innocent; and he condescends to mention that some dissenters, whom he heard in London in 1765, were not edifying preachers.
The second letter is from Monsieur De l’Angle (dated at Paris, 31st October 1680), who seems to consider it a sufficient condemnation of the English nonconformity of that time, that he himself had felt at liberty, when in England as a visitor, to preach for clergymen of the Established Church; he further states that he believes Durel’s assertions to the effect that the Episcopal divines at the Savoy Conference breathed out nothing but charitable sentiments; and his climax is that Schism is the most formidable evil that can befal the church.
The third letter is from Monsieur Claude (dated at Paris, 29th November 1680), who says: “I would not that any one should make Episcopacy an occasion of quarrel in those places where it is established” — also, that Peace and Christian Concord are essentials like faith and regeneration; and, that separate congregations held by those, who dissent from the Established Church only on points of Church Order, are schismatic.
Monsieur Claude, however, could have had no intention of upbraiding the English nonconformists as having themselves to blame for the penalties and imprisonments which they suffered. For there was then in existence another letter of his, from which Du Moulin, in 1679, had quoted the following sentence:— “If one party, who find themselves to be the more prevailing, should have a mind to constrain the rest against their judgment in point of conscience, even in things of little consequence, as are the points which make all the disorder in the English Church, the schism lies on their side who impose.”
With regard to the letters of 1680, I make the following extract from “An Historical Account of my own Life, 1671-1731, by Edmund Calamy, D.D.,” imprinted and edited by John Towill Rutt in 1829, 2 vols. In Calamy’s 1st vol., p. 173, he says:—
“Dr. Frederick Spanheim (born 1632, died 1701), the son of Frederick, is acknowledged to have written as well and to as good a purpose, upon Ecclesiastical History, as any one that has appeared in the Protestant churches. . . . This Dr. Spanheim was one of those divines to whom the Bishop of London [Compton] wrote, for his sentiments about the Established Church of England and Conformity to it, at the very same time that he wrote to Monsieur Le Moyne and Monsieur de l’Angle upon the same subject, whose letters are printed by Dr. Stillingfleet at the end of his Mischief of Separation. Spanheim’s answer was not printed among the rest, not being thought enough in favour of the Church of England. . . . Le Moyne was a great and learned man. . . . I cannot help upon this occasion recollecting a passage of a worthy English divine, who was speaking of a letter of this Monsieur Le Moyne, relating to our contests here in England, of which he had made much use. He says that he had certain knowledge that M. le Moyne had both with his tongue and pen declared that Mr. Durell had much abused him, in leaving out sundry passages in his letter, wherein he did moderate and regulate the episcopal power, which if they had been inserted, the letter would not at all have fitted his design. (Bonasus Vapulans, or some Castigations given to Mr. John Durell, Sec, p. 80.)”
Section III.
THE RECEPTION OF THE FRENCH REFUGEES IN ENGLAND IN 1681.
It was well for many of the intended victims of the exterminating persecutions which began in 1681 that the sympathies of the English family of Savile were engaged on their side. Henry Savile was then the British Envoy in Paris; and his letters to his brother, Lord Halifax, and to the Secretary of State, Sir Leoline Jenkins, were the means of deciding our half-English half-French sovereign to give a hospitable reception to French Protestant Refugees.[1]
We find the skilful and kind-hearted Envoy writing from Paris on the subject at a much earlier date, viz., 5th June 1679:— “The Archbishop of Paris and the Pere de la Chaise do all they can to prevail with this king to make him revenge the quarrel of the English Catholics upon the French Protestants, who tremble for fear of some violent persecution, and are ready to go into England in such vast numbers
- ↑ See the “Savile Correspondence,” edited for the Camden Society by William Durrani Cooper, F.S.A.
