1596, quoted in Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 41. 99   Cf. Carolyn Lougee Chappell, ‘ “The Pains I Took to Save My/His Family”: Escape Accounts by a Huguenot Mother and Daughter after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes’, FHS 22 (1999), 6–7. 95 96

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dependants.100 This meant that a high proportion of Huguenot units were members of the second estate, or noblemen, while even those who were not had close ties to the men who made up the élite of the units in which they served. This remained true right down to the 1690s. As Matthew Glozier observes: ‘The story of the Huguenot soldiers who fought under William of Orange in 1688 is essentially that of the Huguenot nobility in exile’.101 After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes there were many more Huguenot refugees than there were officers’ commissions in units in the service of the United Provinces or friendly German states. Preference in émigré Huguenot units was given to officers who had been holding French commissions immediately before their flight and in consequence many Huguenots of good birth (even some who had previous military experience as officers) had to serve in the ranks. As Harman Murtagh notes, in 1689 some five hundred former officers of the French army (by definition, nobles, if only minor ones) served in the ranks of the regiment of horse and three regiments of foot that were ‘the core of the Huguenot contingent’ in Ireland; indeed in the cavalry regiment ‘the officers and all other ranks’ may have been from the noblesse.102 This aristocratic influence partly explains the considerable numbers of Calvinist Frenchmen willing to engage in military service, since war was both the prerogative and the raison d’être of the nobleman—particularly of those sub–sets of the nobility, like the country gentry, among which Calvinism was strong. Then, too, there were always great nobles willing either to serve abroad or to go into exile and then serve foreign princes, around whom lesser nobles with their followers could and did cluster. Moreover, the natural ties of affinity and hierarchy helped to provide a basis for organisation, not only of specially recruited units (as with the Huguenots serving the Dutch republic 100   Cf. Trim, ‘Fighting “Jacob’s Wars” ’, pp. 70, 260–86; Dubost, La France italienne, 61–4, 242–4; and Gregory P. Hanlon, ‘The Decline of a Provincial Military Aristocracy’, Past and Present, no. 155 (May 1997), 74–8. 101  Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 2. 102   Chappell, ‘Escape Accounts’ 6 n.11; Harman Murtagh, ‘Schomberg, Ruvigny and the Huguenots in Ireland: William III’s Irish War, 1689–91’, in Glozier and Onnekink, War, Religion and Service, 95–109; Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 53–55, 65. In a review of Huguenot Soldiers, in Albion 36 (2004), 131, Robin Gwynn, doyen of Huguenot studies, questions Glozier’s assertion that ‘most, if not all of the common soldiers in these regiments … came from respectable families’; but Murtagh’s study confirms Glozier’s characterisation.



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from the 1570s onwards), but also among the mass of exiles that fled France in various waves, most notably after the Revocation in 1685. The relative speed with which an inchoate agglomerate of refugees was mobilised and organised into highly capable fighting units in the late 1680s is very striking—that social structure provided a basis for military structures is an important point to bear in mind. So too, however, is the fact that, as in 1562, many Huguenots were ‘deserters’ from royal forces. No doubt many of the volunteers who fought for the Dutch republic, Brandenburg, Great Britain and other states in the 1690s were simply angry émigrés with a desire for vengeance and an apocalyptic world view.103 However, many exiles were veterans, who could be readily integrated into new military organisations. In the 1680s and 1690s the proportion of refugees with military experience was probably lower than in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries, simply because the Protestant community had been demilitarised since the 1620s. Nevertheless, the veterans supplied a vital hard core around whom the remainder (who were often kin or clients in any case) could be moulded more readily than if they did not exist. This was true, as we saw, in the 1560s and was equally true in the 1680s. It was surely true in the 120 years intervening. It is a striking fact that the formation of the Jacobite Irish exiles into an effective corps in French pay in the same period owed something to similar dynamics.104 In addition, Huguenots were quickly integrated into the army of the Netherlands, in particular, because of the long tradition of service in Dutch pay, with three and four generations sometimes fighting for the United Provinces. As for integration into other armies, tradition is, again, important here. After all, Huguenots had fought alongside English, Scottish, German and Swiss soldiers from the 1560s–70s all the way down to the 1680s. There was no reason to feel suspicion of or alienation from soldiers of different nationalities. Ethnic diversity was something the Huguenots (and indeed their colleagues of varying national backgrounds) would have taken for granted.

103   Pierre Jurieu, the great Huguenot theologian of the late seventeenth century, identified the Revocation as the death of the two witnesses of Rev. 11: 7–10, and thus an imminent sign of Christ’s second coming and the judgment; it also, of course, implied that France (and French Protestants) would be at the centre of the final events. 104   Cf. Guy Rowlands, ‘An Army in Exile Louis XIV and the Irish Forces of James II in France, 1691–1698’, Royal Stuart Paper, no. 60 (2001).

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Finally, why did so many Huguenots become soldiers? No doubt for many exiles soldiering was just a job, useful and necessary in staving off starvation. But then, for well over a century, French Protes­ tants had voluntarily exiled themselves precisely to fight. Probably profit was a consideration for many, both financial and honorific. However, it is clear when considering the history of Huguenot soldiering that Huguenot soldiers had a strong preference for serving other Calvinists—or at least for serving against what they would have regarded as anti–Christian enemies. Huguenots fought for Catholic powers in the 1570s and 1590s, the 1620s and 1670s, but they did so briefly and in small numbers and, in any case, against the Turks—as bad an enemy of reformed Christendom as the Papacy, even to many zealous Protestants. Parrott shows that confessional allegiance helped to determine where French nobles undertook military service in the early seventeenth century.105 Those Huguenots who served Charles I did so under the leading of a Cal­ vinist prince, Rupert of the Rhine. Although the Netherlands was by early–modern standards highly pluralistic, rather than a Calvinist society, the Dutch Republic came close to being a Calvinist state and William of Orange relied greatly on the support of the reformed church. Similarly, although Calvinism lacked widespread popularity in Brandenburg and Prussia, it was the faith of the Elector and his Court.106 And in Stuart England, although a Calvinist national church was missing, there was widespread commitment to helping Huguenot refugees and a connection with William of Orange. If Calvinist military service was not always confessionally motivated, it was consistently confessionally directed. There is certainly no doubt that most Huguenot soldiers were seeking more than honourable and profitable employment. Some of the hundreds of Geneva-based French émigrés who left Switzer­land  to join William III’s newly-established Huguenot regiments in England in 1688 may have done so simply because this service was more likely to be profitable, but for many of the men in question the key issue was  Parrott, Richelieu’s Army, 29.   Judith Pollmann, ‘From Freedom of Conscience to Confessional Segregation? Religious Choice and Toleration in the Dutch Republic’, in Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), Persecution and Pluralism: Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe 1550–1700 (Oxford, Bern, New York, etc: Peter Lang, 2006), 123–48; Bodo Nischan, ‘The Second Reformation in Brandenburg: Aims and Goals’, SCJ 14 (1983), 186–7. 105 106



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that, in William’s service, they expected to fight Catholics and this religious motivation was of great importance to Huguenot refugees.107 In 1689 a considerable number of officers and men transferred from units in the Netherlands and Britain to join the attempt by the Vaudois to regain their Alpine valleys. This was not only an enterprise with small chance of success; the Huguenot volunteers were paid poorly, if at all, and faced execution if captured by the French army. Yet a number of officers accepted loss of officer’s rank, serving in the ranks, even in this somewhat dubious enterprise. As Charles de la Bonde, sieur d’Iberville, Louis XIV’s ambassador in Geneva, ruefully wrote to the royal war minister: ‘You would scarcely believe … the esteem in which all the Calvinists hold [the Vaudois], based on the notion that they are the earliest repositories of their beliefs.’ In 1692 and 1693, many Huguenot veterans transferred from Ireland in order to serve in the Allied army about to invade the south of France via the duchy of Savoy, even though they had just been given the opportunity to take up land grants in Ireland, by then (relatively) pacified.108 In Dauphiné, the Huguenots and their Vaudois allies took the chance to plunder, as all soldiers did, ‘bringing away greate booty’; but they targeted Catholic sacred places and ‘burnt severall Churches.’109 The Nine Years’ War took on a more secular character in the 1690s, though recent revisionist studies suggests confessional factors remained more significant than traditionally granted by scholarship. In the War of the Spanish Succession, states pursued secular concerns in their policy but the ‘Protestant interest’ remained an important factor in generating popular animosity and engendering support. In any case, such secularising trends as there were, to some extent passed Huguenot soldiers by.110 107  Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 185–86; Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 70–1, and NB 62: ‘Most Huguenots remained steadfast in their faith and most deserved the implicit trust of William of Orange in terms of their religious fidelity’. 108   Ibverville to Louvois, 22 Nov. 1689, AAE, quoted in Walter Utt, Home to Our Valleys! (Mountain View, CA & Oshawa, ON: Pacific Press, 1977), v. See Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove, 79, 82; and Raymond Hylton, ‘The Huguenot Settlement at Portarlington, 1692–1771’, in C. E. J. Caldicott, Hugh Gough and Jean-Paul Pitton (eds.), The Huguenots and Ireland: Anatomy of an Emigration (Dublin: Glendale Press, 1987), 297–315. 109   Anon. newsletter, 11 June 1692, FSL, MS L.c.2100; NB that the typescript transcription [available at http://10.1.5.20/local/newdig/newdig.htm] mistakenly transcribes ‘dauphoney’ as ‘danghoney’. 110   Cf. Andrew C. Thompson, ‘After Westphalia: Remodelling a Religious Foreign Policy’ and David Onnekink, ‘The Last War of Religion? The Dutch and the Nine

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The confessional motivation of the Huguenot troops is also evident in—and helps to explain—their combat effectiveness. The Duke of Schomberg, William III’s commander in Ireland, declared that the three Huguenot foot regiments with him on the Irish campaign were worth ‘twice the number of any others’ in his multinational army.111 The duke, a Huguenot ‘by adoption’,112 was of course biased, but the fighting prowess of the Huguenots was widely acknowledged. To some extent, it reflected their social origins: members of the nobility were brought up to follow a code that privileged, indeed glorified, skill at arms, personal courage, and military prowess more generally.113 Their clients and kin from the third estate may have been more prosaic about martial glory but had a close identification with their aristocratic fellow rank-and-file. Huguenot units thus had unit cohesion and this helped lend durability and reliability. However, a substantial element in the Huguenots’ combat effectiveness, since the early days of the guerres de religion, had been Calvinist confessional fervour, which had always been an important part of Huguenot soldiering. Calvinists across Europe were known for singing psalms, throughout the second half of the sixteenth century and first half of the seventeenth century.114 For Calvinists in France, however, psalm-singing was not only a form of devotional; it was a also means of bracing themselves for and sustaining themselves in the heat of battle. Psalm 68 became known among French Protestants as the ‘battle hymn’ (psaume des batailles) because it was a favourite before going

Years’ War’, in Onnekink (ed.), War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648–1713 (Farnham & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 47–67, 69–88; Jeremy Black, ‘Introduction’ to idem (ed.), The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987), 5–6; Laurence Huey Boles, Jr, The Huguenots, the Protestant Interest, and the War of the Spanish Succession, 1702–1714, American University Studies, series IX (History), 181 (New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, etc: Peter Lang, 1997). 111   CSPD, 1689–90, 401. 112  Vigne, ‘Preface’ to Britain’s Huguenot War Leaders, v; cf. Matthew Glozier, Marshal Schomberg (1615–1690), ‘the Ablest Soldier of His Age’: International Soldiering and the Formation of State Armies in Seventeenth-century Europe (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005). 113   E.g. see Trim, ‘Edict of Nantes’, 90–2 (and sources cited there); Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 57. 114   W. Stanford Reid, ‘The Battle Hymns of the Lord: Calvinist Psalmody of the Sixteenth Century’, in Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 2 (1971), 36–54; Alec Ryrie, ‘The Psalms and Confrontation in English and Scottish Protestantism’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 101 (2010), 129–30.



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into action.115 But whichever psalms were sung, the passion imparted by the process of worship stood the Huguenots in good stead once in combat. At the Battle of Coutras (1587), just before Henri IV’s cavalry charged, a participant later recalled—sharing a personal memory he treasured—that the men ‘made communal prayer and some sang from Psalm 118’. They were heard in the opposing compagnies d’ordonnance and ‘many Catholic nobles cried out loud enough to be heard, “They tremble the cowards, they confess themselves” ’. But as a Catholic veteran quickly cautioned his fellows: ‘When the Huguenots make these sounds, they are ready to charge hard’. The hard charging of the aristocratic Calvinist cavalry, caught up in religious fervour, swept the much larger Catholic army to destruction.116 The same confessionally generated fighting qualities were still evident a century later, but to the general Calvinist zeal that seems always to have been present among Huguenot soldiers was now added a new factor: collective personal and group memory of the humiliations and torments heaped upon Huguenots by the French army, against which they regularly fought. At the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, when units of the French army were serving under James II’s command, the Huguenot regiments were rallied at a critical stage in the battle by the cry: ‘Forward, my friends, gather your courage and your resentment; there are your persecutors’.117 Courage is an inner quality but resentment entails remembrance. When Nicolas Catinat defeated the Allies under the Duke of Savoy at the battle of Marsiglia in 1693 the Allied army was routed, but its Huguenot regiments refused to retreat and were almost wiped out.118 A substantial part of the reason why the Huguenots fought to the bitter end is surely that they were in combat with the very instrument of their persecution and, as the incident at the Boyne suggests, their memories of oppression were still fresh.

115   Thierry, ‘L’homme de guerre’, 146. Psalm 68 was also popular as a battle hymn among the Huguenots’ close allies and confrères, the Vaudois (who up to the 17th cent. lived in southern France as well as in what today is northern Italy): e.g., cf. Giorgio Tourn, The Waldensians: The First 800 Years, trans. Camillo P. Merlino, ed. Charles W. Arbuthnot (Turin: Claudiana, 1980), 148–49. 116  Aubigné, L’Histoire universelle, III, 53; cf. Mattingly, Defeat of the Spanish Armada, 139–45. 117   Quoted by Murtagh, ‘Schomberg, Ruvigny and the Huguenots in Ireland’, 103. 118   Cf. Trim, ‘Huguenot Soldiering’, 30.

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Thus, French Calvinists could be fashioned quickly into very effective members of both Huguenot and foreign armies thanks to several factors. These included social structure and confessional zeal, but crucially also a long heritage of service in foreign Protestant armies, and this service history and the history of persecution in France featured strongly in both individual memories and collective memory. When French Protestant refugees joined the armies of BrandenburgPrussia, Britain, the Dutch republic, Geneva, and the Vaudois, they were following a well–worn pattern, the fruit of history and memory.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Models of an Imagined Community: Huguenot Discourse on Identity and Foreign Policy David Onnekink Introduction ‘Now we groan under hard Bondage, as the People of God did heretofore in Egypt; but God will deliver us out of it with a strong Hand and stretched out Arm. Now we are terrified with the Power of our Enemies; But since t’is against God they wage War […] He’ll fight for us himself.’1 This statement was delivered in a sermon by Claude Brousson, the remarkable Huguenot pastor and subject of a renowned study by Walter Utt and Brian Strayer.2 Brousson responded to the persecution of the Huguenots, and suggested a pacific course of action. He also suggested an identity model for the Huguenot community by comparing it to the people of Israel in bondage. The 1680s, 1690s and 1700s constitute a particular painful episode in the history of French Protestantism. The dragonnades were followed up by the infamous Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, after which hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled their native country and found refuge in Protestant states, such as England, the Dutch Republic, the Palatinate and Brandenburg. During these years, the Huguenot exiles developed a sense of community, purpose and commitment. As such the Huguenots became a transnational community, but because of their hope of return, one with national aspirations. Given the situation, there was also tension between the hope of return and the need to integrate into the societies the Huguenots had found refuge in. 1   Claude Brousson, The support of the faithful in times of persecution, or, a sermon preach’d in the Wilderness to the poor Protestants in France (London, 1699), 82. The sermon is not dated but was preached before 1695, and translated and republished immediately after his death. The international readership of the works of these Huguenots meant they were often translated. In this article, I have made use of the English version when possible. 2   Utt and Strayer, The Bellicose Dove.

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The 1680s in particular also witnessed an important shift in international affairs. In 1684 a truce was concluded between France and Austria, which for the moment alleviated tensions between the two great powers. Around the same time, however, the triangular relationship between the Dutch Republic, France and England started to become troubled. The accession to the throne of the Catholic James II in February 1685, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October of that year, intensified the sense of crisis in the Protestant world. The influx of Huguenots into the Dutch Republic significantly boosted such sentiments. At the same time, rumours of a renewed AngloFrench alliance against the Dutch Republic raised the spectre of a repetition of the 1672 invasion. Although the Glorious Revolution put such fears to rest, 1689 witnessed the outbreak of a long-expected war between the Allies and France. As is well known, many Huguenot soldiers were caught up in the Nine Years War, followed by the War of the Spanish Succession, in which many Huguenots fought as soldiers on the Allied side, against their compatriots. The galvanising effect of the Huguenots on the war effort was very significant.3 At the same time many Huguenots served the war with the pen. They wrote tracts in defence of the war, constructed William III as a Protestant hero, and criticised the regime of Louis XIV. They were ultimately disappointed.4 In most literature it is assumed that the identification of the Huguenot exile community with the wars of the Allies was natural. However, the Huguenots were caught up in several paradoxes. Firstly, the creation of a transnational community, affiliated with the ‘Protestant International’,5 rested uneasily with the national aspirations of the Huguenots. The ‘geographical’ or spatial identity of the Huguenots therefore became a concern. Secondly, there was a tension between the need for constructing an exile community whilst at the same time maintaining a desire for return. The war effort necessitated demonisation of Louis XIV’s regime, but hope for return problematised such an attitude. Thirdly, as suppressed citizens of France, the Huguenots might feel justified to stage a revolt against the King, but as Christians   Matthew Glozier and David Onnekink (eds), War, Religion and Service: Huguenot Soldiering, 1685–1713 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); cf. chapter 6, above. 4   Utt and Strayer, The Bellicose Dove. 5   Robin Gwynn, ‘The Huguenots in Britain, the “Protestant International” and the Defeat of Louis XIV’, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers. 3



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and citizens of the Kingdom of God, their duty was to endure suppression rather than to take up arms. In sum, the Huguenot exiles needed to rethink their identity in a spatial, temporal and ethical sense. These three dimensions of ‘national’ identity (spatial, temporal and ethical) have been discussed by poststructuralist scholars of international relations, such as Lene Hansen, who argues that identity is intertwined with the conduct of foreign policy. According to her the connection of these three dimensions of ‘national’ identity and views on foreign policy is a discursive one. There is a ‘constitutive relationship between representations of identity and foreign policy […] identities are simultaneously constituted and reproduced through formulations of foreign policy.’6 Indeed it would be impossible to distinguish policy and identity, for ‘identities are produced, and reproduced, through foreign policy discourse’.7 It is the purpose of this article to investigate how Huguenot exiles imagined their own identity,8 and what the consequences were for their attitude towards the Grand Alliance and France. Although the exiled Huguenots obviously did not conduct any foreign policy as such, they did extensively comment on the foreign policy that the Dutch and British conducted vis-à-vis France. This article will propose four different models of Huguenot identity, which will be explained later on. Each model is characterised by the three dimensions as described above. These views on foreign policy were interacting with the self-perception of the Huguenot exiles, but also with perceptions of the kingdom of France. The Huguenots constructed their own identity vis-à-vis an image of Catholic France and her king. In order to uncover these models, the article is based on a select number of Huguenot writings (histories, sermons, published letters and political pamphlets) by a small circle of distinguished Huguenot authors: Pierre Jurieu, Abel Boyer, Michel Le Vassor and Guillaume de Lamberty.9 This selection is based on the fact that most of these authors were connected to the court of William III, which strengthens

6  Lene Hansen, Security as Practice. Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), xvi. 7  Hansen, Security, 26. 8   The term ‘imagined community’ is of course inspired by Benedict Andersons’s celebrated Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983). 9  De Lamberty was not a Huguenot, though. See my explanation on p. 197.

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the presupposition that they considered themselves part of a community and felt associated with the wars of the Grand Alliance. At the same time, their different backgrounds and ideas account for varieties of opinions within the community. It is by no means certain that they were representative for the whole Huguenot community, nor that their network was coherent. The selection can, however, serve as a practical case study and uncover discursive patterns. The Huguenot network Before focusing on the discursive community, let us briefly discuss the Huguenots in question, a small group of Huguenot authors that were connected through their affiliation with William III. It is interesting to see how a number of these Huguenots, who employed themselves by using a pen, gravitated towards William III, with whom they often associated their cause. In particular, the Earl of Portland played an important role in what could be described as a network. Portland had a history of hospitality to exiled Huguenots.10 These Huguenots can be divided into several spheres. There were parliamentary agents, such as René Saunière de L’Hermitage,11 a French refugee who moved to London in 1687, and who as from 1692 became an official agent of the States General in London, and supplied Grand Pensionary Anthonie Heinsius with many details on parliamentary affairs.12 Saunière was a French refugee who moved in the circle of Charles de Saint-Évremond.13 Saunière was tutor of the Earl of Portland’s children.14 He was acquainted with Jean de Robéthon, who was also known to Portland via Dijkveld, who met Robéthon in 1692 and was well pleased with him after his published pamphlet to induce Parliament to support the continental war.15 Later Robéthon would become agent for the Court 10  David Onnekink, The Anglo-Dutch Favourite. The Career of Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st  Earl of Portland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 124. 11   Linda and Marsha Frey, The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession: An Historical and Critical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1995), 400. 12   His dispatches are in BL, Add. MS 17677. 13  D.C.A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France in the Reign of Louis XIV (s.l., 1866), 301. 14   According to the Anthonie Heinsius index/database compiled by A.J. Veenendaal: http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BrievenAnthonieHeinsius1702-1720/ Index. 15  Dijkveld to Portland 26 Oct. 1692, Correspondentie van Willem III en van Hans Willem Bentinck, eersten graaf van Portland, ed. N. Japikse, RGP Kleine Reeks 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 5 vols (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1927–1937), vol. 28 (1937), 302.



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of Hanover, in which capacity he continued to correspond with Portland. There were also history writers; Michel le Vassor and Paul Rapin de Thoyras, had acted as tutors to the Earl of Portland’s son, Lord Woodstock. Michel le Vassor was a priest who had initially defended Catholicism by the pen. His De la Véritable Religion was published in 1689, but in 1695 he was converted to Protestantism. In 1700 he published a critical history of Louis XIII, which he dedicated to Woodstock;16 it caused a diplomatic row, and the French put Portland under pressure to dismiss Le Vassor from his services.17 Paul Rapin de Thoyras fled France in 1686, but found the climate in England dissatisfactory. He went to the Dutch Republic where he joined a French regiment of volunteers in Utrecht. In 1688 he joined William in his expedition to England, and fought at the Battle of the Boyne. In 1693, via the mediation of Belcastel and Galway, he became tutor of Lord Woodstock, in which capacity he travelled from England to Holland back quite frequently. In 1698 he was with Portland in Paris, and in 1701 he joined Lord Woodstock on his Grand Tour through Europe.18 He was the author of the History of England. Guillaume de Lamberty (c. 1660–1742), probably of Swiss rather than Huguenot descent, was in London in 1689 and travelled from there with Dijkveld to the United Provinces.19 Between 1698 and 1700 he was secretary for the Earl of Portland. He was the author of Memoires pour servir à l’histoire du XVIII siècle, a very detailed account of developments in international politics after 1698. Lastly, Abel Boyer, although not specifically connected to Portland because of his service to Princess Anne and governorship to the Duke of Gloucester, was a prolific author. A last sphere was that of propagandists, such as Pierre du Moulin and, most notably, Pierre Jurieu. The last, incidentally, also acted as a spy for William, depending on his network of agents in France.20   M. le Vassor, History of the Reign of Louis XIII etc. (3 vols, London, 1700–1702).   28 December 1699, 4 January 1700, N. Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857), vol. IV. 598, 600. 18  D. Onnekink, ‘Het fortuin van Henry Bentinck (1682–1726): de grillige carrière van een Engels-Nederlands edelman’, Virtus (2004), 54–72. 19  According to Henry Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of William III (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 20, Lamberty was in England in 1689, and returned to the continent with William’s adviser Lord Dijkveld. 20  See his correspondence in PRO, SP 84/220; also e.g. Nottingham University Library, MS PwA 2716. For evidence of Jurieu’s support for William III, see F.R.J. Knetsch, ‘Pierre Jurieu: Theologian and Politician of the Dispersion’ Acta Historiae 16 17

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The personal connection between most of these authors may have fostered a sense of community. In this context the concept of a ‘Protestant International’ has been coined, the idea that there was a Protestant international solidarity mainly among exiled Huguenots, of what John Bosher described as a ‘cosmopolitan diaspora’.21 And yet the specific self-construction of the exiled community was not straightforward. It could be interpreted in a political sense, as an exiled community at odds with their monarch. Robin Gwynn, for instance, speaks of he Huguenots in Britain and their involvement in the ‘defeat of Louis XIV’.22 Matthew Glozier has emphasised the military dimension of this Protestant International, whereas Bosher focused on the role of merchants.23 Neither of these interpretations is exclusive of others, but they do seem to focus primarily on political, military and commercial aspects, whereas in fact Huguenots often depicted themselves also as a purely religious community. In the remainder of this article I would like to focus on four different religious models of identity and their consequences for foreign policy views: the wars of religion, Hebrew, pastoral and apocalyptic models. Although they are presented here as ‘pure’ models, it should be noted that narratives often integrated, and arguably even mixed up. The wars of religion model For many Huguenot authors, the wars against Louis XIV were paradigmatic for their interpretation of recent events. The framework of the European coalition wars was typically employed by historians of contemporary events, in which 1688 figured as the starting point, the year Neerlandica 5 (1971) 213–242, 228. Cf. G. Das, ‘Pierre Jurieu als middelpunt van een spionnage-dienst’, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 41 (1926), 372–382. 21   I.e. J. F. Bosher, ‘Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century’, WMQ, 3rd series, 52 (1995), 77–102, 78. For a critique of the concept, see L. H. Boles, The Huguenots, the Protestant Interest, and the War of the Spanish Succession, 1701–1714 (New York: Peter Lang, 1997). 22  Gwynn, ‘The Huguenots in Britain, the “Protestant International” and the Defeat of Louis XIV’. 23   Matthew Glozier, The Huguenot Soldiers of William of Orange and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. The Lions of Judah. (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002); Matthew Glozier, Marshal Schomberg (1615–1690) – ‘The Ablest Soldier of His Age’: International Soldiering and the Formation of State Armies in Seventeenth-Century Europe (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005); Bosher, ‘Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century’.



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in which an international alliance against France emerged. The Grand Alliance consisting of the Dutch Republic, Britain and Austria, easily gained the support of the exiled Huguenot community. At face value, the narrative of the struggle against French universal monarchy lacks an obvious religious dimension, but on closer reading, that dimension is pervasive. The temporal identity of the Huguenots was constructed around a history of repression, in which the wars of religion in the late 16th century were paradigmatic. This is not immediately obvious in the historiography of Abel Boyer. For him, 1688 is the central event which functions as a prism for international affairs. The history of King William the Third, published immediately after the death of the King, is placed squarely within the paradigm of the Glorious Revolution: the frontispiece shows an allegorical illustration of William III. But that event did have religious implications; in the background is a depiction of what appears to be the landing fleet of 1688, and the motto ‘Religion & Libertas’. This motto is repeated in the text, where he compares Anne’s ministers favourably with those of William, for having ‘signaliz’d their Zeal for the Protestant Religion, and the Liberties of England’.24 The narrative is clearly framed within the view of resistance against French expansion. In his dedication, Boyer notes that ‘The sudden Death of that great Man struck a general Consternation among those who look’d upon him as the only Support of the Liberties of Europe, against the Growing Power of France’.25 Guillaume Lamberty published his Memoires pour servir à l’histoire du XVIII siècle: contenant les negociations, traitez, resolutions, et autres documens authentiques concernant les affaires d’état as from 1724.26 Like Boyer, he centres his work around the wars against Louis XIV. It is a remarkably detailed account of developments in international politics, some of which he must have experienced at close hand. His secretaryship to the Earl of Portland between 1698 and 1700, who was then involved in the negotiations with France on the Partition Treaties of   Abel Boyer, The history of King William the Third (3 vols, London, 1702–1703), frontispiece. 25  Boyer, The history of King William, preface. 26  Guillaume de Lamberty, Memoires pour servir à l’histoire du XVIII siècle: contenant les negociations, traitez, resolutions, et autres documens authentiques concernant les affaires d’état : liez par une narration historique des principaux evenemens dont ils ont été précédez ou suivis, & particulièrement de ce qui s’est passé à La Haïe (14 vols, The Hague, 1724–40). On Lamberty, see Frey, Treaties, 237. 24

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the Spanish Empire, provided him with experience as well as first hand documentation; indeed, rather than a chronology, the Memoires is essentially a collection of original documents providing a detailed account of the events that lead to the great War of the Spanish Succession. De Lamberty begins his overview in 1698, although the introduction rather traces the origins of conflict back to 1688 and the establishment of the Grand Alliance against France. Clearly, the Memoirs serve to provide a narrative to describe the battle against ‘the exorbitant power of France’.27 At the same time, however, Lamberty weaves an alternative theme through his history. This becomes clear at the beginning of his work, where he situates his narrative within a Protestant framework. The book is dedicated to the Republic of Bern, whom Lamberty praises for its conduct in the Second Villmergen War of 1712, in which the Protestant cantons of Bern and Zurich defeated Catholic cantons. The juxtaposition between the European conflict and the wars of religion contextualises the war against Louis XIV within the longer history of the wars of religion in Europe. The works of Lamberty and Boyer thus, in a subtle way, contextualise the European conflict as part of the wars of religion which had ravaged Europe, particularly France, ever since the Reformation. In this manner, recent history is spatially and geographically rooted in both the French wars and the international wars of religion. This also becomes clear from Michel Le Vassor’s History of the Reign of Lewis XIII, which, also adds a more pronounced ethical dimension to the analysis.28 It was dedicated to Lord Woodstock, the son of the Earl of Portland, to instruct him about the developments ‘which Europe has with Amazement beheld for thirty years together’.29 Le Vassor, like Boyer and Lamberty, constructs his history within the paradigm of French expansion, and refers to Woodstock’s father Portland, who (as ambassador to France in 1698 and favourite of King William)witnessed key events.30 Woodstock should learn from this history how the Dutch Republic struggled to maintain her freedom in the face of French as well as Spanish aggression, referring explicitly to Philip II who was ‘fierce and bloody’.31 Le Vassor, who has spoken to  Lamberty, Memoirs, 1.   Le Vassor, History, 29   Le Vassor, History, vol. I, dedication (no pagination). 30  Ibid. 31  Ibid. 27 28



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Gilbert Burnet on occasion, takes the bishop’s History of His own Time as an example. He argues that ‘the reading of History, is the most proper means to form the Mind and Inclinations’, but also ‘to confirm in you the Good Sentiments of Religion, Virtue and Probity’.32 In this way Le Vassor continues the medieval and still popular tradition of the Fürstenspiegel. However, Le Vassor makes it clear from the start that his study, which includes ‘bloody battles’ and ‘Protestants in France oppressed, and in Hungary, in Germany and the United Provinces supported’,33 is not simply a political history of Europe, but a confessional interpretation of those events. Indeed, Le Vassor can pinpoint precisely where it all went wrong again: the frontispiece shows an illustration of the assassination of Henry IV in 1610. As historians, Boyer, Lamberty and Le Vassor endeavour to integrate confessional history in a subtle manner into the political narrative, presumably for to reach a wider audience and appear to be objective. In pamphlets, the role of religion is much more emphasised in more persuasive prose. This was so because the pamphlets that will be analysed addressed much more urgent matters, namely the need to intervene in France for the sake of the very survival of Protestantism. Still, pamphleteers wanted to make the argument acceptable for politicians who may not be swayed by religious considerations per se. This becomes clear in The Lawfulness, Glory and Advantage of giving Immediate and Effectual Relief to the Protestants in the Cévennes, a pamphlet written by Abel Boyer in 1703 which was also translated into Dutch.34 Its purpose was to persuade the Maritime Powers to intervene on behalf of the Cevennois. In the second year of the War of the Spanish Succession, a revolt had broken out in the Cévennes in the south of France organised by the Camisards. Protestantism in that area had a long and complicated history. The ‘sacred light’ (according to Boyer) had been kindled by the Waldensians and Albigensians in the late Middle Ages, and had survived the ‘croisades’.35 Protestantism had taken root after the Reformation, but severe repression from the French crown had caused it to mutate in a more ambiguous form of

 Ibid.   Le Vassor, History, Preface, 1. 34  Abel Boyer, The Lawfulness, Glory and Advantage of giving Immediate and Effectual Relief to the Protestants in the Cévennes (London, 1703). 35  Boyer, The Lawfulness, 16. The word ‘crusade’, a translation of croisade, only emerged in 1706. 32 33

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Christianity, with strong emphasis on emotion, prophecy, trances and ‘Entempore Speeches’. However, Boyer takes pains to emphasise that these are Protestants nonetheless; their peculiarities must be understood in the light of their isolation and extreme persecution, but those living in an ‘Over-Philosophical Age’ should try to appreciate this.36 However, rather than dwelling on theological niceties, Boyer focuses on much broader themes. The context of this problem is apparently strategic, rather than religious: ‘The hasty and prodigious Growth of the French Power has justly alarm’d Europe’.37 It is the French aspiration for ‘Universal Monarchy’ that is central.38 Boyer matches the Universal Monarchy discourse closely; the French king is guilty of ‘unwarrantable Encroachments upon his Neighbours; his violent Oppression and Persecution of his own Subjects, and his daring the very Majesty of Heaven, by the Haughtiness and unbounded Ambition’.39 Boyer emphasises the ‘lawfullnes, Glory and Advantage’ of intervention. As to the lawfulness, Boyer points to the fact that Grotius accepts the possibility of lawful insurrection. Moreover, according to Boyer, ‘Let the Cevenois go under what Name soever in other Countries, they ought not with English Men, and Protestants, to pass for Rebels, since they act upon the same Principle, by which the late Revolution was happily accomplished’.40 Upon this principle, Boyer calls for transnational allegiance: ‘For the Honest, the Publick-spirited, the True Protestant, in a Word, the True English Man, heartily wishes for, and would chearfully contribute towards the Support of the Cevenois’. One could image the phrase ‘True English Man’ to be an echo of Daniel Defoe’s 1701 The True-Born Englishman in which he stressed that Huguenot immigrants as well qualified as True-Born Englishmen because of their loyalties and values and religion.41 It is an ingenious stroke, because Boyer connects the pro-glorious revolution discourse with transnational Protestant loyalty. As such he constructs a European Protestantism with blurred confessional boundaries, which includes Huguenots, Camisards and English Anglicans. This identity construction is necessary in order to make his case for English intervention. Reminding Protestant Englishmen of the tyrannical regime of   Presumably he meant ‘Ex Tempore’. Boyer, The Lawfulness, 19–20.  Boyer, The Lawfulness, 4. 38  Ibid. 39  Ibid. 40  Boyer, The Lawfulness, 5, 6. 41  Daniel Defoe, The True-born Englishman. A Satyr (London, 1701). 36 37



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James II, they might be more receptive to the fate of Frenchmen suffering under Louis XIV. Boyer calls upon the traditional role of the English monarch as defender of European Protestantism and contextualises the current troubles in the historical French Wars of Religion: ‘during near Thirty Years that the Wars about Religion lasted in France, She [Queen Elizabeth] did constantly interpose, and supported the Protestant Party, sometimes with Men, but oftener with Money, so that she had near half of that Kingdom depending on her.’42 Ingeniously as well, Boyer applies the title of the Kings and Queens of England, Defender of the Faith, to the justification of foreign intervention for the sake of ‘assisting our Protestant Brethren in France.’43 Still, Boyer takes pains to show that it is not just about religion, indeed, ‘a great many Roman Catholicks are actually in Arms in Conjunction with the Cevenois; so a great many more would join with them to assert their Common Liberties.’44 Indeed, he needed to spell out more secular advantages for England as well. Despite the tremendous efforts of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, because of her superior defence lines France will never be brought to her knees, as has become clear in the Nine Years War. The advantage of a diversion in the south therefore becomes obvious.45 Similar themes appear in The Sighs of France in Slavery, Breathing after Liberty, published in 1689, which contains two (presumably fictional) memorials from French agents, in which the juxtaposition of the regimes of James II and Louis XIV figures prominently.46 Authorship is unclear, but according to F. Knetsch, it was probably written by Michel le Vassor, with Jurieu as editor as well as co-author. This is interesting, for Le Vassor was still a Catholic in 1689, albeit one increasingly critical of his church.47 Perhaps more than the other works discussed, this pamphlet struggles to come to terms with the ethical and temporal identity of France. The pamphlet speaks of suppression of the French nobility, parlements and churches under the present regime. The English translation  Boyer, The Lawfulness, 7.  Boyer, The Lawfulness, 10. 44  Boyer, The Lawfulness, 12, 45  Boyer, The Lawfulness, 11. 46   [Michel Le Vassor], The Sighs of France in Slavery, breathing after liberty (London, 1689). 47  F. R. J. Knetsch, Pierre Jurieu, theoloog en politicus der refuge (Kampen: Kok, 1967). 42 43

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is targeted directly at an English audience, the publisher suggesting in the preface that the account is a representation of what England might have looked like should James have remained on the throne.48 The tone is not religious, rather Jurieu and Le Vassor argue that the French, should, like the English, Dutch and Germans, aspire ‘for the Return of Liberty, and the Design of shaking off that hideous Yoak that rests upon their shoulders’.49 In this discourse France is not seen as the enemy or evil per se, rather it suffers from misfortune. Textual analysis helps to uncover more specifically modes of identity. Jurieu’s and Le Vassor’s emphasis on the ‘return of liberty’ suggests that demonisation of France is out of the question, indeed the temporal connotations suggest the possibility of shifts in identity. The verbs ‘to return’ and ‘to shake off ’ underline the possibility for change; France is not beyond redemption.50 The temporal construction both looks forward as well as backward. France is inhabited by ‘A free People, and who have derived the name of Francks or French-men from their ancient Liberty’.51 The restoration of ancient liberties incited native Frenchmen, both Protestant and Catholic, to initiate change. It is also the King of France that is capable of change. According to Jurieu and Le Vassor, the present situation will leave the Dauphin with ‘a Skeleton of a Kingdom and an imaginary Crown’.52 However, the Dauphin, who is ‘full of good nature […] will much rather choose to Reign as a Father under the ancient Laws of the Kingdom, than to command as a Tyrant that sets himself above the Laws’.53 Whereas, then, the current court is evil, it is not beyond redemption, and Jurieu and Le Vassor more or less dedicate their pamphlet to the Dauphin to show the state of affairs in all its misery. The rhetorical strategy enables Le Vassor and Jurieu to flesh out the ‘Infernal Barbarities’54 whilst at the same time keeping options open. Still, focus on these ‘barbarities’ unequivocally makes clear the ‘ethical identity’ of France in the current circumstances. Le Vassor and Jurieu take pains to show how Catholics as well suffer under the authority of the present regime, whereas Calvinists are persecuted.   [Le Vassor], Sighs.   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 4. 50  Ibid. 51   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 52   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 5. 53  Ibid. 54  Ibid. 48 49



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‘I say nothing of that Persecution it self; the King will quickly see all he has gain’d by this Conduct.’55 Indeed, they argue that with the flight of the Huguenots abroad, commercial enterprise has collapsed.56 More­ over, ‘The Calvinists have just occasion to complain of these Violences; but the Gallican Church has still more reason.’57 It is argued that the King has ‘a boundless Empire over the Church’.58 For all these reasons, Huguenots, as French citizens, have the right to intervene. As Michel le Vassor argued, Huguenots cannot be blamed if they picked up weapons to defend their conscience, because they were ‘driven to Extremity by the frequent Infractions of the most inviolable Edict that ever was’.59 Huguenot authors, then, constructed the political history of Europe around the coalition wars against Louis XIV, but they did so by associating the wars with the wars of religion. It was a way of connecting the wars of religion in France with the disastrous events that followed after 1685, but also to logically connect these to the European wars. In analysing these events, the Huguenots constructed their own identity and its connection with France. The spatial construction of the Huguenots as ‘Frenchmen’ therefore tied them to the Kingdom of France. But at the same time, they were part of the international Protestant community. Protestantism thus becomes a spatial signifier. The ethical construction presented France as suppressor and the Huguenots as suppressed citizens, which gave them the right to resist. In a temporal sense, the conflict is presented as rooted in the wars of religion. But as seen in 1598, France seemed redeemable through secular means. All this suggested a clear foreign policy: Huguenots should support the Grand Alliance, which the Allies saw as a struggle against Universal Monarchy but which the Huguenots argued was also a war of religion, in which they strove for acceptance of their faith in France. The purpose was to change the regime and return home. The Hebrew model Whereas the Wars of Religion model tried to accommodate the War of the Grand Alliance with the armed struggle of Huguenots in the past   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 10.   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 16. 57   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 10. 58   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 7. 59   Le Vassor, History, 2. 55 56

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and calls for military action, the Hebrew model was more ambiguous. Next to regarding themselves as suppressed Protestants or French citizens, quite often the Huguenots identified themselves with the Hebrew people. The identification was, of course, not unusual among early modern Calvinists. The Dutch Reformed, for instance, developed an elaborate ‘second Israel’ theology.60 In England as well, references to Israel amongst Puritans were common during the Civil War, as well as during the reign of William III.61 Naturally, for European culture, partly rooted in biblical history, references to the people of Israel were common, but the political Hebraism, as it is described, was particularly pervasive in the early modern age.62 It was far more specific in its parallels. Although it concerns the political history of Israel, is was strongly prophetic in nature; prophetic not so much in the way of foreseeing the future, but as describing a moral chronological cycle of sin, fall and redemption of nations. This interpretation of events was based upon an interpretation of what the German theologian Martin Noth described as Deuteronomistic literature in the Bible.63 It entailed a theological interpretation of political events mirrored on biblical books such as Deuteronomy and I and II Kings. Although this type of Hebraism seems to have been common in early modern Europe, it was most popular among nations that identified themselves as pure and embattled, just like the Old Israel. Hence Calvinist states such as revolutionary England and the Dutch Republic embraced Hebraism. So, the association with the people of Israel in the Old Testament was popular and grounded in sound theology, but for these Huguenot authors it was otherwise also aptly chosen. In both cases a people were exiled from their land and brought to another land, in which, however, they were not real citizens. That, in a way, made both groups transnational communities with national aspirations, complicating the spatial identity of the Huguenot community considerably.

60   E.g. C. Huisman, Neerlands Israël. Het natiebesef der traditioneel-gereformeerden in de achttiende eeuw (Dordrecht: Van den Tol, 1983). 61   Tony Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 62   Cf. Gordon Sochet et al. ( eds.), Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern Political Thought (Jerusalem and New York: Shalem Press, 2008). 63   Cf. Richard Adamiak et al. (eds.), Justice and History in the Old Testament: The Evolution of Divine Retribution in the Historiographies of the Wilderness Generation (University of Michigan: John T. Zubal, 1982), 43.



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Huguenots compared themselves in a temporal and spatial sense to the people of Israel in Egypt or in exile in Babylon, also implying an ethical identity which was typified by the concepts of ‘exile’ (a punishment for sin) and ‘slavery’ (the result of evil oppression). Like the people of Israel, the Huguenots were exiled from their land, and suffering as slaves. If the Huguenots were slaves, the King of France was pharaoh. Likewise, the Huguenots could see themselves as the Israelites in exile in Babylon, the empire of evil that also loomed ominously in the Book of Revelation. Pharaoh was a tyrant, and so, then, is the King of France. Indeed, the word ‘tyranny’ figures frequently in pamphlets, and was often connected to ‘slavery’. The self-identification of the Huguenot exiled community was inextricably connected to the construction of France as a tyrannical regime. In this perspective, the King of France, like pharaoh, could be demonised. But Huguenots were careful to do so. Although Michel Le Vassor’s book on Louis XIII reportedly incurred the wrath of Louis XIV, it tends not to be directly critical of the King, but follows the traditional modus of accusing his advisers.64 The first volume, for instance, ends with a positive view on Louis XIII, who ‘feared God, loved Justice and was willing to do good to his people.’65 Despite their respect for Louis XIII and Henry IV, few Huguenots had qualms about presenting Louis XIV as a tyrant. The frequent references to ‘tyranny’ and ‘despotism’ construct France in the present condition as decidedly unchristian. The biblical association with ‘tyranny’ in conjunction with ‘slavery’ was presumably interpreted as a link to the people of Israel and pharaoh. It was, in connection with Calvinist resistance theory, often associated with oppressive leaders who suppressed Protestantism. But the phrases ‘tyranny’ and ‘Despotick power’66 go further in that they, like pharaoh, refer to rulers that are not merely unchristian, but outside the context of Christendom altogether. Indeed, Le Vassor and Jurieu contrast the rule of the French monarch unfavourably with that of other ‘Christian princes’, albeit Leopold of Austria or Charles II of Spain – Catholics.67 The French, Jurieu and Le Vassor suggest,

  Le Vassor, History, 2.   Le Vassor, History, 623. 66   I.e. [Jurieu and Le Vassor], Sighs, 4. 67   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 4. 64 65

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‘are  treated with a harshness unknown to all people who live under Christian Princes.’68 Rather, the King of France is in the same league as that other despot, the Ottoman sultan. The authors compare the financial policy of Colbert with that of the ‘Mahometan Princes of Turkey, Persia, and Mogull’ who also ‘have made themselves Masters of Property of all Funds, and the Possession of which they give to whom they think fitting’.69 The ‘Unhappy Tyranny is the Cause that the finest Countries in the East are become Desarts’.70 Just as these Oriental states, France is changing for the worse. The spatial construction in which the kingdom of France is presented as essentially oriental and despotic, like eastern regimes, is clear here. The oriental construction reverberates with Old Testament narratives on Egypt or Babel. The kingdom of France had become essentially pagan. Still, the identification of France with Egypt or Babylon was problematic, since it remained patria for many Huguenots. Religious identity and nationalistic feelings seemed at odds here. In fact, rather than demonising, Jurieu constructs self and other in a different way. His patriotism easily takes over when he describes France as ‘the finest Countrey in Europe, the Noblest part of the World’.71 Le Vassor is also unable to demonise his native country, rather he bemoans the troubles that have overcome it.72 The Hebrew construction, then, presented the Huguenots as an exiled people, suffering from a tyrant but waiting for the return to their native country. But the model was ambiguous. Whereas, of course, the people of Israel were dependent upon Divine intervention rather than reliant upon military strength (in the words of Claude Brousson: ‘the Battle is not Our’s, but God’s.’73), the second Israel concept often allowed for the possibility of armed struggle for the sake of defending the faith. Moreover, even though French Huguenots considered themselves to be in a desert, it was still a beloved native country rather than a foreign land.

  Ibid., 4.   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 22. 70   Ibid., 22. 71   [Le Vassor], Sighs, 4. 72   ‘If I am not in a Capacity to do my Country Service, I have the Liberty to deplore its Misfortunes.’ Le Vassor, History, 5. 73  Brousson, The support of the faithful, 82. 68 69



models of an imagined community 209 The pastoral model

The pastoral, unlike the Hebrew model, was not ambiguous at all. The war against Louis XIV of the Allies was a war of liberation and one to end the religious struggle in France. This conflict did not square with the image of the exiled Huguenot community as part of the body of Christ. First, we must see how the Huguenots imagined themselves a persecuted community based on the model of the first Christians in the Roman Empire. This can be illuminated by focusing on Pierre Jurieu’s Pastoral Letters to the Huguenots in France, published as a pamphlet in 1686.74 The subtitle, ‘Directed to the Protestants in France, who groan under the Babylonian Captivity’, suggests a Hebrew model, rather than a New Testament one – a clear example of the fact that these models were easily mixed up in discourses. But the format of Jurieu’s letters is exactly that of the epistle of the apostle Paul. Indeed, the opening words of the first letter are nearly exactly those of the epistle of Paul to Titus: ‘the Grace and Peace of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ be with you all.’75 The intertextual connotations would have been immediate for anyone reading this letter. Jurieu frames the Huguenot community as the Christians in the Roman Empire. Evidently the addressees are to understand that their position is similar to that of the small Christian community facing pagan Roman oppression. This framing adds significant weight to Jurieu’s exhortations to the Huguenots, as the identification with Paul obviously asserts authority. But it also provides a frame of reference. The epistle to Titus, just like Timothy, focuses in particular on strengthening the resolve of the church leaders in the face of adversity and bad theology, which need to be countered. The importance of this becomes clear from the contents of the letter. Protestant Church leaders in France are to persevere in the face of Catholic pressure to convert, to which some have subdued. Hence the Huguenot community is constructed in a spatial, temporal and ethical

74   Pierre Jurieu, Pastoral Letters. Directed to the Protestants in France, who groan under the Babylonian Captivity (London, 1688). 75  Jurieu, Pastoral Letters, 3. According to the King James Bible, Titus 1:4 runs: ‘Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.’ The 1599 Geneva Bible: ‘Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.’

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way as transnational, rooted in Christian history and suffering from persecution. Yet in this model as well, Catholic France is not a binary other. Like the pagan Roman Empire, Catholic France may yet be converted to the true religion. According to Jurieu, despite all the superstitions, the Catholic Church is redeemable.76 Since France has the ability to change, indeed, Catholicism itself has the ability to change, demonisation discourse is rare, since it would cut off the possibility of any reasonable adjustments. In a letter supposedly sent to Jurieu by French Protestants in 1685, before the Revocation, and published as a pamphlet, Jurieu is mild.77 It reflects on a conference on the reunification of the Huguenots with the Catholics, and Jurieu insists that the Huguenots should not give in. At the same time, however, he admits that ‘French church is one of the purest within the Catholic church, since in other parts many Romish evils are still around’.78 There is no question of demonisation; obviously, the situation is still such that Jurieu does not want to antagonise the King too much, a fear that after 1685 becomes different. Hence the tone of the 1686 Pastoral Letters has hardened. The Huguenots, he wrote, are ‘sighing’ in the ‘prison’ of ‘Babel’. He speaks of the ‘present persecution’. Huguenots in France must defend themselves against the ‘deceptions’ of bishop Bossuet, who ‘seduces’ them.79 Despite Jurieu’s severe criticism there is still no utter demonisation of the French church or the King, since the situation might still be solved, and the Catholic church in France shows the potency to redeem herself. Moreover, nor can Jurieu afford to demonise the Catholics completely. Bishop Bossuet accused the Protestants as ‘heretics’ and ‘schismatics’, and Jurieu needs to show that he is not responsible for the schism, nor completely opposed to Christian reconciliation.80 The pastoral model, then, calls for dialogue, rather than violence. Of  course, very few Christians were pacifists per se. The just war  Jurieu, Pastoral Letters.   Pierre Jurieu, Lettre de quelques protestants pacifiques, au sujet de la reúnion des religions, à l’assemblée de MM. du clergé de France, que se doit tenir à St Germain-enLaye, le … du mois de mai (Paris, 1685). I have made use of the Dutch translation, Brief van eenige Vreedlievende Protestanten, geschreven aan de Vergaderinge van de Geestelijkheyt van Vranckrijck, die den […] der maant Mey 1685 tot St. Germain en Laye sal gehouden werden ter Materie van de Hereeniging der Religien (The Hague, 1685). 78  Jurieu, Brief van eenige Vreedlievende Protestanten, 6. 79  Jurieu, Pastoral Letters, passim. 80   Referred to in Jurieu, Brief van eenige Vreedlievende Protestanten, 12–13. 76 77



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t­ heory allowed for armed struggle for a just cause, but only in the context of secular concerns. In their capacity as Christians, the Huguenots should rather suffer persecution, as the New Testament Christians did. Hence, within this pastoral model, armed struggle within the context of the Grand Alliance was unlikely. Just as the Christians survived the Roman Empire by having faith and perseverance, rather than stage a revolt against the Emperor, the Huguenots were to wait, perhaps even die, and be rewarded with eternal life. The apocalyptic model However, the New Testament also yielded another conceptual model. In his famous prophetic work, The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies, or the Approaching Deliverance of the Church, Pierre Jurieu seems to suggest that ultimately it is not the wars against Louis XIV that will bring deliverance, for his information seems to indicate ‘that the total Reformation of France, shall not be made with bloodshed.’81 Jurieu prophesied the ‘approaching End of the Antichristian Empire of the papacy and of the coming of the Kingdom of Christ.’82 A deeper layer of reality than the raging of worldly kingdoms and peoples was the rise and fall of the satanic kingdom, which would be brought down by God himself. This was a development that was practically autonomous, for who could influence the decrees of God? Since the reformation will be achieved without ‘bloodshed’, the Huguenots could easily be relieved of the duty to fight.83 In another context, Willem Frijhoff described such prophecies as ‘prophecies of hope’, which, apart from their eschatological dimension, served to galvanise the commitment of an embattled minority community.84 The temporal nature of prophetic writings thus strengthened the resolve and coherence of the Huguenot community in exile. It is in The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies that Jurieu constructs the Papacy, rather than French tyranny, as the ‘Antichristian 81   Pierre Jurieu, The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies, or the Approaching Deliverance of the Church etc. (London, 1687), second part, 268. 82  Jurieu, The Acomplishment, 3. 83  Jurieu, The Accomplishment, second part, 268. 84   W. Frijhoff, ‘Prophesies in Society. The panic of June 1734’ in idem, Embodied Belief – Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002). Frijhoff for example studies several Dutch Catholic prophecies which predict the liberation of the Dutch Republic by Catholic powers.

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Kingdom’.85 The juxtaposition of the ‘Antichristian Empire of the papacy and the […] Kingdom of Christ’ is absolute.86 That is so because in his view tyranny alone is not the only or sufficient indicator of the antichristian realm; it goes hand in hand with idolatry and the ‘great corruption of manners’.87 The three ethical indicators tyranny, idolatry and corruption are associated with the spatial signifiers Egypt, Babylon and Sodom.88 The realm of antichrist is everywhere the manifestation of the vices of these earthly kingdoms are visible. As such, the Greek Church, for instance, is seen as a manifestation of the realm of antiChrist, for ‘there is Idolatry, there is Babylon; for there they invocate Saints, and worship Images and Relicks.’89 But the Greek Church is not the antichristian realm. Despite the spatial designator, the antichristian realm is an abstract connotation, it exists in a spiritual sense. However, Jurieu still makes an explicit geographical reference, for ‘we may look for the capital of this Anti-christian Empire in Rome, and find the man of sin, the head of the Babylonish Empire, in the Pope’.90 Thus, if Jurieu constructs a spatial identity it is mostly associated with the papacy. Whereas the Gallican church is redeemable, the Roman church is another matter; according to Le Vassor, she is a ‘cruel and implacable Enemy’.91 Spatial identies were therefore multilayered. Jurieu can argue that although in France there is Babylon, France is not Babylon itself. There is no inherent paradox between criticising the French government and still exhibiting patriotism. Still France figures prominently in Jurieu’s eschatology. The end of times is associated with great persecutions. These have been manifestly present in recent history: in Piedmont, France, Hungary, Moravia, Poland, Silesia and Transylvania Protestants have been persecuted as from about the 1650s. Still, it is in France that, according to Jurieu, the great prophecies will manifested. This will occur between the years 1685 and 1710 or 1715.92 It will happen in France, because it is here that currently the great persecution takes place, which Jurieu argues will be in the geographical centre of the  Jurieu, The Accomplishment, title page.  Jurieu, The Accomplishments, 3. 87  Jurieu, The Accomplishment, 119. 88  Jurieu, The Accomplishment, 120. 89  Jurieu, The Accomplishment, 124. 90  Ibid. 91   Le Vassor, History, 7. 92  Jurieu, The Accomplishment, pt ii, 244. 85 86



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Babylonian Kingdom, which he takes to be France. Several other details persuade Jurieu that France will be the place where the final prophecies are fulfilled.93 In this sense, the spatial reference thus gains significance: the geographical location of France has a particular role to play in the final showdown. The year 1685 is, of course, decided by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.94 And it is the Protestants in France, rather than the Huguenots in exile, that will play a particular role as the witnesses of the true faith, as mentioned in Revelation. However, eventually France will be humbled because of her sins, but not be ruined, for upon its strong foundations a Protestant kingdom will emerge, to the benefit of other Protestant states. France will thus rebel against the kingdom of Antichrist.95 Even though the apocalyptic model therefore does not entirely call for a passive waiting, it seems far removed from the secular wars against tyranny and universal monarchy. In this model, the Huguenots must wait for imminent divine intervention. The Kingdom of France is part of Babylon, its regime will be destroyed but France itself will be redeemed. Conclusion Huguenot apologists constructed multiple identities of themselves. The paradoxical nature of their situation complicated their strategy: should they fight against Louis XIV as French suppressed citizens, or should they wait for Divine intervention, as Christians? Should they integrate in their host societies, be ready for imminent return or construct a transnational identity? In this article, is has been argued that Huguenot authors used discursive models in order to understand their own identity and decide upon a proper course of action. This identity was constructed vis-à-vis the kingdom of France. The paradoxical nature of their situation was  Jurieu, The Accomplishment, pt ii, 245 ff.   Jurieu predicts that after a symbolic 3.5 years or 42 months (see Daniel 7:25) of the so-called Great Tribulation, a sudden relief will take place. Remarkably, between the revocation and the coronation of William III (and thus the end of the Babylonian Kingdom in England) are exactly 3.5 years. Remarkably as well, 1715 is the year of the death of Louis XIV. Jurieu himself was quick to point out that his predictions were just the interpretation of an individual, and should not be seen as fully reliable. Jurieu, The Accomplishment, second part, 244–5. 95  Jurieu, The Accomplishment, second part, 265. 93 94

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reflected in the self-constructed identities. Spatially, it is not easy to see how a transnational group of exiles could foster a sense of community other than through discourse. Ethically, what would the identity of that community look like? As we have seen, it wavered between a group with political aspirations, like for instance the Jacobites, and a group that contented itself as remaining part of a transnational Christian church. Temporally, the Huguenots wrestled with the problem of integration versus return, with passive endurance or active involvement. A disclaimer must be made here, namely that the models discussed in this article are by no means completely developed nor exhaustively studied. Nor do they suggest straightfoward courses of action. Nor indeed can we be sure that the Huguenot authors consciously developed such models at all. Nevertheless, they do make clear that Huguenots tried to frame their role and identity in various discursive patterns. We need to make allowances, of course, for the fact that there were few pure strategic and religious conflict discourses. In practice different discourses were mixed. Tony Claydon has described this rhetorical strategy as a ‘blunderbuss strategy’: arguments did not have to be coherent to increase their effectiveness.96 The wavering between multiple identities also had an impact upon the ethical identity of the Huguenots. If for a political group, the connection with the wars against Louis XIV was natural, as some historians suggest, for a Christian community that connection was not at all clear. Jurieu, for instance, utilised both the pastoral, apocalyptic and the Hebrew model, whereas at the same time was very active in the actual war against Louis XIV in propaganda and espionage. Whether Huguenot authors realised the incoherence of their discourse is unclear. Moreover, further research should enlighten us about discursive strategies. Certain writings may have attempted to discursively integrate Huguenot aspirations into the grand narrative of the Grand Alliance in order to influence allied strategy, whereas others were clearly of a pastoral nature and intended to circulate in Huguenot circles only. What we may tentatively conclude, however, is that the Huguenots constructed a highly complex imagined community, which implied alternatives courses of action. 96   T. Claydon, ‘Protestantism, Universal Monarchy and Christendom in William’s War Propaganda, 1689–1697’, in E. Mijers and D. Onnekink (eds.), Redefining William. The Impact of the King-Stadtholder in International Context (Ashgate: Ashgate, 2007), 133.



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There is, however, another conclusion to be drawn, and that is the remarkable fact that the Huguenots managed to construct an ‘imagined community’ at all. The diaspora had led to chaos, it not only caused a split between French Protestants and exiled Huguenots, it was also hard amongst the exiles to maintain a sense of community at all. That they managed to do so across borders, indeed, that a transnational discursive community did come into being at all, is testimony to the energy and imagination of the authors and illuminating evidence of the emanating ‘public sphere’ of later seventeenth century Europe. Within the context of this volume of essays, it is also testimony to the extraordinary power of memory as a temporal construction in the forging of the Huguenot exile community.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Huguenots in British and Hanoverian external relations in the early eighteenth century Andrew C. Thompson The impact of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes on European history was extraordinary. It prompted a huge population movement around France’s borders and beyond. Wherever the Huguenots went they changed fundamentally the societies where initially they sought refuge and eventually found a home. Huguenot craftsmen and designers transformed their new surroundings and the networks of Huguenot exiles were able to use connections, familial and otherwise, to further trade in an increasingly capitalised European market. Beyond cultural and economic change, though, the Huguenot diaspora had other impacts. News, as well as trade, was able to flow easily across Europe, thanks to Huguenot connections. Information, of course, had an economic value in its own right, as Jürgen Habermas and others have argued.1 Yet the transfer of information could also be turned easily towards more political purposes. Assimilation was not the only option for first-generation exiles. They continued to hope that the ebb and flow of European politics might be turned to their advantage in the specific sense that something might be done to humble Louis XIV and allow the return of Huguenots to their homeland. As time went by, and the prospects of this happening began to fade, Huguenot energies were turned towards a more general aspiration. Huguenot propagandists and leaders found themselves acting as Europe’s conscience, arguing the case for religious toleration and calling on Europe’s protestant princes to defend their co-religionists when they were threatened with persecution.

1   For the links between news, trade and the growth of capitalist society, see Jürgen Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).

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To explore all of these themes lies beyond the scope of this chapter. Yet within its compass it is possible to pursue several interesting lines of enquiry. Much fruitful work has been done on what might be called the ‘local’ dimension to Huguenot studies – exploring the impact of diaspora communities in their new surroundings and, with the aid of extensive genealogical study, discussing how those communities evolved and changed over time.2 There is enormous value in such work and it is an excellent example of the ways in which the concerns of ‘professional’ historical practitioners and amateur contributors can overlap and cross-fertilise in important and stimulating ways. However, there is also considerable value in seeking to put the Huguenot story into a broader context of international experience and encounter. In recent years there has been a strong move away from writing history within a national context and boundaries. Much emphasis has been placed on how connected the world was, even before the twenty first century. It is not entirely coincidental that this move has taken place within a world in which the processes of globalisation are clear for all to see – from the instantaneous contacts made possible by the rise of global communications technology, through the huge growth in air travel overcoming borders and broadening perspectives to the increasingly global nature of problems from financial crises and terrorism to the challenges posed by how to continue to support life on the planet. While the move towards a more supranational perspective on historical writing may be as tied to contemporary concerns as other important historiographical shifts, there is merit to it nevertheless. Huguenot history, with its inbuilt sense of the global, has much to offer transnational perspectives. As this chapter will demonstrate, Huguenots thought about themselves as belonging to a community that could not be confined within national borders and used this insight to make claims on behalf of Protestants as a whole. The court was also an important institution in many European countries and historians have become increasingly interested in it in recent years. As this chapter shows, courts offered a variety of opportunities for Huguenots. They were centres of conspicuous cultural consumption and therefore offered opportunities for the employment of skilled craftsmen and painters.3 Yet court patronage did not stop with 2   The very title of Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (eds.), From strangers to citizens (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001) underscores this impulse. 3   The essays in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, part III, serve to open up this theme.



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the field of design. Court power might be projected through the medium of representational culture but it had a hard edge to it as well. Courts were the arena in which military patronage was discussed and dispensed and soldiering was another profession which exiled Huguenots latched on to quickly and successfully.4 While courts were the spaces in which decisions, such as promotions to regimental colonelcies, were made, they were also the places where the broader strategic direction of foreign policy was formulated. Consequently, for Huguenots anxious to ensure that their cause remained high on the foreign political agenda, courts were very much the place to be. Courts provided manifold opportunities for social, economic and political advancement. The study of Huguenot influence at and around court in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century is therefore of particular interest. It helps in assessing the success of the broader Huguenot political programme and it also allows discussion of how identities and ideas could transcend national borders. While a pan-European survey would be illuminating, the present chapter instead restricts itself to consideration of the Huguenot impact on a narrower set of courts – that of London and those of the several duchies that came together to form the electorate of Hanover. The choice is deliberate. There are several similarities between Huguenot exile communities and the new Hanoverian monarchs who found themselves on the British thrones after 1714. Both were interested in the fate of Protestantism within Europe. Both had perspectives beyond the merely insular. Yet, in some ways, the ascent of the Hanoverians to the British thrones came too late for the Huguenots to achieve their objectives. The chapter begins by discussing the protestant position in Europe at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes before considering  the impact that the influx of Huguenot refugees made to North German protestant courts.5 It highlights some of the ways in which Huguenots were involved in the life of the Guelph courts and shows how Huguenots were at the heart of the complicated dynastic story of

4   For an overview, see David Onnekink and Matthew Glozier (eds.), War, religion and service: Huguenot soldiering, 1685–1713 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); cf. chapter 6, by D. J. B. Trim, above. 5  For a recent studies on the protestant courts other than the ones discussed here, see Guido Braun and Susanne Lachenicht (eds.), Hugenotten und deutsche Territorialstaaten (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007).

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the house that would ultimately obtain the British thrones. It explores Huguenot efforts to alert British and German political leaders to their cause and discusses how far Huguenot aims were achieved in the series of conflict with Louis XIV that dominated the last years of his reign. The chapter begins by looking at Huguenot encounters largely through the lens of individuals but then expands to look at broader policy issues. There are also some final reflections on the ways in which the Huguenot story was subsumed into larger narratives of displacement by subsequent generations. The Huguenot departure from France was one chapter in a broader European story of confessional strife. While 1685 was a landmark within the history of Protestantism in France, from the perspective of many European Protestants it had a depressingly familiar ring about it. In the aftermath of the Thirty Years’ War, Protestantism seemed to be in retreat on several fronts. In central Europe the forces of the catholic reformation were making their presence felt. Large swathes of territory were coming back to the tender arms of the mother church. In the Holy Roman Empire, while open warfare had been brought to an end, the Westphalian settlement, with its complicated mechanisms for regulating confessional relations, ensured that the venue of confessional conflict had switched from the battlefield to the courtroom. The nature of conflict had been transformed but it was still there and, again, the balance seemed to be shifting in favour of the Catholics. The reasons for this were several. The Habsburgs, as Holy Roman Emperors, had been able to reassert their authority and their staunch support for the Catholic church was of considerable importance. In a world in which dynastic rulers had to think carefully about how to provide for their offspring, the church provided a useful source of gainful employment. This option was, of course, not available to protestant rulers and promotion within the secular Imperial hierarchy was also difficult for non-Catholics. Consequently, the pull of patronage was increasingly forcing rulers, as well as ruled, back towards Catholicism. Whereas in the sixteenth century Protestantism had seemed to offer considerable secular advantages to rulers and precipitated a series of princely conversions, the direction of traffic had now been reversed. Yet there are also good grounds for seeing 1685 as a particularly fateful year for European Protestantism. In February Charles II of England, Scotland and Ireland had died to be succeeded by his openly catholic brother, James, duke of York. The efforts that had been made during the last years of Charles’s reign in parliament to exclude James



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from the line of succession on the grounds of his faith had finally failed. Days before his death, Charles had been received into the Catholic church, confirming what many had suspected for some time about his personal faith. How the Church of England would survive a catholic supreme governor remained to be seen. Protestant lights were being extinguished in other parts of Europe as well. In the Palatinate, the elector (another Charles II, as it happened) died childless in May 1685. His territories went to his Catholic Pfalz-Neuburg cousins. The Elector Palatine had been the first major prince within the Empire to convert to Calvinism in the sixteenth century and his lands had provided material and spiritual support for the protestant cause ever since. When Louis XIV decided to bring protestant toleration to an end through the Edict of Fontainebleu in October 1685 it seemed, therefore, to fit into a broader pattern of protestant retreat. The scale of the exodus that followed was new and shocking but events in France could be easily assimilated into a larger frame of reference. Several of the elements that characterised protestant thinking about catholic behaviour were present. There was the association of catholic rulers with tyranny, which expressed itself in the form of persecution. Blame for the king’s actions was also placed on an unholy cabal of clerics around him.6 This fell neatly into narratives of dangerous clerics, exercising undo influence over secular rulers, and reinforced anxieties about the dangers of priestcraft. In some senses, therefore, the task for refugee Huguenots should have been relatively straightforward. For those with eyes to see, it was clear that Protestantism faced a real and present danger within Europe. Whether this meant that something would be done about it, however, was an entirely different question. Huguenot refugees found a safe haven in protestant territories throughout Europe following the Revocation and their impact was felt wherever they went. Those territories closest to France, such as the United Provinces and protestant Swiss cantons like Vaud, were obvious places to go, but Huguenots also travelled further afield, reaching Brandenburg in considerable numbers. The physical presence of the Huguenots in Berlin is readily apparent even now – the French church

6   Brian E. Strayer, ‘The Edict of Fontainebleau (1685) and the Huguenots: Who’s to blame?’, in Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), Persecution and Pluralism: Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe 1500–1700 (Oxford, New York & Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 273–94.

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in the Gendarmenmarkt was built between 1701 and 1705 when Huguenots made up perhaps a quarter of Berlin’s population. The Great Elector was keen to increase the population of his territories, especially in some of the more sparsely populated rural areas, and the Huguenots offered a ready source of new subjects. Population size was seen as a proxy for political strength in this period so the Elector’s willingness to support immigration was unsurprising. Yet there were other destinations for Huguenots in north Germany. Some 3500 found homes in north German protestant states and the Hanseatic towns.7 For present purposes, those who settled in the duchies of Calenburg and Celle are of most interest. Calenburg and Celle were part of a uniquely complicated form of early modern state – the Holy Roman Empire. The Empire was a veritable patchwork of territories and jurisdictions in the late seventeenth century. The Emperor enjoyed some measure of authority over some three hundred ‘territories’.8 The Guelph family had ruled various territories in the north-west of the Empire for some time. The senior branch of the family were dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and the cadet branch held the duchies of Calenburg and Celle, although it was different branches of the family that ruled in each territory. Duke George of Calenburg had moved his residence to Hanover in 1636 and he left the duchy to his oldest son Christian Ludwig on his death in 1641. Christian Ludwig’s uncle Frederick died childless in 1648, leaving his own duchy of Celle to Christian Ludwig. Christian Ludwig promptly decided that Celle, with its larger geographical area and greater wealth, was preferable to Calenburg so upgraded his duchy, leaving Calenburg to his younger brother, Georg Wilhelm. The Huguenot impact on the dynastic manoeuvrings of the Guelph family was soon to become apparent.9 One of the cardinal duties of any early-modern ruler was to ensure that their line was continued successfully into the next generation. Marriages were therefore driven not

7   Andreas Flick, ‘Huguenots in the electorate of Hanover and their British links’, HSP 27 (2000), 335. 8   This number excludes the Imperial knights in south-west Germany whose ‘territory’ often amounted to little more than a castle and the surrounding village. 9   The following draws on Ragnhild Hatton, George I (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978), ch. 1, Karin Feuerstein-Praßer, Sophie von Hannover (Regensburg: Friedrich Pustet, 2004), 61–80 and Maria Kroll, Sophie: electress of Hanover (London: Gollancz, 1973), 52–79.



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primarily by love but by political necessity. Georg Wilhelm was aware of these pressures when he arrived at the court of Heidelberg with his youngest brother, Ernst August, in 1656. The pair were en route to Venice to indulge in the pleasures of the carnival. In Heidelberg they met Sophia, twelfth of the thirteen children of Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart, the ‘winter king and queen’ of Bohemia (so called because Frederick, Elector Palatine, had ruled only for a season in Prague as elected king before the Habsburgs ejected them by force and reassumed control of Bohemia). The unmarried Sophia was living at the court of her eldest brother, to which he had returned following his restoration in 1648. At 26 she was relatively old to still be unmarried but familial exile during the Thirty Years’ War probably explained this. Georg Wilhelm clearly saw something in the palatine princess and indicated to her brother a willingness to marry her. Georg Wilhelm was himself under a certain amount of pressure to marry from his estates. His eldest brother’s conversion to Catholicism had created worries about the continuation of a line of protestant dukes. Having contracted in haste, Georg Wilhelm began to repent once he arrived in Venice. Perhaps he was reminded of the advantages of a bachelor life-style. Nevertheless, familial honour meant that he could not simply walk away from the arrangement so a solution had to be found. Ernst August agreed to step in and fulfil his brother’s promise by marrying Sophia. However, such fraternal largesse came at a price. Ernst August extracted an agreement from Georg Wilhelm that, if he did not marry Sophia, then he would not marry at all. Ernst August’s reasoning was that such a promise would increase his own chances of eventually inheriting some of the Brunswick duchies himself (although there were still a large number of ifs and buts in his calculation). Nevertheless, Georg Wilhelm was prepared to accept the price and Ernst August married Sophia in autumn 1658. How, then, does this rather convoluted story of marital indecision relate to Huguenot concerns? The answer can be found in the further dynastic developments of the 1660s. Ernst August and Sophia fulfilled their dynastic duties quickly and a son, Georg Ludwig, was born in 1660. As yet, he had no territory to inherit but this was soon to change as well. In 1665, the eldest brother, Christian Ludwig, died without issue. Georg Wilhelm followed the path set by his brother in 1648 and decided to upgrade from Calenburg to Celle as well. The next brother, Johann Friedrich, initially demurred, claiming Celle for his own, but he eventually accepted Calenburg instead. Ernst August sided with

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Georg Wilhelm in the dispute and was rewarded with the county of Diepholz for his trouble. French influence was strong at Johann Friedrich’s court in Hanover, although it was more catholic than protestant because Johann Friedrich had also converted to Catholicism in 1651. Ernst August and Georg Wilhelm were close to William of Orange and so wary of the rise of Louis XIV’s power. Yet it was Huguenot, rather than Catholic, influence that was to create problems for Ernst August next. Ernst August’s plans for the advancement of his own rapidly growing family relied on his brother keeping his promise and remaining unmarried. This promise had come under pressure because Georg Wilhelm had taken a fancy to a young French noblewoman, Eléonore d’Olbreuse. Born in the Poitou in January 1639, Eléonore was travelling in the entourage of the Calvinist princess of Tarente when she encountered Georg Wilhelm at the court in Kassel. While not quite love at first sight, Georg Wilhelm was sufficiently taken with Eléonore to persuade Ernst August to ask Eléonore and her companion, Mademoiselle de la Motte, to join Sophia’s suite for the trip that the two brothers and Sophia were planning to Italy for the winter of 1664–65. This initial effort was rebuffed as Eléonore elected to follow her mistress to The Hague instead. Undeterred, Georg Wilhelm abandoned his trip south and journeyed to the United Provinces instead. Sophia was persuaded to invite Eléonore to join her as a lady-in-waiting in Osnabrück and when she and her husband travelled with Eléonore to Celle, Georg Wilhelm promptly entered into a morganatic marriage with Eléonore (the difference in their respective social statuses was too large for anything else to be considered). Eléonore gave birth to a daughter, Sophia Dorothea, in September 1666. Although the likelihood of Sophia Dorothea, as both illegitimate and a woman, succeeding to her father’s titles was small, her existence was worrying to the dynastic plans of Sophia and Ernst August. These worries were confirmed by Georg Wilhelm’s subsequent actions. Eléonore was raised to the status of Imperial countess in 1671, partly because of the strongly anti-French stance that Georg Wilhelm took. In April 1675 Georg Wilhelm married Eléonore formally and ensured that Sophia Dorothea was retrospectively legitimated. Sophia Dorothea had now become a potentially valuable bride even at the tender age of nine and a queue of suitors soon formed. The queue was sufficiently long to make Ernst August and Sophia realise that the only way in which they could ensure that their dynastic ambitions were fulfilled



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was for their son, Georg Ludwig, to marry his first cousin, Sophia Dorothea and this ambition was eventually completed in November 1682. Ernst August was able to extract a dowry of 100,000 Taler from his brother and Sophia Dorothea was also to receive an annual allowance of 4,000 Taler from her father.10 The fate of this marriage was to have important consequences for the fulfilment of Huguenot political aims in a variety of ways but before considering these, it is important to consider the broader impact that the Huguenots had on the court in Celle. The Huguenot community in Celle was different from those in many other places in two particular aspects. The first is that, because of Eléonore’s presence, it pre-dated the revocation and the second was that it was firmly rooted in the life of the court. Eléonore had surrounded herself with a number of her compatriots and co-religionists. She used a room in the ducal palace in Celle to hold French services and this room was also used by the small Huguenot community in the town.11 A number of those employed at the court were French and although not all were Huguenot, a majority were. Most of the musicians in the court orchestra were catholic but the company of French comedic actors was protestant. The longevity of the French community in Celle meant that a degree of religious indifference emerged that would have been unthinkable within France, perhaps because in a foreign context the differences between the French and German courtiers were greater than the religious divide.12 Nevertheless, when the clouds began to darken, Georg Wilhelm was prepared to step in to help Huguenot refugees. More than a year before the revocation he issued an edict promising a safe haven in Celle.13 Like other princes, Georg Wilhelm hoped that Huguenot merchants and craftsmen would provide economic stimulus. The significant influx of high-ranking Huguenots also served to stimulate courtly life in Celle. Although Beuleke has suggested that the impression that, after Prussia, the highest number of Huguenot refugees found new

 Hatton, George I, 40–1.   Andreas Flick, “The court at Celle…is completely French”: Huguenot soldiers in the duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg’, in Onnekink and Glozier (eds.), War, religion and service, 199. 12   Wilhelm Beuleke, Die Hugenotten in Niedersachsen (Hildesheim: August Lax, 1960), 146; Flick, ‘Court at Celle’, 197. 13   Flick, ‘Court at Celle’, 202. 10 11

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homes in Celle is not supported by the surviving records,14 the impression is, of itself, revealing. Gregorio Leti, a protestant convert, who left a detailed picture of life at the Celle court, noted that the best way to gain acceptance was to appear as a ‘soldier, huntsman or musician’ and there is some truth to his claim.15 While some Huguenot officers had always plied their trade in the service of foreign princes, the number increased dramatically after 1685. Georg Wilhelm was an anxious as any other late seventeenth-century German prince to increase the size of his army because of the implied increase in his power and status that this would bring and so he was willing to provide employment for a number of Huguenot officers. The cadet school at Celle provided training for several Huguenots whose families were to serve Georg Wilhelm and his successors for considerable periods.16 Like the rest of the soldiers in Georg Wilhelm’s army, they were involved in a series of campaigns in the 1680s and beyond – against the Turk on behalf of the Emperor and then in the Nine Years War and the War of the Spanish succession. Huguenot involvement in the military of their adoptive territories was about more than mere employment. It was also a potential means of curbing the power of Louis XIV. In this sense, the wars of the Grand Alliance, begun by William III and continuing to the Peace of Rastatt in 1714, offered an inviting opportunity to further Huguenot aims. How successful this would be in practice depended on the ability of Huguenots to convince their new employers that Huguenot aims were worth including in general war aims. How, and with what success, Huguenots in Britain and beyond were able to do this will be discussed further below but it is necessary first to complete the complicated marital history of Georg Ludwig and Sophia Dorothea. Sophia Dorothea’s marriage to her cousin in 1682 had clearly not been made in heaven. It was designed to secure specific dynastic and political aims and neither party thought much about romantic attachment. Sophia Dorothea had to leave her mother and father’s court at Celle and reside at Hanover instead. She lodged initially in the Altes Palais opposite the Leine Schloß which had been constructed after the  Beuleke, Hugenotten, 16.   Flick, ‘Court at Celle’, 203. 16   Ibid, 204. The most notable example was Jacques d’Amproux du Pontpiétin. His regiment had a long and distinguished career in the Hanoverian army, as did many of his descendents. 14 15



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duke of Calenburg moved his residence to Hanover in 1636. The court in Hanover was dominated by Ernst August and Sophia. Sophia in particular was a stickler for court etiquette. This aspect of her personality helps to explain her dislike of Sophia Dorothea’s mother. Sophia had always been acutely aware of the hierarchy of social ranks that governed all aspects of courtly society. Both her parents and grandparents had been monarchs. Her husband aspired to become an Elector of the Holy Roman Empire – immediately below a monarch in the accepted European order of precedence. Consequently Eléonore, despite her noble birth, was not her equal and Sophia was not above commenting in her letters on the damage that she felt had been done to the Guelph bloodline by the introduction of the Huguenot noblewoman – her niece, the duchess of Orléans responded to one such tirade on the subject by agreeing that this was the sort of thing that happened when ‘mouse droppings had been mixed into the pepper’.17 Something of Sophia’s dislike of her mother was probably apparent to Sophia Dorothea. She avoided court society where possible, spending mornings in her apartment either asleep or writing letters and walking with her own companions in the afternoon.18 Sophia Dorothea saw relatively little of her husband during the first years of their marriage. Georg Ludwig was frequently away on campaign and he also made several trips to Italy, although his new wife was able to join him there in 1685. A son, Georg August, had been born in 1683 so, dynastic duties performed, Georg Ludwig felt under no obligation to remain monogamous. In this he followed the accepted practice among elite males of the time; what was less acceptable was for his wife to adopt the same attitude. Nevertheless, Sophia Dorothea did and she began an affair with a Swedish noble in Hanoverian service, Count Phillip Christoph von Königsmarck. It was difficult to keep such things secret and Sophia Dorothea was warned about the inappropriate nature of her conduct. Undeterred, the relationship continued until one night in July 1694, when Königsmarck, who had switched to Saxon service, was intercepted on his way to Sophia Dorothea’s apartments in the Leine Schloß and was never seen again.   Elisabeth Charlotte to Sophia, Versailles, 27 Oct. 1710, in Eduard Bodemann (ed.), Aus den Briefen der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orléans an die Kurfürstin Sophie von Hannover, 2 vols. (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), ii, 258, no. 740. 18   W.H. Wilkins, The love of an uncrowned queen, 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1900), i, 92. 17

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Divorce proceedings were quickly put in place and by the end of the year a separation had occurred. The real reasons for the divorce were left opaque. Instead it was suggested that Sophia Dorothea had been planning to desert her husband.19 Under an agreement reached between Ernst August and Georg Wilhelm, Sophia Dorothea was to spend the rest of her days under close supervision, primarily in the castle of Ahlden. Sophia Dorothea was accompanied by a number of Huguenot servants, as well as a reformed minister who acted as her spiritual advisor, during her confinement in Ahlden. Sophia Dorothea, in common with other people of her rank and background, spoke French regularly. In her confinement she also seemed to value the companionship of servants from her mother’s country. Some of the German soldiers given the task of guarding the disgraced princess expressed worries that the presence of so many French servants increased the chance of intrigues but to little avail. Indeed, a Huguenot officer, Gabriel de VillarsMalortie, took charge of Ahlden in 1711.20 The acrimonious nature of the split between Sophia Dorothea and Georg Ludwig also increased suspicion of the Huguenots at the Hanoverian court. This was not helped by the actions of the English envoy James Cresset. Cresset had been critical of the process that led to Sophia Dorothea’s confinement and had made some rather impolitic remarks in a dispatch about her innocence that found their way back to Hanoverian officials. Efforts were made to get Cresset recalled but without success. Hanoverian suspicions increased when Cresset married a distant relative of Sophia Dorothea, the Huguenot noblewoman Louise Marie de la Motte in December 1694. Cresset found himself drawn further into Huguenot politics. He tried to get his master, William III, to raise Sophia Dorothea’s plight when William met Georg Wilhelm at Het Loo, in the Dutch republic, in 1696. Further Hanoverian pressure led to Cresset being temporarily stationed in Hamburg but he remained active in Lower Saxon politics until 1703.21

19   Georg Schnath, ‘Die Prinzessin in Ahlden: Sophie Dorotheas Gefangenschaft, 1694–1726’, in idem, Ausgewählte Beiträge zur Landesgeschichte Niedersachsens (Hildesheim: August Lax, 1968), 169. 20  Schnath, ‘Die Prinzessin in Ahlden’, 171, Flick, ‘Huguenots in the Electorate of Hanover’, 336–7. 21  Schnath, ‘Die Prinzessin in Ahlden’, 206–8.



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Eléonore remained an indefatigable campaigner on her daughter’s behalf. Her actions made relations between the courts of Celle and Calenburg difficult. Georg Ludwig was particularly keen to ensure that Eléonore was unable to exercise too much influence over her grandson, Georg August. Elaborate preparations were made on the occasions when Georg August was allowed to visit his grandmother to ensure that he was not unduly distracted. These measures could have knock-on effects. When Georg August visited William III at Het Loo, his companion and former tutor Phillip Adam von Eltz was given elaborate instructions about how to deal with the question of Georg August’s maternal relations. Von Eltz was supposed to suggest to William that when Georg Wilhelm died, Eléonore had expressed the desire to return to France and seek Louis XIV’s protection. The none too subtle undertone was that she proposed to abandon her protestant faith. This particular line would undoubtedly have interested William. Concerns about Protestantism and succession were looming large on his political agenda. The death of his sister-in-law Anne’s eldest son, the duke of Gloucester, had made ensuring the future of the protestant monarchy in Britain a top priority for him. William listened attentively to von Eltz’s claims, although he did point out the dangers of throwing stones in glasshouses – two of Georg Ludwig’s own brothers had converted to Catholicism. Nevertheless, he made clear that he had told Eléonore to tone down her advocacy. His words must have had some impact because it was only after his death that Eléonore resumed efforts to raise awareness of her daughter’s plight in Britain. Even then, Eléonore’s efforts went largely unrewarded, as Anne, on Cresset’s advice, was reluctant to get involved.22 On one level, Eléonore’s problems were purely personal. Yet they also typify the broader difficulties that Huguenots faced. William’s reactions are a reminder of one of the important factors that impinged on the ability of Huguenots to get their message across in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Exiles had to rely on the good will of those in power to intervene to help them. The domestic situation in Britain that William faced made it hard to secure his attention. Although the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had made Protestantism within the British Isles secure in the short term, concerns about the long-term future remained. A protestant succession, to underwrite the   Ibid, 210–11.

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provisions put in place by the Bill of Rights, was ultimately secured with the Act of Settlement in 1701. This placed the succession to the British thrones after Anne in the hands of Sophia of Hanover and the ‘heirs of her body being protestant’. At a stroke more than fifty closer blood relations were excluded from the line of succession. From the Huguenot point of view, the difficulty was that if Protestantism seemed threatened within the British Isles, then persuading the relevant people that action needed to be taken to help Protestants outside Britain became commensurately more difficult. Another factor within this process was the tension between differing versions of Protestantism and debates about the nature of true religion. On the one hand there were those within Britain who saw the Church of England as part of a broader European protestant movement and were keen to emphasise the common reformation heritage of all protestant churches. Such people would see the body of Christ as an organic unity and, picking up on Pauline teaching, would argue that an attack on one part was an attack on the whole. Such people were found at the low church end of Anglicanism or among protestant dissenters (who had a deep vested interest in eschewing the claim that there was no truth outside Anglicanism). Politically speaking, they tended to be Whigs. On the other hand there were also those who thought that the Church of England held a monopoly of truth and were deeply suspicious about foreign Protestants. They tended to have a high church perspective and be politically Tory.23 Attitudes towards Huguenots were consequently filtered through these two perspectives and questions of assimilation and integration played their part as well. Individuals who could play a role in bridging gaps and providing perspectives beyond the purely national were, therefore, important. One such Huguenot figure who was to provide a vital, but sometimes obscure, link over a number of years was Jean de Robethon.24 His career also exemplified the way in which concerns about European Protestantism were intertwined with politics at the Hanoverian and, subsequently, British courts. Little is known of Robethon’s early life. 23   For a discussion of the evolution of these positions, see Tony Claydon, Europe and the making of England, 1660–1760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 235–41. Cf. chapters 3 and 5, by Gregory Dodds and Robin Gwynn, above. 24   The following draws heavily on Matthew Kilburn, ‘Robethon, John (d. 1722)’, Oxford DNB; online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23821, accessed 16 Sept 2009]. It also includes material from D.C.A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France, 3rd edn, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: privately printed, 1886), II, 199–207.



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He was probably born in Authon in Perche. His father was a lawyer in the parlement of Paris and he was raised as a Calvinist. Following the revocation, his father and brother decided to convert. Jean, however, sought his fortune outside of France. He may have travelled to Britain after 1685 where his uncle, the Huguenot pastor Claude Groteste de la Mothe had settled, or spent some time in the United Provinces. By 1693 he had become a naturalised British subject. It was also in this year that he became secretary to Ludwig Justus Sinold von Schütz, the extraordinary envoy of Georg Wilhelm and Ernst August in London. Sinold von Schütz was well connected. His father had been chancellor of Celle and his sister was married to Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff, his father’s successor. Like Cresset, he had also found a bride from among Eléonore’s French entourage and was married to Anne des Lesours.25 Having worked for the Georg Wilhelm’s representative in London for a few years, Robethon moved on to bigger and better things. He was secretary to Portland during his embassy to Paris in 1698 and he became confidential secretary to William III when Portland retired from public affairs in September 1698. Robethon remained with William until his death and then returned to the continent. His next employer was Georg Wilhelm of Celle and again Robethon acted as confidential secretary. Georg Wilhelm died in 1705. Sophia and Ernst August’s plans now came to fruition. Celle was joined to Calenburg and Robethon transferred his service to Georg Ludwig. He was to remain in Hanoverian service until his death in 1722. He accompanied Georg Ludwig to London in 1714, after the latter had succeeded to the British thrones as George I. Robethon was, in many ways, an ideal advisor. His long and varied European experience meant that he was well connected at most courts. He retained contacts with his French relatives, and so had access to information about what was going on inside France. In the period after William III’s death he was able to provide his Guelph masters with considered commentary on the fluctuations of British domestic politics. He was also a committed protestant and so was in a good position to push his political masters in a direction likely to benefit Huguenots and the protestant cause more generally.26 He was an almost 25   Georg Schnath, Geschichte Hannovers im Zeitalter der neunten Kur und der englischen Sukzession, 1674–1714, 4 vols. (Hildesheim: August Lax, 1938–82), IV, 53. 26   Andrew C. Thompson, Britain, Hanover and the protestant interest, 1688–1756 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2006), 50–1, R. Pauli, ‘Jean Robethon und die

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ideal type of the protestant international. Yet even this short summary of his career shows the levels of interconnectedness, in both people and ideas, with some of the other themes discussed in this chapter. It is therefore necessary to focus more directly now on the policy, as opposed to the personnel, of international relations to assess Huguenot impact. The international situation provided Huguenots with a variety of opportunities. The prevalence of conflict in this period enabled them to press their claims for a resolution of their grievances. On at least three occasions, Huguenot exiles planned invasions with William’s overt aid to recover their lands and restore Protestantism within France.27 The rest of the chapter, however, focuses not on the late seventeenth but the early eighteenth century. Some work on the impact of Huguenot propagandistic efforts on the course of international relations exists already.28 The perspective offered here is more positive about the effectiveness of Huguenot efforts. Both Huguenot campaigns inside France to unseat Louis XIV and the ways in which these were justified are explored. The War of the Spanish Succession was the result of diplomatic failure. It had been clear for some time that an agreement would have to be reached about the fate of the Iberian Peninsula following the death of the last Spanish Habsburg, Carlos II. Both Louis XIV and William III had been keen to avoid armed conflict and efforts had been made to ensure a peaceful transition of power through a series of Partition treaties. The death of the agreed compromise candidate, a Wittelsbach prince, before Carlos made matters more complicated. When Carlos died in 1701, Louis backed the claims of his grandson, Philip, duc d’Anjou, while the Habsburgs decided to support the Archduke Charles. William, still mindful of containing the power of France, had little choice but to back his erstwhile Habsburg allies and conflict Thronfolge des braunschweig-lüneburgischen Haueses in England’, Nachrichten von der Köngil. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften und der Georg-Augusts-Universitäts zu Göttingen, 16 (1881), 409–37; and idem, ‘Confessionelle Bedenken bei der Thronbesteigung des Hauses Hannover in England’, in idem, Aufsätze zur Englischen Geschichte neue Folge ed. Otto Hartwig (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1883), 379–91. 27   For a short overview of all the invasion attempts in the period, see Matthew Glozier, ‘Schomberg, Miremont and Huguenot invasions of France’, in David Onnekink (ed.), War and religion after Westphalia, 1648–1713 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), 121–53. 28  Laurence Huey Boles, Jr, The Huguenots, the protestant interest and the war of the Spanish succession, 1702–1714 (New York: Peter Lang, 1997).



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commenced. While Spain was to be one of the theatres of operations, there was also fighting in Italy, America, southern Germany and the Low Countries. With conflict taking place across such a variety of locations, the resources of both France and her opponents were stretched considerably. In the circumstances, it is unsurprising that attempts were made to take the fight into the very heart of the enemy’s territory—all the more because Louis XIV was willing to support both financially and militarily various invasion plans by the exiled Jacobite court to recover the British throne. Huguenot discontent within France still seemed to offer the chance to reverse the tables. Almost as soon as war broke out, a revolt started in the Cévennes. The region had been an area of traditional Huguenot strength. Like other Huguenot strongholds, the inhabitants had been subjected to dragonnades for some time. Protestantism was effectively forced underground. The seeming success of the royal campaign also contained, however, the seed of future trouble. Faced with the prospect of conversion or exile, Huguenot nobles had either decided to conform or flee. Their financial position allowed them to emigrate, although their longstanding sense of loyalty to the crown might also pull them in the opposite direction. Such a choice was not open to those further down the social scale. With a certain amount of official influence removed, the Huguenot peasantry became increasingly radicalised. Millenarian belief grew. In the context of such persecution, it is easy to see why ideas of the imminence of a second coming might gain purchase in the course of the 1690s.29 These pressures came to a head in June 1702. Abraham Mazel, one of an ever-growing band of prophets in the Cévennes, claimed to have a received a vision that required him to drive out priests, using force if he had to, in order to prevent them from destroying God’s creation.  His immediate target was François Langlade, Abbé de Chalia. Langlade enjoyed a considerable local reputation as a tormentor of Protestants. His house had been used to imprison locals caught trying to flee to the safety of protestant Geneva. Mazel gathered a group of malcontents together, attacked and set fire to Langlade’s house, freeing various Protestants in the process. The unfortunate abbé jumped

  W. Gregory Monahan, ‘Between two thieves: the protestant nobility and the war of the Camisards’, FHS 30 (2007), 542; cf. Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove. 29

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out of an upstairs window, only to be captured and dragged off and murdered by a vengeful mob. Following the murder, matters escalated quickly. The royal authorities were anxious that such an assault on their authority should not go unchallenged. Their efforts were opposed by a guerrilla force of Huguenots, led by Jean Cavalier and Roland Laporte. The rebels became known as ‘camisards’, probably derived from an Occitan word for the type of shirts they habitually wore. Using techniques that would now be described as asymmetric warfare, they waged a bloody campaign of ambushes with the occasional pitched battle against the might of Louis XIV’s army. Allied commanders finally realised the revolt might have huge potential for disrupting the French war effort. Yet, it was only once Cavalier began to enjoy some success that those outside France took it seriously. Cavalier’s early victories proved to be a drain on French resources, forcing Louis to divert troops from other theatres. Backing the rebels was not necessarily straightforward, however. The absence of noble leadership was problematic because of worries that the rebels wanted to bring about social, as well as religious and political, change. British agents travelling to region to assess whether it was worth supporting were told that the rebels were perfectly willing to put themselves under the command of the local protestant nobility but volunteers were not forthcoming.30 The initial surge of revolt had been headed off by 1704 when the new royal commander, Marshall Villars, managed to reach an agreement with Jean Cavalier. Laporte was less convinced and sporadic fighting continued until 1710 but it was small scale compared with early years of the war. Boles has argued that allied support for the camisards was largely still-born.31 Some British efforts were made to support the uprising through the actions of British naval squadrons in the Mediterranean.32 Miremont decided to use the opportunity to move a body of Huguenot exiles to Piedmont in the hope of capitalising on the unrest in France, as well as adding recruits to his forces from among the refugees.33 Yet there was also a certain 30   Roy L. McCullough, Coercion, conversion and counterinsurgency in Louis XIV’s France (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Glozier, ‘Schomberg, Miremont’, 142, 544. 31  Boles, Huguenots, chs. 5–6. 32   Andrew Wellum-Kent, ‘The role of frigates in Royal Naval operations in the early eighteenth-century Mediterranean’, unpublished BA dissertation (University of Cambridge, 2008). 33   Glozier, ‘Schomberg, Miremont’, 143–4.



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degree of ambivalence in the response of members of the grand alliance to events in the Cévennes. Concerns about hierarchy and its defence go some way to explain this reticence. A related reason was concern about supporting rebellion and what that might mean for the existing political order throughout Europe. Notions of the divine sanction for the powers that be were still common. Therefore, Huguenots also had to advance arguments to support the legality of abetting rebellion. Abel Boyer published a work defending the actions of cévenol Huguenots in 1703.34 In it he argued that, contrary to the common perception, the camisards were not, in fact, rebels. Drawing on the authority of no less a personage than Hugo Grotius, Boyer claimed that ‘subjects are not bound to obey the Magistrate, when he decrees any thing contrary either to the Law of Nature or of GOD’.35 The thrust of Boyer’s argument was that intervention was not only permitted but indeed advisable when a prince had, in effect, declared war on his own subjects through the operation of tyrannical policies. The defence of the innocent offered ample justification for interference in the internal affairs of another state. He coupled the philosophical justification with a lengthy historical description of how what was happening in the Cévennes was based on the same principles that had inspired the Glorious Revolution and that support for the Huguenots would fit into a pattern of support for European Protestantism stretching back to Elizabeth’s reign.36 Arguments in favour of intervention might strike more of a chord with us now but the ways in which Boyer had to downplay the novel aspects of what he was suggesting indicate the rhetorical and practical difficulties in which he found himself. Forcing Huguenot concerns onto the agenda of powers pursuing conflicts for a wide variety of reasons was always going to be difficult, not least when allied commanders like Marlborough had to think about the relative costs and value of intervening on behalf of the Huguenots.

34   [Abel Boyer], The lawfulness, glory and advantage of giving immediate and effectual relief to the protestants in the Cévennes together with the ways and means to succeed in such an enterprise, 2nd edn (London: 1703). 35   Ibid, 6. I draw here on my ‘The protestant interest and the history of humanitarian intervention, c.1685–c.1756’, in Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), Humanitarian intervention—a history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 67–88. 36  Boyer, Lawfulness, 6–10.

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Nevertheless, figures like Abel Boyer continued to wage an information war on behalf of the Huguenots in particular and the protestant cause in general.37 Boyer himself is an apposite representative of this broader movement.38 He was probably born in upper Languedoc around 1667 and entered a protestant academy in the hope of the following the familial tradition of becoming a pastor before the revocation. He left France for the United Provinces and spent some time in the Dutch army before resuming his studies at Franeker University in Friesland, in the Dutch republic. He travelled to Britain after the Glorious Revolution with a letter of introduction from Pierre Bayle to Bishop Gilbert Burnet, a vigorous Protestant Internationalist and counsellor of William III. Boyer’s early interventions in the public sphere were driven by a desire for patronage and to secure his financial  position. He dedicated his new French teaching manual to the duke of Gloucester in the hope of securing the task of instructing the boy. He published other reference works and acted as a translator of French literature. His output became more political at the turn of the century. Boyer was drawn into the world of news and its transmission. He began writing the foreign news for the newly founded Post Boy in 1705. To perform this task, Boyer needed a network of extensive contacts to furnish him with information and it is probable that he drew on letters from Huguenot correspondents in Amsterdam and beyond. He had become a newsletter writer as well, sending information about goings on in London out to a network of correspondents. Boyer hoped to become the editor of the official paper The Gazette in 1710 but when this failed he founded his own publication, The political state of Great Britain, in 1711. This monthly periodical contained news, including parliamentary reports, and accounts of recently published books and pamphlets and was read widely. Some of his newsletters may have even found their way to Hanover after 1714 when the

37   G. C. Gibbs, ‘Some intellectual and political influences of the Huguenot émigrés in the United Provinces, c. 1680–1730’, Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de geschiedenis der Nederlanden 90 (1975), 255–87 and idem, ‘Huguenot contributions to the intellectual life of England, c. 1680–c. 1720, with some asides on the process of assimilation’, in J. A. H. Bots and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds.), La Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes et les Provinces-Unies 1685 (Amsterdam & Maarssen: APA Holland University Press, 1986), 181–200. 38   For a biographical details, see G. C. Gibbs, ‘Boyer, Abel (1667?–1729)’, Oxford DNB, online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3122, accessed 17 Sept 2009].



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Hanoverian ministers were keen to keep a close eye on goings on in London.39 Boyer’s decision to move into news in the first decade of the eighteenth century is an interesting one. It may have been simply economic. With an expanding public sphere in the aftermath of the lapsing of the Licensing Act in 1695 it was now much easier to make a living from newspapers than when he first arrived in Britain. That said, Boyer’s change of direction may also have been influenced, at least in part, by events in the world around him. He had published, albeit anonymously, a tract in defence of his Huguenot frères in 1703. The support for the Camisard rising had not been as great as he might have hoped. Perhaps the option to report more extensively and regularly on foreign events provided a means to keep the struggle against Louis XIV and the suffering engendered by the French monarch at the front of the public mind. The rise of the public sphere created numerous economic opportunities but it was advantageous to those who had a particular political agenda to push as well. Where force of arms had failed, perhaps the pen could succeed. The point about news reporting was that the very selection of which items to cover and how much attention to devote to them made an implicit point. Boyer’s choices in this respect, even after hopes of securing immediate aid for Huguenots had faded, are revealing. For example, during the crisis in the Palatinate triggered by Elector Karl Phillip’s decision to take control of all of the Heiliggeistkirche in Heidelberg, The political state of Great Britain consistently provided extensive coverage of the crisis and the response of British ministers to it – over forty pages of the June 1720 edition were devoted to an update on the crisis and it was the opening item in the issue.40 Boyer’s career encapsulates some of the changes with which Huguenot propagandists had to deal. While there were some schemes to invade France after the camisard uprising, Glozier is probably right to describe them as being increasingly ‘fanciful’.41 It has often been thought that the purchase of the ‘Calvinist international’ was decreasing in this period – an influential collection on the subject stops its coverage in 1715.42 From the Huguenot perspective, Robin Gwynn has  Thompson, Britain, Hanover, 86.   Ibid, 88. Political State of Great Britain, xix (1720), 600–42. 41   Glozier, ‘Schomberg, Miremont’, 150. 42  Mena Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism, 1541–1715 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985). 39 40

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linked notions of international protestant solidarity closely to the struggle against Louis XIV.43 Considered within this context then it might appear that Huguenot efforts left something to be desired. As this chapter has shown, for a variety of reasons persuading the British to support the Camisard revolt was fraught with difficulties. The occasions on which it could be said, despite efforts to cajole and persuade, that policy was altered significantly to take account of Huguenot pressure were small. While Huguenots in Britain had to compete with the problems of partisan political culture and worries about the survival of the social hierarchy, in Hanover the situation was slightly different. Here, the court remained a central focus of Huguenot activity. Yet, as the situation in Celle showed, being so closely tied to the fate of a particular court and a particular individual brought with it dangers as well as rewards. In some ways, the Huguenots who found refuge at the court of Celle were far from typical. They enjoyed the protection of a Huguenot princess and the community was well established, even before the Revocation. Yet the reputation and position of that community was to become subject to the vagaries of domestic context in which it found itself. The collapse of Sophia Dorothea’s marriage and Eléonore’s efforts to push her daughter’s cause, almost regardless of the political consequences, sent shockwaves through Hanover and Celle. Suspicion of the Huguenots and all things French grew. From a public relations perspective, the divorce was little short of a disaster. It was also an illustration of the more general point that Huguenot experience and expectation was very susceptible to changes in the relative positions and power of their new-found patrons. The refugee existence was frequently an uncertain one. Yet to focus solely on immediate failures is to miss something important. As the public sphere expanded, the nature of power and its presentation was being transformed. Where once it had been sufficient to convince a few elite individuals to make things happen, a broader stratum of society was now taking an active interest in the political process. Here Huguenot involvement in news-gathering and distribution was to prove crucial. The consistent Huguenot emphasis on the tyrannical nature of Louis XIV had some impact on the way in which the struggles against him were portrayed in public. The presentation of

43   Robin Gywnn, ‘The Huguenots in Britain, the “Protestant International” and the defeat of Louis XIV’, in Vigne & Littleton (eds.), Strangers, 412–24.



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the wars was one of the means used to garner support for them and, as Tony Claydon and others have argued,44 the religious aspects of the struggle had tended to be underplayed. More importantly, though, Huguenot writers made a significant contribution to debates on toleration and its desirability. At the time of the revocation, intolerance was still intellectually respectable. Arguments could be mustered in its defence that convinced a good many.45 By the middle of the eighteenth century the intellectual landscape had shifted. This was not to say that persecution had ended and freedom of conscience reigned supreme – far from it. Rather, the growth of Enlightenment thinking meant that it was the persecutors who now found it difficult to justify their conduct. Intellectual and philosophical shifts had helped but so had the steady flow of information about practical instances of persecution. One of the ways in which the story of the growth of tolerationist thought can be told is to focus on particular individuals and the reception of specific texts, such as the work of Baruch Spinoza and John Locke. However, it is also important to remember that to create the context in which their work could be received and appreciated, it was necessary for many other authors to push the message of toleration, even if it arrived with less theoretical sophistication than could be mustered by professional philosophers. Journalism and passing on news of the horrors that the Huguenot community experienced within France helped raise short-term awareness but it also contributed to a greater awareness, in the long term, of the undesirability of such practices. It reinforced a sense of collective memory that helped to shift expectations and political values. The message of the importance of toleration was spread as much by sermons and political pamphlets as it was by intellectual treatises. In this respect, Huguenot authors and pamphleteers were part of a large, but generally unacknowledged, republic of letters that was slowly altering the European intellectual scene. Local studies of Huguenot experience performed and perform a vital role in securing identity and perpetuating memory. Yet, as this

 Claydon, Europe and the making of England, 158–92.   Mark Goldie, ‘The theory of religious intolerance in Restoration England’, in Ole Peter Grell, Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke (eds.), From persecution to toleration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 331–68, John Marshall, John Locke, toleration and early enlightenment culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), ch. 15. 44 45

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chapter and others in the volume illustrate, there was always an inherent tension between Huguenot assimilation and the broader European context in which Huguenot identity operated. Huguenots had a significant vested interest in ensuring that Europe’s protestant powers survived. Consequently, they were willing supporters of efforts to ensure that the protestant succession was secured in Britain. This was not, however, an end in itself but a means to something larger. It slowly became clear that a return to France was unlikely and, perhaps, even undesirable. Yet, the story did not end there. Huguenot writers, their views shaped by Huguenot history and collective memory, had helped to create a political and intellectual world in which the fate that they and their forebears had suffered had become intellectually disreputable. Practical politicians could no longer ignore this fact.

CHAPTER NINE

Exile, Integration and European Perspectives: Huguenots in the Pays de Vaud* Vivienne Larminie The Pays de Vaud, on the northern and eastern shores of Lake Geneva and on the east bank of the upper Rhône, might appear to have been the ideal land of exile for French Protestants.1 It was conveniently placed for Huguenots fleeing their former strongholds in Languedoc and Dauphiné, yet protected by the Jura and the Alps. French-speaking yet Reformed, it was politically neutral and relatively free from the fickle favours of princes, with their unstable dynasties and shifting alliances. The front door-way to the Pays, the independent but vulnerable republic of Geneva at the western end of the lake, was of course a familiar destination as the training ground of their ministers; some families had established a bridgehead there early on through a son engaged in trade or banking. The back doorways, the mountain passes, provided well-trodden if hazardous escape routes in times of crisis. During the exoduses associated with the sixteenth century wars of religion and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685, many French Calvinists duly took these routes – but then travelled rapidly onwards.2 It has been estimated that, in the years around the revocation, about 200,000 of an estimated Reformed population of 850,000 opted to leave France. Between 1680 and 1700 just over half of this number – at

*  The early stages of my research in Vaud (1996–1998), which underpin what follows, were funded with assistance from the British Academy and from the Open University (where I was then an associate lecturer), for which I am most grateful. 1  The Pays became, with slight boundary adjustments, what is now the canton of Vaud when it joined the Confederation in 1803. 2   For an overview of the refuge, see: Le Refuge Huguenot en Suisse: Die Hugonotten in der Schweiz (Lausanne: Musée Historique de l’Ancien-Evêchê, 1985). See also: L. Gacond, ‘Bibliographie des Refugiés Huguenots en Suisse après la Révocation’, Revue Suisse d’Histoire 36 (1986), 368–91.

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least 450,000 – passed through the territories of the Swiss Confed­ eration.3 Protestant Bern, the largest and most powerful canton, bore the brunt of the traffic, followed by Zurich, its neighbour and rival for dominance. These city states of the northern plateau straddled the route to Germany and thence to the Netherlands, and for the vast majority of French emigrants they represented merely transit camps along the way. Only 6,000 at most made a permanent home on Swiss soil, most of them in Vaud, where they settled principally by the lake in Lausanne, Vevey and Morges, but also up the Rhône valley. The indispensable modern study of the statistics and structures of refuge in Vaud found that the number of refugees grew rapidly between 1685 and 1688, reaching a peak in 1690 and 1691. Little impact on figures was made by the so-called ‘Glorieuse Rentrée’ of 1689 which saw the return by Waldensian refugees in the Pays to their valleys in Piedmont, and these people (confusingly also termed ‘Vaudois’) were in any case a distinct religious community, Savoyard rather than French. On the other hand, the end of the war of the League of Augsburg in 1697 saw notable emigration of Huguenots to Germany and the Netherlands, but there was a renewed influx following further persecution in 1698, bringing numbers of refugees again up to about 9,000. More than half then moved on, but later crises like the revolt in the Cévennes again replenished the flow somewhat.4 Both economic and political pressures worked to limit severely permanent settlement in Switzerland. Agricultural productivity was barely sufficient to maintain the existing population and imports carried a heavy price of strategic dependency; industrial activity was very modest.5 This perhaps should not be exaggerated: even at the time observers might detect defensive special pleading; and as one modern

3   M.–J. Ducommun and D. Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant dans le Pays de Vaud (Fin XVIIe–début XVIIIe s.): Aspects d’une migration (Publications de l’Association Suisse pour l’Histoire du Refuge Huguenot, vol. 1/Bibliothèque Historique Vaudoise [hereafter BHV], vol. 1, Geneva: Droz, 1991), 11, 13. 4  Ducommun and Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant, chap. 2. 5   See e.g. F. de Capitani, ‘Vie et mort de l’ancien régime’, Nouvelle Histoire de la Suisse et des Suisses (Lausanne: Payot, 2nd edn. 1986), 423–39; R. Braun, Le Declin de l’Ancien Régime en Suisse: un tableau de l’histoire économique et sociale au 18e siècle (Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, 1998); De l’Ours à la Cocarde: Ancien Régime et Révolution en Pays de Vaud, eds. F. Flouck, P.–R. Monbaron, M. Stubenvoll and D. Tosato-Rigo (Lausanne: Payot, 1998), parts 1 and 2; M. Blanchard, ‘Sel et diplomatie en Savoie et dans les Cantons suisses aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, Annales, 15 (1960).



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historian has pointed out, by the turn of the seventeenth century, Bern was filling its coffers through disengagement from foreign conflict to the extent of being able to lend to the British and Dutch governments.6 None the less, there was a continuation of the well-established tradition of economic emigration in search of employment as mercenary soldiers, private tutors or engineers.7 The precarious concord between the Protestant and Roman Catholic cantons of the Confederation, the desire of all confederates not to compromise their hard-won neutrality and independence, and somewhat paradoxically, the engagement of many Swiss in French regiments, made them vulnerable to the manipulations of King Louis.8 The impetus was thus to shift the problem of French refugees on to someone else. Moreover, in the Pays de Vaud peculiar disincentives to the establishment of French expatriates were in play towards the end of the seventeenth century. Originally a possession of the dukes of Savoy, this territory had been conquered by the Bernese in 1536 and converted to their own brand of Erastian Protestantism, derived from Huldrich Zwingli. A Presbyterian system of local classes was organised and controlled from Bern by its councillors, commonly referred to as ‘Leurs Excellences’. There were also colloques, but no general clerical assembly equivalent to that in Scotland to challenge the secular powers. Ministerial training at the Académie de Lausanne was strictly monitored and calls to parishes were carefully vetted; censorship of press and pulpit was strict. Theology was Calvinist, but of a narrow, conservative cast, determinedly upheld. An influx of relatively liberallyminded French clergy, perhaps trained at the unorthodox and suspect Académie de Saumur or accustomed to living in some sort with the 6  BL, Add. MS 9,741 (Blaythwayt Papers XXIII), f. 64 (Philibert d’Herwart from Bern, 3/13 Sept. 1693); S. Altorfer, ‘To have or have not: state finance of the Swiss Republic of Berne in the eighteenth century’, (http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/ conference2003/assets/Altorfer.doc, accessed 18 Aug. 2009). 7  See e.g. Gente Ferocissima: Mercenariat et Société en Suisse (XVe–XIXe siècle. Solddienst und Gesellschaft in der Schweiz (15.–19. Jahrhundert, ed. N. Furrer, L. Hubler, M. Stubenvoll and D. Tosato-Rigo (Lausanne and Zurich: Chronos, 1997). Instances of Swiss in Britain are returned by a search of Oxford DNB, online at www.oxforddnb.com, employing a ‘People’ search limited by ‘born’ in ‘Switzerland’ between ‘1500’ and ‘1700’. 8   See e.g. V. Larminie, ‘Exile and belonging: Philibert Herwarth, ambassador to Switzerland and benefactor of the French hospital’, HSP 28 (2006), 509–23. The classic work on Franco-Swiss relations in this period is E. Rott, Histoire de la Représentation de la France auprès des Cantons Suisses, de leurs Alliés et Confédérés, vols. IX and X (Bern: Imprimerie A. Benteli, 1926, 1935).

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Catholic enemy, was unwelcome; few incomers were appointed to ministerial positions.9 Historians like Jules Chavannes in the 1870s and, in more measured terms, Henri Vuilleumier in the 1920s saw the new arrivals as a breath of fresh air in a stultifying backwater, but the reality of their impact seems very much more complex, with much evidence still to be uncovered and sifted.10 It is true that some aspects of the refuge in Vaud were described long ago in both local and general studies.11 The statistics and the financial impact of French exile have been studied recently, but relatively little attention has been given to the personal experiences of the refugees and in particular to their expressions of belief.12 This is understandable: for the period before about 1720 the archives are thin of personal material on incomers and natives alike. Correspondence, diaries and creative compositions are very rare; family collections emanate only from a few native nobles. There are, however, several volumes of homologued wills for Lausanne, beginning in 1638 but evidently more  9   The classic work on this theme is H. Vuilleumier, Histoire de l’Eglise Réformée du Pays de Vaud sous le régime Bernois (4 vols., Lausanne: Éditions La Concorde, 1927–1933). See also: A. Bonard, La Presse Vaudoise: Esquisse Historique (Lucerne: Raber & Cie., 1925); J.-P. Perret, Les Imprimeries d’Yverdon au XVIIe et au XVIIIe Siècles (BHV 7, Lausanne, 1945). 10   J. Chavannes, Les Réfugiés Français dans le Pays de Vaud et particulièrement à Vevey (Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1874), 9–10, 68–9; Vuilleumier, Histoire de l’Eglise Réformée, esp. IV, 6, 173, 178. See also: G. Marion, Paroisses et Pasteurs de la Broye au XVIIIe Siècle: La Classe de Payerne 1675–1798 (BHV, 101: Lausanne, 1990), esp. p. 55; V. Larminie, ‘La vie religieuse en Pays de Vaud et le contexte européen’, in Flouck et al., De l’Ours à la Cocarde, 261–80; I. Fiaux, ‘Collaborateurs ou pertabateurs? Les pasteurs huguenots réfugiés dans les paroisses des Classes de Lausanne et Morges au temps du Refuge (1670–1715)’, Revue Historique Vaudoise [herafter RHV], 112 (2004), 29–53. 11   E.g. J. Bonzon, ‘La direction des pauvres refugiés français de Nyon’, Bull. SHPF, 50 (1901); E. Mottaz, ‘Yverdon et les refugiés de la révocation’, RHV (1903), 282–5, 311–18, 388–45, 379–86, and (1904), 53–5, 119–25; M. de Chambrier, ‘Solidarité protestante: la direction des pauvres refugiés à Lausanne’, Bull. SHPF 53 (1904), 54–62; J. Cart, ‘Les protestants français refugiés dans le Pays de Vaud et la Bourse Française de Rolle’, RHV, 171–82, 193–205; A. Veyrasset, ‘Etat des refugiés au Pays de Vaud après la révocation’, RHV (1926), 212–5, 248–52, 281–4; H. Yersin, ‘Les refugiés pour la cause de religion à Rolle’, RHV (1937), 232–43. 12   E. Burgy, ‘La Bourse Française de Rolle 1716–1986’, Mémoire de licence, Faculté des Lettres, (Université de Genève, 1987); F. Raymond, ‘Les Refugiés Huguenots à Lausanne de 1693 à 1698’, Mémoire de licence (Faculté des Lettres, Université de Lausanne, 1987); B. Baudraz, ‘Refugiés et prosélytes à Bex de 1695 à 1798’, Bulletin Généalogique Vaudoise (1997), 22–221; A. L. Rodondo, ‘La Bourse Française de Vevey (1687?–1790)’, Mémoire de licence (Faculté des Lettres, Université de Lausanne, 1999); A. Bachmann and T. Garlet, ‘La Direction Française: Composition et Activités (1688– 1699). Une Vie Commune Huguenote à Lausanne?’, unpubl. paper, Université de Lausanne, seminaire d’histoire moderne (6 April 2004).



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comprehensive from the 1670s, and more fragmentary testamentary records for other towns; the habit of giving precise details of the social status and origins of testators greatly assists the historian.13 A survey of these will occupy the core of this paper, but first it may be helpful to say something further about the structure of the refuge. Switzerland was a country notorious among foreign ambassadors for the tortuous and procrastinatory nature of its decision-making.14 None the less, on this occasion the Bernese at least laid plans for the reception of immigrants in good time. An Exultaten Kammer or chambre des refugiés emerged in Bern as early as 1683, and by 1686 it had accrued powers over the whole refugee problem.15 In the Pays itself an extensive network of hospitals of medieval origin offered bases for the bourse des français established by ordinances of Leurs Excellences in each major town. These simultaneously exhorted Christian charity towards co-religionists and took measures to avoid swamping by economic migrants.16 An infrastructure for supporting the indigent poor came into existence fairly rapidly, but the conference of civil rights was a different story. Towns, which had a pre-existing concern to limit their bourgeoisies, introduced the inferior status of ‘habitant’, conferred on supplicants who had means of living independently and who could afford a fee – no easy matter with few vacancies in the church and entrenched privileges complicating initiatives to establish industries new to the Pays. Other refugees remained mere ‘residents’, with no rights at all. For a favoured few, there were pensions from Bern, or in exceptional cases, largely confined to Lausanne and Vevey, a fast-track to the bourgeoisie.17 One such was Philibert Herwarth, Baron von Hüningen, whose family had roots in Provence and Alsace. He had

  The wills in this study at held at the Archives Cantonales Vaudoises (hereafter ACV). Inventories for the city of Lausanne are at the Archives de la Ville de Lausanne (hereafter AVL). I am most grateful to the staff of both repositiories for the assistance I have received at regular visits since 1995. Wills from Lausanne are entered in a continuous series of well-preserved volumes starting in the early seventeenth century; records for other towns are more fragmentary. 14  E.g. see: V. Larminie, ‘The Jacobean diplomatic fraternity and the Protestant cause: Sir Isaac Wake and the view from Savoy’, EHR 121 (2006), 1301. 15  Ducommun and Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant, 63. 16  Ducommun and Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant, 68, 70, 79–80. 17  Ducommun and Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant, 146; M.-J. Ducommun, ‘Aspects du Refuge Huguenot à Grandson, 1680–1701’, Memoire de licence (Université de Neuchâtel, 1985), 19–21; A. Leroy, ‘Passage, acceuil et établissement des réfugiés huguenots à Moudon’, Bull. SHPF 133 (1987), 229–30. 13

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served as British ambassador to Geneva and to the Swiss cantons, had  married into the Bernese élite, and had been energetically involved in plans to transport refugees in Switzerland to new lives in Germany and Ireland. When his diplomatic career ended in 1702, his entry to the bourgeoisie of Vevey was almost instantaneous.18 Few could command, or be thought to command, such a record and such connections. There was thus a hierarchy in the refuge, but there was also solidarity. The bourses des pauvres refugiés were sometimes initiated by refugees, and they came to be dominated by them. This is illustrated by the censuses taken in the 1690s.19 That compiled in Lausanne in 1698 was overseen and signed by ten ‘directeurs des François Refugiez’. Their list of householders, probably incomplete, enumerates 10 ministers and five clergy widows, 11 gentlemen and gentlewomen, three officers in the service of the allies against France, 15 bourgeois, three lawyers, 43 merchants, two physicians, four apothecaries, and two students, as well as many artisans and people living off rentes. Of a total of 1,578 persons, about one sixth were in receipt of financial assistance, 10 were hospitalized and 23 were pensioners of Bern.20 In a society which set great store by carefully graded titles of honour, it doubtless helped that several of the 1698 directeurs (among whom were four pastors and four elders) were here and elsewhere identified as of noble birth – both laymen like Jaques Deportes and ministers like Jean de Paradès. The latter, whose age was given as 65 and who had arrived from Bas Languedoc with his wife, was the recipient of a (modest) 72 écus pension from the city, but an inventory taken in March 1702 after his death revealed in his possession not only a bible and their marriage settlement but also a substantial cache of jewels – gold, silver, pearls and chrystal.21 The 1702 inventory and homologued will of Directeur ‘Seigneur’ Estienne Alberge, previously a merchant in Béziers, display his substantial wealth, his extensive kinship and patronage network (in France, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands), and his complex

  Larminie, ‘Exile and belonging’, esp. 517.   E. Piguet, Les Dénombrements Généraux de Réfugiés Huguenots au Pays de Vaud et à Berne (2 vols., Lausanne, 1934 and 1942) (also in Bull. SHPF 87 (1938), 187–202, 295–310, 494–551, and 88 (1939), 166–205, 330–56). 20  Piguet, Les Dénombrements Généraux, ii. 45–119, in Bull. SHPF, 87: 295–310, 494–551. 21   Bull. SHPF, 87: 296, 536; AVL, D533, ff. 58–59v. 18 19



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business dealings with fellow refugees as well as in Geneva and Lyon. Aside from his two main heirs (his wife in Lausanne and a nephew in France) and other beneficiaries, five nephews and a niece (all seemingly refugees) received sums totalling 9,000 livres, while nine refugee ministers (three of them fellow directeurs of 1698) each gained 50 livres.22 The following year his widow, Susanne Arnaud, still deployed sufficient wealth to name some forty individual or institutional legatees, including residents in hospitals, four ministers, their wives and servants, female friends and numerous nephews and nieces.23 Meanwhile, in the somewhat smaller town of Vevey relief was channelled through even more exalted hands, being dominated by the connections of Henri Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway, William III’s general. Galway’s uncle Paul Tallemant, sieur de Lussac, arrived there in 1685 aged 70. Within two years he was called in by the town as its chief consultant and became treasurer of the bourse. Following his death in 1696 there was a public funeral for ‘un Seigneur de si grand merite’. Meanwhile Galway himself had won great respect by establishing a chambre des orphelins, initially confided to the management of a female refugee, Demoiselle Morel, and later to the directors of the bourse.24 Both natives and refugees contributed to relief, although the attitude of the former could be cautious. In 1695 André de Praromand, citoyen of Lausanne, left 20 écus blancs to the poor of his own parish and an equal sum to genuine French refugees living in Lausanne ‘qui seront reconnus gens de bien et de probité et d’une vie exemplaire et sans reproche’. They were to be selected by his heir ‘a ou il verra y avoir le plus sujet de compassion le tout selon la prudence’.25 Many testators were even-handed, dispensing charity to the poor irrespective of their origin. A man like Pierre Vechière, who had fled the Pays de Gex (near Geneva) and since established himself, as the homologued version of his will proclaimed, as ‘tres expert commissaire pour leurs Excellences du Canton de Berne’, could appreciate the need to equip as well as to relieve the indigent. Having earmarked 1,000 florins specifically for

  AVL, D533, ff. 60–61v; ACV Bg 13bis2, ff. 3–8v.   ACV, Bg 13bis2, ff. 36v–40v. 24  Chavannes, Les Réfugiés Français, 207–14, 223–33. 25   ‘who are recognized as respectable people of integrity and exemplary lives, above reproach’; ‘from those most in need of compassion, always according to prudence’: ACV, Bg. 13bis/1, ff. 180v–183v. 22 23

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refugees, he left a further twenty thousand florins to the directeurs des revenues de tous les pauvres de Lausanne to be employed not just to feed and clothe them and instruct them in the fear of God, but also to teach them reading, writing and trades, ‘le tout selon qu’ils en seront trouvés capables pour pouvoir ensuite gagner honnêtement leur vie’.26 But there was also a tendency to privilege compatriots. In 1713 refugee Daniel Garcin (almost certainly the same man whose wife Elizabeth and many other kin had benefited greatly from Alberge/Arnaud bequests) made his own bequest to poor refugees conditional on the directors of the chambre giving first preference to his relatives.27 Somewhat more disinterestedly, in 1697 Judith Derafalis set up a trust to invest 6,000 livres for poor refugees in Geneva and Lausanne, but decreed that, if Protestantism were to be re-established in her native Montélimard, all funds were to be diverted there.28 Language and theology ensured that Huguenots (unlike the unorthodox dialect-speaking Piedmontese Waldensians) worshipped with their hosts; the availability of accommodation dispersed them among the local population. But for all that, there were respects in which the immigrant community remained intact. On the whole, well after testators’ arrival in Lausanne Huguenot wills tended to be witnessed by fellow refugees – for example, those of Margueritte Commard, a tailoress from Dauphiné (1710), and of Seigneur Isaac Laval, a silk manufacturer from Languedoc (1712), both recorded in the city in 1698.29 It seems natural enough that most beneficiaries of wills were fellow refugees – relatives, godchildren, former neighbours – members of those extended households depicted in the census, notable for attendant sisters and nieces, and shaped by who would or could escape from France. However, a notable minority, especially of the wealthier sort, revealed high-placed local friends. In 1715 Elizabeth Falgout, described seventeen years earlier as living ‘de son travail et de l’interêt d’un peu d’argent qu’elle a apporté de France’, surprisingly left money and a selection of fashionable clothes and luxury items not only to relatives in Holland and Lyon, and to a wide circle of refugees in Lausanne, but also to at least five women from the city’s leading families.30 Guillaume   ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 139–146.   ACV, Bg. 13/3, f. 30v. ‘All to the end that they may be rendered capable of later making an honest living.’ 28   ACV, Bg. 13/bis2, ff. 11–13v. 29   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 219v–220v; Bg 13bis/3, ff. 68–68v; Bull. SHPF 87:513. 30   ACV, Bg 13bis/3, ff. 71v–73; Bull. SHPF, 87: 309–10. 26 27



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Herouard dit Moselles named as an executor in 1691 Monsieur de Chesaux, the city’s bourgmaistre, its chief executive under the Bernese.31 As well as bequests to leading councillor Monsieur de Seignaulx and his wife, and to leading minister Monsieur Bergier, Joseph Ysnard du Terrier (a director of the Bourse Française as early as January 1688) left de Chesaux a diamond, a clock, a bible and his books.32 Pierre Vechière, the ‘commissaire pour leurs Excellences de Berne’, was unusual in naming among his many godchildren several of local origin.33 The comfortable, securely-rooted existence evidenced by such wills, and reinforced by some inventories, contrasts sharply with the insecurity or uncertainty displayed by others. As it might be expected, death caught some in transit. Michel du Mont appeared to be lodging temporarily in an inn when in 1688 he named his sister as his heir, not knowing whether she was in Switzerland or still in France.34 In February 1686 Marie le Cous, a widow from Vivaret, told one woman who attended her deathbed that she had left all her money in France, and another woman that she wanted to go and die near her nephew who was a minister in Germany; loving him like a son after his great assistance to her in time of need, she wanted to give him all her goods. Since her nuncupative will was registered in Lausanne it is evident that her first desire, at least, remained unfulfilled.35 This was a true diaspora, in which many had relatives scattered abroad, but while this situation might induce restlessness it was, as indicated earlier, an experience shared to an extent by the refugees’ hosts. Locals could match Daniel Lanusse or Susanne Arnaud in having, respectively, a brother who was an officer and a great-nephew who was a surgeon in Dutch service.36 Rose de Boileau was probably not alone in having £300 sterling ‘au fond perdu en Angleterre’.37 Many might share the apprehensions of Silvie Deleuze from Viviers, ‘indisposée à cause de sa grossesse’, her brother in Brandenburg and her cousins and godchildren variously scattered, or the tensions implied in her provision that a legacy to Helix Franceson, the one cousin living with

  ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 15v–16v.   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 90v–96; Bachmann and Garlet, ‘La Direction Française’, 37. 33   ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 139–146. 34   ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 122v–123. 35   ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 147–9. 36   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 22v, 36v. 37   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, f. 226v ‘in funds lost in England’. 31 32

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her, was conditional on Helix not marrying her widower, merchant Jean Renouard.38 All the same, it was in the nature of the refuge that those caught up in it had peculiarly attenuated ties. Jean Blanc (1712) mentioned a son and namesake and Pierre Vechière (1695) a nephew (Jean Marc Vechière) who were ministers of the Word of God in London.39 Jean Marion (1709) noted, among his four sons and heirs, that Élie (uniquely) was in the English capital, without specifying his métier, but according him an extra 500 livres.40 That this was almost certainly Élie Marion, one of the infamous ‘French prophets’, the Camisards whose ecstatic utterances were causing a furore among both French and English inhabitants of London, raises questions about the kind of ideology reaching Lausanne and about the two-way traffic between England and Lausanne or Vevey, which will be addressed briefly in the final section of this essay.41 Refugees’ reactions to their international existence and to split families varied: some were resigned, some were in denial, some were optimistic. Some recognized the reality that they had forfeited the bulk of their wealth back in France, in theory confiscated by royal command and in practice subject to the good- or ill-will of relatives. When in 1696 Louyse Leveillé, widow, updated a will begun in Paris nine years earlier, she divided property between two main heirs: her nephew receiving the portion in France, where he remained; a female cousin receiving the residue in Switzerland after many small bequests of clothing, silver and household goods to other refugees and to Lausannois.42 On the other hand, ten years later Philippe Alcoine, who said he had been keeping a careful account of his goods in France, made no geographical distinction when he handed his property to his wife to distribute among their children.43 In 1713 Estienne Cabestan, a merchant from Montélimard, appeared convinced that his wife Anne Liottard would be able to retrieve the 2,000 livres she had won in the Lyon lottery.44 While some fretted about the management of property and   ‘Unwell because of her pregnancy’: ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 105–109v.   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, f. 267; 13bis/1, ff. 139–46. 40   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, f. 219. 41   H. Schwarz, The French Prophets: the History of a Millenarian Group in EighteenthCentury England (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1980). 42   ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 158v–160. 43   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 132–132v. 44   ACV, Bg 13bis/3, f. 27v; Bull. SHPF, 87: 301. 38 39



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interests left behind, others looked forward to a return home and to an equitable redistribution. Samson Dussaut’s aged father instructed him in 1711 that, if he were able to return to Vivares and retrieve his property, he should pay his brothers and sisters an extra 300 livres each.45 If circumstances remained as they were, Jean Lacroix (1703) seemed happy to leave his goods in France to his nephews there, but if by God’s grace ‘the religion’ were re-established, he wanted his widow to return to Languedoc and enjoy their house, fully-furnished, for the rest of her life.46 Some wealthier testators made specific provision for the reconstruction of the Protestant community in France. Esther Cotte from Languedoc acknowledged the value of a new friendship made during the refuge with Marie Bolo from Burgundy, but she also thought of the Protestant poor in her native parish, should ‘our holy Religion be reestablished there’.47 Estienne Alberge gave 600 livres towards the rebuilding of the Protestant temple at Moulines, Dauphiné, while Judith Derafalis gave 4,000 livres to the directors of the (resurrected) church in Orange and 2,000 livres to the directors of its sister church in Montélimard to be deployed in ‘oeuvres piés’.48 Others wished to support infant churches opened elsewhere: the newly-established church in Württemberg received money from Jacques Pons and a donation reserved for four communion cups from Daniel Chabrin.49 Many wills remained grounded in the present, fixed on the faithfulness to God embodied in the decision to abandon their native land for the sake of religion. Frequently, inheritance was made conditional on departure from France to join the refuge. Susanne Arnaud made relatives in France her chief heirs provided they would come to Lausanne and Anthoinaz Bossiere promised half his estate to his niece if she came and converted, while Daniel Lanusse sought to entice his sister to Geneva, where Professor Calendrini of the Académie would hold the principal of her fortune for a period during which she would prove the validity of her conversion.50 In 1709 nobleman Charles Boileau de Castelnau was prepared to leave his nephew in France the enjoyment

  ACV, Bg 13bis/3, ff. 21–2.   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 31–31v. 47   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 135–136v; Piguet, Dénombrement, II, 9, 90. 48   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 3–8v, 11–13v. 49   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 19–21, 35–6. 50   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 22v, 36v, 184. 45 46

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of his goods there, but pleaded with him ‘en honneste homme’ to share it with his elder brothers, ‘qui ont tout habandonné pour pouvoir en liberté professer nostre religion’.51 Although the aged Dauphinoise Catherine Pestre left everything to her daughter who had accompanied her to Vaud, and nothing to her children who had stayed behind and changed their religion, others like her compatriot Isbeau Pelat threatened forfeit to children who thought of apostacy and return.52 Marie Champel allowed her brother the use of her goods for his life, provided ‘il n’on pourra rien divertir de ce pays’ nor carried it into France until ‘religion [y] soit restablie et la parole de Dieu en toute pureté preschée par ses fidelles ministres ‘.53 Jean Lacroix left 300 livres to his nephew, presently in Savoy or Holland, but remained uneasy, asking his wife to take the greatest possible care that Jean the younger lived well in the fear of God; he exhorted his nephew ‘sur tout de navoir iamais la pensée de retourner en France si ce nest quil pleust a Dieu de restablir la Religion Réformée’’.54 As in wills anywhere, there is the problematic possibility that testators were coached by an attendant minister or interpreted by the attendant notary. Unsurprisingly, while refugee wills are readily distinguishable insofar as details of the testator’s social status and place of origin are always given, they often display the same formulae, language and preoccupations as those of native Vaudois. Yet there are echoes of individual voices. Of those who avowed that they wrote with their own hand, there was a tendency to make a firm personal profession. Rose de Boileau de Perrotat, a woman in her sixties who had come with two daughters, leaving her merchant husband behind in Languedoc, proclaimed herself ‘refugiée dans le Pays de Suisse pour cause de religion’. Imploring God’s mercy, she supplicated pardon of her sins by the merit of Christ’s death and ‘la possession des biens esternels, qu’il reserve á ses fidelles dans son paradis’.55 Marie de Froment, wife of a cavalry officer 51   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 181–2: ‘as a gentleman’; ‘who abandoned everything for the liberty to profess our holy religion’. 52   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 156v–7, 261–2; Piguet, Dénombrement, II, 117, 513. 53   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 221v–2: ‘diverted nothing from this pays’; ‘our religion is reestablished there, and the word of God in all its purity is preached by his faithful ministers’. 54   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 29–30v: ‘ never to think of returning to France until it pleased God to re-establish the Reformed religion’. 55   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 226v–7: ‘a refugee in Switzerland for the sake of religion’; ‘the possession of an eternal inheritance, reserved by God for his faithful in Paradise’; Bull. SHPF 87: 305.



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in Languedoc, commended her soul to God ‘du plus profond de mon coeur’, praying that he would wash ‘touts mes pechés dans le sang precieux que mon divin et adorable Sauveur et Redempteur a respandu sur la croix’. As the good Lord had commanded, she began by distributing the wealth with which God had blessed her by sharing it with ‘les membres de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ’, duly giving 200 livres to poor French refugees and 50 francs to the poor of the locality.56 If sentiments like these were common to all pious Reformed, others were more characteristic of refugees. Perseverence was a frequent theme. With the particular eloquence appropriate to his ministerial function François Desfougieres de Bussy prayed that he and his two sons would ‘perseverer constamment en la profession de nostre sainte Religion, et dy vivre et dy mourir en bons Chrestiens, malgre toutes les oppositions de la chair, du monde, et du Diable, afin quensuitte il nous eleve dans son paradis pour y jouir á jamais du salut glorieux … et participer esternellement á cette joye inerrarable qui se trouve en la contemplation de sa face, qui est tout rayonnante de gloire’’.57 More simply, Guillaume Herouard dit Moiselles commended his legatees to persevere constantly in the profession of the truth of the holy gospel.58 Several testators clearly felt a peculiar obligation toward God owing to the circumstances, and the selectivity, of their preservation. In a lengthy outpouring, Pierre Matte from Marseille recognised his unworthiness. He knew himself for ‘un misérable pécheur [qui a] mérité par mes transgressions mille et mille fois les enfers; et quand je me regarde dans le miroir de sa loi, il n’y a pas de commandements dont je ne me trouve coupable une infinité de fois dans mes pensées, paroles ou actions’. He had not merited the grace he had received, which came from God’s bounty and liberality. He thanked God for having preserved him and his family from the persecution ‘qui ont régné et qui règnent encore dans notre malheureuse patrie, et de m’avoir conduit heureusement dans ces contrées, où sa sainte et divine Parole est purement prêchée et ses

56   ACV, Bg 13bis/3, ff.36–7: ‘from the very bottom of my heart’; ‘all my sins in the precious blood which my divine and beloved Saviour and redeemer has poured out on the cross’. 57   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 206v–208v: ‘persevere constantly in the profession of our religion, and live and die in it as good Christians, against all oppositions of the flesh, the world and the devil, so that God might raise them to his Paradise to enjoy for ever glorious salvation … and participate eternally in that certain joy found in the contemplation of his face, which is radiating with glory’. 58   ACV, Bg. 13 bis/2, ff. 15v–16v.

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saints sacraments administrés’. Continuing at length in the same vein, he beseeched God to give him grace never to forget his benefits, but when called from this earthly tabernacle to have time to make a good death.59 Galway’s uncle, the aged Paul Tallemant de Lussac, acknowledged God’s grace in letting him be born as a Christian, and a Reformed Christian at that, and then keeping him from the violent persecution exercised in France, ‘qui fait tomber tant de personnes dont la vie était plus réglée que la mienne’. Gratitude that God had taken account of his feebleness made it his duty to consecrate to the Almighty the few days he had left in this world.60 As suggested, sources which allow more than fleeting glimpses into the sentiments of refugees are relatively few. However, a handful of wills are so expansive and so personalised that, taken together, they present a picture of the experience and mentality of exiles unavailable in other documents. Eighty-one year old Joseph Ysnard du Terrier already encountered as a refugee well-integrated into Vaudois society, had cousins in Geneva, a friend who was a student in Berlin, and a cousin whose husband was King Louis’ secretary in Calence. In addition to 2,000 livres for the poor of Lausanne and 8,000 livres for poor refugees in the Pays de Vaud for distribution forthwith, he left 12,000 livres to be invested in a perpetual fund for those same refugees. But if by the grace of God they were able to return to France, the exercise of ‘the religion’ were secured there, and there were no longer refugees in Vaud, he wished the revenue to be devoted to poor French strangers and other sojourners’. Duterrier regretted that, although God had blessed him and delivered him from serious illness, his sins had continued to multiply. Seeking a sincere, constant and persevering repentance, he averred that it was in the death and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ that he put his only hope, which was never confounded. On the contrary, he was consoled and assured that his sins were washed in Jesus’ blood. ‘Comme cela nous <est> enseigné dans la parole de verité qui suivent et enseignment les Eglises Reformées de France et celles de ce 59  Chavannes, Les Refugiés Français, 218–20, 238: ‘a miserable sinner [who by transgressions] has merited hell thousands of times over, and when I look in the mirror of his law there is no commandment of which I am not found guilty innumerable times in thought, words or actions’; ‘which reigned, and reigns still, in our unfortunate country, and for having guided me so happily in these parts, where the holy and divine Word is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments administered’. 60  Chavannes, Les Refugiés Français, 217–18: ‘which brought down so many people whose life was more observant than mine’



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pays, en profession de laquelle verité iespere vivre et mourir par la grace de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ’.61 Jaques Guybert, who, as the notary helpfully explained in the margin of his homologued will of 1697, was the descendent of a family which had supplied mayors for La Rochelle ten times between 1365 and 1519, was formerly minister there. Born on 9 February 1626, according to his own expansive account, he was thus now 71, though this did not prevent him from naming his wife (born in October 1618) as his heir. He gave thanks for his education and upbringing in the Protestant Reformed religion, but even more that he had been called to the ministry. God had sustained him through testing times to that goal, as he had done later through two criminal trials, four spells in prison and three examinations under torture. Providence had led him and his wife out of the kingdom (of France) a little before the ‘unhappy’ revocation of the Edict of Nantes and into Switzerland, where they were received very humanely. He could not tell why he had escaped the judgement under which so many others groaned, or the tragic accidents which had caused some to perish during their escape, or the transportation to desert islands, or into America among savages, which had befallen some who had stayed behind. Why was he singled out – he who had merited the judgements which God had executed in so terrible a manner on all the churches of France, and particularly those whom he had had the honour to serve? Imploring God’s eternal compassion, he asked that he would make him victorious over all his spiritual enemies. None the less, it is plain that Guybert found it difficult to divorce himself from earthly concerns. He had 15,590 livres and a few moveable goods in Switzerland, but the bulk of his estate consisted in rents and obligations which were in the hands of his wife’s nephew and heir, who had been in possession of them since 1688 thanks to a brevet du roi. His own and his wife’s journey to Lausanne with a servant and nine bundles had been expensive. There seems a note of plaintiveness in the observation that his two widowed and childless sisters in France were enjoying their relatives’ property: ‘je ne croy pas quelle[s] en ayant besoin’.62 Daniel Dabrenethée, Seigneur de la Baume, a 74 year-old minister from the Nîmes region, also appeared to struggle to do justice to those 61   ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 90v–96: ‘Thus we are taught in the Word of Truth which is taught and followed by the Reformed churches of France and those of this pays, in the profession of which truth I hope to live and die by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ’. 62   ACV, BG 13bis/1, ff. 160v–162v: ‘I do not believe they need it’.

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left behind. He explained that his precipitate departure from France had given him no opportunity to make an inventory of his printed books, manuscripts, ‘livres de memoire’, contracts and obligations, and that he had had to leave them in the hands of relatives. Despite a promise made before a notary on 29 October 1685, just after the revocation, and reiterated on subsequent occasions, these agents, motivated by prudence or some other cause, had acquitted themselves ‘most imperfectly’. Dabrenethée tried daily to rise above the inconveniences arising from the lack of documents, but found this difficult, and he appealed to his relatives’ good conscience. In the meantime he took pride in his exile, ‘pour la seule cause de ma religion et de mon ministere’; by God’s grace and his own will he was a refugee en Suisse parmi nos freres selon lindication faitte à mon choix expressement mentionnée dans mon passeport expedie au nom de sa Majesté le dernier jour du mois d’octobre de l’annee mille six cents quatre vingt cinq.

He prayed for God’s churches, both those in the states ‘qui ont ouvert leur sein fraternels [et] donné azile à nos pauvres freres exillé et fugitifs pour la seule cause de leur religion’, and also those who have found themselves scattered – for his own ‘dear flock’ and especially those of ‘our poor France’. Above all, this determined loyalist asked that God’s blessings would entail the flechissant [et] convertissants en leur faveur le coeur de nostre grand Monarque et de ses successeurs, afin quil nous face bien tost la grace dy rapeller dy rassembler [et] dy retablir tous ses pauvres sujets qui ont toujours esté si fidelle à sa Majesté.

Dabrenethé gave a legacy to his ‘Roman Catholic’ nephew, but his wife having died at Morges (probably soon after their arrival in Vaud), his main heir was to be the niece and adopted daughter who had attended her, Demoiselle Anne de Sebastier de Leirys. Her many services to the family had culminated in that which he himself had continuously received ‘depuis plus de sept ans quil y à que nous sommes ensemble ne cessant lun [et] lautre de benir la paternelle providence de nostre Dieu qui nous à ainsi uni ensemble dans ces pays estrangers pour sa grande gloire, [et] pour nostre mutuelle consolation’.63 -o-o-o63   ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 165v–167v: ‘for the sole cause of my religion and my ministry’; ‘in Switzerland among brothers, according to my choice expressly mentioned in



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For the Huguenots in Vaud the experience of exile was complex. The emotions they articulated mingled disappointment with friends who had deserted the cause with anxiety about the feeble resolve of some who had stayed put and not yet formally abjured; wonder at providential preservation; gratitude for congenial sanctuary; misery at material deprivation and separation from loved ones; hope against hope for an eventual return to their homeland. Many refugees con­ tinued to look outwards to networks of friends and kin scattered over Europe, sometimes in agonising ignorance of their fate. But many also looked inwards to fellow exiles locally for friendship, godparents and witness of their wills, just as they worked together for charitable relief. Yet this did not necessarily make them a community apart. Just as the wealthier had friends in the highest echelons of Vaudois society, so the rest also had native landlords, customers and suppliers; as has been indicated, they sat in the same congregations. Furthermore, they shared with their hosts common concerns, common experiences and common memories, forged by a hostile environment, the residue of earlier streams of refugees and the tradition of economic migration. At the turn of the seventeenth century and in the decades which followed the inhabitants of Vaud and their neighbours had their own heightened fears about plague, war and the potentially overwhelming power of the French and Savoyard armies they knew were converging on Geneva and could see marching on the other side of the lake and the Rhõne.64 In the summer of 1688 there was the perplexing disaster

the passport sent in the name of his Majesty the last day of October in the year 1685’; ‘who gave their fraternal support and asylum to our poor brothers exiled and fugitives for religion alone’; ‘[bending] and [converting] in their favour the heart of our great monarch and his successors, so that soon he will give us grace to recall, re-assemble and re-establish his poor subjects who have always been faithful to his Majesty and have been dispersed and oppressed for the same conscience that teaches them their loyalty to him’; ‘during the seven years that the paternal providence of God has united us together in these foreign lands for his great glory and our mutual consolation’. 64   Vividly exemplified in Jacques Flournoy, Journal 1675–1692, ed. O. Fatio, M. Granjean and L. Martin van Berchem, Publications de l’Association Suisse pour l’Histoire du Refuge Huguenot, 3 (1994); the editors talk of ‘une véritable guerre de nerfs’ (xxvii). The tension is apparent also from a French angle in Charles François d’Iberville, résident de France à Genève: Correspondance 1688–1690, ed. L. Vial-Bergon, Publications de l’Association Suisse pour l’Histoire du Refuge Huguenot, 7 (2003). In the 1710s and 1720s insecurity from natural disaster pervades the livre de raison of Nicolas Bergier: AVL, Bergier. For further discussion, see; Larminie, ‘La vie religieuse’, esp. pp. 272–4.

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of a fire reported to have destroyed half the town of Vevey.65 Twentyfive years earlier one of its witnesses, Augustin Scanavin, ‘bourgeois et  justicier’ of Vevey, prefaced what became an ongoing record of his immediate ancestors and his posterity with a family story which could probably have been echoed by many – a heroic account of his  grandfather Louis’ escape from the Inquisition, culminating in his arrival in Geneva, praising God for his miraculous deliverance.66 In  Lausanne the Poliers, another product of the first refuge, were at the  apex of city society from the mid seventeenth century; in time family members also scattered over Europe.67 Among travellers, for every Guy Miege, who left Lausanne for England in 1661 and never returned, there was probably a César-François de Saussure who came back.68 Among ministers, for every Pierre Noé Paschoud, educated from 1704 at the Académie de Lausanne and minister of several London churches after 1718, there was doubtless a Pierre Isaac Violat, a native of Orbe who was a pastor in Exeter before beginning ministry at Grandson in 1703.69 Such movement ensured that Vaudois society could not remain hermetically sealed from outside influences. In the early seventeenth century it indeed had a claim to being the most unenlightened in western Europe, having more executions for witchcraft than in all the rest of French-speaking Switzerland, itself not renowned for its liberalism.70 But thereafter the repercussions of external political upheavals such as the Thirty Years’ War and the British civil wars, and of burgeoning international intellectual exchange might be felt. Jean Pierre Polier de Bottens, bourgmestre of Lausanne, published several millenarian

65   ACV, Bt 25, f. 12 (‘Receuil’ of Augustin Scanavin); P Loys 4560, f. 40 (livre de raison of John Rodolphe Loys). 66   ACV, Bt 25, ff. 3–5; Larminie, ‘La vie religieuse’, 266. 67   Receuils Généalogiques Vaudois, 155–73; P. Morren, La Vie Lausannoise au XVIIIe Siècle d’apès Jean Henri Polier de Vernand, Lieutenant Baillival (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1970); entries ‘Polier’ in Oxford DNB, and in Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse, ed. M. Jorio, at www. hls-dhs-dss.ch. 68   See their entries in Oxford DNB. 69   E. Giddey, L’Angleterre dans la Vie Intellectuelle de la Suisse Romande au XVIIIe Siècle (BHV, 51: Lausanne, 1974), 25. 70   E. W. Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: the Borderlands during the Reformation (Ithaca 7 London: Cornell University Press, 1976), 106–8; P. Kamber, ‘Croyances et peurs: la sorcellerie dans le pays de Vaud’, De l’Ours à la Cocarde, 247–60.



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works  at Geneva in the 1650s; he was also a notable Hebraist.71 Perhaps as a result of the arrival at Vevey of several English regicides a few years later, he possessed a copy of John Milton’s anti-censorship work Areopagitica.72 Although they had come seeking obscurity, the  very presence of those exiles (significantly, warmly welcomed despite their radical baggage) entailed contacts with the outside world  – correspondence, diplomacy (albeit officially through Bern), the arrival of agents such as the man who assassinated John Lisle, on his way to church through one of Lausanne’s most important squares.73 By the 1680s and 1690s a less subversive, but potentially wider external influence had arrived in the form of pietism. This is apparent in wills which glorified holy resignation and made much of being ‘washed in the blood of the Lamb’.74 It is indicated also in the frequent appearance in inventories of works such as La Communion Devote, Le bouclier de la foy, Drelincourt’s Consolations contre les frayeurs de la mort and Lewis Bayly’s Practice of Piety, the much-translated bestseller from the pen of an Anglo-Welsh bishop – and occasionally by glimpses of potentially more controversial publications emanating from the Jansenists of Port Royal.75 The persecution of Huguenots by Louis XIV made an impact on the inhabitants of Vaud even before the Revocation, and its effects rapidly escalated. This can be exemplified in the life of Jean Rodolphe Loys, Seigneur de Middes, a Lausanne councillor whose long-running livres de raison unusually survive. He noted on 30 October 1684 a solemn fast ‘pour prier le Siegneur qu[‘il voulez] detourner son ire de dessus ses  pouvres Eglises de France’; Thursday fasts to mark the ‘extremes persecutions faits aux Reformez’ became a regular occurrence.76 71  See Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse; Le Livre à Lausanne: Cinq siècles d’édition et d’imprimerie, ed. S. Corsini et al. (Lausanne, 1993), 37; E. Robert, ‘Entre orthodoxie et critique: les études hébraiques et le discours sur le judaisme au 17e siècle autour de l’Académie de Lausanne (1588–1739)’, mémoire de licence (Université de Lausanne 1999). 72  Vuilleumier, Histoire, III, 59n. 73   E. Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watch Tower, ed. A. B. Worden, Camden Society, 4th ser., 21 *1978), e.g. 307; The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed. C. H. Firth (2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), appendix vi, ‘Letters of the English exiles’; ‘Ludlow, Edmund’ and ‘Lisle, John’, in Oxford DNB. 74  Vuilleumier, Histoire, III, 253–67; ACV, Bg 13bis/1, passim. 75   ACV, Bis 113, ‘Livre des Inventaires’, Vevey 1683–1719; AVL, D513 Chambre des Orphelins, 1670–1690, D533. 76   ACV, P Loys, 4558, f. 56; 4559.

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In November 1685 he recorded the execution of the under secretary of the Confederation’s council at war, who had plotted to leak strategic infomation to the French ambassador, while an annual subscription to the Gazettes Françaises, renewed in January 1686, ensured he received his own intelligence of unfolding events.77 As the flood of refugees intensified, as well as regular almsgiving and taxpaying, he found himself keeping order as a magistrate, intervening (at the request of refugee pastors) in a sword fight between two refugees outside the council chamber (1689) and hearing the case of another who had been assaulted (1693).78 On 28 October 1693, like other local leaders, he participated in the solemn funeral at Lausanne cathedral of the allied general commanding Huguenot auxiliary forces, Charles de Schomberg, 2nd duke of Schomberg, before the duke’s heart was despatched to England.79 Eighteen months later he met the Huguenotborn British ambassador Philibert Herwarth, from whom he sought news of his brother David, a soldier in the allied forces in Piedmont.80 The impression that by the 1690s the Pays, and particularly Lausanne, had become a place of rendezvous for Huguenots and their friends, and that, as a consequence, it had gained in importance and in communications, is strengthened by other sources. It was, for example, a key staging post for the minister Claude Brousson, who divided his time between sacrificial preaching in France and spells in safety in England, the Netherlands and the Vaud.81 International networks clearly fed the reading tastes of Jean Pierre Daples, whose registre of 1692 to 1718 lists a constant stream of of books, some of them acquired through the extremely well-connected Jean Alphonse Turrettini of Geneva, a friend of the celebrated friend of Switzerland Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury. Publications of all kinds and all provenances – Lucan, Aristophanes, Boccacio, Bucer, Pascal, Robert Boyle, John Reynolds to cite only a few from the 1690s – appear to have been at least sometimes exchanged with friends.82 There is no doubt that the authorities periodically stepped in to quash what they considered the alarming advent of unwelcome new

  ACV, P Loys, 4559, ff. 15v, 21.   ACV, P Loys, 4560, ff. 3, 11v, 12v, 14v, 15, 21, 76v; 4562, f. 12. 79   ACV, P Loys, 4562, ff. 4v, 5v; ‘Schomberg, Frederick Herman de’, in Oxford DNB. 80   ACV, P Loys, 4562, f. 29. 81   Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove, esp. chapters 3 and 7. 82   AVL, P118, esp. p. 277. For external contacts see also Giddey, L’Angleterre, 28. 77 78



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ideas from outside the Pays. In 1680 an ordinance of Leurs Excellences forbade the teaching of Cartesianism at the Académie de Lausanne. In 1699 they imposed on its staff and on the clergy an oath to uphold the Formula Consensus of 1675 which had prescribed the Helvetic Confession on all cantons; the French text of the oath specifically rejected the heresies of Arminianism, Pietism and Socinianism. Following curricular reforms in 1708 which saw the introduction of law and history, and a period of innovative teaching by the brilliant jurist Jean Barbeyrac, son of a refugee, and the philosopher Jean Pierre de Crousaz, the authorities attempted between 1715 and 1722 an even stricter clamp-down.83 However, while there was evidently substance behind their fears, it is difficult to disentangle the responsibility of refugees for ‘unorthodox’ opinion from that of other foreigners, nativeborn travellers, or indeed natives who stayed at home but cultivated wide contacts and interests. At any rate, in the longer term, efforts at containment proved futile. Barbeyrac returned, and in the meantime local grandees like Loys de Middes had continued to socialise with his cultivated friends and to keep up international contacts which included investing in the London lottery. While a key component of their weekly meetings in the 1710s was undoubtedly gambling, it would be unwise to conclude that conversation did not range as widely as ever.84 Whatever the Huguenots’ exact contribution to their country of refuge, in the thirty years between 1685 and 1715 it had continued markedly its evolution from relative backwater to cultivated destination for international interchange.

83   H. Meylan, La Haute Ecole de Lausanne 1537–1937 (Université de Lausanne, 1986), 42–53; D. Christoff, P. Javet, A. J. Voelke, G. P. Widmer, La Philosophie dans la Haute Ecole de Lausanne, 1542–1955 (Université de Lausanne, 1987), 27–36; O. Fatio, ‘L’Affaire du “Consensus helveticus” ’, De l’Académie à l’Université de Lausanne 1537–1987: 450 Ans d’Histoire (Lausanne: Musée historique de l’Ancien Evêché, 1987), 64–5. 84   ACV, P Loys, 4556, ff. 11–17, 25, 32, 34, 39–44, 80, 103 etc; Giddey, L’Angleterre, passim; La Vie Lausannoise. See also C. Lasserre, Le Séminaire de Lausanne (1726– 1812): Instrument de la Restauration du Protestantisme Français (BHV, 112, Lausanne, 1997).

CHAPTER TEN

Testaments of Faith: Wills of Huguenot Refugees in England as a Window on their Past Randolph Vigne Henry Wagner (1840–1926), Huguenot researcher In a field neglected by historians and sociologists – the making of wills – Henry Wagner1 harvested a rich and bountiful crop. His interest in the Huguenots was aroused when he discovered that his ancestor Melchior Wagner, an immigrant from Silesia, had married in 1714 Mary Anne Teulon, daughter of a Huguenot refugee from Valleraugues in the Languedoc. He concentrated his researches on the Huguenots of the diaspora brought about by the persecution of the Protestants in France, its high point being the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Ample inherited money enabled him to spend the long hours in church vestries, public record offices, muniment rooms, amidst family papers to which he was given access, and in widespread correspondence. He began work in the years of the revival of interest in the settlement of some 50,000 French Protestant refugees in late Stuart and early Hanoverian Britain, and assembled a massive body of research files on bourgeois and noble Huguenot families in Britain and Ireland. These he bequeathed to the Hospital for Poor French Protestants and their Descendants in Great Britain, which had been founded in London in 1718, of which he had been elected a Director in 1865. The directors of the French Hospital, known from its earliest days as La Providence, had become the driving force in preserving the Huguenot tradition and had founded in 1885, the Huguenot Society of London (later ‘of Great Britain and Ireland’). Wagner published pedigrees of many Huguenot families in the genealogical journals of the day and articles about them in the Proceedings of the Huguenot Society.2

  See A. Wagner and A. Dale, The Wagners of Brighton (London: Phillimore, 1983).  See HSP 8: 88 for the appropriate journals.

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With his bequest to the French Hospital were many books, and in the mass of unpublished materials the largest component was some 5000 abstracts of wills of Huguenot testators proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury between 1617 and 1849, the great majority of them between 1680 and 1780. For eighty years after his death the abstracts remained in manuscript, used by readers in the Huguenot Library in University College, London to which the combined libraries of the French Hospital and the Huguenot Society were moved in 1960. In 2007 the Huguenot Society published Huguenot Wills and Admin­ istrations in England and Ireland, 1617–1849 as Vol. 60 in its Quarto Series, transcribed and edited by Dorothy North, and in 2008 as Part 2 the Complete Index of Names, listing some 25,000 testators, executors, beneficiaries and others named in the wills. Wagner’s five notebooks, in 16mo format, covered with minute script and using his own abbreviation system, had become available for all and await analysis by historians, not only of the Huguenot diaspora but of social usages in the long eighteenth century. This chapter will seek to give some impressions of the attitudes of refugees at the end of their lives to the religious and social motivations that drove them into exile, and of the apportionment of their estates among relatives, friends and charitable institutions. The abstracts were made mainly to satisfy Wagner’s genealogical needs and the small random selection examined here – some 150 – often omit references to religion and exile, and names of beneficiaries who in extreme cases run into the hundreds in a single will. They nevertheless offer a glimpse of the Huguenot refugees’ state of mind as they recall their experiences, express their religious beliefs, and consider their attitude to their co-religionists in exile or still in France. These are the wills of men and women whose adult lives had been shaped by their confessional migration and memories of that migration are observable in many of them. A popular study of English wills3 quoted some half a dozen by Huguenot testators, a large proportion measured against the author’s

3   E. Vine Hall, The Romance of Wills and Testaments (London: Fisher Unwin, 1912). See A. Camp, Wills and their Whereabouts (London: Society of Genealogists, 1963) for an account of the episcopal courts’ testamentary procedures.



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selection of a few score from their English hosts’ hundreds of thousands. He states ‘Of particular interest are the wills written in French [of those] who escaped from France and formed a colony in Canterbury’. It is noted how these wills ‘with a pathos all their own follow the common custom of such “prefaces” ’4 (personal religious preambles like those of the Revds Peter Allix and Peter de Tascher quoted below from the original wills though not in the abstracts). They have other aspects in common with English wills which have, like the ‘prefaces’, almost entirely disappeared from modern wills.5 In Wagner’s Huguenot wills one is struck by several components that may also have been common to English wills of the time. Did the sometimes astonishing number of beneficiaries in the Huguenot wills reflect the size and close relationships within the refugee community? Wagner notes in his abstract of the will of the Revd Peter de Tascher (1731),6 examined below, eight beneficiaries – executors, relatives, fellow ministers and ‘legacies to chapels, £30 to La Providence’. The will itself names 29 beneficiaries, 23 of them recipients of mourning rings, from £60 to £1 in value (one of ‘five moidores’), of money, ‘old china’, clerical gowns, and household goods (to a servant). The number called for no comment from Wagner: others he omits as ‘innumerable’ or ‘too many to note’. Huguenot and English wills (1) Burial places Familiar in English wills are the very frequent instructions regarding burial places. Typical among the Huguenots’ is the requirement ‘To be buried in the vault where my wife’s family lie in the Church of St Edward the King in Lombard Street’ (Peter Bonovrier, 1749). William Devaynes of Dover Street (1810) gave ‘minute directions as to spot but if die more than 120 miles from London “in any clean and airy churchyard” .’ Devaynes left large sums, which included a trust for ‘my mulatto daughter Elizabeth, known as Beby, Smith’, and legacies for other children, godchildren, nephews and nieces, and all the clerks and partners

  Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 193.   Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 194. 6   The year in brackets is the date of probate, throughout. Page references for testators in Huguenot Wills and Administrations are omitted as these appear in the book in alphabetical order. 4 5

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in Dawes, Noble, bankers (known in his time as Devaynes, Dawes, Noble, an offshoot of Child’s Bank, founded in the seventeenth century and still operating, though Devaynes, its popular name, closed with Devaynes’s death).7 Wagner gave up in despair: ‘The will occupied 29 sheets – attempted to read but a small fraction of it, maybe one-eighth!’ The grandson of a refugee, Devaynes’s directions were probably as much in line with English as French will-making conventions. Shared with the English also were requirements for simplicity, even austerity, in the funeral rite, but the Huguenots went as far as to stipulate that their graves must be unmarked. Even as great a nobleman and statesman as Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, Earl of Galway, was buried without a tombstone in Micheldever churchyard in 1720, near the home of his cousin and close friend Lady Rachel Russell.8 Joseph Barbaroux of Hackney (1774) instructed his executor to inter ‘my body to some obscure corner of the earth … in the most private manner without any intelligent mark I ever existed’. Mary Hamon, born Bernard, among many Huguenot testators in the Netherlands whose wills were deposited with the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, wished ‘they would bury me plain, as they do the Refugees’. Ministers often demanded austere burial. The Revd Stephen Fouace of Chelsea was more graphic in his request to be buried near his ‘two dear daughters’ with ‘as little expense as becometh the conveying out of sight of the dismall object of a dead carcass’. English testators sometimes stipulated similarly. Vine Hall quotes the elaborate instructions in 1683 of Sir John Monson, Bart., for his body to be brought, with minimum attendance, from Broxbourne in Hertfordshire to his seat, Burton Hall, near Lincoln, before burial in the family mausoleum at South Carlton, his death to be seen as a happy event for his soul and not a cause for mourning.9 Proximity to family members was the most frequently required burial place. In the case of Susan Robethon of Broad Street, Westminster, spinster (1770), ‘forty years in the service … of Princess Amelia’, these were her sister Elizabeth and uncle, for whom she had long kept house and whom we know to have been James Robethon, cousin of a major figure of the grand refuge, the Right Honourable Jean Robethon, Privy 7  F.G. Price, Handbook of London Bankers, wiih Some Account of their Predecessors (London: Simpkin Marshall, 1876). 8  See HSP 28 (2004), 299–30. 9   Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 202. 211.



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Councillor and third Governor of the French Hospital.10 Elizabeth and Susan had been James’s executors (1740). More dramatic, however, was Susan’s requirement that ‘due care [be] taken of me not to be buried alive, as was the case with one of my relations’. Her fear was shared by a surprising number. Isaac Bouquet, apothecary of the Minories, St Botolph, Aldgate (1803) stipulated ‘visible putrefaction before screwed down’, Mary de La Garde, spinster of Clifton, Somerset (1800), who left ‘numberless bequests of £5’ wished to hasten that putrefaction with her instruction that ‘quicklime may be put in my hands and half-a-peck spread in the coffin’. The Spitalfelds carpenter and undertaker Francis Jolit is mentioned in several wills when the testator wished for his burial services. Had the Jolits, father and son, a better record on live burials than others in their trade? Perhaps Francis Sr’s own will (1791) gives the answer in its stipulation that ‘funeral not to exceed £15’. The Jolits buried the deceased inmates of the French Hospital, of which Francis Jr was elected a Director in 1815. He donated some fine silver to the Hospital11 where his portrait by Opie of a benevolent old gentleman hangs today. (2) Charitable bequests The French Hospital became the most frequently named charity to receive benefactions. In 1719, a year after its foundation, Sir James Misson, Commissioner of the Glass and Paper Duties, younger brother of the better known Maximilien, author, translator and traveller, bequeathed £200 to the ‘Governors of the hospital erected in the fields going to Islington for maintenance of poor French people’. Bequests to charities were, of course, common in English testators’ wills but those in Huguenot wills were characteristic of the cohesiveness of the refugee community and its sense of duty to the poor, aged and infirm among them who had not prospered as the testators had done. A random sample of 50 abstracts in which Wagner mentions charitable bequests to institutions contains 87 such. Of these no fewer than 10   R. Vigne, ‘Some Directors of the French Hospital: the Early Years’, HSP 29 (2009), 180–07; D. C. A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France chiefly in the Reign of Louis XIV, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: privately printed, 1886; repr., Ticehurst, Piccadilly Rare Books, 2003), II, 206. 11   T. Murdoch and R. Vigne, The French Hospital in England: Its Huguenot History and Collections (Cambridge: Adamson, 2009), 48–9.

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67 (80 per cent) Huguenot bodies, thirty of them (30 per cent of the total) were to the French Hospital – and 27 to Huguenot churches and chapels, all of them in London. They were Threadneedle Street (11), the Savoy (5), La Patente (3), the Artillery, Spitalfields (2) and one each to Brown’s Lane, the Chapel Royal St James’s, John Street, Le Carré, Leicester Fields and Les Grecs. The remaining specifically Huguenot charities were the Spitalfields feeding scheme, La Soupe (5), the Westminster Charity School (for Huguenots) (4) and the Saintonge [Friendly] Society (1). The seventeen non-Huguenot charitable bequests were to the local poor – North Chapel parishes (Lincolnshire), Chiswick, the City of London, New Sarum, or, very generally, in the five abstracts similar to that of Claudius Amyand, ‘principal and sergeant surgeon to H.M.’, who in 1740 left it to his two sons as executors to distribute £300 among ‘indigent people who may be ashamed to beg’ and to apprenti­­ cing.  There were also two benefactors of hospitals: Sir Edward Des Bouveries’s12 (1694) £100 to both St Bartholomew’s for the sick and Christ’s Hospital school. A donation of £100 to the London Hospital benefited the fourth of the great London infirmaries to follow the French Hospital’s foundation in 1718. The only non-Huguenot church bequests were the widow Judith Delamare’s (1798) to Christ Church Spitalfields for maintenance of her father’s vault in the churchyard.13 Her husband Abraham Delamare was buried there too and his will (1762, outside our sample) tells us that he was a member of a voluntary society, the SPCK, ‘which first met in 1696 and has weekly meetings in house at Bartlett’s Buildings’. Huguenot support for the SPCK and the SPG is evident from the frequency of bequests – five in this sample, perhaps because of these bodies’ aid to Protestant minorities in Europe in these years. The largest such legacy was Sir John Chardin’s, the court jeweller and traveller, (1712) of £1000 ‘for the propagation of Gospel in foreign parts’ (i.e. the SPG).14

12  Uncle of William de Bouverie, 1st Earl of Radnor, Governor of the French Hospital, 1770. 13   See M. Cox and T. Molleson, The Spitalfields Project, 2 vols (London: CBA, 1993) for an account of the clearing of Huguenot remans from the crypt of Christ Church. 14  Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 266. See also S. Nishikawa, ‘The SPCK in Defence of Protestant Minorities in Early Eighteenth-century Europe’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 56 (2005), 730–48.



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The second bequest to a religious body was that of Martha Agace (1786) to what Wagner describes as ‘a quasi-clerical charity the “Independent Persuasion” .’ Not, perhaps a charitable body as such but the non-conformists who became the Congregational Church, now the United Reformed Church. There remains the category of bequests to bodies abroad. Like those to the SPCK and SPG, these reflect clearly the Huguenots’ memory of past associations, with legacies to ‘the Rochelle refugees’ (1771), Aleppo charities (1739), the ‘French church in Stettin’ (1728) and to relieve the sufferings or bring about the release of ‘slaves in Barbary’ (Sir Edward Des Bouveries, 1694) and the Cevenol James Campredon’s £10 for ‘French confessors who are sufferers in the galleys’ (1718). (3) ‘One shilling’ bequests On a lighter note, the Huguenot testators employed the same device as the English for frustrating claimants by ‘cutting off with a shilling’. Reasons for this derisory shilling (sometimes even less) are seldom given, though the widow Grace de Gennes of St Giles left ‘one shilling to Mr Walford who married my daughter Grace Burrell without my consent’. Probate was in 1694, though dictionaries date ‘cut off with a shilling’ as an eighteenth-century usage. A little earlier (1692) the estate of John Baudouin, ‘heer refugied’, was to go to his brother and sister, after some local legacies, ‘if they come out of France’, one of a category to be examined later. If not, the executors were to reduce ‘my true heirs in France to 5d’. Anne Pictet, widow, of Hoxton (1785) treated with similar contumely her two brothers in France – one shilling each, and ‘on demand’, i.e. by travelling to England for it. Jean de La Ferté of Bethnal Green, weaver (1786), fobbed off claimants: ‘any relations who make a claim to have 1/-.’ (4) Charitable bequests in detail The legacies briefly noted above are in no way a scientifically controlled sample. Frequently Wagner adds ‘and many charities’ or the like. The detail of such charitable giving towards their fellow refugees is clearly shown in the Revd Peter de Tascher’s will15 (Wagner notes only the £30   PRO, PROB 11/647.

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to the French Hospital in his abstract). The full text dealing with church beneficiaries reads thus: I give unto the Governours Ministers and Officers of the French conformist church or chappel in Castle Street in St Martins in the Fields the County of Middlesex for the time being Twenty pounds to be by them distributed to and amongst such persons or familys of their Congregation as are most in want. Item. I give unto the Ministers and Officers of the French Comformist Chappel in Berwick Street in St James Westminster for the time being Twenty pounds to be by them distributed to and among such Objects of their Congregation as are most in want., Item. I give to the Governours and Directors of the French Hospital commonly called the House of Providence the sum of Thirty pounds to be by them distributed for the use and benefit of the poor relieved and maintained thereby. Item. I give unto the Ministers and Officers of the French Church of St Martin Orgards Thirty pounds for the use and benefitt of such persons of familys of their Congregation as are most in want. Item. I give unto the Reverend Dr Herret Minister of Greenwich aforesaid a Ring of twenty shillings value and unto the poor of the said parish of Greenwich six pounds the same to be distributed by him to such housekeepers as he knows to be most in want. Item. I give unto the Reverend Mr Rivalie Minister of the French Church at Greenwich aforesaid a Ring of Twelve pounds value and to the poor of his Congregation there three pounds the same to be distributed by him to those of his Congregation most in want.

(5) ‘Prefaces’ to the wills Vine Hall noted the ‘pathos’ in the prefaces to Huguenot wills which is usually lacking in their English counterparts who had not gone through persecution, flight and settlement in a foreign land, unforgotten after a lifetime’s exile. A preface of particular interest for its biographical content rather than its piety is that of the Revd Peter Allix (1717), which typifies the loyalty of so many refugees to their new homeland and its monarch, albeit perhaps in an extreme form in recognition of Royal favour. He deals with loss of his property in France and its possession by family members with comparative mildness. His ‘preface’ reads, in the words of Agnew’s translator:16 I recommend my soul to God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and I  order my body to be buried privately and without expense. I was

16  Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 233. The original in the National Archives, Kew, has the catalogue reference PROB 11/ 536.



testaments of faith 271 minister of the church of Paris, when, by the persecution made in France to those of the reformed religion, all the ministers were drove out of the kingdom by an Edict. I came for refuge into England with my wife and three children where I found a happy asylum… The Oxford and Cambridge universities did of their own accord confer on me the degree of Doctor of Divinity. I exercised the ministerial functions two years or thereabouts in London among the French refugees, until I was named Treasurer and Prebendary of Salisbury by the bishop of the diocese. I have endeavoured to edify the faithful by my ministry, my works and my example. … I have always wished the welfare of this nation, and of the Church of England, and I have sought for the opportunities of contributing thereto. I have made fervent wishes for the Act of Succession of these kingdoms of England and Ireland in the House of Hanover, I have taken part in the public joy upon the accession of King George to the crown, and to my death I will put forth my fervent prayers to God that he will please to give him a long and happy reign, and to continue the same, till time is no more, in his illustrious house. I die full of gratitude for the kindness of that good king, which he has showed lately towards my family, in granting it a pension for its subsistence, upon the entreaty of my Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and my Lord Bishop of Norwich. … I have left the majority of my estate in France, whereof my relatives have taken possession by virtue of the Edicts; and I have brought little into England.

Allix, who had attempted, unsuccessfully, to found a new conformist French Protestant church in London, wrote many pamphlets and books on religious questions. He explains that the revenue from his Salisbury appointments was enough for him to live on, educate his children and pay the expenses of an amanuensis ‘for my work on The Councils’ [‘The History and Councills of the Gallican Church’] which was unfinished at his death and never published. Agnew quotes John Campbell in Biographica Britannica (1747–66) to display Allix in glowing colours: ‘equally assiduous in the right discharge of all the offices of public and private life, and in every way as for his virtues and social qualities, as valuable for his uprightness and integrity and famous for his varied and profound learning’.17 The entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is sadly different and makes much of his failure to produce ‘The Councils’. His will perhaps favours the latter case.18

 Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 333.   V. Larminie, in Oxford DNB.

17 18

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Like Jaques Fontaine in the memoir written for his children,19 Allix set great store by keeping his family together, so easily dispersed in the Huguenot grand refuge. He exhorted ‘my wife and children to live in the fear of God and to keep up the good union and understanding wherein they have lived now, which is the sure and only way to bring down the blessing of heaven’. It is intriguing that Wagner, in his very brief Peter Allix profile, notes: ‘from French, is given by Agnew interesting preamble, which should be copied in full’, suggesting his intention of using the abstracts in a narrative of some kind Gratitude for sanctuary Many expressed their gratitude for the sanctuary they had been given in other Protestant countries, in wills proved in England. Magdalen Amyot, of St James Westminster (1743), widow of the physician Peter Amyot MD and mother-in-law of Sir Theodore Colladon, physician to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, gave thanks to God ‘for causing me to be received into this country of liberty’, in the same phrasing as was used by Joseph Pandin, Sieur des Jariges (1721), which expressed gratitude ‘for the favour he hath granted me to come into this country of liberty’, which in his case was Brandenburg. Charlotte Damaris de St George de Marsay was even more grateful to the Seven Provinces in 1772: ‘I  tenderly love this republic as a second native country’. Margaret Perachon (the widow Huguetan), The Hague (1711) thanked God ‘that he has given me grace to make profession in the land of the Christian and truly reformed religion in my advanced age’. England was seen by the Revd Balthazar Regis DD, Rector of Adisham in Kent and a Canon of Windsor, as ‘our dear country, the Bulwark of our Holy Religion against Popery’. Regis, like Allix, had served the Church of England in high places and had his reward for it. He had lost an estate in Dauphiné, which he hoped to recover, with its revenue since 1716 ‘in case there should be a reformation in France, as I am inclined to believe there will be’ – high hopes indeed in 1757, six

19   The Memoirs of the Revd Jaques Fontaine, ed. D. Ressinger (London: Huguenot Society, 1992).



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years before the Calas case revealed the intolerance that Voltaire was inspired to do battle against.20 Peter de Ladeveze, whose will was drawn in Dublin and granted probate in London in 1715, described himself as ‘run astray like the horse which has got loose’ until God ‘had conducted me by the hand into this country of refuge’. Was he a fugitive on the run or had he abjured and been a nouveau converti? – a rarely confessed source of shame, admitted by a widow of the petite noblesse Anne Muysson, of The Hague, who ‘had the unhappiness of the time of the persecution in France to sign that I did myself reunite to the Roman church’ (1715). France’s culpability The Revd Peter de Tascher combined hard words for France with praise for England. The ‘preface’ to his full will contrasts with that of Revd Peter Allix in the intensity of his gratitude to God, and penitence for his sins, and continues with celebration of his escape from France ‘my unnaturall country’: I hope for everlasting Life in that Blessed Kingdom of His where there is no Sin or Sorrow but praising of God Eternally I return my most humble thanks to him for that I was by his Grace born and bred in the Protestant Religion wonderfully delivered out of France my unnaturall country and honoured here with the Ministry of his Gospell in the Church of England.

With more ‘pathos’ than either of these is the preface to the will of John Lacombe (1702, quoted by Vine Hall)21 of St Hipolite and Paris, a recent refugee in Canterbury ‘advanced in years, being in my seventyfifth year, very infirm of body but of sound mind and understanding, by the grace of God’: After having received so many graces and favours from the mercy of God in all the course of my life and, and chiefly in this time of affliction and 20   PRO, PROB 11/556; R. Vigne, ‘The Killing of Jean Calas: Voltaire’s First Huguenot Cause’, HSP 23.5 (1981), pp. 280–94. 21  Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 117–18. PRO, PROB 11/ 469. Grateful thanks to Mr Daniel Korachi-Alaoui, Kent Library and Archives, Canterbury, for tracing two of the Huguenot wills quoted by Vine Hall in the Kent County Archives – www.kentarchaeology.ac/ekwills_a/. That of Rigoullott (below) is in neither the Canterbury Cathedral nor the Kent County Archives. The PCC wills at the PRO have also been checked unsuccessfully.

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randolph vigne grief for His Church in which so many persons do sigh after the liberty of serving Him purely according to the motives of their conscience, I  render him my most humble actions of grace … for conducting me through His providence in this city. … I am come into it with five children, which it hath pleased God to leave me of a greater number which He had given me. I have still in France Elizabeth Beauchamp my wife, their mother. I hope that God shall grant me grace to see her in this country to end together the few days that remain to us: to live and die in it in peace and tranquillity, that is the prayer that I make daily to God.

None of these, Allix, De Tascher nor Lacombe, condemns their ‘unnaturall country’ and its religion as bitterly as does the will of Isaac 22 and therefore, like Rigoullott (1720) deposited in Canterbury  Lacombe’s, unabstracted by Wagner. It is quoted by Vine Hall: Because death is certain and the hour thereof uncertain, after having recommended my body and soul to God by Jesus Christ our Lord through His Holy Spirit, and being come out of France by reason of the persecution against our holy Christian Religion forcing us to worship the Bread and Wine as being the blood and bone of our Lord Jesus Christ, making us believe in the invocation of Saints, the imaginary fire of Purgatory, and other falsehoods inspired by the spirit of the Devil, to worship the true God in spirit and in truth as He has commanded us in His holy word in the Old and New Testament, I Isaac Rigoulott … give …

A briefer recollection of the clash of religions is in the will of the refugee Stephen Godin, a successful merchant of St Peter le Poer in the City of London (1729), where Godin requires ‘my body to be modestly interred as becomes as one of the dispersed Protestants of France where God in his providence fetched me out of a consuming fire of Idolatry and persecution’. Glory in Protestantism For many there was an element almost of joy in their praise of the Protestantism for which they were ready to sacrifice all but life itself, after enduring persecution. Jacob Chabaud of Long Acre (1712) affirmed that ‘I intend to die in the beliefs of the Holy Religion which is professed by the Protestants and Reformed Church in which I have ever lived and on account of which I refugied myself in the Province of

  Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 119.

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Holland in 1686 and since some years in the City of London where I  now live in Long Acre’. The Revd Paul de Claris, Sieur de Florian, Rector of Stradishall, Suffolk, and of St James Westminster (1737) gave thanks that he had been ‘born in the Christian, Protestant, Reformed church … the ark of God, door to Heaven’. A soldier’s simpler point of view was expressed by a refugee from Grenoble in the Dauphiné Charles St Maurice, ‘captain in the service of His Britannic Majesty’, of St Anne’s Westminster (1746) who ‘quitted my country France on account of the persecution for my reformed religion, the only motive which made me abandon my estate and my country’. Two years earlier he had served on the committee that recruited 1600 volunteers from among the refugees of Wesminster and Spitalfields for military service against the threatened Jacobite rising.23 Transferring funds Some wills exemplify the concern for family division brought about by flight from persecution and the financial implications. Anne Allenet, widow of Michael Boucher, La Rochelle merchant (1716), gives an historical account of her financial affairs and the effect on them of the persecution and partial exile of her family and property, which bears fuller examination24 than Wagner’s abstract makes possible: I declare that the Estate which I bequeath by my Will and all that I have heretofore given to my children proceeds for the most part from that which hath been bequeathed to me in France by the late Mr Repusard de La Ramigere out of which Estate given to me and of that as well as personal left by my late husband deceased at Allever in 1681 and of that of my Father in Law Paul Boucher deceased at La Rochelle in 1683 proceeding from our commonalty of Estates I have from time to time whilst I remained in the Kingdom of France sent and remitted for my said three children Paul Lewis and Anne Boucher who were then out of the Kingdom of France diverse summs of money which they have received to wit the said Paul the summ of seventeen thousand and odd Livers and Lewis as much or thereabouts of such money and Anne twelve hundred pounds sterling which she has brought as a Marriage Portion to the said Du Charnau25 and whereas on account of the coming away out of France in the year 1702 and before that of my said sons Paul Michael  Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 299.   PRO, PROB 11/552. 25   Correctly Du Prat de Charreau, as in Jean, Director of the French Hospital, 1726. 23 24

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randolph vigne Lewis and James Boucher I have been prosecuted at Law of La Rochelle as well by the King’s Commissary appointed Sequestrator of the Estate of my said child as on behalf of Mr De Villeson the next of kin and heir of my said children of the Father’s side to give an account of their Estate and put the said Mr De Villeson in possession thereof in pursuance of the King of France’s Edicts which give the property of the Estates of those who are absent from the Kingdom to their nearest Relations or Heirs I do declare that I was compelled fearing the Convent to treat with the said De Villeson by an Act under my own hand … the property and rents left by the said Anne my daughter … left and abandoned to Mr De Villeson … and whereas I left the said Kingdom of France in the year 1713 and that I have been able to get and bring away only near the Estate whereof I dispose by my Will … the summs of money … been received by them …do belong to them …

Transferring money was a central issue also to the wealthy Parisian timber merchant Paul Girardot of St Stephen Coleman Street (1712)26 ‘I came out of France to get refuge in this city on account of the persecution in the month of August 1699, my three daughters remaining’. His sister Mary Girardot, unmarried, died in Paris ‘since I refugied’. Wagner notes: ‘Large sums divided’ among his two sons and five daughters. A lieutenant-colonel in the Dutch army, James de Dompierre de Jonquieres (1729), through his wife and estate in France, ‘had the means to retire from the great persecution with wife and six children’. Others, probably the great majority, were less successful in getting their funds out of France. One son of the widow of Elizabeth Le Lens, née Congnard, (1723) was ‘major of a regiment of horse in the Dutch army’ and her executor, but another, Stephen Le Lens de Volligny, ‘enjoyed goods in France since his father’s death and must do justice’. Inheritance and family division Money is, of course, the theme common to all wills, and Huguenot testators were deeply concerned with the inheritance of families divided as a result of persecution and the grand refuge. The salient feature of Huguenot wills, marking them out from their English counterparts, was the effect on inheritance of the linked questions of loyalty to Protestant kin and of alienation from France. Thirty wills, chosen

 M. Bray, The Girardot Family (Upton-upon-Severn: Square One, 1996, 1998).

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at  random from this group, reveal a range of attitudes to these questions. The mildest were those who, despite the bitterness of their division, made no demands of their relations who had stayed in France. Huldrich Bataillard of St Mary Bothaw (1750) simply prayed ‘May God enlighten my sister Catherine Uchard’, née Bataillard. Could she be the Catherine Uchard who was executrix to her husband, the nobleman, traveller and sufferer for his religion, François Leguat, in 1735? The Revd Philip Bouquet, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1748), left, ‘of what God hath pleased to bestow on me in the face of my enemys’, £100 to his brother Gabriel Bouquet of St Fulgent, Poitou, ‘left behind and educated in bosome of that Popish church’, £300 to his ‘cousin John Theoph. Desaguliers’ plus other bequests, and the residue to ‘the grievous sufferers whom I call my spiritual brethren, my relations by the better part’, perhaps referring also to those who had failed to make the escape from post-Revocation France. Most forgiving of this small category was Charles du Bourgay of St Martin in the Fields (1732) whose will ‘forgives his sisters for detaining in France the property due to him’. Was it an easing of Catholic-Protestant relations in France, the rise of ‘toleration’ promoted by Voltaire, and the approach of Louis XVI’s Edict of Toleration in 1788 that accounted for Wagner’s surprising find that, in 1780, the heirs of Peter Guirand, merchant of Austin Friars (and in 1767 a Director of the French Hospital) were ‘all his relations living in France’ – mainly in and near Montagnac (Hérault). Memory of persecution seems to have faded with Guirand, while family bonds had not. Nine of the thirty required of their beneficiaries that they leave France and proclaim their acceptance of Protestantism but laid down no further conditions for their inheritance. These were John Baudouin, see above, who threatened reduction to a contumelious 5d per day to legatees who stayed on in France; Peter de Ladeveze (1715); the widow Mary Lesterlen (a brother in Caux, Normandy was left ‘a rose of diamonds’ and, ‘if he come out of France’, £1000 to him and each of his children); and the mariner William Ballavie (1729) who offered his uncle in France ‘reversion unless he comes and enjoys the same in the Kingdom of England and not otherwise’; Martha Nicolas (1733) whose brothers must ‘retire from France’ if they are to receive her and her sister Magdalen’s money ‘accruing from our common labour and profit’; Martha Magdalen Le Rouille of Berwick Street (1762) (her nephew Jean, of Alenćon, to come to England or forfeit his inheritance

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to her cousin and executor, Claud Champion de Crespigny); and James Baudoin, who, with many charitable bequests including £500 to the French Hospital, of which he was the first Deputy-Governor in 1718, left £200 ‘to my brother if he will come out of France …. with freedom of body and mind’. Return to Protestantism was demanded of only two of the sample (taken for granted, perhaps, by the others); John Bouquet of Paddington (1719) allowed the interest on £350 to his sister Elisabeth Saint and her children ‘on condition that she and they profess the Protestant religion’. John Poumies (1719) was as firm: his niece, in Orthez, would receive her inheritance ‘if she come and reside in England and make profession of the Protestant religion’. Susanna du Moulin, widow of James Basnage, Sieur de Franquenay, Rouen pastor of a distinguished Normandy family who contributed much to French Protestantism, was more downright in her will drawn in Haarlem (1726). Her four De La Sarrat grandchildren would inherit ‘under the condition that they will never be so vile as to leave the holy Protestant Religion in which they have been born and baptised’. Suspicious of the younger generation, she went on: ‘if the eldest return into France and there settle himself before the compleat execution of this her testament, whatsoever protestations he may make that he may not have apostatized in his heart, she disinherits him entirely’. A further six risked disinheritance if they failed the tests imposed. Charles Le Bas of St Martin in the Fields (1732), with estates in Northamptonshire, required of an heir by default, unnamed, that ‘he shall then be a Protestant’. He excluded ‘my relations in France who have changed their religion and keep me out of my estate there’. Francis Dubois (1732) ruled out relations in France as having ‘no right or pretence’ to inherit. Lewis Levesque de Fouronce left her two Dassas granddaughters ‘an annuity and good jewels’. She made clear the feelings towards the country where she had endured persecution; her brother in France, Louis Claude Dassas, was to receive one shilling and the girls were enjoined ‘never to go into France to inherit the estate’. Daniel Dupuy of Lambeth (1761) hit back at ‘my unnaturall wife Anne [who] hath absented herself from me and become a Papist abroad’. She too was to receive one shilling. The court official and later British resident at the The Hague, Solomon Dayrolles of Henley Park, near Guildford in Surrey (1786) added to his ‘immensely long will’ four codicils, one of which cut off the £6000 each his two unmarried daughters, Emily and Mary, were to receive ‘if they marry Roman Catholics



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or reside out of Great Britain’. Neither failed at the first condition but it is not known if Mary’s marriage to the ADC to the Duke of Wűrttemberg a few months after her father’s death caused her to fail at the second. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography makes no mention of his Huguenot background, but four more Dayrolles wills abstracted by Wagner establish it beyond doubt. Susanna Basnage’s suspicions of her nephew’s assertion that he may not have apostatized in order to inherit is echoed in a milder form in twelve of the wills in this sample focusing on conditional inheritance. The longest ‘probation’ period for heirs returning to Protestantism and England was required by the Revd John Dubourdieu, pastor at the Savoy Church in London, whose chief heirs were two sons, Peter (Rector of Kirby over Carr, Yorkshire) and Armand and his eldest daughter. Her sister Anne, still at Montpellier, would have her share ‘if she comes to England [but would not have] the power of disposal till she have lived here for ten years a Protestant’. A third daughter, Elisabeth, married, had the same condition imposed on her, with her children ‘to inherit in her default on their compliance’. The widow Elizabeth La Pradelle (née La Primaudaye) (1743) willed £400 to her husband’s nephew, already out of France, on condition that he stay out for five years. This ‘probation’ was cut down to four years for the period of time by which Mary Barbat (née De Duroy) (1695) required the departure from France of her niece Antoinette, daughter of John James du Roy, Sieur de Reminier. Antoinette’s brother, Lieutenant David du Roy was serving in Ireland. For Mary Caillaud (née Bontin) (1787), nearly a hundred years later, and with the Edict of Toleration only a year away, instructed a niece and nephew, Mary and John Mongeon: ‘I intend that John and Mary shall be at London before three years are out if they are to have a share’. Peter Gallot, a Spitalfields silk-weaving master (1778), among many bequests to family and charities, made assurance double sure by offering £100 ‘to the first of my nephews and nieces who shall come from France within a year of my death and remain two years in this country without returning to France, to be paid at the end of the two years’. Guy Viçouse’s estate (1753) went to his wife Mary Magdalen and thereafter to be shared by his nephews and nieces ‘if they come out of France twelve months after my wife’s decease’, adding prudently ‘or if Great Britain and France be at war, twelve months after conclusion of peace’. Mary Magdalen died in 1769. Her heirs, Mary and Anne Fountain (formerly de La Fontaine), ‘spinster nieces, the only persons entitled to

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a distribution’ had clearly met the terms of their uncle’s will and come to England well before their aunt’s death. The will of Mary Magdalen Viçouse’s sister Anne de La Fontaine dated 1766 names Mary and Anne de La Fontaine, of St Benet Sherehog, who signed an affidavit before probate in 1770. Guy Viçouse, the son of Guy de Viçouse, Baron de La Court, Governor of the French Hospital in 1722, had himself been elected a Director in 1732. Like other Huguenots of the noblesse and petit noblesse in England, he had dropped the ‘de’ and the barony. Amongst the heirs of John Lichigaray (1743) were a nephew Jean ‘on condition he come to England within a year’. There was more: he was also ‘to make profession of the Protestant Religion’. Conditions were more relaxed for Martha Viard, sister of the spinster Anne Viard of Christ Church, Spitalfelds (1762), for whom there was £300 in trust ‘only if she come out of France in a limited period’. Four more such wills that named beneficiaries who must ‘come out of France’ were those of Lewis Duterme de La Cour (1742), James de Foyssac (1751), a friend of Captain St Maurice and committee member recruiting London Huguenots to serve against the Jacobites,27 the widow Mary La Combe de Cluzel (1743), her brother De Loches would inherit ‘on condition he come to England and profess our bold Reformed Religion’. Once again showing that suspicion of nouveaux convertis Peter de Vesis de Combrune of St Anne’s Westminster, widower (1731) left his estate to his six surviving children, including William, ‘gone into France to make himself a Papist’, to inherit only ‘if he publicly abjure in Les Grecs’, the ‘outstation’ chapel in Soho of the conformist French Protestant Church of the Savoy. Hope for the Restoration of Protestantism in France By no means all of the refugee testators saw their future and that of their families to be forever in England. Like the Revd Peter Allix, Gaspard de Masclary in The Hague in 1710 expressed ‘the happiness of finding means to save the only four children we then had living’, remembered ‘my sister the nunn’, and his brother in France who had benefited by the division of the family estates in France. He laid down ‘if restoration in France no lawsuit against my brother’. In 1725

 Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 299.

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Lieutenant Colonel Peter de Lisle de Verdun, in the States General’s army, stationed at Utrecht, bequeathed half his estate to his eldest son and half divided among his other children ‘if French estates recovered’. This was a joint will with his wife Mary Anne Muysson, whose mother Anne Muysson (née Rambouillet) had, ten years earlier, so repined her abjuration ‘at the time of the persecution in France’. In the same period Perside de L’Escure, of St James Westminster (1718), widow of James Badiffe, Sieur de Romanes, bequeathed the family’s estates to their son, who was to be given ‘the papers which concern the estate in France and titles of nobility’ by her executors, her nieces Susanna and Jane Badiffe. The son and heir’s first duty was made clear. He was ‘to build a Protestant chapel in island of Alvert, as near as possible to Mere de Vaux’. The Badiffes had come into these estates on the Saintonge coast by marriage in 1679 and occupied the manor house Maine de Vaulx (a name, like the island of Arvert, mistranscribed by the scrivener at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, or by Henry Wagner). The estate experienced many vicissitudes, particularly during the Revolution and today the Maine de Vaulx – the present building dating from the latter period – houses, pleasingly, a charitable institution for aged Protestant men and women.28 The refugee David Bosanquet, four of whose five sons carried on his mercantile and banking activity and expanded the family’s wealth (the fifth became a doctor) shared with three daughters an inheritance of some £50,000, left a small bequest of £200 to ‘the Elders and Deacons of the French Church in Threadneedle Street’ who were charged to pay £100 ‘towards the building of a church at Lunell in Languedoc if it should please God to re-establish the exercise of the Protestant religion there before the year 1800’. A shrewd man of affairs, Bosanquet must have calculated that his £100 would at 68 years compound interest pay for a worthy temple at Lunel (Hérault) in the Languedoc, whence David and his brother John had escaped to Geneva in 1685, reaching London the following year.29 Bosanquet took a longer view than others of the return of Protestantism to France, which came about with Louis XVI’s Edict of Toleration, on the eve of the Revolution. The temple where the Bosanquet family had worshipped had been demolished during

  See www.maine-etaules.fr/tourisme/images/darcy-brun.  Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 292. See also G. L. Lee, The Story of the Bosanquets (Canterbury: Phillimore, 1966). 28 29

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the persecution. It stands today but history does not record if David’s bequest was used to achieve its purpose. The silent majority of Huguenot wills This brief study has sought to glean from Wagner’s abstracts and a few full wills evidence that sheds some light on England’s Huguenot testators’ charitable bequests, burial customs, attitudes to Protestantism in France and to England and other countries of sanctuary. Perhaps the clearest outline is of the effect of the division of families and the use of inheritance to re-unite family members, to punish those still in France and reward those willing to escape to England. It should not be thought, however, that the abstracts in the samples explored are representative of the wills en masse. In page after page of Mrs North’s alphabetical transcription there might be found evidence relating only to straightforward inheritance and small bequests, of charities and burial. On pages 202–03, as but one small example, wills of seven members of the Guinand family do not stray beyond these confines. These Guinands are Henry John (1756), his wife Elzabeth (née Hamelot), his brother Joseph (1764), two of Henry John and Elizabeth’s unmarried daughters (Elizabeth, 1792, ‘a regular old maid’s will’ writes a somewhat acerbic Wagner), son Henry (1785, from whom, with his wife Elizabeth Yvonnet, the Princes William and Henry are descended, via their mother the late Diana, Princess of Wales’s Roche ancestry), grand-daughter (Catherine, 1805) and grandson (John Henry, Bengal, 1793, aged 31). Henry John Guinand, a substantial figure who had worked hard for Huguenot charities, left money to bodies in Geneva and Neuchâtel, his birthplace, and England, including the French Hospital (‘of which I have the honour to be sub-governor’). His will30 began with a striking ‘preface’ which vividly displays his paternal feelings but has no trace of ‘Huguenot’ content: I pray this God of mercy to shower his most precious blessings as a mark of our dear children and to sanctify them by His spirit in order that they may be found without reproach at the coming of our Saviour who will change our vile bodies and here in this last and first day I may say with confidence, Lord, I am here with the children thou hast given me.   Seen by courtesy of Ian Caldwell, Esq.

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Henry John’s Elizabeth was the daughter of David Hamelot, also of Neuchâtel31. They were married in St Giles’s Church, Ashtead, Surrey in 1720, by the Revd Peter Hamelot, rector of the parish, whose table tomb in the churchyard32 revives memory of the family’s sufferings unrecorded in the wills of their relations by marriage. Here lies the body of Jane, wife to Hierome Hamelot, Doctr. of Physick, who died the 10th of January 1731 in the 91st year of her age. Here also lies the body of Catherine, wife to Peter Hamelot, Rector of Ashtead, who died the 7th of February 1728 in the 68th year of her age. Here also lies the body of Peter Hamelot M.A. When the Popish fury destroyed the Protestants in France he left his patrimony and came to England. He was chosen Rector of this Church the 25th of March 1699. He died the 14th day of April 1742 aged 81 years.

Conclusion The Wagner will abstracts give us brief glimpses into the minds of those thousands of Huguenot testators, the great majority of whose wills deal only with the distribution of their assets to their heirs and of mourning rings and small sums of money to a wider circle. As the Hamelot gravestone suggests, memories of early sufferings for their ‘holy religion’ were surely in most cases as live at the end of their days as they were to the Hamelots, looking back on ‘leaving their patrimony’, They are a mere soupçon of the gargantuan feast awaiting researchers into the vast collection of Huguenot wills in Episcopal and County Record Offices, the greatest proportion of them, those of the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, held at the Public Record Office, the National Archives, in Kew.33 The PCC wills are accessible online at a modest fee, an unthinkable facility to Wagner’s generation. The prospect is almost limitless and awaits the assiduity and motivation of the Wagners of today. Here could be a major contribution to our understanding of English Huguenots’ experience of their past, their memory of it and the effect of both on their lives and the lives of those who came after.

 Ibid. See also J. Stansfield, ‘Ashtead’s Refugee Priest’ at http://sgsgashtead.com/ mobile/default. 32  Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 267, describes this Hamelot family as ‘illustrious Rochellois’. 33  www.nationalarchives.gov.uk. 31

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Memory of the Huguenots in North America: Protestant History and Polemic Paul McGraw ‘Persecution cannot last for ever. Like all things human it wears itself out’.1 The words Hannah Farnham Lee used to conclude her twovolume history, The Huguenots of France and America, epitomised not only the condition of French Protestants by the early nineteenth century, but also the process by which Americans viewed their plight. Nearly half a century later, Charles W. Baird produced the first definitive work on their entrance into, and impact on, American society. When nineteenth-century historians of American religion focused their attention on Huguenots, it was not a new field of historical study but merely a new tack on the importance of this underrepresented but arguably over-emphasised group of religious refugees. Huguenot numbers do not seem to justify the focus showered on them in over the three centuries since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. There are few time periods since the establishment of English Colonies in North America in which some voice has not found the ephemeral image of the Huguenots a useful figure with which to foment agendas ranging from anti-Catholic animosity to the promotion of millenarian apocalypticism. American historians, preachers and politicians from the early seventeenth century to the present have found the study of Huguenots an important element in their polemics. Huguenot history and European presence in the Americas parallel one another in numerous ways. The short-lived settlement of Fort Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida, established in 1562 as a refuge for Huguenots, was destroyed by the Spanish in 1565. Fort Caroline exemplifies the unique, if precarious, nature of Huguenot settlement in North America. As early as the mid-seventeenth century, the story of Huguenot persecution in France and the exile which 1   Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, The Huguenots in France and America, 2nd edn, 2 vols. (Cambridge: n.p.,1843), II, 268.

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eventually contributed to their presence in America caused prominent American Protestants to celebrate their story as both an example of Catholic evils as well as a reminder that not even the Atlantic Ocean should make American Protestants complacent about the dangers Catholicism posed. From the earliest Huguenot immigrants to America, the story of their persecution fit them within the American landscape. New England’s Puritans saw in their story one similar to their own: a small group of believers whose adherence to a set of Reformed principles led to persistent persecution for their beliefs. The polemical use of Huguenots, particularly by New England clergy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, helped to make an argument against Catholicism, but often seemed less concerned about the actual experience of those French refugees. Despite their place in Colonial American polemics, by the mid-seventeenth century, in most parts of the Colonies, Huguenot assimilation into American culture both economically and religiously was complete. Their presence in the literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after nearly complete adaptation into American culture makes their presence in that literature nearly as important as their physical presence. Most recent historiography of America Huguenots focused on the rapid nature of their assimilation into, and largely disappearance from, the religious landscape of Colonial America. Within this short period of time, Huguenots found numerous alternatives to the ethnic segregation of the French Churches established by the earliest immigrants. While Huguenot communities are largely grouped into three geographically diverse regions in New England, New York and South Carolina, almost all experienced the same alternatives in their quest for religious expression. By the 1710s, many of the most economically successful Huguenots gravitated to the Anglican Church. Many found alternatives within various Reformed denominations fulfilled the yearnings of their religious quest. The fact that Huguenots in all three geographical strongholds essentially disappeared by the middle of the seventeenth century is not surprising considering the rather small number of refugees who decided to journey across the Atlantic.2

2   Jon Butler, The Huguenots in America: A Refugee People in New World Society, Harvard Historical Monographs, V. 72 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983).



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Considering their relatively small impact on the demographic landscape of Colonial America, Huguenots’ consistent appearance in both the political and religious rhetoric of American society well into the nineteenth century must be attributed to something other than their physical presence. From the time of the Puritan establishment in Massachusetts Bay Colony through their historical treatment by Charles Baird in the late nineteenth century,3 the major emphasis of American thinkers and historians was on Huguenots as an important part of the polemical and political debate between Protestants and Catholics. Until Baird’s work, little study focused on Huguenots as displaced refugees who arrived in America seeking a new home where they could practice their faith freely. The earliest emphasis on Huguenots comes almost exclusively from New England preachers. First among these was one of American Puritanism’s greatest theologians, John Cotton. Cotton, as many other American Protestants after him, focused on Huguenots as part of his broader argument against Catholicism. Yet, Cotton’s argument as to the importance of Huguenots went even deeper. He, along with other Puritan millennialists, argued that Protestant persecution in France merely proved their contention that the current religious foundation of the world was rapidly drawing to a close. The Fifth-Monarchy movement in American Puritanism did not contain nearly the number or cast of ‘colorful’ figures found in England.4 More than four decades prior to the Revocation, John Cotton’s brief mention of Huguenots in his 1641 sermon embracing the message and meaning of the coming Fifth Monarchy, showed that while separated from the English hub of apocalyptic fervour, there were those in America whose eschatological intensity mirrored those in England. The fact that Cotton gave voice to Fifth Monarchy ideology in the remote American Colonies and preached about the imminent coming of Jesus with such power and fervour gave the movement an influential voice that it could find in few  others.5 Cotton’s sermon ‘The Churches Resurrection,’ deftly fit 3   Charles W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, 2 vols. (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1885; repr., Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1966). 4   J. F. Maclear, ‘New England and the Fifth Monarchy: The Quest for the Millennium in Early American Puritanism,’ WMQ, 3rd series, 32 (April 1975), 225; cf. B. S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-century English Millenarianism (London: Faber, 1972). 5   John Cotton, The Churches Resurrection, or the Opening of the Fifth and Sixth Verses of the 20th Chapter of Revelation (London: 1642; Wing C6419).

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Huguenot persecution into an array of examples in which worldwide Protestantism would soon throw off the yoke of Catholic oppression. Cotton argued that anyone willing to look at places as far afield as Scotland and New England would find numerous examples of how an awakened Protestantism stood ready to commence a new reformation. Cotton believed that all Protestants who suffered persecution were forerunners of freedom. He specifically noted Huguenots when he said, ‘those that were branded before for Huguenots, and Lollards, and Hereticks, [sic] they shall be thought the only men to be fit to have Crownes [sic] upon their heads’.6 Cotton embraced persecution as merely a necessary step in the establishment of God’s Kingdom. Fifth Monarchy emphasis on the soon coming Kingdom of God which would commence the long-hoped for millennium led him to embrace any group he thought exemplified such oppression and Huguenots were a perfect example. Cotton and other Puritan millennialists were not afraid of setting at least a range of dates they believed were possible starting points for the Fifth Monarchy. Cotton’s fervency left one historian to comment, ‘in reputation Cotton stood foremost among transatlantic Puritans as prophet of the coming glory, and as the 1640s advanced, news from England must have vindicated his teaching and deepened an assured and militant adventist [sic] mood’.7 John Cotton died in 1652 fully believing that the establishment of the Fifth Monarchy was at hand. While the ardent expectation of men such as Cotton did not come to fruition, his influence on American theologians would not be lost over the next century. Even before the revocation in 1685, John Cotton’s grandson, Cotton Mather, took up the cause. In the early 1680s, Mather spoke about Louis XIV’s growing pressure on Huguenots. His focus on Louis XIV ranged from impassioned pleas for New England’s Puritans to pray for Huguenots protection, to outright mockery of Louis XIV as ‘Louis le Loup, ravaging the Protestant flocks of France’.8 In some of his earliest diary entries, Mather noted the concern New Englanders had for the Huguenots. ‘About this Time there was a proposal made among many devout people, in this Countrey, to retire, each one, every Monday, between eleven and twelve a clock, for secret prayer before   Ibid., 5–6.   Maclear, ‘New England and the Fifth Monarchy’, 236. 8   Howard C. Rice, ‘Cotton Mather Speaks to France: American Propaganda in the Age of Louis XIV,’ The New England Quarterly 16 (June 1943), 201. 6 7



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the Lord, purely on the behalf of the church abroad weltring under the grievous persecution’.9 The next year, Increase Mather, Cotton’s father, preached a sermon directly focused on how France’s continued pressure on Huguenots to recant Protestantism and their Reformed heritage. In ‘A Sermon wherein is shewed that the Church of God is sometimes a Subject of Great Persecution: Preached on a Publick Fast at Boston in New-England: Occasioned by the Tidings of a Great Persecution Raised against the Protestants in France,’10 Increase Mather showed the awareness of New England clergy concerning the condition of Huguenots prior to the Revocation. While some attention focused by Puritan ministers on the plight of the Huguenots was an extension of the eschatology, much also stemmed from New Englander’s observation of their own world. Puritan ministers equated the suffering of Protestants in France with their own fears of what might happen in America. The fact that New France lay geographically just north of New England worried many Puritans that they too may be subject to the incursions of and persecution by France. They feared their proximity to New France would prove easily accessible to an emboldened France and they worried that they too might be forced to recant their Protestantism or flee their homes. Throughout much of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, New Englanders pushed the frontier further into established Native American territory. In response, Native Americans fought back against new settlements by attacking, killing or capturing English settlers. The much-publicised attack on Deerfield in 1704 by a band of Kahnawake Indians, who were supported by a Jesuit settlement near Montreal, gave further reason for New Englanders to fear. The focus of the Deerfield attack was the Puritan minister John Williams. The French commissioned Kahnawake Indians to capture Williams who they hoped to trade for ‘Captain Baptiste,’ a French privateer who the English had captured and the French government in Canada desperately wanted returned. The result of the raid included the capture of John Williams’ wife Eunice, a cousin of Cotton Mather, and either the

  Cotton Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, 2 vols. (New York: F. Ungar, 1957), I, 41.  Increase Mather and American Imprint Collection (Library of Congress), A Sermon Wherein Is Shewed That the Church of God Is Sometimes a Subject of Great Persecution: Preached on a Publick Fast at Boston in New England, Occasioned by the Tidings of a Great Persecution Raised against the Protestants in France (Boston: 1682).     9 10

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capture or killing of almost his complete family. Even after the ransom of the surviving members of the Williams family, one daughter, Eunice, remained with her captors. Despite repeated attempts to achieve her ‘redemption,’ Eunice not only chose to remain with the Kahnawake, but she married a Mohawk Indian and embraced the Catholic faith.11 In 1706, Mather contributed to the growing genre of captive narratives with a collection entitled Good Fetch’d Out of Evil.12 Following his ransom, John Williams and his son Stephen collaborated to write one of the most popular captive narratives of the early eighteenth century entitled The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion. In his account of ‘Jesuit’ captivity, John Williams told how his captors attempted to convert he and other captives to the Catholic faith. He told of how the Jesuit priest inquired which of the captives were baptised and explained he had instructed the Indians sent to Deerfield ‘to baptize all children before they killed them; such was my desire of your eternal salvation, though you were our enemies’. Williams did not see these as acts of  compassion, rather the he said, ‘All means were used to seduce poor souls’.13 Following the Seven Years War and the absorption of Canada into the British Empire, New Englanders continued to see Quebec as a danger. As late as 1774, New Englanders worried that Britain’s acquiescence to Catholicism in Canada in the Quebec Act, which guaranteed the free practice of Catholicism in Quebec, might eventually open the door to New England being forced to embrace the Catholic Faith. Mather’s attention to the early Huguenots was not merely a fear of Catholics being forced onto New England via French governmental power. In a January 1686/87 entry into his diary, Mather expressed worry about a possible ‘scandal’ with the new members of the New England community. Mather showed concern that despite the mutual Reformed faith of the Huguenots and New England Puritans, his

  John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America, 1st Vintage Books ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). 12   Cotton Mather, Good Fetch’d out of Evil, The Garland Library of Narratives of North American Indian Captivities, 4 (New York: Garland, 1977). 13   John Williams and Stephen W. Williams, The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion: Or, a Faithful History of Remarkable Occurences in the Captivity and Deliverance of Mr. John Williams, Minister of the Gospel in Deerfield, Who in the Desolation Which Befel That Plantation by an Incursion of the French and Indians, Was by Them Carried Away, with His Family and His Neighborhood, into Canada (Northampton [MA]: Hopkins, Bridgman, and Co., 1853), 44. 11



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Puritan community might stray toward the ‘continental’ rather than an English perspective on issues of person conduct. He encouraged New Englanders to follow his example saying, ‘as I would show all kindness that I can, unto the French Refugees arrived in this Countrey, so I would earnestly recommend it unto their Ministers to awaken that people unto a greater observation of the Lord’s Day; by neglect whereof they had given too much of scandal’.14 Mather’s focus on Huguenot refugees came from two perspectives. First, the Huguenots were an example of commitment to Protestantism in the face of Catholic opposition. The second was to use the Huguenots as a moral lesson of what may occur if Puritans were not diligent in their piety. Two years later, Mather embraced the first of these perspectives after hearing a sermon entitled ‘The Charitable Samaritan’ presented by Ezechiel Carré, the French pastor in Boston. Mather was so impressed by Carré’s sermon that he encouraged its publication and agreed to write an introduction. In that introduction, Mather referred to the persecution of the Huguenots saying, ‘Never were wild Beasts pursued with such eagerness and watchfulness, as these poor lambs were by their wolfish persecutors’. He explained the presence of the Huguenots in New England saying, ‘many thousands of Protestants found a merciful providence assisting their escape; and some of them have arrived into New England, where before they came, there were fastings and prayers employ’d for them, and since they came, they have met with some further kindness, from such as know how to sympathize with their Brethren’.15 In an introduction to another of Carré’s sermons, Mather recounted Jesuit opposition to the mission work of English Fifth Monarchist John Eliot with Native Americans. Mather accused the Jesuits of propagating ‘paganism disguised as popery’.16 Mather’s concern for the piety of the New England’s Huguenot immigrants hinted at his greater concern for Protestantism as a whole. As Jon Butler has pointed out, the actual numbers of Huguenots in North America were small relative to their place in New England polemics.17 The Huguenot story provided fertile ground for Mather to focus his argument concerning the future advances of the worldwide

 Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 134.   Ezechiel Carré et al., The Charitable Samaritan (Boston: 1689; Wing C638), 1–4. 16   Quoted in Rice, ‘Cotton Mather Speaks to France’, 206. 17  Butler, Huguenots in America. 14 15

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Protestant Reformation. News from Post-Revocation France made it easier for Mather to focus his argument against Catholicism. Mather saw varied aspects of French culture which he believed strengthened his argument against the Huguenot oppressors. To Mather, Huguenot persecution served as merely another example of the grand scheme which progressed toward the ultimate goal of the reformation of human society. Cotton Mather published over 475 books, pamphlets and sermons during his life. One of the most important was his history of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana.18 Mather’s perspective on the impact of the Huguenots into the broader battle of Protestantism mirrors his work in Magnalia Christi Americana and his emphasis on the importance of events in New England. Despite New England’s position on the periphery of the ‘civilized world,’ Mather believed it could still play a pivotal part in God’s ultimate reformation. Mather believed that America was further advanced along the road of reformation and on numerous occasions in his diary, Mather spoke of his hope that Britain might also be nearing a ‘mighty revolution’.19 Mather’s belief in the coming ‘revolution’ reflected the influence of his grandfather John Cotton’s apocalyptic interpretations regarding France. In the seventeenth century, many Protestant polemics equated the ‘Two Witnesses’ of Revelation 11 to the battle between Protestants and Catholics, particularly in France. Following the Revocation, a number of writers interpreted the two witnesses as French Protestantism and Louis XIV. Protestantism was God’s pure church and Louis XIV the beast that sought to overwhelm them. Regardless of how desperate the situation may have seemed to the untrained eye, Mather believed he saw a glimmer of hope in England with the ascension of King James II. Although James II was Catholic, he appeared to make accommodations to dissenting Protestants. The openness to ‘such a liberty for the dissenters, as may, for ought I know, begin the Resurrection of our Lord’s Witnesses’.20 To Mather, the step away from oppressive Catholicism in England may portend an opening in France as well. In the decade following the Revocation, as Huguenot refugees who settled in New England began to assimilate into Colonial American society, Mather continued to worry about the condition of the French 18  Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford, CN: Roberts & Burr, 1820). 19  Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 205. 20  Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 113.



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Protestants. Though Mather did not appear expressly interested in Huguenot doctrine, he did worry that so many found comfort in Anglican churches. One example which continued to garner Mather’s focus was the impressment of French Protestants into the galleys of French ships. Mather specifically took up the case of Elie Neau, a French Protestant who immigrated to Boston in the early 1680s. Neau became a merchant in America and happened to be aboard one of his ships when it was captured by French privateers. Although Neau was a British citizen, he was impressed into the galley of a French ship. Eventually Neau was imprisoned in Marseilles. Mather used Neau’s case as an example of Catholic oppression of Protestants. Mather hoped that continued focus on the condition of French Protestants would serve as a reminder for French Protestant community in America to be more vigilant in their commitment to the Protestant cause. While imprisoned in Marseilles, Neau wrote of his travails in a letter21 which when it came into Mather’s hands fit perfectly into his plan. In his diary of October 21, 1697, Mather wrote the he wanted the people of New England to understand the ‘great sacrifice, to whom all the glory of our great salvation will bee due’. He said that he ‘ask’d of the Lord, that Hee would allow, and assist mee to publish unto my people, my late meditations of the great sacrifice’. Mather described how he finally decided to share the letter in one of his sermons and then to publish it under the title, ‘Present from a Far Country to the People of New England’. Mather believed that the letter ‘would bee a very charming way to do good, through all this countrey, and to diffuse the Spirit of Christianitie wonderfully’. While Neau’s story might have a chastising effect on New Englanders as a whole, Mather openly admitted that he hoped the publishing of it in New England in French and ‘addressed unto the French Church in this Town, advising them as prudently as I was able, to reform things, that are amiss among them’.22 For Mather, the injustices suffered by Protestants such a Neau fit into the broader, transatlantic battle between France and England. Mather wrote in his diary of April 24, 1701 that there is ‘reason to suspect, that the French oppressor, who wants nothing but New England, for to render him the Master of all America, and has been under

21   Elias Neau, An Account of the Sufferings of the French Protestants, Slaves on Board the French Kings Galleys (London: 1699; Wing N363). 22  Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 238–39.

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Provocation enough to fall foul upon us’. To Mather, this possible attack made sense based on the ‘astonishing accounts, of the sufferings undergone by the Protestants in the French King’s Galleyes’. Mather committed to spread the news as broadly as possible because ‘it would be many wayes a service unto the Christians in this Countrey, to be informed thereof ’. To make this possible, Mather printed the account ‘under the title of, A Letter, Concerning the Sufferings of our Protestant Brethren’.23 Two years later Mather happily announced Neau’s release from prison. Neau eventually returned to his adopted home in America. It was more than a decade later that Mather included in his diary a solemn note at the ‘Apostasy of that famous French Confessor, Mr. Elias Neau’. Upon his return to America, Neau, like many Huguenots in the early eighteenth century, affiliated with the Anglican church and began to work for the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts in New York. Mather lamented that this ‘is to me one of the most grievous and shocking things that I have mett withal’. Mather found Neau’s story of imprisonment more beneficial to his narrative about the Protestant March to the Reformation of the church, but that sotry had much greater impact when Neau was imprisoned by French Catholics than when a free Neau chose a Protestant tradition other than his own. Mather made Neau a matter of prayer in an attempt ‘to do something towards his recovery’.24 In 1715, after hearing of the death of Louis XIV, Mather published the text of a sermon entitled, Shaking Dispensations an Essay Upon the Mighty Shakes, Which the Hand of Heaven, Hath Given, and is Giving, to the World; With Some Useful Remarks on the Death of the French King, Who Left Off to Make the World a Wilderness, and to Destroy the Cities Thereof; on the Twenty-First of August 1715; in a Sermon on that Great Occasion, at Boston, New-England. Once again Mather saw an event on the world stage as the harbinger of his hoped for Reformation. As Mather reached the end of his life, he published one of his most pointed works on the place of Huguenots. In 1725, Mather published an anonymous pamphlet, written entirely in French entitled, Une grande voix du ciel a la France.25 Mather wrote this pamphlet  Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 398.  Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, II, 89. 25   Cotton Mather, ‘Une grande voix du ciel a La France. [Two Lines in French from Ecclesiastes]’ ([Boston?: Printed by B. Green?], 1725), available at http://opac.newsbank.com/select/evans/2554. 23 24



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specifically for Protestants in France. Published just three years before his death, the situation of distinctly French churches in America was grim. By 1725, many American Huguenots moved from distinctly French churches to membership in a variety of Protestant denominations. The majority of Huguenots found their way to Anglican Churches which led Mather to worry not only about American Huguenots, but the state of French Protestantism as a whole. His eighteen-page pamphlet sought to ‘sett [sic] before the French Nation, the horrible wickedness of the cruel and matchless persecution’ which their fore-bearer’s had experienced. Mather sought to ‘instruct them in the only terms, which the friends of a reformation must unite’.26 Ever the siren of reform, Mather sought to encourage French Protestants not forget the importance of their mission and its place in the whole of Christianity. By the time Mather published Une Grande Voix du Ciel, he appeared to believe that the days of France as a centre of persecution were about to end. Mather makes clear both the reality of France’s past and his hopes for its future. Mather spoke hopefully because ‘I have a strong apprehension, that France is very near a mighty and wondrous revolution’. Mather then proposed his own mission to bring about that revolution, when he said ‘it is not easy to do a greater service for the Kindome [sic] of God, than to sett before the French Nation, the horrible wickedness of that cruel and matchless persecution with which they have exposed themselves to the tremendous vengeance of God’. Mather believed that those who are ‘friends of a reformation must unite’ and present to the French people ‘pure and undefiled religion’. He then laid responsibility for France’s brutal past squarely at the feet of the Catholic Church. Mather contrasted the ‘pure’ religion of Protestantism to the corrupt ‘religion with which the Man of Sin intoxicates them’.27 Mather also exhorted New Englanders to pray for Protestants in Europe because doing so was the ‘mark and work of all sincere Christians, that are not actually under the Romish Oppressions’.28 Cotton Mather was not alone in his fascination with the battle between Protestantism and Catholicism. Until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 ended the War of Spanish Succession, the American Colonies  Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, II, 776.  Ibid. 28  Thomas S. Kidd, ‘Let Hell and Rome Do Their Worst’: World News, AntiCatholicism and International Protestantism in Early Eighteenth-Century Boston’, The New England Quarterly 76 (June 2003), 286–87. 26 27

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burgeoning newspaper industry also saw the war as ostensibly a battle between Protestants and Catholics. John Campbell’s newspaper ‘The News-Letter’ brought attention to the situation of Protestant countries, especially those Huguenots still in France. The Huguenot reaction to the Revocation, sometimes referred to by contemporaries as the ‘War of the Camisards,’29 gained the attention of Campbell in 1704. In a series of attacks, Campbell focused on Huguenot resistance provided for American Protestants. As was typical for the eighteenth-century newspapers, Campbell used powerfully subjective words and phrases to describe the actions of Louis XIV’s suppression of the Huguenots. Campbell described the attack on Huguenots as ‘cowardly’ and called the actions of Louis XIV and France as a whole our ‘enemies’ who use ‘Devilish Devices’. The Mathers were not alone in using the travails of the Huguenots as an object lesson for daily conduct. John Danforth, a New England pastor, encouraged his audience to beware of what might befall them if the Catholic menace came to American shores. He asked, ‘do we escape the woful day, because of our Godliness and Righteousness, that is greater than theirs [the Huguenots’]? No verily’.30 The French and Indian War refocused attacks by New England ministers, but they were not alone in their criticism of France. Samuel Davies in a sermon preached on the eve of the French and Indian War in 1756 at Hanover, Virginia, tied French involvement in North America to millennial elements concerning Catholicism. Davies labelled France ‘that plague of Europe, that has of late stretched her murderous arm across the wide ocean to disturb us in these regions of peace’. He then reminded his hearers that France was also responsible for those who were ‘still plundered, chained to gallies’ and ‘broken alive upon the torturing wheel’. He concluded, ‘thus the harmless subjects of the Prince of Peace have ever been slaughtered from age to age and yet they are represented as triumphant conquerors’.31 While not specifically tied apocalyptically to the coming ‘Reformation’ as Mathers had half-a-century earlier, Davies made it clear that wherever France was involved, Protestants had reason to worry.

 Butler, Huguenots in America, 20.   Kidd, ‘World News, Anti-Catholicism and International Protestantism’, 275–77. 31  Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 1730–1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 198. 29 30



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By the time of the American Revolution, the apocalyptic fascination with the Huguenots as exemplars of the coming millennium subsided. The cooperation between France and the American Colonies during the war made it more difficult for Americans to opposed France politically, but did not diminish the aversion many Americans had for Catholicism. One example of this refusal to abandon the anti-Catholic aspect of the French-American relationship was the continued popularity of a late seventeenth-century novel The French Convert.32 One major dilemma for Americans, when it came to perceptions of France, stemmed from an unspoken acceptance by most Americans that Catholicism was incompatible with democracy. This deep-seated animosity toward the Catholicism of France made American acceptance of The French Convert much easier. The novel combined several elements which played into the readers religious prejudices including that of Catholics and Huguenots. The novel had all the elements necessary for a romantic novel, but with a twist, the faithful Huguenot. The first known American edition was printed in 1725 by Boston publisher John Phillips who was familiar with such polemical works due to his frequent printing of Cotton Mather’s works. Most copies of The French Convert came attached to a copy of A Brief Account of the Present Persecution of the French Protestants.33 For an American Protestant, the major characters fit their prejudices easily. The heroin Deidamia was a Catholic woman often left alone by a husband who was in the military. The hero of the story was a Huguenot gardener named Bernard. Bernard was presented as ‘pure and undefiled,’ just as Cotton Mather had described Huguenots. Rather than taking advantage of Deidamia’s vulnerability of being home alone, Bernard attempted to convert Deidamia to his Protestant faith. Finally, the villain was a Franciscan priest who rather than trying to rebuff the doctrinal arguments made by Bernard, filled the role of the lustful,  lecherous priest who would rather take advantage of Deidamia’s loneliness to satiate his own carnal desires. This novel fit many American prejudices about French religion in a single story.

32   A. D’Auborn, The French Convert Being a True Relation of the Happy Conversion of a Noble French Lady, from the Errors and Superstitions of Popery, to the Reformed Religion, by Means of a Protestant Gardener Her Servant. … To Which Is Added, a Brief Account of the Present Severe Persecution of the French Protestants (London: 1725). 33   Thomas S. Kidd, ‘Recovering the French Convert: Views of the French and the Uses of Anti-Catholicism in Early America’, Book History 7 (2004), 105.

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Deidamia is religiously naive because of her attachment to Catholicism. Bernard, being a persecuted Huguenot, epitomises the purity that persecution brings and wants nothing more than to share with Deidamia the truth for which he and his fore-bearers were willing to die. Historian Thomas Kidd points out that the attachment of the ‘Brief Account’ would ‘attribute the Huguenots’ trouble to ‘the restless Malice of the great Enemy of Mankind against the Church of God’. It would also refer to the persecution of Huguenots by the ‘blood thirsty papists,’ who would throw the innocent Protestants into ‘nasty Dungeons and Holes, full of Mire and Dirt,’ and ‘despite their terrible circumstances, these courageous Protestants ‘glorify’d GOD in their sufferings,’ making them a heroic example to the world Protestant movement’.34 In the early days of the American Revolution, Samuel Sherwood preached a sermon entitled ‘The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness’ on January 17, 1776, to an audience that included John Hancock. Sherwood’s sermon tied France and ‘other popish countries’ to the ‘massacre and destruction of so many thousands of Protestants’. He then made a leap to Great Britain who he said, ‘appears so favourable to popery and the Roman Catholic interest, aiming at the extension and establishment of it’.35 In a statement which showed how politics can influence even the most ardent critic of France, Sherwood predicted ‘France has been satiated with the blood of Protestants, and ‘tis to be hoped, will never thirst after it any more. She has already shewn some tendency toward a reformation; and therefore may be judged very likely to effect such a revolution’.36 While not specifically mentioning Huguenots, Sherwood showed that American preachers had not forgotten their persecution, but due to the juxtaposition of America’s enemies and Catholicism. He was willing to hope that Mather’s Reformation was near but he also worried that Britain was now in the grip of the papacy. Despite the political affiliation of America to France following the American Revolution, the anti-Catholicism of American preachers led to a somewhat surprising coalition. Throughout the early years of the French Revolution, American ministers gave the French Revolution their support. Richard Price, in a sermon entitled ‘A Discourse on

  Kidd, ‘Recovering the French Convert’, 101.  Sandoz, Political Sermons, 502. 36  Sandoz, Political Sermons, 515. 34 35



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the  Love of our Country’ given on November 4, 1789 showed great hope for the French Revolution when he said, ‘Behold. The light you  have struck out, after setting America free reflected to France, and there kindled into a blaze that lay despotism in ashes, and warms and illuminates Europe’.37 Price believed that the freedom realised by the American Revolution could well transform France into a similar bastion. Few openly championed the killing of clergy, but what they did applaud was what they saw as the reflection of the American Revolution in France. Early in the French Revolution the anti-clerical aspects of the revolution led many American preachers to strongly favour the Revolution. Israel Evans in an Election Day sermon preached in June 1791 went so far as to say, ‘The Freedom of America and France, shall make this age memorable from this time forth’.38 What American pastors anticipated was that given an equal chance, Protestantism would always win out over Catholicism. Jedidiah Morse in a 1794 Thanksgiving sermon plainly stated, ‘When peace and a free government shall be established, and the people have liberty and leisure to examine for themselves, we anticipate, by means of the effusions of the Holy Spirit, a glorious revival and prevalence of pure, unadulterated Christianity’.39 A turning point for American preachers concerning the French Revolution seemed to come in 1794. A sermon published by Noah Webster in that year, entitled ‘The Revolution in France: Considered in Respect to its Progress and Effects’ showed that the atrocities of the French Revolution would no longer be ignored by America’s preachers. As stories of the great atrocities in France became clear, Webster called for Americans to take a different perspective on France. Webster admitted that when he first heard of the French Revolution ‘his heart exulted with joy’ similar to that when America gained its independence. Despite that initial exuberance, his ‘joy has been allayed by the sanguinary proceedings of the Jocobins, their athestical attacks on Christianity, and their despicable attention to trifles’.40 Webster argued that the reason for the excesses of the French Revolution were simple. Because of France’s Catholic history, it was filled with ‘a system  Sandoz, Political Sermons, 1027.  Sandoz, Political Sermons, 1076. 39   Quoted in Gary B. Nash, ‘The American Clergy and the French Revolution,’ WMQ, 3rd series, 22 (July 1965), 393. 40  Sandoz, Political Sermons, 1239. 37 38

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of errors and superstition’ which had ‘enslaved their opinions’. Some of these opinions existed because France saw religion ‘clothed with a garb of fantastical human artifices’ and thus ‘rejected her as a creature of human invention’.41 Fascination with Huguenots as an exemplar of premillennial persecution found a resurgence in the late nineteenth century. One group in particular who focused on the Huguenot experience and combined it with an eschatological belief that the Huguenot experience presupposed their own was the Seventh-day Adventists. Within just two years of experiencing the ‘Great Disappointment,’ when Jesus did not return as they predicted in 1844, one remnants of the Millerite Movement, began to focus on the role of the Seventh-day Sabbath in their millennial interpretation. The 1840s were rife with anti-Catholic polemics and Joseph Bates, one of the founders of what would become Seventh-day Adventism, wove together an eschatology which argued that the Catholic substitution of Sunday worship in lieu of the Seventh-day Sabbath, would play a major role in earth’s final events. The major difference between Cotton’s postmillennialism and Miller’s premillennialism was that Catholicism would bring other Protestants into its conspiracy against Sabbath-keeping premillennialists. As Seventh-day Adventist theology matured, another founder, Ellen G. White, used the proven American Protestant argument of persecution to argue against Catholicism. What separated White from John Cotton was their eschatology. Cotton embraced a Post-Millennial theology which held that mankind was capable for growth that would eventually lead to a Millennium of peace and prosperity followed by the Advent of Christ. Ellen White’s perspective was very different. White was a premillennialist whose theology combined the belief that Jesus return was imminent and that the Catholic Church itself would play a role in the final persecution. In 1888 Ellen G. White published the first edition of what many consider her seminal work, The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan: The Conflict of the Ages in the Christian Dispensation.42 The fact that her work contained a strong characterization of Huguenots was

 Sandoz, Political Sermons, 1251.   Ellen Gould Harmon White, The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan During the Christian Dispensation, 11th edn (Oakland, CA, New York, etc.: Pacific Press, 1888). 41 42



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not surprising. In the years previous to its initial publication, two very important works which had substantial comments about Huguenot oppression were published: James A. Wylie’s History of Protestantism and Charles W. Baird’s History of the Huguenot Emigration to America.43 Wylie’s classic History of Protestantism, first published in the late 1870s, spent a great deal of time on the French Reformation and the persecution of Huguenots in particular. Historical research has shown White relied heavily on Wylie’s work to the point that some have claimed outright plagiarism.44 Wylie focused on the Huguenots and their status as the object of Catholic persecution almost to the point of obsession. Such a focus should not be surprising when taken in the context of other of Wylie’s works which included The History of the Waldenses, The Rise, Progress, and Insidious Workings of Jesuitism, and The Papacy: Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects. As the titles suggest, although a Scotsman and not a New England polemic, Wylie’s perspective on Catholicism could be easily aligned with that of American Protestants from John Cotton through any number of Federalist preachers. Because a major premise of The Great Controversy is built on the foundation of Catholic persecution of Protestants, Wylie’s focus on Huguenots as the centre of papal persecution fit neatly into Ellen White’s work. In a chapter entitled ‘The Bible and the French Revolution’, White also drew on Wylie, among others.45 She drew the same comparison of the ‘Two Witnesses’ of Revelation to the French Revolution as John Cotton had two centuries earlier. The juxtaposition of the pure and persecuted Huguenots to that of the menacing Catholics propped up by the power of the state was very clear in Great Controversy. White combined traditional apocalyptic perspective with the American ideals of freedom and separation of church and state. In the story of the Huguenots, White saw both. She described Huguenots as ‘battling for those rights which the human heart holds most sacred’. She then

43   J. A. Wylie, The History of Protestantism 3 vols. (London, Paris, New York: Cassell, [1874–77]); Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America. 44   Cf. William S. Peterson, ‘A Textual and Historical Study of Ellen G. White’s Account of the French Revolution’, Spectrum 2:4 (Autumn 1970), 63–65; ‘Eric Anderson, ‘Ellen White and Reformation Historians’, Spectrum 9:3 (July 1978), 23–26, esp. 24–25; Jan Voerman, ‘Ellen White and the French Revolution’, Andrews University Seminary Studies 45 (Autumn 2007), 247–59. 45   Cf. Peterson, ‘Textual and Historical Study’, 60–63, 65–66; Voerman, ‘Ellen White and the French Revolution’.

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interjected Adventism into the Huguenots role of the persecuted. Adventists believed that one day it would face a similar persecution. White said the Huguenots ‘had poured out their blood on many a hard-fought field’. Just as Adventism believed that Catholicism would one day persecute those who hold to the seventh-day Sabbath, she said of the Huguenots: ‘The Protestants were counted as outlaws, a price was set upon their heads, and they were hunted down like wild beasts’.46 To White, the Huguenots had experienced in the past what she believed God’s people would one day again experience at the hands of Catholics. John Cotton could easily have penned the words found in the 1888 edition of The Great Controversy described the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre. In very blunt language regarding the Catholic Church’s involvement in the massacre, White stated that ‘Satan, in the person of the Roman zealots, led the van. As Christ was the invisible leader of his people from Egyptian bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this horrible work of multiplying martyrs’. White continued, describing the reaction of the papacy to news of the massacre, and stating: ‘the pope, Gregory XIII, received the news of the fate of the Huguenots with unbounded joy. The wish of his heart had been gratified, and Charles IX, was now his favourite son. Rome rang with rejoicings.’47 The 1890s were the highpoint of prosecution of Adventists for breaking Sunday Laws; over one hundred Adventists spent time in jail for working on Sunday. With that as a backdrop, it is possible to see why White found an affinity between Adventists and Huguenots. In a show of how the rhetoric for even the most adamant advocates of the role of Rome in the persecution of Huguenots changed around the turn of the century, the 1911 version of The Great Controversy saw the previous passage amended to say, ‘As Christ was the invisible leader of His people from Egyptian bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this horrible work of multiplying martyrs’. Where the 1888 edition specifically named pope Gregory XIII, the 1911 edition simply said, “When the news of the massacre reached Rome, the exultation among the clergy knew no bounds.48   Ellen Gould Harmon White, The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan: The Conflict of the Ages in the Christian Dispensation (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press Publishing Association, 1911), 271. 47  White, Great Controversy, ed. cit., 272–73. 48  White, Great Controversy, ed. cit., 272. 46



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Throughout the chapter, similar to Noah Webster in 1794, White blamed the horrors of the French Revolution on the previous persecutions of the Huguenots saying, ‘With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon France. Flourishing manufacturing cities fell into decay; fertile districts returned to their native wildness; intellectual dullness and moral declension succeeded a period of unwonted progress. Paris became one vast almshouse’. White inferred that the French struggled because of largess on the part of the church and said, ‘Jesuits alone flourished in the decaying nation, and ruled with dreadful tyranny over churches and schools, the prisons and the galleys’.49 Similar to the arguments made by New England Federalist preachers following 1794, White appeared to believe that the French Revolution was in part retribution for the persecution of Huguenots. ‘The galleys and the prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with their persecutors. Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the Roman Catholic clergy experienced all those woes which their church had so freely inflicted on the gentle heretics’.50 These comments were part of the normal fare throughout most of the nineteenth century. Despite that, the first attempt at a scholarly approach to the study of the Huguenot immigration to America came with the research of Baird and the publication of his Huguenot Emigration to America in 1885. Baird’s work, which focuses solely on Huguenot immigration to New England, was to be the first in a series that would also cover the other Huguenot strongholds of New York and South Carolina. The importance of Baird’s work is that it approached Huguenots not as an icon of oppression, but from the historical perspective of all immigrant groups. As evidenced by the changes in Ellen White’s Great Controversy, where changes are made between the 1888 edition of the Great controversy and the 1911 edition when it came to the rhetoric used to describe Catholicism, the study of Huguenots began to reflect the immigrants themselves and rather not merely how they contributed to the ‘American Character’. What Baird’s work began was a systematic account of the places where Huguenots settled and how they grew or disintegrated. Yet, from the time of Baird, little serious scholarship on Huguenots took place until the growth of Immigrant studies in the

 White, Great Controversy, ed. cit., 279.  White, Great Controversy, ed. cit., 283.

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1930s–1960s. Even in these studies much of the concentration was merely on Huguenots as a part of the whole story of French immigration to the new world. In the 1980s, Jon Butler published The Huguenots in America, a study of Huguenots in each of the three major strongholds. Rather than focusing on the persecution Huguenots suffered at the hands of French Catholics, Butler’s work looks at how, by the middle of the eighteenth century, Huguenots comprised virtually no appreciable influence on the American religious map. For most of the first four centuries of European history in America, Huguenots participated in the peopling of the New World. Yet, as Butler points out, in a very short period of time they were largely assimilated into majority society in America.51 Despite this relatively rapid absorption into American Protestantism, Huguenots maintained a place in the rhetoric and polemics of America which far outweighed their physical presence. They were seen as a tangible example of the possibilities of a world where Catholicism ran unchecked. Current scholarship focuses mainly on local and community studies of Huguenots. This work argues that, contrary to Butler’s thesis of assimilation, there were pockets, mainly in rural areas, where Huguenot religion and culture persisted and thrived. While much of the current historiography focuses on arguments about how long it took for Huguenots to be absorbed by American culture, what remains clear is that the place where Huguenots remained in the American consciousness throughout most of its history, before the twentieth century, was essentially in the minds of American Protestants, for whom the Huguenots were and remained an object lesson about the dangers of Catholicism. Yet, starting from Baird’s work, a new century brought a new perspective with the change to Huguenot history being more about the immigrant experience and less a story of a persecuted people. One could argue that, by the end of the twentieth century, to rephrase the words of Hannah Lee that ‘Persecution cannot last for ever,’ had finally come true in American polemics for both Huguenots and Catholics.

 Butler, Huguenots in America.

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INDEX Abercromby, David  108 Academie de Lausanne  243, 258, 261 Academie de Saumur  128, 243 Agace, Martha  269 Alberge, Estienne  246, 248, 251 Albigensians 201 Alcoine Phillipe  250 Alès, Peace of (1629)  205 Allenet, Anne  275 Allix, Pierre  98, 115, 146–47, 265, 270–74, 280 Amyot, Magdalen  272 Anjou, [Francois] duc d’ (d. 1585)  167 Anjou, Henri duc d’ (later Henri III; d. 1589) 58 Anjou, Philip duc d’  232 Antichrist  64, 99, 211–13 António, Dom (pretender to Portuguese throne) 164 Areopagitica 259 Arminianism  86, 261 Arnaud, Susanne  247–49, 251 Asselin, Jacob  147 Aurignac, sieur d’  181 Azores, The  167 Baird, Charles W.  285, 287, 301, 303–304 Barbaroux, Joseph  266 Barbat, Mary  279 Barbeyrac, Jean  261 Barclay, Robert  75–76, 89–90 Basnage, Susanna  278–79 Bataillard, Huldrich  277 Bath and Wells, Bishop of  113 Baudoin, James  278 Baudouin, John  269, 277 Bayeux, Election of  156 Bayle, Pierre  24, 236 Bayly, Lewis  259 Beauce 156–57 Benech, Pierre  131 Bergen–op–Zoom 166 Bern  200, 242–43, 245–47, 249, 259 Bernard of Saxe–Weimar  181 Bernstorff, Andreas Gottlieb von  231 Bertrand, Paul  128–32, 140, 142

Béthune, Léonidas de, seigneur de Congy 171–72 ___, death of (1603)  172 Béthune, Syrius de, seigneur de Congy 172 Beuleke, Wilhelm  225 Blanc, Jean  250 Bochart, Samuel  132 Boileau de Castelnau, Charles  251 Boileau, Rose de  249, 252 Bolo, Marie  251 Bommel, island of  170 Bonde, Charles de la, sieur d’Iberville 189 Bosanquet, David  281 Bosher, John  198 Bossiere, Anthoinaz  251 Bossuet, Bishop  210 Bouillon: see La Marck, de; and La Tour, de Bouquet, Isaac  267 Bouquet, John  278 Bouquet, Philip  277 Bourbon [dynasty], Bourbon monarchs  8, 23–24, 27, 45, 1 56, 160, 165, 175 Bourgay, Charles du  277 Boyer, Abel  106, 115, 195, 197, 199–203, 235–37 Boyne, Battle of (1690)  191, 197 Brandenburg, Brandenburg–Prussia  2, 26, 154n4, 187–88, 192–93, 221, 249, 272 Breda 166 Brewer, John  103–104 Brousson, Claude  ix, xxiii, xxx, 24–25, 39, 148, 193, 208, 260 Brulon, Daniel Burke, Edmund  50 Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop  76–78, 112, 182–83, 201, 236, 260 Burrell, Grace  269 Butler, Jon  291, 304 Cabestan, Estienne  250 Caillaud, Mary  279 Calenburg  222–23, 227, 229, 231

306 index Calvinism  1, 10n14, 19–21, 28–30, 39, 59–60, 86, 113, 121, 129, 131, 133, 148, 150, 155–57, 159, 178, 186, 188, 221, 237, 243 Calvinists  1, 19–20, 23, 26–28, 32, 35, 58, 61, 108, 112, 164, 167, 173, 176, 180, 188–91, 204–207, 221, 231 Calvinists, French  3–4, 8, 21, 24, 45, 66, 103, 129, 153, 155–57, 168, 174, 179, 182, 185–86, 192, 205, 241 Camisards  10n14, 67, 201–202, 234–35, 237–38, 250, 296 Campbell, John  271, 296 Campredon, James  269 Cardonnel, Adam de  149 Care, Henry  86, 90–91, 93 Carlo, Paula Wheeler  150–51 Carlos II: see Charles II, King of Spain Carre, Ezechiel  291 Carris, Abraham  130 Castaign, John  116 Catholic Church  148, 210, 220–21, 295, 300, 302 Catinat, Nicolas  191 Cavalier, Jean  234 Celle  222–26, 229, 231, 238 Cevennes  201, 233, 242 Cevennois 201 Chabaud, Jacob  274 Chabrin, Daniel  251 Champel, Marie  252 Charas, Moses  124 Chardin, John  268 Charles II, King of Spain  207, 232 Charles II, King of England and Scotland  69, 71–72, 75, 82, 86, 88, 121–22, 135, 141, 144, 181, 220–21 Charles IX, King of France  46, 52, 54, 58, 156, 161–62, 302 Charnacé, Hercule, baron de  179 Châtillon: see Coligny, Henri de, Coligny, Gaspard II de, and Coligny, Gaspard III de Chavannes, Jules  244 Chesterfield, Earl of  123 Child, Josiah  116 Christian Ludwig, Duke of Calenburg and Celle  222–23 Cize, Emmanuel de  115 Claris, Paul de  275 Clarkson, David  82 Claydon, Tony  111, 214, 239 Cleves–Jülich, Duke of  180 Colbert, [Jean–Baptiste]  182, 208 Coleman, Edward  82

Coligny–Châtillon: see Coligny, Gaspard III de Coligny, François de, seigneur d’Andelot 160–61 Coligny, Gaspard II de (d. 1572), seigneur de Châtillon  35, 53–55, 157, 160–61, 164, 166, 174 Coligny, Gaspard III de, seigneur and duc de Châtillon, maréchal de France  172, 176–80 Coligny, Gaspard IV de, seigneur and duc de Châtillon  177, 179–80 Coligny, Henri de, seigneur de Châtillon 171–72 ___, death of (1601)  171 Coligny, Maurice de  180 Colley, Linda  103, 119 collective memory: see memory, collective Colonies, American; English colonies in America  2, 28, 107, 114, 117–18, 285–87, 295, 297 Commard, Margueritte  248 Compton, Henry, Bishop of London  107, 128–30, 132, 135–36, 138, 146 Condé, Henri I de Bourbon, Prince de 165 Condé, Henri II de Bourbon, Prince de 175 Condé, Louis I de Bourbon, Prince de  156–58, 160, 165 ___, death of (1569)  165 Cotte, Esther  251 Cotton, John  287–88, 292, 300–302 Cottret, Bernard  22, 30, 114, 129 Cougot, Antoine  149 Couraud, Jean  134–35 Cous, Marie le  249 Coutras, Battle of (1587)  191 Créqui, Charles de Blanchfort de, maréchal de France  176, 178 Cresset, James  228–29, 231 Crousaz, Jean Pierre de  261 Crouzet, Denis  47, 50 Culpeper, Thomas  125 d’Olbreuse, Eleonore  224–29, 231, 238 d’Hallot: see Hallot d’Hauterive: see Hauterive Dabrenethee, Daniel  225–26 Danforth, John  296 Daples, Jean Pierre  260 Dassas, Louis Claude  278 Dauphiné  189, 241, 248, 251, 272, 275

index307 Dauphine, Durand  117 Davenant, Charles  104–105, 114, 116 Davies, Samuel  296 Dayrolles, Solomon  278–79 De Thou, Jacques August  76 Declaration of Indulgence, First (1672) 69 ___Second (1687)  70, 141–42 Defoe, Daniel  105–107, 109, 116–18, 202 Delamare, Judith  268 Deleuze, Silvie  249 Deportes, Jacques  246 Derafalis, Judith  248, 251 Des Bouveries, Edward  268–69 Desfougieres de Bussy, François  253 Devaynes, William  265–66 Diepholz 224 dragonnade, dragonnades  29, 67, 70, 81n46, 82, 85, 93, 121–23, 130, 132, 139–40, 142, 182, 193, 233 Dubois, Francis  278 Dubourdieu, John  279 Dumond de Bostaquet, Isaac  111 Dupuy, Daniel  278 Duras, Louis, Earl of Feversham  181–82 Dürer, Albrecht  46 Dussaut, Samson  251 Dutch republic, The  6, 7, 26, 29, 38, 67, 154, 170, 174, 176, 180, 182–84, 186– 88, 192–94, 197, 199–200, 206, 211n84, 228, 236 Duterrier, Joseph Ysnard  254 Elector Palatine, The  180–81, 188, 221–23, 237 Eliot, John  291 Elizabeth I, Queen of England  57–58, 63–64, 160, 168, 203, 235 Elizabeth, Electress Palatine  223 Eltz, Phillip Adam von  229 Épinoy, Prince of  164 Ernst August, Elector of Hanover  223–25, 227–28, 231 Estrades, Louis d’  179 Eudes de Mezeray, François  76 Evans, Israel  299 Evelyn, John  113 Everard, Edmund  83 Exclusion Crisis  69, 122 Falgout, Elizabeth  248 Feversham: see Duras, Louis Fielding, Henry  104 Fifth Monarchy movement  287–88, 291

Finch, Heneage, Earl of Winchelsea  129 Fleury de Culan, Philippe–Henri de, sieur de Buat  179 Florida 285 Fontaine, Jacques  107, 113, 272 Fontainebleau, Edict of (1685)  1, 28, 67, 181, 221 Fort Caroline  285 Fort, Captain Jacques du  171 Fouace, Stephen  266 Fouronce, Lewis Levesque de  278 Foxe’s Acts and Monuments 73 Foyssac, James de  280 Franceson, Helix  249–50 Franco–Dutch War (1672–8)  183 François II, King of France  156 Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange  173, 176, 178 Frederick V, Elector Palatine  223 French and Indian War [see also: Seven Years’ War]  296 French Hospital  263–64, 267–68, 270, 277–78, 280, 282 French Reformed Church, Churches  1, 8, 19, 20–22, 28, 30, 61, 121, 143, 169, 175, 180, 274–75 French Wars of Religion (1562–1629)  34, 40, 71, 76, 78, 153–55, 168, 176, 190, 203, 205 ___, first war (or first civil war)  44–45, 47, 58, 159–60, 164 ___, second war (or second civil war)  44–45, 47, 158–59, 160 ___, third war (or third civil war)  44–45, 47, 53, 57, 159–61, 165, 167 ___, fourth war (or fourth civil war)  161, 163 ___, fifth war (or fifth civil war)  160, 163–64 ___, sixth war (or sixth civil war)  165 Frijhoff, Willem  211 Froment, Marie de  252 Gallot, Peter  279 Garcin, Daniel  248 Geneva  2, 20, 188–89, 192, 233, 241, 246–48, 251, 254, 257–60, 281–82 Genlis: see Hangest, Jean de Gennes, Grace de  269 gens d’armes, gendarmerie: see Ordonnance, compagnies d’ Gex, Pays de  247 Georg, Duke of Calenburg  222, 226

308 index Georg Ludwig, Duke of Celle  223, 225–37, 229, 231 Georg Wilhelm, Duke of Celle  222–26, 228–29, 231 Giradot, Paul  271 Gastines, Richard and Phillipe  53–54 Glorious Revolution (1688)  72, 94, 100, 103, 120, 182–83, 194, 199, 229, 235–36 Glozier, Matthew  186, 198, 237 Godin, Stephen  274 Goulart, Simon  64 Gourjault, Charles, Marquis de Venours 123 Grand Alliance  27, 195–96, 199–200, 205, 211, 214, 226, 235 Graverol, Jean  147 Great Britain  7–8, 15n34, 26, 29–31, 34, 36–37, 67, 109, 112, 116, 118, 121, 141, 154, 187, 189, 192, 198–99, 226, 229–31, 236–38, 240, 263, 279, 290, 292, 298 Great Controversy, The 300–303 Great Fire [of London], The  72 Gregory XIII, Pope  57, 302 Grostete, Claude, de la Mothe of Lizy 147 Grotius, Hugo  202, 235 Gruchy, Elias de  149 guerres de religion: see French Wars of Religion Guinand, Henry John  282 Guirand, Peter  277 Guise, Duke of  35, 47, 53, 55, 57, 156, 168 Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden  38, 181 Guybert, Jacques  255 Gwynn, Robin  6, 19, 21, 82n48, 94n96, 115, 186n102, 198, 237 Haarlem  124, 163, 278 Habermas, Jürgen  217 Habsburg–Valois Wars (1521–59)  156 Hallot, Guillaume d’, seigneur de Dommarville et Guichery  171–72 Hamelot, David  283 Hamelot, Peter  283 Hamon, Mary  266 Hancock. John  298 Hangest, Jean de, seigneur de Genlis  160–62, 164 Hanover  7, 26, 197, 219, 222, 224, 226–27, 236, 238

Hansen, Lene  195 Hauterive family  180 Hauterive: see Laubespine, de, François, sieur d’Hauterive Hebert, Matthieu  130 Hebraism 206 Heidelberg  223, 237 Helvetic Confession, The  261 Henri III, King of France  63 Henri IV, King of France and of Navare  1, 18, 22, 34, 36, 44–46, 63, 66, 165, 168, 170, 173, 191, 201, 207 Herwarth, Philibert, Baron von Huningen  245, 260 Holy Roman Empire, The  168, 220–22, 227 Huguenot identity, transnational  184, 185, 213; see also transnational content, dimension, or perspective, Huguenots in Huguenot regiments (in Dutch army)  165–67, 170–74, 176–81, 183, 197 Huguenot Society of London  31, 263–64 Huguenot soldiering  154–57, 159, 169, 175, 188, 190, 219 Huguenot Wills and Administrations  22, 31, 244–45, 248–49, 251–52, 254, 257, 259, 263–67, 270, 272, 275–76, 279–80, 282–83 Hyde, Edward, Earl of Clarendon  74n16, 132 Hylton, Raymond  148, 150 Ingelmunster, Battle of (1580)  166 Innocents, Cemetery of the Holy  53, 55 James II, King of England and Scotland  69–73, 75, 80, 86, 90, 93–101, 108, 113, 141, 143–44, 146–47, 154, 181–82, 184, 191, 194, 203–204, 292 Jarnac, Battle of (1569)  57 Jenkins, Leoline  128 Johann Friedrick, Duke of Calenburg 223–24 John Paul II, Pope  65 Jolit, Francis  267 Jonquieres, James de Dompierre de  276 Jouanna, Arlette  50 Jurieu, Pierre  24, 109, 187n103, 195, 197, 203–204, 207–214

index309 Kahnawake Indians  289–90 Karl Phillip, Elector  237 Kidd, Thomas  298 Kingdon, R. M.  66 Knetsch, F.  203 Knight, John  110 Königsmarck, Count Phillip Christoph von 227 L’Escure, Perside de  281 L’Estrange, Roger  86n66, 90–93 L’Hermitage, Rene Sauniere de  196 Ladeveze, Peter de  273, 277 La Ferté, Jean de  269 La Fontaine, Anne de  279–80 La Force, duc de, maréchal de France 175–78 La Garde, Antoine de  164, 166–67 ___, death of (1583)  166 La Garde, Mary de  267 La Marck, Guillaume–Robert de, duc de Bouillon and Prince of Sedan  168 La Mothe, Claude Groteste de  147, 231 La Motte, Louise Marie de  224, 228 La Noue, François de  161–62, 165–67 La Noue, Odet de, sieur de Téligny  167, 169n44, 170, 174 La Pradelle, Elizabeth  279 La reine Margot  34n90, 36, 40, 65 La Rochelle  17, 160, 167, 175–76, 255, 275 La Tour, Henri de, duc de Bouillon and Prince of Sedan  159, 168 La Tour, Henri de, vicomte de Turenne and maréchal de France  173, 176–77, 179, 181, 183 La Tour, Frédéric–Maurice de, duc de Bouillon and Prince of Sedan 173 La Valette, Henri de Nogaret de, comte de Candalle  179 Lacombe, John  273–74 Lacroix, Jean  251–52 Lamberty, Guillaume de  195, 197, 199–201 Langlade, François  233 Lannoy, Louis de, seigneur de Morvilliers 160 Lanusse, Daniel  249, 251 Laporte, Roland  234 Laubespine, François de, sieur d’Hauterive and marquis de Châteauneuf  172, 179–80 Lausanne  242, 244–51, 254–55, 258–60

Laud, William, Archbishop [of Canterbury]  122, 134–35 Laval, Seigneur Isaac  248 Le Bas, Charles  278 Le Lens, Elizabeth  276 Le Vassor, Michel  195, 197, 200–201, 203–205, 207–208, 212 Lee, Hannah Farnham  285, 304 Leopold of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor 207 Lesours, Anne des  231 Leti, Gregorio  226 Leveillé, Louyse  250 Licensing Act (1662)  237 Lichere, Nicolas  132 Lichigaray, John  280 Liottard, Anne  250 Lisle de Verdun, Peter de  281 Lloyd, William  73–76 Locke, John  100, 109, 118, 239 Lollards 288 Lombard, Jean, of Angers  147 Louis (or Lodewijk) of Nassau  160–62, 166 Louis XIII, King of France and Navarre  22, 66, 174–75, 197, 207 Louis XIV, King of France and Navarre  xxi, 1, 22–25, 27, 39, 66–67, 69–70, 72–73, 75, 81n46, 82–83, 91, 93–96, 98–101, 103, 106, 112–15, 122, 142, 154–55, 182–84, 189, 194, 198–200, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211, 213–14, 217, 220–21, 224, 226, 229, 232–34, 237–38, 241, 243, 254, 259, 288, 292, 294, 296 Loys, Jean Rodolphe  259 Maitland, William  110 Margot, Princess: see Valois, Marguerite de Marion, Élie  250 Marion, Jean  250 Maritime Powers, The  154, 201 Marlborough, Duke of  149, 203, 235 Marshall, John  108 Marsiglia, Battle of (1693)  191 Masclary, Gaspard de  280 Massachusetts Bay Colony  287 Mather, Cotton  288–98 Mather, Increase  289 Matte, Pierre  253 Maurice of Nassau  170, 173 Mayenne 156 Mayer, Andrew  138

310 index Mazel, Abraham  233 Medici, Catherine de  52, 54 Memory  vii, 1, 3–7, 9, 11–18, 22, 25, 29–30, 32–33, 41–42, 43–44, 61, 71, 74, 76–78, 80, 85–86, 98, 100–101, 121–22, 127, 135, 140–41, 143, 147–48, 150–51, 155, 162, 166, 191–92, 215, 239, 269, 277, 283, 285 ___, collective  4–6, 11–16, 18, 22, 30–33, 35, 37–38, 40, 42, 64, 182, 191–92, 239–40 mercenaries, English  170, 185 mercenaries, French, Huguenot  155, 159–60, 168–70, 172, 185 mercenaries, German  63, 160, 162, 168, 170, 185 mercenaries, Irish  185 mercenaries, Italian  185 mercenaries, Scottish  38, 170, 185 Middes, Loys de  259, 261 Miege, Guy  258 Miller, John  77n32, 94, 98n115 Millerite Movement  300 Milton, John  259 Miremont 234 Misson, James  267 Moncontour, Battle of (1569)  57 Monmouth, Duke of  96n101, 141, 181 Mons  161–62, 166 Monson, John  266 Mont, Michel du  249 Montgommery, Jacques de Lorges, comte de  157, 159n16, 163, 166–67 Montpellier, Treaty of (1622)  175 Morel, Demoiselle  247 Morley, George, Bishop of Winchester  132–37, 139, 145, 149 Morse, Jedidiah  299 Moselles, Guillaume Herouard  249 Mossom, Charles  130–31 Moulin, Pierre du  197 Moulin, Susanna du  278 Mulheim, Battle of (1605)  172 Muysson, Anne  273, 281 Nantes, Edict of (1598)  1–2, 22–23, 27–28, 31, 60, 66–67, 70, 82, 86, 93–95, 101, 103, 129, 141, 169–70, 175, 181–83, 186, 193–94, 213, 217, 219, 241, 255, 263, 285 Nassau: see Louis of Nassau, Maurice of Nassau Navarre, King of: see Henri  IV

Neau, Elie  293–94 Netherlands, The  2, 6–7, 15n34, 26, 32, 61, 76, 124, 141, 154–55, 160–67, 169–70, 173, 177–78, 184, 187–89, 242, 246, 260, 266 New England  286–94, 296, 301, 303 New York  2, 65, 150, 286, 294, 303 Nine Years’ War (1688–97)  27, 154, 183, 189, 194, 203, 226, 242 nobility, Huguenot  46, 54, 155–56, 164, 173, 178, 182, 186 Naturalization Act (1709)  106, 109–10, 116 Normandy  59, 156–57, 160, 277–78 Noth, Martin  206 Noyelles, Jacques–Louis, comte de  183 Oates, Titus  76, 79–80, 83n52 Orange, Prince of: see Frederick Henry, Maurice of Nassau, William I, William III Ordonnance, compagnies d’ 158–59, 161, 191 Ostend 171 Palmer, Roger, Earl of Castlemaine  72 Pandin, Joseph  272 Papacy, The  73n10, 113, 188, 211–12, 298, 301–302 Papillon, Thomas  115 Paradès, Jean de  246 Paschoud, Piere Noé  258 Pays du Vaud  2, 6, 26, 221, 241–44, 252, 254, 256–57, 259–60 Peace of Rastatt  226 Pelat, Isbeau  252 Penn, William  86, 89–90, 93 Perachon, Margaret  272 Pernambuco 180 Perponcher–Maisonneuve family  180 Perponcher, Isaac de, sieur de Maisonneuve 179 Pestre, Dauphinoise Catherine  252 Petty, William  117 Philip II, King of Spain  167, 200 Phillips, John  297 Pictet, Anne  269 Piedmont  212, 234, 242, 260 Pietism  259, 261 Pincus, Steve  70n2, 95, 111 Pius V, Pope  57 Plessis, Louis du, sieur de Douchant  179 Polier Bottens, Jean Pierre de  258 Pons, Jacques  251

index311 Porcien, Prince de  164 Portland, Earl of  196–97, 199–200, 231 Poulveret, Daniel  124–25 Poumies, John  278 Poyet, seigneur (or sieur) de  161, 163 Praromand, Andre de  247 Price, Richard  298–99 processions, Corpus Christi  44, 49 prophets, French  10, 233, 250 ‘Protestant interest’  109, 189 Protestants, French  2, 7, 15n34, 17–27, 43–47, 61–63, 69–74, 77–79, 81–89, 91–93, 95, 99–101, 107, 112–13, 116, 124, 132–33, 137, 143, 160–61, 164, 176, 180–82, 187–88, 190, 201, 209– 10, 215, 218, 241, 263, 274, 283, 285, 289, 293–95, 297 Prussia 225 Psalms, Psalm-singing  190–91 Quercy 156 Rechine–Voisin, Charles de, sieur de Loges 179 Recife 180 Recussants 73 Reformation of Manners movement  119 refugees  3–4, 6, 8, 18, 26, 28, 30, 70, 73, 82n48, 85, 87–88, 90, 105–107, 110, 112–17, 121–24, 129–32, 135–37, 140–48, 150–51, 183, 186–89, 192, 219, 221, 225, 234, 242–50, 253–54, 257, 260–61, 263–64, 269–71, 275, 285–87, 291–92 Refuge, The; Le refuge  2–4, 8, 18–19, 21–23, 25–26, 29, 31, 42, 127, 140–42, 150, 162, 242, 244–46, 250–51, 258, 261, 266, 272, 276 Regis, Balthazar  272 Renouard, Jean  250 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685)  2, 6, 23, 25–26, 29, 31, 70–71, 82, 93, 95, 98, 101, 103, 128–29, 137, 142, 146, 183, 185–87, 193–94, 210, 213, 217, 219, 221, 225, 231, 236, 238, 239, 241, 255–56, 259, 263, 285, 287–89, 292, 296 Revolt, Camisard  67, 201, 234–35, 237–38, 250, 296 Rheinfalden, Battle of (1638)  181 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de  66, 175–78 Rigoullott, Isaac  274 Robethon, James  266

Robethon, Jean  196, 230, 266 Robethon, Susan  266 Rochefoucault, duc de La  167 Rocques, Jacques de, baron de Montesquieu 171 Rohan, Benjamin de, seigneur de Soubise 173–75 Rohan, Henri de, duc de  173–77, 180–81 ___, death of (1638)  181 Rondeau, Jacques  124–28, 145 Rothstein, Nancy  111 Rupert, Prince (of the Rhine)  181, 188 Russell, Lady Rachel  147, 266 Ruvigny, Henri Massue de, Marquis  142, 148, 247, 266 Saint-Évremond, Charles de  196 Saint–Simon, Jean Antoine de, baron de Courtomer  172, 179–80 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, St Bartholomew’s Massacre  1, 6, 17, 24, 26, 35–38, 40, 43–45, 51, 53–68, 70, 75, 77–79, 87, 97–100, 162–63, 298, 302 St Geertruidenberg  163, 172 St Géneviève  49 St George de Marsay, Charlotte de  272 St Germain, treaty of (1570)  53 St Maurice, Dauphine Charles  275, 280 St Quentin  46 Saintonge  156, 281 Sancroft, Archbishop William  123–26, 129, 132, 136, 138, 146–47 Sau, Jean de  171 Saussure, Cesar-Francois de  258 Savary, Michel  130 Savoy  154n4, 189, 252 Svaoy Church  124, 126, 136–38, 144–47, 149, 268, 279–80 Savoy, Duke of  191, 243 Scanavin, Augustin  258 Schomberg, Charles de  260 Schomberg, Duke of  190 Schütz, Ludwig Justus Sinold von  231 Schwoerer, Lois  90 Sebastier de Leirys, Anne de  256 Secker, Archbishop Thomas  107 Second Villmergen War (1712)  200 Serene Republic: see Venice Seven Years’ War (1756–63)  290 Seventh-day Adventists  xxiv, xxix, 300 Sheldon, Gilbert, Bishop of London, Archbishop of Canterbury  132

312 index Sherwood, Samuel  298 Socinianism  108, 261 soldiers, Dutch  160–63, 165, 170, 176, 178 soldiers, English  160, 163, 170, 172, 176, 184, 187 soldiers, French (Catholic)  161, 163, 165, 167, 169, 173, 176–78, 185, 234 soldiers, French (Protestant, Reformed), or Huguenot  29, 34, 38–39, 62, 67, 96, 104, 154–55, 157–67, 169–71, 173, 175–77, 179–81, 184–91, 194, 226 soldiers, Scottish  163, 170, 184, 187 soldiers, Spanish  162–64 soldiers, Swedish  169 Sophia, Electress of Hanover  223–24, 227, 230–31 Sophia Dorothea, Duchess of Celle  224–28, 238 Soubise: see Rohan South Carolina  2, 150, 286, 303 Spain  57, 63, 157, 162, 164–65, 167, 169, 172–74, 207, 233 Spínola, Ambrogio  174 Spinoza, Baruch  239 staatse leger  170, 174, 179–80, 184 States–General [of the Netherlands]  166–67, 170, 172–73, 179–80, 183, 196, 281 Stillingfleet 109 Strayer, Brian  193 Strozzi, Philippe  167 Stuart, Elizabeth: see Elizabeth, Electress Palatine Sun King: see Louis  XIV Swift, Jonathan  106 Swiss Confederation, Switzerland  241n1, 242–43, 260 Tallemant, Paul  247, 254 Tascher, Peter de  265, 269, 273–74 Téligny: see La Noue, Odet de Terrier, Joseph Ysnard du  249, 254 Test Act, The (1673)  69, 98n112 Teulon, Mary Anne  263 The Observator 90 The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome 90 Thirty Years’ War (1618–48)  179, 185, 223, 258 Thoyras, Paul Rapin  115, 197 Threadneedle Street church  115, 121, 123, 128, 130, 138, 141–45, 147–48, 268, 281

Toland 109 Toleration, Act of (1689)  103, 108, 114 Tonge, Israel  76 Tonnet, Nicolas  137 transnationalism  vii, 1, 3, 7–10 transnational communities  193–94, 206, 209–10, 214–15 transnational context or perspective, Huguenots in  40–42, 155, 218 troops: see soldiers Turenne: see La Tour, Henri de, vicomte de Turenne Turrettini, Jean Alphonse  260 Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–21)  172, 174 Two Witnesses, The  187n103, 213, 292, 301 United Provinces, The  2, 6, 155, 164–65, 170, 172, 174, 179–80, 184, 186–87, 197, 201, 221, 224, 231, 236 ‘Universal Monarchy’  103, 112–14, 199, 202, 205, 213 Utt, Walter  vii–viii, xv–xix, xxi–xxv, xxviii, 24, 33, 39 Valenciennes 161 Valois [dynasty]  45, 63, 160 Valois, Marguerite de  36 Valtelline, The  177 Van Ruymbeke, Bertrand  2n2, 18, 29, 118, 150 Vassy 47 Vaud, Pays de  2, 6, 26, 221, 241–44, 252, 254, 256–57, 259–60 Vaudois  39, 189, 191n115, 192, 201, 242, 248, 252, 254, 257–58, 301 Vechière, Pierre  247, 249–50 Venice, Republic of  181 Vervins, Treaty of (1598)  169 Vesis de Combrune, Peter de  280 Vevey  242, 245–47, 250, 258–59 Viard, Martha  280 Viçouse, Guy  279–80 Viçouse, Mary Magdalen  279–80 Vigor, Simon  47 Villars, Marshall  234 Vindicae contra tyrannos 61 Violat, Pierre Issac  258 Vuilleumier, Henri  224 Wagner, Henry  31, 263–67, 269, 272, 274–77, 279, 281–83 Wagner, Melchior  263 Waldenses, Waldensians: see Vaudois

index313 Walsingham, Francis  62n50, 63, 167n39 War of the League of Augsburg: see Nine Years’ War War of the Spanish Succession (1702–13)  27, 154, 164, 189, 194, 200–201, 226, 232, 295 Webster, Noah  299, 303 White, Ellen G. 31, 300–303 William I, Prince of Orange  39, 63, 154, 160–65, 167, 170, 174 William III, Prince of Orange and King of England  103–104, 108,

112, 114, 116, 119, 154, 181–86, 188–90, 194–96, 199–200, 206, 213n94, 224, 226, 228–29, 231–32, 236, 247 Williams, John  289–90 Worcester, Bishop of  113 Wilson, James  126 Württemberg  2, 251, 279 Wylie, James A.  301 Zeeland  2, 162–64 Zürich  200, 242 Zwingli, Huldrich  243