as would be a great advantage to the nation, if you would, by easy naturalization, make it the least easy to them. I find those who are rich are afraid our king (Charles) should meddle with their concerns, but the crowd and the number talk of nothing but the necessity of his declaring himself Protector of the whole Protestant religion, and live upon the hopes of seeing that glorious day. How ripe you are for such designs, I cannot answer. . . . All Protestants are turned out of all places except just the gens de robe, but all in the finances and all the common soldiers in the guards are cashiered, which would be no disadvantage to you in a dispute with this crown, for you would have them all if you pleased.” Near the end of this letter he says: “I hear from England I shall be forced to keep a chaplain, which I never less needed, having never failed Charenton[1] one Sunday since I came into France. How much more that is for the king’s service you cannot imagine, unless you saw how kindly those poor people take so small a countenancing as mine is.”
Viscount Halifax, replying on June 12th, writes:— “It becomes the zeal of the French clergy to press the king to a persecution by way of revenge upon us here; but I will hope wiser things of the Government there than that so unreasonable a thing should prevail. However, if the fear of it putteth thoughts into the Protestants of removing hither, I am sure we must renounce all good sense if we do not encourage them by all possible invitations. It hath ever been so much my principle that I have wondered at our neglecting a thing we ought to seek; and those that have not zeal enough to endeavour it for the preserving of our religion, might have wit enough to do it for the increasing our trade. But to think of any greater designs is not fit for our age; we may please ourselves with dreaming of such things, but we must never hope to get further. . . . I approve your going to Charenton, and your countenancing the Protestants, which I think the principal work of an English minister in France; but I am apt to believe it may make the court there very weary of you, it being a method that they have of late been so little used to, that they take it for an injury.” On the last-mentioned topic Lord Rochester wrote to Henry Savile in a jocular strain: “I cannot deny you a share in the high satisfaction I have received at the account which flourishes here of your high Protestancy in Paris. Charenton was never so honoured as since your residence and ministry in France.”
Passing on to 1681, we find our envoy writing to Mr. Secretary Jenkins on June 25: “The Huguenots are in daily expectation of a very severe edict against them, by which any of their children shall be capable of choosing their religion at seven years old; how this will correct the chastisement of their parents, and how it will expose them to the temptations of the seducers is enough apparent. In Poictou the quartering soldiers upon them has made so many proselytes that the same trick is to be tried in Languecdoc, and five hundred dragoons are ordered to march thither for that purpose.” Again on July 2d, “The edict I mentioned in one of my last concerning the Huguenots and their children does so alarm them that they are making extraordinary deputations to the king to prevent it. By the next post I shall give you a better account of it. In the meantime our want of a bill of Naturalization is a most cruel thing in this conjuncture.” The edict was still unpublished on 5th July, at which date Savile says:— “Old Monsieur de Ruvigny has given a memorial to the king concerning the edict coming forth about the children of the Huguenots. The king said he would consider of it. But these poor people are in such fear that they hurry their children out of France in shoals, not doubting that this edict will soon be followed by another to forbid their sending them out of the kingdom. I will confidently aver that had a Bill of Naturalization passed in England last winter, there had been at least fifty thousand souls passed over by this time.” This edict was out in time for Savile’s next letter, dated 12th July; he says to Secretary Jenkins, “I send you the terrible new edict concerning the Huguenots. They are more sensible of this than all the former mortifications have been given them.”
Our good Envoy’s final appeal was dated at Paris 22d July 1681.
- ↑ “having never failed Charenton,” i.e., having never been absent from Protestant Public Worship.
