but still worked as hard as before, and lived as plainly; the modern brick houses beginning however, to take the place of those of wood and plaster.” The French refugees introduced “the art of calico-printing and wax-bleaching, the weaving of velvet, silk stockings, crapes, bombazines, gauzes, damask table linen, cambric, &c. They brought with them improved ways of manufacturing ribbons, tapestry, baize, sail-cloth, and sacking; new modes of dyeing, and of making hats, pins, needles, watches, lace, and looking-glasses. The first person who contrived a machine moved by steam in England was Savary, the best maker of telescopes was Dollond, and the most famous biscuit-baker was Le Mann, near the Royal Exchange, London.” In 1845 a Christian Society of Operative Silk-Weavers in Spitalfields erected a Tablet, “as a public declaration of their faith, that of late the sufferings of the Silk-Weavers have been greatly aggravated through a departure from those principles of piety which enabled their forefathers, the French Refugees, who planted the silk trade in Spitalfields, to endure the loss of all things; also to record their intention to erect a House of God. — Haggai i. 7, 8, 9.” The last French minister was Rev. G. Huelins; he became a clergyman of the Church of England, but continued to care for his old flock.
“During the fifty years which immediately succeeded the Revocation,” says Mr. Taylor, “the English silk manufactures increased no less than twenty-fold.” As a specimen of the prosperity to which the weavers in those times attained, I refer to the will of John Blondell, weaver, of the parish of St. Mary Matfelle, alias Whitechappell, Middlesex, 5th March 1698 (n.s.). His heirs are several cousins of the name of Boudrie, to whom he leaves grounds in Coleman Street, and freeholds in Bishopgate Street — £500 to each of three cousins named Delfosse — to my brother-in-law Peter Petit, £100; to Rachel, wife of John Michie, £50; to Mary Blondell of Canterbury, widow, £40; to the poor of the French Church, Threadneedle Street, £40; to the poor of the Walloon Church, Canterbury, £40; unto my good friend Major Peter Le Keux, my copyhold estate in the parish of Stepney, alias Stebonheath, commonly known by the name of the Angell and Trumpet — unto my said very good friend, my six messuages or tenements in Gravell Lane, Houndsditch; to my god-son James Le Keux, £20.
Mr. Taylor picturesquely describes the weavers and weaving processes, as now existent. He informs us that a silk-weaver, requiring a broad and full light, must live in the upper portion of a house, and having a window extending across the whole breadth of his room; such houses, having their upper stories with long rows of broad weavers’ windows glazed with small diamond panes, may be seen in street after street in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green. Enter one of these houses, climb to the upper storey, knock at a door and enter the weaver’s dwelling. “The room is airy, light, and scrupulously clean (for no master weaver would suffer costly and delicate fabrics to be made in a room reeking with abominations); with the exception of the ponderous looms, there is little furniture, two or three unsteady chairs, a deal table, a bed-stead that folds up against the wall, a few cheap framed prints, a struggling fuchsia or nettle-plant on the window sill, and on the chimney-piece the family heir-looms, those inevitable china ornaments.” “The refugees had no English settlement, and consequently no claim upon the poor-rate. Self-reliant by nature, they started friendly and provident societies to provide for the necessities of sickness and old age. One of the earliest of these, the Norman Society of Bethnal Green, survived till within the last five years (1869). From this germ arose the English Friendly Societies.” “The weavers have two hereditary hobbies, gentle tastes brought with them from the sunny south, the love of birds and the love of flowers.” The roofs of the older houses are frequently covered with wooden stages for pigeon-cotes. The songs of canaries, finches, larks, and linnets enliven the weavers at their weary work. Many of their windows are a perfect flower show. The first refugees were often skilful gardeners. They introduced their craft at Rye and Sandwich, and there it still survives. The Rye flower-shows are in high repute in Kent and Sussex. One of the earliest flower-shows ever held in England was the annual weavers’ show in Spitalfields. Twenty or thirty carefully trained plants may sometimes be seen in a single room, and their flower-shows are now being re-organized.[1] The History of Dublin states that the resident Huguenot refugees founded the Dublin Florists’ Club in the reign of George I.; annual meetings were held in the Rose Tavern in Drum-coudra Lane (now Dorset Street); before that era, the cultivation of flowers was little attended to, and exotics were scarcely known.
One very remarkable inventor is rather a descendant of a refugee than a refugee — I mean Lewis Paul. His father, a refugee druggist and medical practitioner, left him a competency, his guardians being the Earl of Shaftesbury and Hon. Maurice Ashley Cooper. But not till he had squandered away his property did his genius
- ↑ Rev. Isaac Taylor’s Paper in “Golden Hours” for 1869, pp. 25S, &c.
