our own. Besides, the benefit of cheapness of foreign commodities by so much exceedeth the benefit of dear prices, by how much the number of buyers of them exceedeth the number of sellers, which is infinite. But if the second be true, that it is but our error to believe that they sell their wares better cheap than our nation doth, then surely I cannot but think it very great injustice to punish them for a fault committed by us.
It hath been further objected unto them in this house, that by their sparing and frugal living, they have been the better enabled to sell good pennyworths. It seems we are much straitened for arguments, when we are driven to accuse them for their virtues.
From the defeat of the bill, in opposition to which the above speech was delivered, Strype justly infers, “the hearty love and hospitable spirit which the nation had for these afflicted people of the same religion with ourselves.” Not only was this bill refused a second reading, but the same fate happened to another, which proposed that the children of strangers should pay strangers' customs. Thus the late Archbishop Parker’s maxim (he died in 1575) was still adhered to, “profitable and gentle strangers ought to be welcome and not to be grudged at.” (See Strype’s “Life of Parker,” p. 139.)
It will be observed that all that the refugees sought and obtained was the opportunity of earning their own livelihood. They suffered none of their people to solicit alms. They maintained their own poor, a large portion of their congregational funds being devoted to this purpose. And so grand and resolute was their determination in this matter, that when the convulsions of a time of war made their trade low and their cash little, their London consistory (or vestry, as the English would have said) actually borrowed money to enable them to maintain their poor. This circumstance came to light when Archbishop Whitgift communicated to the Pasteur Castol, the Queen’s desire that his congregation should contribute to the fund for raising an English force to assist King Henry of Navarre, and to defeat the rebellion against him as the legitimate King of France. Castol’s letter in answer to the Archbishop of Canterbury was dated 19th December 1591; (it was in Latin and is printed in the Life of Whitgift, Appendix (No. 13) to book 4th — Strype also alludes to it in the body of the Life, p. 381, and in “Annals of Elizabeth,” vol. iv. p. 82). This letter states other interesting facts. Their gentlemen had gone over to France in the hope of being repossessed of their estates. The able-bodied men had joined King Henry’s army, and their travelling expenses had been paid, their wives and children being left to the charity of the church. The congregation had also been always ready to make collections for their brethren in other places, and had responded to such appeals from Montpellier, Norwich, Antwerp, Ostend, Wesel, Geneva, &c.
Having failed to put down refugee retailers by Act of Parliament, some Londoners attempted to gain this end by threats of rioting. In May 1573 they had surreptitiously issued this warning: “Doth not the world see that you beastly brutes the Belgians, or rather drunken drones and faint-hearted Flemings, and you fraudulent Father-Frenchmen, by your cowardly flight from your own natural countries, have abandoned the same into the hands of your proud cowardly enemies, and have, by a feigned hypocrisy and counterfeit show of religion, placed yourselves here in a most fertile soil, under a most gracious and merciful prince who hath been contented, to the great prejudice of her natural subjects, to suffer you to live here in better case and more freedom than her own people?
“Be it known to all Flemings and Frenchmen that it is best for them to depart out of the realm of England between this and the 9th of July next; if not, then to take that which follows. There shall be many a sore stripe. Apprentices will rise to the number of 2336. And all the Apprentices and Journeymen will down with the Flemings and strangers.” Of equal merit with this miserable prose were some verses stuck up upon the wall of the Dutch Church-yard on Thursday night, 5th May 1593: —
“You strangers that inhabit in this land!
Note this same writing, do it understand;
Conceive it well, for safety of your lives,
Your goods, your children, and your dearest wives.”
&c, &c, &c, &c.
By order of the Government, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London quietly arranged with some merchants and master-tradesmen to act as special constables.
And some apprentices and servants who were found behaving riotously ” were put into the stocks, carted, and whipt.” (See “Annals of Elizabeth,” vol. iv. pp. 167-8.)
In 1598 the refugees’ patron at court, Lord Burghley, died. And in the following year we find the Lord Mayor of London forbidding the strangers, both Dutch
