Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Historical Introduction - section III
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 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[2] 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.
“And now, sir, let me say something concerning the Protestants of this kingdom The whole body of these are in perfect obedience, and have been so personally serviceable to this very king (Louis XIV.), that in one of his edicts he does himself own the crown upon his head to their services in the last civil war; so that this ought to be no very prevalent argument to hinder the king (Charles II.) from pleading their cause, especially when in all human appearance both his foreign and domestic concerns would receive new life from an avowed protection of all the Protestants in Europe — a station God Almighty has so long offered to his family, and would, no doubt, upon so sound a bottom, make him Sourish equally with a great predecessor of his own, who found this the only way to be quiet in her life, and glorious after it. Now should His Majesty’s circumstances admit of these measures, were not[3] the properest method to begin with a declaration to all Europe, in French and Latin, to offer countenance and encouragement to all such as, receiving prejudice from the profession of the Protestant Religion in any other countries, could come and harbour themselves in his? The effect of this would be that no restrictions whatsoever would hinder these people from going to him, who submit to their miseries here for want of assurance of not finding as great elsewhere. . . .
“I have formerly urged to one of your predecessors the number of French seamen of this religion, their willingness and easiness of transportation, the considerable number of wealthy people ready with great sums to come over to you; nay, I had once (and hope upon good encouragement I could retrieve them) prepared a body of men that should have brought you the manufacture of sail-cloth, so much wanted in England; but all this was upon the hopes of a Bill of Naturalization, which, so unfortunately failing, lessened my credit with them, as well as my hopes of doing a considerable service to the nation. But all these matters may be recovered again by a hearty declaration, by some sort of commission established for strangers to address to upon their first arrival, and by a Bank in the city on purpose for this use that men may convey their estates with great privacy. . . .
“Though I have dwelt much too long upon this subject, I cannot omit telling you, the ports of France are stopped to all Protestants under the age of sixteen; three hundred were upon it refused passage for England last week at Dieppe; and though I know any prince may stop his ports to his own subjects, I question whether, in a case of no crime, they can regularly be debarred going into the territories of a prince in amity. I leave that circumstance, as well as all others, to your better judgment, craving pardon for this long trouble, which I shall conclude with my most hearty wishes that His Majesty would concern himself as far in this matter as can consist with his power and dignity, to free these poor oppressed people, who are like to suffer all the miseries that can be invented by the malice of the Jesuits, and executed by the boundless power of this king, who in things of this nature has given himself so wholly into their hands that their credit with him has given jealousy to all his other ministers, whereof not one does approve these methods, but are willing upon all o casions to declare they are not the authors of them. — I am, Sir, your most faithful and most humble servant,
“Hen. Savile.
“To Mr. Secy. Jenkins.”
The result of this fine appeal was that the Secretary of State encouraged some French Protestants, who had already become refugees, to draw up a paper detailing the steps which might be advantageously taken in the matter by the British Government. This document was presented to the King in Council on the 31st July; a committee was then appointed to prepare a draft of the Royal Proclamation, which was formally signed and issued on the 7th August (i.e., 28th July, old style).
The following was Secretary Jenkins' written reply to Savile:—
“Whitehall, 7th Aug. (28th July) 1681:— What you write of the poor Protestants of that side is great sense and a noble compassion. On this day se’ennight there was a Memorial, drawn by some of them already come over, read before His Majesty in Council. His Majesty ordered letters immediately to be prepared for his royal signature to my Lord of London and my Lord Mayor for the making a speedy collection to answer in some measure their present necessities. The memorial His Majesty was pleased to refer to a committee; and of eight or nine points which the French demanded as an help and an ease towards their transport and settlement, there was nothing but what my Lords assented to, as far as the things were practicable here. I do hope the collection in London will prove consderable, and may be so disposed of as may best suit with the exigencies of those people. Besides this collection there is a Brief directed to be issued out, all the kingdom over; and His Majesty this day agreed to everything in the report and advice of the committee.”
Of the same date is a letter from the Earl of Halifax containing this sentence:— “I shall endeavour to justify my Protestantship by doing all that is in my power towards the encouragement of those that shall take sanctuary here out of France.”
The following is the Proclamation:—
“At the Court at Hampton Court, the 28th day of July 1681.
| Present — | The King’s Most Excellent Majesty in Council. | |
| Lord Archbishop of Canterbury. | Lord Viscount Fauconberg. | |
| Lord President. | Lord Viscount Hyde. | |
| Lord Privy Seal. | Lord Bishop of London. | |
| Earl of Clarendon. | Mr. Secretary Jenkins. | |
| Earl of Bathe. | Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer. | |
| Earl of Craven. | Mr. Seymour. | |
| Earl of Halifax. | Mr. Godolphin. | |
| Earl of Conway. | ||
“His Majesty, by his order in Council of the 21st of July instant, having been graciously pleased to refer a Memorial presented to His Majesty in behalf of the distressed Protestants abroad to the consideration of the Right Honourable the Lords Committees of this Board for Trade and Plantations, with directions to report their opinion thereupon; and their Lordships having this day made their Report to His Majesty in Council; His Majesty, upon due consideration thereof had, was pleased to declare that he holds himself obliged in honour and conscience to comfort and support all such afflicted Protestants who, by reason of the rigours and severities which are used towards them upon the account of their religion, shall be forced to quit their native country, and shall desire to shelter themselves under His Majesty’s royal protection, for the preservation and free exercise of their religion.
“And in order hereunto His Majesty was pleased further to declare, that he will grant unto every such distressed Protestant, who shall come hither for refuge and reside here, his Letters of Denization under the Great Seal without any charge whatsoever, and likewise such further privileges and immunities as are consistent with the laws for the liberty and free exercise of their trades and handicrafts; and that His Majesty will likewise recommend it to his Parliament at their next meeting to pass an Act for the general naturalization of all such Protestants as shall come over as aforesaid, and for the further enlarging their liberties and franchises granted to them by His Majesty as reasonably may be necessary for them. And for their encouragement His Majesty is likewise pleased to grant unto them that they shall pay no greater duties in any case than His Majesty’s own natural-born subjects; and that they shall have all the privileges and immunities that generally His Majesty’s native subjects have for the introduction of their children into schools and colleges.
“And His Majesty was likewise pleased to order, and it is hereby ordered accordingly, that all His Majesty’s officers, both civil and military, do give a kind reception to all such Protestants as shall arrive within any of His Majesty’s ports in this kingdom, and to furnish them with free passports, and give them all assistance and furtherance in their journeys to the places to which they shall desire to go. And the Right Honourable the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury are to give orders to the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Customs to suffer the said Protestants to pass free with their goods and household stuff whether of a greater or a smaller value, together with their tools and instruments belonging to their crafts or trades, and generally all what belongs to them that may be imported according to the laws now in force, without exacting anything from them.
“And for the further relief and encouragement of the said necessitous Protestants, His Majesty hath been pleased to give order for a general Brief through his Kingdom of England, Dominion of Wales, and Town of Berwick, for collecting the charity of all well-disposed persons, for the relief of the said Protestants who may stand in need thereof. And to the end that when any such come over they may know where to address themselves to fitting persons to lay their requests and complaints before His Majesty, His Majesty was graciously pleased to appoint the Most Reverend Father in God His Grace the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Right Reverend Father in God the Lord Bishop of London, or either of them, to receive all the said requests and petitions, and to present the same to His Majesty, to the end such order may be given therein as shall be necessary.”
On 19th October 1681, the French churches in the City of London and in the Savoy returned His Majesty thanks for his Declaration in favour of the French Protestants. (Pointer s Chronological History.)
Of the money raised by the collections in the Churches I shall have to speak in another Section. In this place I give some important extracts from one of the sermons delivered on the occasion; the preacher was the learned George Hickes, D.D.[4]
In the introduction he said, “It hath been the practice of all good Christians to suffer or fly. For so we are used to speak, not that flight is not one sort of suffering (for it implies forsaking of house, relations, land, and country.) But it is the custom of all languages to speak of the lesser evil as of a good. And so flight is, if it be compared with death, slavery, or bodily torments, which are more emphatically called sufferings; though really in itself it is also a great degree of suffering, for which the person so flying from persecution shall be rewarded with everlasting life. I say it hath been the inviolable practice of all good Christians to suffer or fly, and never to resist. So the primitive Christians did under Pagan, Arian, and Apostate Emperors — the Waldenses under Pagano-Christian or Popish powers — our own ancestors in the days of Queen Mary — and now, our poor brethren of the Reformed French Communion, who are fled hither in assurance of His Majesty’s protection 'and his Protestant subjects’ charity, to whom he, as it becomes so great a patron of the Protestant cause, hath most affectionately recommended them.”
In the third head of his discourse Dr. Hickes gave the following summary of their sufferings:—
“They are deprived of the ancient liberties which were granted unto them by former Princes, the father and grandfather of this present king. Many of their Universities are dissolved (Sedan, the college of Rochefoucauld and that of Chatillon); and more than half their temples are razed, contrary to the faith of oaths and edicts, and against the common right of prescription of three and four score years. They are not allowed to erect Free Schools for the education of their own children, nor hospitals for the maintenance of their own poor, nor can they have the benefit of any already erected, without turning to the Popish religion. The Lords of Manors among them, who formerly had right to keep ministers and set up the Reformed Worship in their own houses, and call their neighbours and tenants into it by the sound of a bell, are now in the most arbitrary manner deprived of that privilege. And in the cities where they are most numerous, Colleges of Jesuits or Houses of Mission for propagating the faith are erected, into which undutiful children or servants, under a pretence of turning Catholics, may retreat when they please. And in the greatest of those cities, where perhaps ten schoolmasters could hardly teach all their children, the late laws allow them but one, and their unjust magistrates commonly none.
“They are forbidden to set up the Fleurs de Luces in their churches, because they must not bear any marks of royal favour; and as a further token of royal displeasure and contempt, their chief seats and most costly pews are ordered to be pulled down.
“Formerly Papists were allowed solemnly to renounce their religion in the Protestant Temples (as at Charenton, La Rochelle, Montpellier, Nismes); and scarce a Lord’s Day passed in the places where they were numerous, but some converts might be seen so to renounce. But now all Papists are forbidden to turn Protestants, under pain of death, or the penalty called l’amende honorable, in which the recanting person, only in his shirt, with a torch in his hand, and a rope about his neck, and the hangman standing behind him, begs pardon of God and man for having renounced the Catholic (as they miscall the Romish) religion, and is afterwards punished with banishment, if not with confiscation of goods.
“On the contrary, Protestants have all imaginable encouragement to turn Papists — pensions, honours, offices, and preferments; and to secure them after they have once declared, the aforementioned severity (as I have been informed) is the punishment of a relapse.
“The magistrates of the place have authority to go with the priest and what other company they please, to visit sick Protestants and turn their friends and attendants out of the room, and discourse with them about their religion. And if either hopes of reward, or a delirious condition, or impatience, or any other cause, make them speak anything in favour of the Romish religion, then they presently take witness that they turned Papists; after which, if the sick persons die, they are to be buried as Papists, and if they left children behind them, they also are to be bred Papists. But if they recover, they are obnoxious to the law against a relapse.
“Their ministers cannot, without great danger and difficulty, visit Protestants who lie sick in Popish houses; but every pitiful Sacrificulus, every ignorant busy priest, hath authority to go into Protestant houses and visit the sick as often as they please. And when their women are in travail, like the Hebrew women in the time of hardened Pharaoh, they must have Popish Egyptian midwives, which is a far greater terror to many of them than the pains of childbed itself.
“Formerly they were capable of the magistracy in cities and boroughs, where they lived; but now they are incapacitated Formerly they were to sit in their Courts of Justice as the Chambers of the Edict (so called from the Edict of Nantes by which they were erected in favour of Protestants) and the Parti-Chambers of the Provinces (where half the judges are Protestants and half Papists), but now they are deprived of that privilege. So that for want of judges of their own religion they have little or no benefit of the law when a Catholic is their antagonist. But when both parties are Protestants, if one change (or promise to change) his religion, he is usually sure to gain the cause.
“And as they are banished from the Bench so are they banished from the Bar and Faculties, for no Protestant can be counsellor, attorney, notary, surgeon, apothecary, midwife, &c. In one word, they are made utterly incapable of all employments civil or military, and by that means are deprived of all honours and better conveniences of life, of all the comfortable means of subsistence and well-being which the Papists enjoy in their offices, at court and in the country, in peace and in war, and in the armies both by sea and land.
"This is their miserable condition; and (what is yet worse) their children have liberty at seven years of age to choose their own religion. And if, to prevent the mischief that may follow upon this, they send their children away, they must forfeit a year’s revenue of their estates if they do not produce them within a year, but if they do not produce them within two years, then they must forfeit the whole. In case they have no visible estates, then they are subject to arbitrary valuations, and to arbitrary fines imposed thereupon.
“If their children upon this liberty happen to change their religion (as many will do rather than endure wholesome discipline), their parents are bound to maintain them as they do their other children, or else to allow them a pension for their maintenance. And their daughters so changing may leave their parents and go into nunneries when they please.
“This is the complement of all their other miseries. And to avoid so great a mischief it is that they fly in flocks to Protestant countries, that they may save the souls of their own bowels, and not have them bred up in Popish darkness and the regions of the shadow of death. Some have slipped away by night with their families, and driven without intermission till they have got out of their imperious Prince’s dominions. And others, as is credibly reported, have shipped off their little ones packed up in bales of merchantable goods.
“As for their ministers, they upon any pretended crimes are banished, fined, or imprisoned on purpose to make them forsake their flocks, and to discourage the people from putting their children to the study of Divinity. Nay, they are in an especial manner obnoxious to the barbarous cruelties and insults of the soldiery, who have free quarter upon the poor Protestants, whom they abuse to what degree they please.
“In some provinces (as Poictou, Xaintonge, and about Rochelle) they trail them like dogs by the neck to the mass, torture them till they renounce their religion, and most inhumanly misuse or murder those whom God enables to resist unto blood. And though these tyrannical and arbitrary outrages be not done by open order, yet it may be presumed they are done upon connivance, and according to the secret will of the supreme authority; since those that do them are neither punished nor restrained, notwithstanding the complaints which the sufferers daily make at court. These barbarous insolences, added to the severity of the royal edicts, you may be sure adds wings to their haste, and makes them fly in great hurry and confusion into foreign countries. And the providence of God hath cast many of them, like shipwrecked men on our coasts, and expects that we should show them no little kindness, but receive them courteously, and do good unto them in an especial manner, as unto them that are of the household of faith. They are persecuted, but we must not forsake them; they are grievously cast down, but in such an exigence as this we must not let them be destroyed.”
So far Dr Hickes, who had been much on the Continent as a travelling tutor, and, having correspondents abroad, was fully competent to draw up an elaborate, accurate, and interesting statement such as the above. The collection was made in 1681 (old style), but according to new style in 1682. Anthony a Wood says in his Diary:— “April 1682. — At the latter end of March and beginning of this month, was a collection in every college and hall, as also in every parish of Oxford, for succour and relief of poor Protestants that were lately come into England on a persecution from France; people gave liberally.”
The following tidings appeared in a newspaper: — Plymouth, 6th Sept. 1681. — An open boat arrived here yesterday, in which were forty or fifty French Protestants who resided outside La Rochelle. Four others left with this boat, one of which is said to have put into Dartmouth, but it is not yet known what became of the other three.” Pointer says, — “30th Nov. 1681. — Mr Firmin settled some French Protestants at Ipswich.”
- ↑ See the “Savile Correspondence,” edited for the Camden Society by William Durrani Cooper, F.S.A.
- ↑ “having never failed Charenton,” i.e., having never been absent from Protestant Public Worship.
- ↑ “were not . . . .?” — i.e., would it not be, &c.?
- ↑ The True Notion of Persecution stated in a Sermon preached at the tune of the late Contribution for the French Protestants. By George Hickes, D.D., Chaplain to his Grace the Duke of Lauderdale, and Vicar of Allhallows-Barkin, London. Published at the earnest request of many that heard it preached, London, printed for Walter Kettilby, at the Bishop’s-Head, in St. Paul’s Churchyard, mdclxxxi.