The Huguenots: History and Memory

in Transnational Context

Studies in the History of

Christian Traditions
General Editor

Robert J. Bast
Knoxville, Tennessee
In cooperation with

Henry Chadwick, Cambridge

Paul C.H. Lim, Nashville, Tennessee
Eric Saak, Liverpool
Brian Tierney, Ithaca, New York
Arjo Vanderjagt, Groningen
John Van Engen, Notre Dame, Indiana
Founding Editor

Heiko A. Oberman

VOLUME 156

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/shct

Walter C. Utt

The Huguenots:
History and Memory in
Transnational Context
Essays in Honour and Memory of Walter C. Utt

Edited by

David J. B. Trim

LEIDEN BOSTON
LEIDEN BOSTON
2011

Cover Illustration: Joseph-Nicolas RobertFleury, Scne de la SaintBarthlemy, assassinat de

Briou, gouverneur du Prince de Conti, 24 aot 1572, 1833 (Paris, muse du Louvre, inv. 7673)
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The Huguenots : history and memory in transnational context : essays in honour and memory
of Walter C. Utt / edited by David J.B. Trim.
p. cm. -- (Studies in the history of Christian traditions, ISSN 1573-5664 ; v. 156)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-20775-2 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Huguenots--History. I. Trim, D. J. B.
(David J. B.) II. Utt, Walter C.
BX9454.3.H88 2011
284.509--dc22
2011015899

ISSN 1573-5664
ISBN 978 90 04 20775 2
Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing,
IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
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Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Contributors xi
Abbreviations xiii
In Appreciation of Walter Utt................................................................. xv

Stanley G. Payne
Walter C. Utt, My Colleague..................................................................xxi

Eric Anderson
1.The Huguenots and the Experience of Exile (Sixteenth to
Twentieth Centuries): History, Memory
and Transnationalism1
D. J. B. Trim
2. The Huguenots and the St Bartholomews Massacre 43
H. H. Leonard
3.Sham of Liberty of Conscience: Huguenots
and the Problem of Religious Toleration
in Restoration England 69

Gregory Dodds
4.How dangerous, the Protestant stranger?
Huguenots and the formation of British identity,
c.16851715 103
Lisa Clark Diller
5.Strains of Worship: The Huguenots
and Non-conformity 121

Robin Gwynn
6.The Huguenots and the European Wars
of Religion, c.15601697: Soldiering in National
and Transnational Context 153
D. J. B. Trim

vi contents
7.Models of an Imagined Community:
Huguenot Discourse on Identity and Foreign Policy 193
David Onnekink
8.The Huguenots in British and Hanoverian
External Relations in the Early Eighteenth Century 217
Andrew C. Thompson
9.Exile, Integration and European Perspectives:
Huguenots in the Pays de Vaud 241

Vivienne Larminie
10.Testaments of Faith: Wills of Huguenot
refugees in England as a Window on their Past 263
Randolph Vigne
11.The Memory of the Huguenots in
North America: Protestant History and Polemic 285
Paul McGraw
Index 305

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was created in the belief that examining history and memory through the lens of a particular transnational communitythe
Huguenotsin the longue dure has the potential to provide uncommon and valuable insights into the academically fashionable areas of
memory and transnationalism. It is the editor and contributors belief
that the essays that follow also cast new light on several aspects of
Huguenot history. Yet while this book is intended as a contribution to
scholarship in its own right, it also has another purpose.
It is a (very belated) festschrift for the late Walter C. Utt (192185),
long-time Professor of History at Pacific Union College, in Angwin,
California. Given that he was an historian of early-modern France,
perhaps the French term hommage is more appropriate in this case
than the German festschrift. Regardless of term, this collection of studies on Huguenot history, chiefly of the lateseventeenth and early
eighteenth centuriesa subject of which Walter Utt became a masteris intended to commemorate an outstanding teacher and excellent scholar, who, at his untimely death, left behind only one
monograph, a handful of articles, and two historical novels. His passing was untimely in that, although he was not young at his death (at
age 64), he was not particularly elderly, and indeed he is still survived
by two brothers now in their eighties, which suggests the world of
scholarship lost many productive years. Happily, Utts second monograph (and masterwork), on Claude Brousson, was posthumously
brought to publication.* However, the admiration a number of scholars and former students felt for Walter Utt, and the sense that his career
would, in happier circumstances, have produced more excellent books,
prompted the idea of a volume in his honour and memory, to mark the
25th anniversary of his death.
This book owes a great deal to the support of the Walter C. Utt
Endowment at Pacific Union College and of two Presidents of PUC,

*Walter C. Utt and Brian E. Strayer, The Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson and
Protestant Resistance to Louis XIV, 16471698 (Brighton and Portland, Oreg.: Sussex
Academic Press, 2003).

viii acknowledgments
Richard Osborn and his successor, Heather Knight. The Utt Endowment
provided a generous subsidy towards the cost of publication and
also funded my appointment to a second year as Walter Utt Professor
of History at the college, which provided the necessary time to complete editorial work. I gratefully acknowledge the members of the
Endowments board for their practical and moral support: Vic Aagaard,
Bruce Anderson, Eric Anderson, Martha Utt-Billington, Arleen
Downing, Steve Herber, Wayne Jacobsen, Nancy LeCourt, Grant
Mitchell, Amy Rosenthal, David Westcott, and Elle Wheeler. I am also
grateful to John Collins, Paul McGraw, Dick Osborn and Leo Ranzolin,
who took the practical steps to turn the Utt Endowments financial support into an extension of my tenure of the Utt Chair at PUC. Above all,
I am beholden to Bruce and Audrey Anderson, without whom this festschrift would certainly have been neither commenced nor completed.
I appreciated the efficient and enthusiastic support of Adugnaw
Worku, Gilbert Abella, Karen Thomas and other librarians at Pacific
Union College Library in developing the Walter Utt collection in the
Library and in obtaining materials needed for chapters 1, 6 and 11. In
addition, I am greatly indebted to the Folger Shakespeare Library, for
awarding me a fellowship in 2009, and to the supremely competent
and considerate reading room staff for their help during time at the
Folger in 2009 and 2010, when the introduction was researched and
drafted, and my own essay revised.
For permission to use JosephNicolas RobertFleurys Scne de la
StBarthlemy (1833) on the cover I am obliged to Frances Runion
des muses nationaux and I thank Cristina Sanchez of its Agence photographique for her help in obtaining an image of this evocative
painting.
I am grateful to Bruce Anderson, Eric Anderson, Peter Balderstone,
Felicity Stout and Wendy Trim for helpful conversations about history
and memory; and to Lisa Diller, Greg Dodds, Matthew Glozier, David
Onnekink, and Randolph Vigne, for arranging or participating in conference panels on Huguenot history that were very helpful in developing chapters in this volume. Finally, I take this opportunity to
acknowledge my indebtedness and gratitude to Robin Briggs, Mark
Greengrass, Alan James, David Parrott, Guy Rowlands, and Randolph
Vignefrom them, over the last 15 years, in many enlightening and
enjoyable conversations, I have learned much about the Huguenots,
early-modern France, and good scholarship. It is a pleasure to be

 acknowledgments ix
part of the community of scholarsthe transnational republic of
lettersthat was vitally important to many of the people examined in
the chapters that follow.
David Trim
Angwin, Calif., Reading, Berks., and Washington, DC,
2009 and 2010

CONTRIBUTORS
Eric Anderson is President of Southwestern Adventist University; his
publications include Race and Politics in North Carolina, 18721901
(Louisiana State University Press, 1981).
Lisa Clark Diller is Assistant Professor of History at Southern Adventist
University.
Gregory Dodds is Professor of History at Walla Walla University and
the author of Exploiting Erasmus: The Erasmian Legacy and Religious
Change in Early Modern England (University of Toronto Press, 2009).
Robin Gwynn is a distinguished authority on Huguenot history and
seventeenth-century English history, on which he has published
widely; he was Director of the 1985 British Huguenot Heritage tercentenary commemoration under the patronage of Queen Elizabeth II.
Vivienne Larminie is Research Fellow at The History of Parliament. As
well as publishing on seventeenth-century England, she contributed
several entries on Huguenots to the Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography and has written on religion in the Pays de Vaud.
H. H. Leonard held the Walter Utt Chair of History at Pacific Union
College in 2002, after teaching for 32 years at Newbold College in
England.
Paul McGraw is Professor of History at Pacific Union College.
David Onnekink is Assistant Professor of History at the Universiteit
Utrecht, in the Netherlands. He is the author of The Anglo-Dutch
Favourite, the career of Hans Willem Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland
(Ashgate, 2007) and editor or co-editor of four other books.
Stanley G. Payne is HilldaleJaume Vicens Vives Professor of History
Emeritus at the University of WisconsinMadison. He is a leading
authority on both the history of European fascism and the history of
Spain, and the author of fourteen books on Spanish and modern
European history.

xii contributors
Andrew C. Thompson is College Lecturer in History at Queens College,
University of Cambridge. He is the author of Britain, Hanover and the
Protestant Interest (Boydell & Brewer, 2006) and George II (Yale
University Press, 2011).
D. J. B. Trim, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, is Director of the
Archives of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and held the Walter
Utt Chair of History at Pacific Union College in 2008 and 2009. His
recent publications include, as co-editor, Humanitarian intervention
a history (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and European Warfare
13501750 (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
Randolph Vigne, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and one of the
preeminent scholars of the Huguenot diaspora, was for many years
Editor of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland. He has
published widely on the history of minorities.

ABBREVIATIONS
NB: Abbreviations used in only one chapter are indicated in the
footnotes of the respective chapters.
Add. MS
BL: Additional Manuscripts
AHR
American Historical Review
BL
The British Library, London
Bodl.
Bodleian Library, Oxford
Bull. SHPF Bulletin de la Socit de lHistoire du
Protestantisme Franais
CSPD
Calendar of State Papers Domestic
CSPF 
Calendar of State Papers, Foreign
Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth I
Dunan-Page, Religious Culture 
Anne Dunan-Page (ed.), The
Religious Culture of the Huguenots,
16601750 (Ashgate: Aldershot,
2006)
EHR
English Historical Review
FHS
French Historical Studies
Gwynn, Conformity 
Robin Gwynn, Conformity, Nonconformity and Huguenot Settle
ment in England in the Later
Seventeenth Century, in DunanPage, Religious Culture, 2341
HJ
The Historical Journal
HMC 
Royal Commission on Historical
Manuscripts [Historical Manu
scriptsCommission], calendars and
reports
HSQS Huguenot Society of London [later,
of Great Britain and Ireland], Quarto
Series
HSP Proceedings of the Huguenot Society
[originally of London; later of Great
Britain and Ireland]
LPL
Lambeth Palace Library

xiv abbreviations
MS(S) Manuscript(s)
OxDNB 
Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography. Oxford: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 2004.
PRO The National Archives (UK), at The
Public Record Office, Kew, England
repr. Reprint
SCJ Sixteenth Century Journal
SP
State Papers
Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove Walter C. Utt and Brian E. Strayer,
The Bellicose Dove: Claude Brousson
and Protestant Resistance to Louis
XIV, 16471698, (Brighton and
Portland, Oreg.: Sussex Academic
Press, 2003)
Vigne & Littleton, Strangers 
Randolph Vigne and Charles
Littleton (eds.), From strangers to
citizens. The integration of immigrant
communities in Britain, Ireland
and colonial America, 15501750
(London/Brighton & PortlandOreg.:
Huguenot Society of Great Britain
and Ireland/Sussex Academic Press,
2001)
Wing Wing, Donald. Short-Title Catalogue
of Books Printed in England, Scotland,
Ireland, Wales, and British America
and of English Books Printed in Other
Countries 16411700, 2nd edn, rev.
and ed. John J. Morrison, Carolyn
W. Nelson, Matthew Seccombe, et al,
4 vols. (New York: Modern Language
Association of America, 198298)
WMQ
The William and Mary Quarterly

In Appreciation of Walter C. Utt

Stanley G. Payne
Walter Utt returned to Pacific Union College in 1951 as assistant
professor of history, the junior member of a two-man History
Department chaired by George Meldrum. The division of labour was
simple: Professor Meldrum taught American history and Professor Utt
taught European history. So limited a focus seems strange nowadays,
but in those years even the large university history departments did
not go very far beyond European and American history. At PUC this
required what today would be considered a heavy teaching schedule,
involving a wide range of courses from the introductory to advanced
and specialized upper division offerings.
Walter Utt threw himself into this broad curriculum with energy
and youthful enthusiasm. Those of us who were history majors got a
large dose of courses by two professors, but this did not strike any of us
as unusual, nor do I remember that we were ever bored. Classroom
teaching at that time involved little or nothing in the way of visual
aids, much less electronic projection, placing a special burden on professors to present lectures that were clear, interesting, pedagogically
effective, and also not tedious.
Walter Utt had begun to teach, in so far as I recall, as a teaching
assistant during his doctoral studies at UC-Berkeley, and immediately
revealed that he had a special calling. Good teaching on the college or
university level involves a combination of intellect, organization, style
or method, and personality, and he excelled in all of these. Only later,
after I myself began to teach, did I appreciate the amount of work
involved in preparing those courses, particularly during his first
semesters.
Over the years I have had teachers and also colleagues who were not
always prepared for their classes and filled the gap by simply winging
it, shooting the breeze in semi-scholarly fashion to fill in the time, or
eliciting an unusual amount of student discussion and participation in
order not to have to do very much of their own in that particular class.
I do not recall that this ever happened once in the case of Professor
Utts courses. Some lectures were naturally a little more dense than
others, but all were seriously prepared and engaging.

xvi

stanley g. payne

The Utt lecture style involved the preparation of basic lecture notes
for each class, but these were rather informal and consisted simply of a
list of main points to be covered. Professor Utt had a natural eloquence,
precision and wit that turned these into a colorful and absorbing discourse for the full class period. The era of entertaining students had
scarcely begun in the 1950s, and each class seriously focused on the
main narrative and problems of history, with no time wasted.
Nonetheless, these were never highly formal classes and certainly not
dry-as-dust history. His lectures were delivered in a direct, engaging
and conversational style, full of personalities and colourful anecdotes
by way of illustration, so that in fact in the great majority of cases they
managed to be entertaining, as well.
The way history was done in those days, not merely at PUC but
almost everywhere, gave prominence to political history and public
affairs, the major framework of history. That meant little attention to
minorities or women, and even less to the kinds of trivial themes in
social and socio-cultural history that at the present time occupy so
much of the program of the annual convention of the American
Historical Association. Even in secular institutions, the idea of history
as transgressive was largely unknown. This was, in a word, basic historythe major issues, events and personalities of the European and
Western past. It was in fact excellent preparation for further study
because it built a basic platform of knowledge and gave students a serious focus for their current and continuing work. I have always been
very grateful for it.
Professor Utts energy was very rarely wanting, which was surprising
in view of his physical limitations. There was perhaps one episode a
year (or possibly not even that often) that required a few days in bed,
and there might also be another occasion when his health was parlous
and he was barely able to come to class, but even on the latter days he
carried things off in his normal manner. That he was able to teach us so
effectively and continue a full work schedule year after year, despite
personal disability, was an inspiration to us all. There was never a single semester, during my years at PUC, in which this resulted in any
significant hindrance to his teaching, and, in fact, in most semesters it
caused none at all. For me personally, his was a courageous example
from which I greatly profited, and which stimulated me to try to show
the same determination and perseverance.
As a Christian institution, PUC involved much more for the
faculty than teaching classes. Its professors have always had greater

in appreciation of walter c. utt xvii

r esponsibility as personal examples and as spiritual and social guides

than is the case in secular institutions. Despite the heavier loadand
in part because of the comparatively small size of the facultythey
have also been in closer personal contact with their students than is the
case in a larger college or university, or even than in other small liberal
arts colleges.
Walter Utts personal relations with the students were as important
as his classroom teaching. In those days college life was more formal
than in the twenty-first century, in terms of dress, deportment and also
the tenor of relations between students and faculty. At PUC, nonetheless, there was a certain kind of informality and more contact with the
faculty, or at least some members of the faculty, than I would find in
my graduate education at Claremont and Columbia. Walter Utt
excelled in these informal relations, first in terms of his witty, personable and highly approachable classroom manner and then in the way
he dealt with students either individually or in very small groups. He
was sympathetic and understanding, but he never pandered or patronized, holding his students up to the mark not merely in their classroom
but also in other responsibilities.
In my own case, I began my education in Angwin as a sixteen-yearold senior at PUC Prep in 1950 and then entered the college in the
following year. Thus my matriculation coincided with the arrival of
Professor Utt in the History Department. Even before I finished high
school I planned to become a history major, and by 1951 I was becoming strongly oriented to Modern European history, also Professor Utts
main field, so that his courses became my principal focus from the very
beginning.
He was extraordinarily kind and even, I would say, attentive to me,
and during the course of the nearly four years at PUC I spent what was
probably an inordinate amount of time in the history department
itself, then conveniently located in Irwin Hall. (I should point out,
however, that this was not a matter of privilege, because there was a
fairly steady flow of students in and out of the department office.) This
involved innumerable conversations, from the briefest chats to occasional lengthier discussions, more than one could count, and created a
personal bond that eventually became very strong. Professor Utt was
young enough that he seemed more approachable and understanding
than the older professors, and was rarely too busy to talk. For me he
became an indispensable mentor, not so much because of what
I learned in any particular class, but simply as a role model and a

xviii

stanley g. payne

mentor in a broader sense in terms of values, attitude and a kind of

professionalism. In the 1950s, the term of being there for someone
had not yet developed, but Walter Utt was always there for his studentsfor me and for many others.
I did defect briefly. In 1953, as I neared my nineteenth birthday,
I had the idea of transferring to San Francisco State College (as it was
then called), to enjoy a more sophisticated life in the big city, though
I had very little money. It was as near as I ever came to a youthful rebellion. Only one months residence and a few days of classes in my new
surroundings were enough to convince me that I was making a big
mistake, and that I would be better off both personally and pedagogically finishing up my work at PUCa conclusion that was absolutely
correct. Professor Utt welcomed me back with open arms, and nary a
word of reproach.
One of the great advantages of PUC in the 1950s was that an excellent
core curriculum existed, so that students really did get a basic educationa true liberal education something that in the twenty-first century no longer exists in most American colleges and universities of any
kind. This meant that one learned the things during those four years
that one really needed to learn, both inside and outside the classroom.
The two-professor history department did not have means to offer
certain kinds of specialized courses, nor was there very much in the
way of undergraduate seminars. It would have been better to have provided more opportunity for writing, which, after my first year, I rarely
did at an advanced level. Yet the freshman English and composition
course that was required of all students was outstanding, and it has
now disappeared from most undergraduate curricula, to the great loss
of the undergraduates.
In the fall of 1952 Professor Utt gave me a job as grader for the survey course in European history, in which I had been a student the year
before, and during the remainder of my undergraduate semesters I was
a grader for several different courses. This was excellent training, for it
helped to develop a more mature focus on historical study, while providing experience in the process of examination and evaluation that is
so important for teaching. Despite the relative dearth of writing
courses, I was well prepared for graduate school, and here too Professor
Utt helped to open the way, recommending, among other things, that
I apply to a special new program at the Claremont Graduate School
(now Claremont University), which proved to be an ideal stepping
stone en route to Columbia.

in appreciation of walter c. utt xix

A basic responsibility for a history professor at PUC is to provide a

Christian perspective on history, something that once upon a time was
almost universal in American colleges, and then in the twentieth century began to disappear almost altogether. What was Walter Utts
approach? He was a serious professional scholar and did not teach
Providentialist History or Christian blueprintism, in which every
detail of history somehow revealed the Divine Will. He knew that no
historian, as a serious scholar, can demonstrate that, and his teaching
was consistently objective and empirical. Some would call that letting
the chips fall where they may, but that would be an inadequate description. His approach rather was, through an objective and empirical
treatment of history, to allow underlying meanings and basic interpretations to emerge. There was no pretence to discover the guiding hand
of God behind every event; if that were the case, then the conclusion
would have to be that God led in quite dreadful ways, since so much
of history consists of the delusions, follies, misfortunes and sins of
mankind.
Nonetheless, a truly objective Christian approach, when compared
with modern ideological interpretations, has the effect of demystifying
history, because it frees the scholar from fashionable straitjackets and
abstract determinisms, making it possible to grasp manythough not
necessarily allof the factors and influences at work in history.
Christian historians in fact are more humble than other scholars, not
merely because humility is a fundamental Christian virtue, but because
Christian historians are free of the fads, foibles and ideological
approaches that have dominated much of the work in history for the
past century and more. Christian historians, more than many others,
are not afraid to let certain facts speak for themselves, and have no
reason to fear the conclusions that may emerge. They are also able,
more clearly than most others, to discern what are the clearly productive and creative factors at work in history, as well as the frequently
destructive consequences when these are ignored or abandoned. This
is accomplished through a consistent empiricism on the one hand, and
an appropriate attention to the moral and spiritual dimension of
human affairs, on the other. They are not bewildered when historical
outcomes are often much less than happy, though the wiser and more
professional ones avoid facile moralizing about complex issues which
need to be studied in their entirety. Walter Utt, it has always seemed to
me, was this kind of Christian historian.

Walter C. Utt, my colleague

Eric Anderson
After earning a doctorate at the University of California, Walter C. Utt
spent the rest of his life at a small denominational college, an institution unknown to most of his classmates and teachers at Berkeley.
Pacific Union College was within easy driving distance of Berkeley, of
course, but it existed on a different intellectual map from the eminent
research university. Although Walter Utt became a remarkably influential teacher, scholar, and mentor in his long tenure at Pacific Union
College, his achievements were mostly invisible to the wider academic
world. He wrote three books, none an academic treatment of his speciality. He taught only a handful of graduate students, and his most significant research was not published until after his death.
Professor Utt devoted most of his professional life to one major
research projectthe story of Claude Brousson and Huguenot resistance to Louis XIV. He took several research trips to France, filled scores
of notebooks with his tiny left-handed scrawl, purchased many rolls of
microfilmed documents, made hundreds of pages of photocopies, and
compiled lengthy bibliographical lists. When he died in 1985, he left
behind a 900-page manuscript, which was well beyond a first draft,
having been rewritten two or three times. In contrast to his other writings, he called this long-gestating book the real one.
If he was obscure in the general academic community, he must have
felt superfluous, at times, even on Howell Mountain (not yet a famous
wine appellation). To the presidents, deans, and trustees of PUC during the years between 1951 and 1985, Walter Utts research could not
have seemed very important. An elegant ornament to the College, perhaps, he and his study of seventeenth-century France appeared to have
little direct connection to paying the bills, keeping the College accredited, maintaining enrolment, and all the other quotidian anxieties that
dominated their agendas. Although the College did grant him rare
sabbatical time, what he was doing was secondary, at best, at Pacific
Union College. It was difficult to evaluate or measure in the schemes of
quantitative assessment so popular by the end of his life.

xxii

eric anderson

For that matter, the things that now cause former students to remember Walter Utt, including the many hours he spent in witty conversation with them, the remarkably rich and gossipy correspondence he
carried on with dozens of graduates, and the lively discussion groups
he sponsored, might well look, to a practical-minded observer, charmingly irrelevant. They had about as much to do with either historical
research or the immediate survival of the College, such an analyst
might conclude, as his stamp collection or his interest in French military music. And yet he is now being honoured by a book of scholarly
essays.
For ten years I was Walter Utts colleague in the history department
at Pacific Union College. He was my chairman, mentor, editor, and
friend. We worked together on many occasions as team teachers.
I believe that the perspective of a teaching colleague may be useful to
understanding the accomplishments of this important, yet oddly invisible man. It is possible, indeed, that some of his intellectual achievements were only fully manifest to his fellow historians.
A teaching associate, especially an inexperienced and youthful one,
sees some details more clearly than others, no doubt. My view of
Dr. Utt was quite different from that of his colleagues in other disciplines, or from College administrators, high and low, many of whom
saw him as a formidable, even frightening figure, capable of clever
obstruction or sarcastic candour. My point of view was simultaneously
more admiring and more familiar. I knew the academic actor backstage, without his makeup, and I thought I knew how he achieved his
effects.
I craved his approval and recognized that I was seen around campus
as his protg. I had some sense of what this meant, but not until later,
much later, did I realize that he was more my teacher than my patron,
that he was quietly showing me the imperfections of my scholarship,
my shortcomings as an historian. In a sense, although no advanced
degrees or seminars were involved, he was my tutor as well as my faculty peer. I did not recognize at first what he was teaching me.
If Walter Utt had accepted a position in a larger, better-known institution, a place like Berkeley, he would have had the luxury of focusing
his work on a fairly narrow academic speciality. He would not have had
to teach anything except modern French history and closely related
subjects. He would have had both more freedom and less. At a different
kind of school he would no doubt have had fewer administrative
assignments, no threat of theological controversy, and fewer (or at least

walter c. utt, my colleague xxiii

different) intellectual or political limits to his research. Yet at the same

time, he would have less flexibility to write historical novels, influence
students in other disciplines, or connect his faith to his learning.
As chairman of the history department, Professor Utt accomplished
remarkable things by indirection. In a certain sense, department
meetings were quite irregular, convened only when absolutely necessary. Looked at another way, however, he presided over one continuous
meeting, with members of the department dropping in and out of each
others offices, eavesdropping on conversations in the next cubicle,
shouting jokes over the walls, or carrying on long telephone conversations after hours. Late in his career, when he captured a large, private,
air-conditioned office, he regretted the splendid solitude, I think,
and wished for the crowded sociability of the old arrangement. He
protected the departments curriculum, encouraged his colleagues,
recruited new majors, found jobs for graduates, and built up a sizeable
departmental library, stocked mostly with his books. He even provided
more than a few of the decorations around the offices and classrooms,
including vintage French and Soviet propaganda posters.
Looking back, I now recognize what he taught me. Unlike my graduate school teachers, he had little interest in the latest historiography
or popular intellectual trends. He did not teach me much about constructing a course or designing a test. Instead, he subtly challenged
me to synthesize, to show how my specialized interests related to the
big picture, illustrating larger developments in American history or
Western civilization. In the process, I learned a great deal about gaps in
my knowledge. For example, I had detailed information about
Reconstruction on the local level, but little understanding of the political leadership of Lincoln or Grant. I could explain the Founding
Fathers attitudes toward slavery, but I had never read the Federalist
Papers. I knew more about historians favourite lost causes, such as
Populism, than about the successes of the American economy. With
quiet wit, Walter (as I learned to call him) told me colourful historical
anecdotes, assumed that I, like any educated person, knew the relevant facts, and constantly surprised me with his encyclopaedic knowledge of my own areanot just his field of modern European history.
(Didnt everybody know, say, John Paul Joness unusual naval career
after the Revolutionary War?)
Without ever delivering any direct pronouncements, he instilled in
me a love of precision, a quiet intolerance for errors of grammar or
spelling, an expectation that infelicities of style were unacceptable,

xxiv

eric anderson

even a bit gauche. He believed that historians should write and rewrite
and he was happy to work on my drafts, rooting out vagueness, suggesting transitions, or demanding further evidence. Oddly enough,
this specialist in seventeenth century France was as important to the
editing of my first book as the readers at a famous university press or
my eminent advisors at the University of Chicago.
I was Walters teaching colleague in the fullest sense on those occasions, formal and informal, when we taught together. These included
not only regular courses that we team-taught, but also student reading
groups that met in our homes and voluntarily took on writers ranging
from G. K. Chesterton and C. S. Lewis to Malcolm Muggeridge. We
were also part of the rotating group of discussion leaders in the Choir
Room, a weekly religious discussion group aimed more at faculty than
at students, noted for its lively, freewheeling conversations. In all of
these situations, I had the opportunity to watch Walter construct questions, direct discussion, and engage criticsall the while indulging in
his penchant for sardonic observation.
The interdisciplinary course we created on the history of the
Seventh-day Adventist denomination was certainly the most stimulating, even disturbing, experience of such collaboration. Working in a
time of intense controversy in the denomination, we found ourselves
(as we often said quietly) dancing along a precipice, trying to force one
group (cocksure believers) to recognize historical context, while resisting another group (usually recently lapsed fundamentalists) who
wanted to reduce history to polemical debunking. Facing an audience
made up mostly of future elementary school teachers, Walter applied
to the history of his own group the same calm and sympathetic curiosity that informed his other historical work. Relentlessly sceptical of
claims of uniqueness or pure originality, he masterfully described what
Adventists owed to general Protestant values and history. Working
from small scraps of paper covered with cryptic notes, he brilliantly
extemporized, improvising like a jazz musician on an essay by Hugh
Trevor-Roper about the varieties of Protestant religious experience. By
the time he was finished, an alert student would be able to put Adventist
history into a broad perspective that extended well before 1844, and
included a range of millenarian, messianic, and puritan movements.
He counselled the rest of the teaching team, sometimes as many as
three or four colleagues, on framing complex, controversial issues,
always insisting on both integrity and prudence. He only became
impatient when a student refused to listen, stubbornly missing the

walter c. utt, my colleague xxv

nuances of our presentations. (Indeed, although I was the junior member of the team, reputedly capable of rushing into any number of sensitive matters, I think I suffered fools more gladly than my mentor did.)
In any case, a scholar could hardly have asked for a group of students
more sure that ideas have consequences, that getting the facts right
really matters. Every time we taught the class, we had a wonderfully
relevant illustration of what sort of questions history could answer.
Our students also learned to think about the limitations of our discipline in weighing certain kinds of claims.
Such questions also came up, albeit without the same immediate
and intense implications, in the other classes we worked on together.
Although Walter and I did not teach together the capstone course for
majors called Philosophy of History, it felt like we were collaborators.
I followed immediately after him and employed the pattern he had created for a class that was one of his favourites. When he handed the
course over to me, I used much of the same assigned reading, for
example, with star billing going to E. H. Carrs What is History? Over
the years my students and I wrestled with Carrs thoroughly secular,
vaguely Marxist approach to history, thinking carefully about how an
historian could have the future in his bones, why Carr denied being a
determinist, and the usefulness of the political definition of objectivity used by this controversial historian of the Soviet Union. Along the
way, we learned to read the footnotes, and to listen to the other side of
the debate, including Carrs selected punching bagsIsaiah Berlin,
Herbert Butterfield, Louis Namier, and Karl Popper, and others. One
could argue that even after his death in1985, Walter was a silent partner in our classroom debates.
The course ended with a discussion of what was unique about
the history taught at Pacific Union College. Walter believed in a
Christian approach to history, but only if such an approach was defined
in terms of Christian assumptions about human nature, progress, and
the events affirmed in the creeds. He rejected any version of Christian
history that played Providence as the joker in the pack (as Carr put it)
or tried to assign the historian a special role as a sort of confidential
secretary to Prophecy(in Walters words). In his own teaching
and writing, he refused to promulgate intuitions or insights beyond
what the data will bear, believing that exaggeration would only lead
disillusioned students to discard any attempt to understand the purposes of God.

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eric anderson

We were formal partners in a course we dubbed Historiography,

but which might better have been labelled Great Historians. We asked
upper division students to read and discuss selected classic historians,
including, at one time or another, Thucydides, Gregory of Tours,
Edward Gibbon, Henry Adams, and Francis Parkman. Meeting often
in Walters living room, we asked students to think about historians
assumptions and biases. Could an historian rise above his patriotic or
religious or political commitments? we asked, and then passed around
the cookies. How did style and artistry shape what the historian had to
say? These issues could not have been remote for Walter, who was
about the same time attempting to write an accurate history of Pacific
Union College, including the recent years in which he had been a significant participant and had definite opinions about policies and policy
makers.
Walter was the right person to write the college history, for he was,
despite his reputation for independence and mocking candour, a man
appropriately described as institutional thinker. Unlike most of his
students and not a few of his colleagues, he saw beyond current leaders
and their personalities to the organic life of the institution. Most people on campus remembered his penetrating wit, his irreverent sense of
humour. Yet he practiced a certain kind of college and denominational
patriotism, thinking of the long term and ultimately putting the success of the institution above his private preferences and his personal
career. At times, he practiced the patience of a Huguenot. He assiduously supported the prerogatives of the executive office, even if the current occupant made ridiculous mistakes and he obeyed the writ of the
larger community. He longed for changeand reserved disobedience
for direct conflicts with Gods demands.
Walters approach to life, including his elegant wit, bore many marks
of the Age of Reason. Charmed by Bayle and Voltaire, he was in many
ways an Enlightenment man. He preferred to interpret crasez linfme
as an attack on superstition and corrupt religion, not Christianity
per se. He had a constitutional aversion to extremes and excess, cherishing the jocular definition of a fanatic as a person who does what
God would do if He had all the facts! He laughed when a crusading
liberal Adventist, dismissed him as a gradualist. The word was a
good description of my historical view and temperament, he thought.
On another occasion, he privately observed, I am inclined to wish to
weigh, balance, analyze, consider causations, etc., and this probably
prevents me from the fiery commitment I should have. He was uneasy

walter c. utt, my colleague xxvii

with what the eighteenth century called religious enthusiasmthat is,

a Christianity that was mystical or too emotional. He especially
loathed far-fetched conspiracy theories, which turned the untidy contingency and regular follies of history into an intelligently designed
plan of a few plotters. (One can easily image his reaction to The Da
Vinci Code or the other overheated novels of Dan Brown!)
In his lectures, letters, and conversations, he relished a tone of irony.
Like Gibbon, he enjoyed seeing the realities that dwelt behind artifice
and carefully crafted rhetoric. Zealots of all sorts exasperated him, but
he was seldom enraged. Yet despite this posture, he was a thorough
believer, intelligently defending his tradition, and distressed when students moved from thoughtful criticism to outright scepticism or, even
worse, wholehearted rejection of Christianity.
His embrace of the Enlightenment mentality was not unqualified, in
other words. He could well have rewritten to fit his situation Senator
Henry (Scoop) Jacksons famous credo: I am a liberal, but Im not a
damn fool. As teacher and scholar, Walter can be imagined saying:
I am a realist, but I am not a cynic.
I am a churchman, but I am not intolerant.
I relish questions, but I am not a relativist.
I love wit, but I am not flippant.

Most important of all for a teacher in a school like Pacific Union

College, he might well have said, I am a Seventh-day Adventist, but
I recognize the impact of history on me and those I love. I believebut
I am not afraid of studying the historical context of my own group.
With Gibbon he could aver:
The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as
she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable
mixture of error and corruption, which she contracted in a long residence upon earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

We must imagine all these statements delivered in Walters curious

combination of provocation and prudence, as he stood behind a lectern, or inched his way around campus with one or two canes. He was
a haemophiliac, suffering from recurring bleeding into his joints that
severely limited his mobilityand he laboured on a hilly campus with
few accommodations to his disability. His jaunty, hard-headed interpretation of human events flourished, in short, against a background
of continual personal pain.

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eric anderson

On the deepest level, Walter Utts virtues are what made a school like
Pacific Union College successful. He was stimulated by good questions, the lure of discovery, and the power of disciplined curiosity. He
gave several generations of students and colleagues a working model of
a Christian scholar. Unmoved by fads or self-promoters, he loved
learning for its own sake, knowing that instant relevance and shortterm practicality might get in the way of wisdommight, indeed be
truly irrelevant or useless. He was prepared to sacrifice and to work
alone. He believed in the time-honoured idea of searching for truth.
All these old-fashioned virtues, in turn, made other people, including
me, believe in a small, obscure, isolated college. The students (and others) who were truly educated by Walter Utt had to be ready to open
their minds, to submit themselves to an intellectual discipline, to defer
to a mentor.
In all this, Walter was a profound democrat, the opposite of an elitist. In the one episode of genuine elitism in PUCs history (in the
1950s), he was mostly a sceptic, opposed to setting admission standards too high. Assuming a few common sense limits, Walter did not
doubt the basic American commitment to mass education. On the
contrary, he really believed in the power of education to change
people.
A teacher cannot avoid wondering from time to time: Can education actually transform our students? Are our expectations too high,
our hopes of mastery and synthesis and autonomy simply unrealistic
for ordinary people? Are we too confident in our judgments of what is
important? Though he sometimes sounded like a pessimist, on such
questions he was a profound optimist.
On the small stage of a liberal arts college, my colleague Walter Utt
practiced all the values that informed his scholarship. He wasted nothing, it seemed, in three decades of teaching. Disciplined in the demanding world of an overloaded teacher, he mastered the art of synthesis
and summary. Thriving in a deeply religious environment, he learned
how to balance the competing demands of commitment and analysis.
More than anything else, the years at Pacific Union College showed
him the importance of explaining his specialized work to a wider audience. As a result, he approached the world of Claude Brousson, the
bellicose dove, with an appropriate mixture of irony, faith and realism.
Far from being a distraction or a detour, his life on Howell Mountain
was an ideal preparation for the real one.

CHAPTER ONE

The Huguenots and the experience of exile

(sixteenth to twentieth centuries): History,
memory and transnationalism
D. J. B. Trim
This book is concerned with the interplay of history and memory in
transnational context. The studies that follow explore, using different
approaches and a range of different sources, the role of history and
memory in shaping a particular transnational community: that of the
Huguenots.
Huguenot was the term given in sixteenth-century France to adherents of John Calvin, though they characteristically called their confession not Calvinism but rather the Reformed religion (la religion
rforme). Always a minority, the Huguenots were subject to sustained
persecution by the Roman Catholic majority in France: episodically in
the late-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth centuries, then continually in
the late seventeenth century. Oppression was both mental and physical: Huguenots were for example officially required to call their faith
the so-called reformed religion (la religion prtendu reforme); and
their persons suffered from both legal sanctions and communal violence, as well as appalling mass killings that blurred the distinction
between state and popular action, such as the infamous St Bartholomews
massacre (1572), in which the dead numbered in the thousands. The
Edict of Nantes (1598), the work of Henri IV, extended liberty of conscience and limited liberty of worship and organisation to the French
Reformed Churches, but the tolerationist framework erected in 1598
was gradually eroded over the seventeenth century. The so-called
reformed religion was formally suppressed in France by Louis XIV,
whose Edict of Fontainebleau (1685) revoked the Edict of Nantes; to be
a Protestant was thereafter illegal in France until the French Revolution
when Calvinists re-emerged after a century of secrecy. Members of the
French Reformed Church of the nineteenth century and after increasingly reserved the term Huguenot for their ancestors, rather than

d. j. b. trim

using it for themselves. In a sense, then Huguenots no longer existed in

France after c.1700; however, thanks to a mass departure, Huguenots
survived in several European countries and overseas colonies. Thus,
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes resulted in the destruction of
Reformed organization in France, but not in the extinction of the
Huguenots.
Waves of emigration from France had taken place in the late sixteenth century and then again in the 1670s and early 1680s, but from
1685 there was a huge expansion and acceleration in flight to sympathetic countries, which collectively the Huguenots called the Refuge
(le refuge)the origins of the modern term refugee.1 Protestants who
remained in France were driven underground, part of what they
dubbed the church of the desert (lglise du dsert) due to the necessity
of holding its meetings in wilderness areas; as early as the late-
seventeenth century le dsert was contrasted with le refuge. For those in
the desert, the Revocation was a calamity, since practicing their faith
could mean fines, imprisonment or death; Protestantism in France was
literally in the wilderness for a hundred years. Yet in the Refuge,
Huguenots could survive and thrive. Surely the most significant consequence of the suppression of Protestantism in France was the creation
of an extraordinary, truly global diaspora.2 Huguenot settlements were
established in four of the seven United Provinces of the Netherlands
(Friesland, Groningen, Zeeland and Holland) and in the Dutch republics recently founded colony in the Cape of Good Hope; in England,
Ireland, and the British colonies in America, especially South Carolina
and New York; in Vaud and Geneva (in Switzerland); in Germany
primarily in BrandenburgPrussia, but also in Wrttemberg, Baden

Rather than a neologism, it was coined in the 1680s: Bernard Cottret, The
Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement c. 15501700, trans. Peregrine and
Adriana Stevenson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press/Paris: Editions de la
Maison des sciences de lhomme, 1991), 2.
2
As Bertrand Van Ruymbeke argues, although until recently the Huguenot mass
migration was not called a diaspora or included in diaspora studies the Refuge
undeniably belongs to the Jewish diasporic paradigm: Minority Survival: The
Huguenot Paradigm in France and the Diaspora, in Van Ruymbeke and Randy
J. Sparks (eds.), Memory and Identity: The Huguenots in France and the Atlantic
Diaspora (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), 18 n.2. Cf. Eckhart
Birnstiel with Chrystel Bernat (eds.), La Diaspora des Huguenots: les rfugis protestants de France et leur dispersion dans le monde (XVIeXVIIe sicles), Vie des Huguenots,
17 (Paris: Champion, 2001).
1

the huguenots and the experience of exile3

and Hesse; while some individuals went as far as Poland, Sweden and
Russia.3
The Huguenot diaspora was greatly influenced initially by its transnational nature, but as scholars increasingly recognise it was also significantly shaped, over the longue dure, by the interplay of history and
memory.4 These three factorstransnationalism, history, and memoryare the subject of this book, which illustrates how they and the
interplay between them fashioned the ethnic Huguenot identity over
several generations. They moulded the self-conceptualisation and selfunderstanding of French Calvinist migrs and their descendants, and
additionally shaped how Huguenots were perceived and received by
their host communities, both during the original waves of emigration
and over subsequent decades and centuries. The transnational natureof
the Huguenot ethnie5 diminished over time, yet while Huguenots gradually assimilated into host communities, some sense of Huguenot
identity was generally preserved in most countries where Huguenot
refugees settled; even when the French language was no longer used
and distinctive cultural practices had vanished, that identity was
(indeed, is) still expressed in art, literature, drama, and genealogical
and historical research.
Important reasons why a sense of Huguenot identity persisted
are the shared memory of historical events, and the fact that, relatively
quickly, to be a Huguenot did not necessarily mean being French.

3
For an overview of the approximate distribution of refugees during Louis XIVs
reign see map 1 in Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of
the Huguenots in Britain (2nd edn, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 31.
4
Examples of studies of history and memory from Huguenot perspectives include
the collection edited by Van Ruymbeke and Sparks, Memory and Identity; Christian
Jouhaud, Camisards! We Were Camisards! Remembrance and the Ruining of
Remembrance through the Production of Historical Absences, History and Memory
21 (Spring/ Summer 2009), 524; and the conference of the Association suisse pour
lhistoire du Refuge Huguenot at Ascona in Oct. 2010, Histoire, mmoire et identits
en mutation: Les huguenots en France et en diaspora (XVIeXXIe sicles) [http://
www.unige.ch/ihr/huguenots2010.html]. For some potential pitfalls in the scholarly
study of memory see Alon Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural History:
Problems of Method, AHR 102 (Dec. 1997), 13861403.
5
The very helpful term coined by Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations
(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), for an ethnic community, defined as human populations with shared ancestry myths, histories and cultures, having an association with a
specific territory and a sense of solidarity (ibid. 32, emphasis suppliedthe Huguenot
retained their identification with France long after having, as noted above, become an
essentially migr community).

d. j. b. trim

Instead it meant being a member of a community that, despite s peaking

a different language than the indigenous hosts, shared (or at least
approximated) its confessional allegiance and had suffered as a result,
and that moreover transcended borders so that its members, while not
necessarily us, were also not necessarily other. Knowledge of these
points persisted in the collective memory of the host communities in
le refuge, as well as of Huguenot refugees. As a result, the latter could
readily be absorbed into the former. Rather than only being strangers
in strange lands, Huguenots had multiple identities they could adopt,
facilitating their adaptation and assimilation: skilled craftsmen and
women, who added to the prosperity of their host community; active
citizens of the republic of letters; suffering saints and martyrs, deserving of sympathy; and comrades-at-arms in a war against Catholic tyranny. Chameleon-like, members of Huguenot communities, exploiting
empathy (or at least relative lack of suspicion and hostility), could take
on such personae and identities as best suited their ends. Yet this could
engender difficulties among the Huguenot community by raising questions as to who its members really were. Huguenot identity was thus
innately bound up with the Huguenots history, the transnational
nature of their diaspora, and the memories they and others preserved
of their experiences. Ultimately, however, the traumatic shared experience of persecution, forced emigration, and the contested process of
integration, all helped to ensure that a memory of being Huguenot
endured even when most signifiers of ethnic distinctiveness had been
eroded.
The chapters that follow are separate but overlapping case studies.
They focus chiefly, though not entirely, on the history of Huguenot
migr communities and the Huguenot experience in exile, rather
than on the history of the Reformed religion and its adherents within
France. In particular they examine the ways in which the Huguenot
history in France, and knowledge thereof, both among French
Calvinists and foreigners, affected the way Huguenot emigrants interacted with host communities, the way they adjusted and assimilated,
and the way, eventually, their history was written and the uses to which
it was put.
In this book history and memory are each explored in two ways or in
two senses. The workings of memory, in particular, are analysed in
more detail, below, but the twin pair of different usages for history and
memory can be summarised as follows (and is set out, including the

the huguenots and the experience of exile5

interrelationships between them in schematic form in figure 1, which

shows the probable chronological progression). The essays in this book
explore the actual historical experience of the Huguenots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centurieswhat might be termed the Huguenot
heritage;6 but they also consider the shaping of the written record, or
historiography, of that heritage, which scholars began to construct in
the nineteenth century, though drawing on literary works, intended
as histories, that were written soon after the events they describe. But
the chapters in this book are also concerned with both the memoriesand the group-memory of that heritage: the first are actual remembrances of events (i.e. of history in the first sense) by those who
personally experienced them, whether recalled individually or mutually; the second is the collective concern of a group for its past,
expressed in the preservation and transmission through generations,
of what started as memories, but becomes common memory of the
shared heritage.

History I
(Historical events)

Memory I
Personal memories

Memory I
Collective memories

Memory II
Collective memory

History II
Historiography

Figure 1. Relationship between different types of history and memory

The title of Gwynns seminal Huguenot Heritage.

d. j. b. trim
Overview of Contents

The chapters that follow are arranged in roughly chronological order;

they begin in the late sixteenth century and move to the nineteenth
century. Some are studies of Huguenot history (in the first sense) and
memory, examining the Huguenots role in and experience of key historical episodes, as well as the ways in which collective memory of
those episodes (including early histories, in the second sense) shaped
responses to Huguenot migrs (chapters 26). Other essays explore
Huguenot history (again, in the first sense) in transnational context
(chapters 68). The final three chapters (911), while written by historians rather than sociologists on episodes in the past, are primarily on
memory, but are also on history in the second sense, exploring how a
Huguenot identity was preserved, re-shaped, and times created, both
by the descendants of the original Huguenots and among broader communities into which they had gradually assimilated, and how the collective memory of the Huguenot past that had emerged among European
and American Protestants played a critical role in the identity-formation
process and in the development of historiographical accounts.
Thus, the emphasis of the volume is on the experience of Huguenots
in England (chapters 35, 78, 10). This concentration of chapters
reflects Robin Gwynns recent argument that, contrary to the presumptions of previous scholars, by 1700 England had emerged as [a] more
significant centre for Huguenots than the Netherlands (although
unquestionably the Dutch Republic attracted great numbers of refugees immediately after the Revocation), and his demonstration that
London was the largest single centre of Huguenot population.7 But
the Huguenot diaspora was wider than England and in this volume
consideration is also given to the Huguenots experience as refugees
in three other significant foreign milieus (chapters 79): respectively
the Reformed United Provinces of the Netherlands, Lutheran and
Reformed principalities in Germany, and the Reformed (and Frenchspeaking) Pays de Vaud in Switzerland. In addition, three other chapters (2, 6, 11) look at particular aspects of the Huguenot experience
that significantly shaped their identity and the way they were regarded
and remembered: the St. Bartholomews Day massacre; their military
7
See Gwynn, Conformity, esp. 2526, 3941; cf. Willem Frijhoff, Uncertain
Brotherhood: The Huguenots in the Dutch Republic, in Van Ruymbeke and Sparks,
Memory and Identity, 12871, esp. 13435.

the huguenots and the experience of exile7

service beyond France; and their place in the writings of North

American historians and theological controversialists.
Beyond the three fundamental issues (history, memory, transnationalism) and their interplay, there are six broad themes which chapters explore. The first is the experience of the Huguenots as an ethnic
and confessional minority in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (chapters 4, 5, 10); and, second, in particular, their role,
and the role of memories of their sufferings, in debates over ecclesiastical policy and religious toleration in Great Britain (chapters 25). The
third is the way political and intellectual debates in late-seventeenthand early eighteenth-century Great Britain, Hanover, and the Dutch
Republic, were shaped not only by concern about the fate of Frances
Protestants, but also by the actions and writings of prominent Hugue
nots: drawing on their transnational networks, they influenced foreignand military policy-making, and contributed significantly to the
increasingly influential discourse of toleration (chapters 3, 6, 7, 8).
Fourth is the role, of both the Huguenots and those debating how they
should be received, in the emergence of the nascent public sphere in
Britain and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century and early
eighteenth century (chapters 3, 4, 7, 8).8 Fifth is the cultural and social
impact of Huguenot exiles in northern Germany, western Switzerland,
and Great Britain, during the late-seventeenth, eighteenth, and earlynineteenth, centuries; these highlight the necessity of including a local
dimension to Huguenot studies, since local contexts shaped the wider
story of international experience and encounter (chapters 810). Sixth
is the broader social, cultural and particularly literary impact of the

8
For the importance of public opinion and print debate in this period, especially in
Britain, see Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early
Modern England, Journal of British Studies 45 (April 2006), 270292; cf. Judith
Pollmann and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Public Opinion and Changing Identities in the
Early Modern Netherlands: Essays in Honour of Alastair Duke, Studies in Medieval and
Reformation Traditions 121 (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2007), for its importance in the
Low Countries. The role of Huguenots in the emergent public sphere is beginning
to be explored by scholars: e.g., Itamar Raban, The Newspaper The Post Man and
its Editor, Jean Lespinasse de Fonvive, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to Citizens,
397403; Simon Harvey and Elizabeth Grist, The Rainbow Coffee House and the
Exchange of Ideas in Early Eighteenth-century England, in Dunan-Page, Religious
Culture, 16372; Andrew Thompson, The Protestant Interest and the History of
Humanitarian Intervention, c.1685c.1756, in Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim (eds.),
Humanitarian interventiona history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 6788.

d. j. b. trim

Huguenots, their persecutions, and emigrations, in Britain, France,

and the United States of America, from the mid-nineteenth century to
the late twentieth century (chapters 1, 10, 11).
Collectively, the essays suggest that the economic prosperity and
access to the upper ranks of society achieved by French Protestant
migrs in many countries derived not only from rapid acculturationand entrance into mainstream circles of the host society, but also
(at least for some) from cultivating strong social networks across
national borders. Some studies of modern immigration and religion
seem to take for granted that, once immigrants have arrived, then, if
they if they are able to, they will settle permanently and thereafter
undergo a process of assimilation and acculturation slow, perhaps,
but steady and almost inescapable.9 To some extent this pattern does
describe Calvinist emigrants from France; however, for several generations, at least until the Reformed Church in France was definitively
driven into the desert and there was no hope of a change of heart by
the Bourbon monarchy, Huguenots retained a keen interest in the fate
of their literal and figurative brethren and sisters, both in France and
in the diaspora, as well as a willingness to act on behalf of confrres
regardless of where they were. This meant that, even though probably
many Huguenots concentrated on making new lives for themselves in
new lands, certainly many others faced outwards as well as inwards;
their focus was on the Huguenot community, whether in the particular
national context or the general transnational context, as well as on
integration and assimilation.
This had consequences for transplanted French Calvinists. And the
following chapters additionally indicate that one of the most significant and divisive issues facing those who had emigrated to the lands of
The Refuge was their own identity: were refugees primarily subjects
of the House of Bourbon? Frenchmen and women (with enduring loyalties to France but not necessarily its crown)? Persecuted Protestants?
Productive members of their host communities? Or, as eventually
became the case, were they primarily Huguenots? Because of the
importance of this issue of identity, it will be considered explicitly in

9
Cf. e.g., Milton M. Gordon, Assimilation in American Life: The Role of Race,
Religion, and National Origins (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964); Alejandro
Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landolt, The Study of Transnationalism: Pitfalls
and Promise of an Emergent Research Field, Ethnic and Racial Studies 22 (1999), 228.

the huguenots and the experience of exile9

the remainder of this introductory chapter. First, however, three other

issues will be explored; transnationalism; the meaning and workings
of memory; and the way it relates to history. Each will be considered in more detail, as these were so formative in the construction
of identity.
Transnationalism
The Huguenots are an extraordinary and early example of the
phenomenon of a transnational community linking immigrant
groups across borders, made up of different national or local communities, each composed of people living dual lives.10 Members of such
communities often (though not inevitably) speak two or more languages and are consciously members of both their host community
and the local representation of their transnational community.
Transnational activity can be economic, political, socio-cultural
and religious. There are the economic initiatives of transnational
entrepreneurs who mobilize their contracts across borders in search
of suppliers, capital and markets, such as the Huguenot merchants
who have been examined by a number of scholars.11 There are also the
political activities of officials, functionaries, immigrant community
leaders, and, in the early modern period, polemicists, who seek power
or influence in either their original or their host countries.12 There
are the manifold socio-cultural enterprises oriented towards the

Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, Transnationalism, 217.

Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, Transnationalism, 221; see e.g., Herbert Lthy, La
Banque Protestante en France de la Rvocation de ldit de Nantes la Rvolution,
vol. I, Dispersion et regroupement (16851730), cole Pratique des Hautes tudesVIe
Section, Affaires et gens daffaires, 9 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1959); F. M. Crouzet,
Walloons, Huguenots and the Bank of England, HSP 25:2 (1990), J. F. Bosher,
Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century,
WMQ, 3rd series, 52 (1995), 77100; Ole P. Grell, Merchants and Ministers: The
Foundations of International Calvinism, in Grell, Calvinist Exiles in Tudor and Stuart
England (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1996), 98119; Robin Gwynn, The Huguenots
in Britain, the Protestant International and the Defeat of Louis XIV, in Vigne &
Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 41418; R. C. Nash, Huguenot Merchants and the
Development of South Carolinas Slave-Plantation and Atlantic Trading Economy,
16801775, in Van Ruymbeke and Sparks, Memory and Identity, 20840; and cf. chapter 4, by Lisa Diller, below.
12
Cf. Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, Transnationalism, 221; this is the subject of
chapters 7 and 8, by David Onnekink and Andrew Thompson, below.
10
11

10

d. j. b. trim

reinforcement of a national identity abroad or the collective enjoyment

of [common] cultural events and goods.13
Last, and insufficiently recognized in studies of modern transnationalism, but significant in the Huguenot context, are the activities of
theologians, episcopal and synodal officials, scholars, andat least
among the Huguenotsprophets.14 Such men (and occasionally
women and children) sought to build or to maintain a common set of
theological interpretations and a common set of values and behaviours, rooted in the homeland and often in the face of divergent (even
when similar) ecclesiological, spiritual and liturgical praxis in the host
nation.15
Portes, Guarnizo and Landolt, Transnationalism, 221. Huguenot examples are
the activities of artists and craftsmen, many of whom crossed national borders: cf. e.g.
chapters 1217 (by Karen Hearn, Julia Marciari Alexander, Christine Riding, Eileen
Goodway, Tessa Murdoch and Natalie Rothstein) in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to
Citizens, 11771. Virtually all issues of HSP in recent years have carried at least one
article on such protagonists in cultural transnationalism. For a broader view of sociocultural international interchange, see chapter 9, by Vivienne Larminie, below (quotation at p. 261).
14
There is a wealth of scholarship on this area, though rarely from the perspective
of transnationalism. There are studies of a range of 16th- and 17th-cent. theological
and ecclesiastical leaders who operated across borders: e.g., chapters 24 (by Carrie
A. Euler, Christoph Strohm, Jeannine E. Olson) in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to
Citizens, 1747; Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove; Paula Wheeler Carlo, The Huguenot
Soul: The Calvinism of Reverend Louis Rou, in Dunan-Page, Religious Culture, 10919;
Jonathan Israel, Group Identity and Opinion among the Huguenot Diaspora and the
Challenge of Pierre Bayles Toleration Theory (16851706), in Pollmann and Spicer,
Public Opinion and Changing Identities, 27993; cf. chapter 9, by Larminie, below; cf.
also Anthony Milton (ed.), The British Delegation and the Synod of Dort (16181619),
Church of England Record Society, 13 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005),
Introduction, xviilv, and the apparatus criticus, passim, which illuminate the role that
ecclesiastical statesmen played in the Synod of Dort, a key episode in 17th-cent.
Calvinism. On the Camisard Prophets and their influence in England and North
America, see Hillel Schwartz, The French Prophets: the History of a Millenarian Group
in Eighteenth-century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980);
Kenneth G. C. Newport, The Prophets and Early Methodism: Some New Evidence,
Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society 50 (1996), 12740; Terrie Dopp Aamodt,
Out of thee, O England, shall a bright star arise: Mother Ann Lee and the English
Origins of the Shakers in Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds), The Development of
Pluralism in Modern Britain and France (Oxford, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, New York,
etc: Peter Lang, 2007), 16988.
15
The issue of conformity was a particular challenge to Huguenots in Great Britain
and its colonies: this is the subject of chapter 5, by Robin Gwynn, below; cf. also
Gwynn, Conformity; Paula Wheeler Carlo, Anglican Conformity and Nonconformity
among the Huguenots of Colonial New York and Jane McKee, The Integration of the
Huguenots into the Irish Church: The Case of Peter Drelincourt, in Vigne & Littleton,
Strangers to Citizens, 31321, 44250; Andrew Spicer, A Place of refuge and sanctuary of a holy Temple: Exile Communities and the Stranger Churches, in Nigel Goose
13

the huguenots and the experience of exile11

Memory

As already observed, the studies that follow examine two forms of

memory. The first is what has been called the living experience of
memory; the second is the capacity of collective entities to preserve
and recall common memories, even after those who actually experienced them have died.16
Actual memories can be both individual and collectiveone of the
pioneers of memory studies, Maurice Halbwachs, stressed that there
are social frameworks for memory; it is to the degree that our individual thought places itself in these frameworks and participates in
this memory that it is capable of the art of recollection.17 The point
here is that memories are socially constructed rather than being autonomous. But this means they are also dynamic and fluid. They go
through a process of invention and appropriation.18 As various studies
of memory, including in early modern Europe, have emphasised, when
people ordered their memories of events into narratives they shared
with others, they were often influenced by the stories they had heard
others tell, the books and pamphlets they had read (including chronicles and near-contemporary narrative history), the paintings, broadsheets and plays they had seen, and the songs and ballads they had
heard sung. Thus, their process of remembrance incorporated not only
their own recollections, but also other peoples memories, and/or contemporary or later propaganda and polemic.19
There is a second kind of collective memory, however, separate from
actual memories of person experiencesit is rather the recurrence of
the past in collective consciousness, and the conservation by subsequent generations of the memories of those who experienced events.20

and Lien Luu (eds.), Immigrants in Tudor and early Stuart England (Brighton: Sussex
Academic Press, 2005), 91109; and Susanne Lachenicht, Differing Perceptions of the
Refuge? Huguenots in Ireland and Great Britain and Their Attitudes towards the
Governments Religious Policy (16601710), in Dunan-Page, Religious Culture, 4353.
16
Paul Ricur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David
Pellauer (London & Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 7, 124.
17
Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. Lewis A. Coser
(London & Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 38.
18
Confino, Collective Memory and Cultural History, 1393.
19
This is brought out well by, e.g., Judith Pollmann, Brabanters Do Fairly Resemble
Spaniards After All. Memory, Propaganda and Identity in the Twelve Years Truce, in
Pollmann and Spicer, Public Opinion and Changing Identities, 218.
20
Cf. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 39.

12

d. j. b. trim

In this second sense, memories are not first-hand recollections at all,

but instead are traditions. This kind of memory is, at its heart, how a
culture or community lives with or against its past, and it can be
expressed in multiple formsmost obviously in simple storytelling
about the past (an actual transmission, even while also a reshaping, of
original memories), but also in rituals, ceremonies, monuments and,
eventually, in the research and writing of history.21 It is therefore also
the way that the past is represented, both by and to the community,
shaping how the community sees and understands itself. The traditions that are preserved and perpetuated derived originally from personal reminiscences (subject, as these were, to varying degrees of
conscious or unconscious post-event shaping), which were irregularly
and informally gathered, and often collectively inchoate, but were then
transmitted down the generations.
All this means that collective memory, like collective memories, is
dynamic. While the living reminiscences from which it derives have
passed away, much of what they encompassed lives on as collective or
group-memory; and this form of memory is retained and recalled by
living societies. It remains in permanent evolution, open to the dialectic of remembering and forgetting vulnerable to manipulation
and appropriation, susceptible to being long dormant and periodically
revived.22 There is a danger that when, as often happens, traditions are
invented to serve group purposes, memory will also, in a sense, be
invented.23 A recent study of the Huguenots and memory suggests that
the discourse of remembrance not only produces powerful effects of
the presence of the past but at the same time obscures the very past on
which it is based.24 Group memory, then, is dynamic, evolving, and
enormously influentialnot least in generating a sense of identity, and
to this we shall return later.
In sum, memory is both actual remembrance of the events that
are history (in its first sense) by people who lived through them,

21
Michael S. Roth, Remembering Forgetting: Maladies de la Mmoire in
Nineteenth-century France, Representations, no. 26, Special Issue: Memory and
Counter-Memory (Spring 1989), 49.
22
Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mmoire, Represen
tations, no. 26, Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory (Spring 1989), 8.
23
The classic work is Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds.), The Invention of
Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
24
Jouhaud, Camisards, 6.

the huguenots and the experience of exile13

including the way their memories were shaped, both consciously and
subconsciously; but it is also the representation of those events and
their construction as a shared cultural knowledge by subsequent
generations.
This second form of memory, group memory, collectively produced
and retained, is an example of what scholars of memory call ethnic
memory, the sociological function of which is to reproduce certain
behaviours in societies.25 Nations and ethnies emphasise common historical experiences and shared memories, capturing them and preserving them and making them serve the purpose of the group. Thus,
collective memory is not only a conquest, it is also an instrument and
objective of power.26 Arguably, indeed, without it, no sense of a distinct
ethnic identity can exist: as Anthony Smith argues, there can be no
identity without memory (albeit selective), no collective purpose without myth, and identity and purpose are necessary elements of the
very concept of an ethnic community. An ethnie must have an
identity and hence myths and memories.27 Indeed, without memory, there can be no ethnicity.28 Collective memory is even more
important in a case (such as that of the Huguenots), when an ethnie
and its homeland are separated, perhaps by external power; the
association between the community and its lost homeland becomes
an essential part of the collective memory and identity of the
community.29
Thus, memory in its second sense is a primary source of the constituent myths of ethnies and nationsand thus of ethnic and national
identity. It is also, however, inevitably a source for historiography (history in the second sense), which it is also likely to influence, for ultimately, history, like memory, is a representation of the past.30 History
can therefore also be a source of, or vehicle for, myth and identity; yet
it can equally be a means of their dissolution. Accordingly, before we
examine the role of memory in shaping Huguenot identity, it is important to consider the relationship of history and memory.

See Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth
Claman (New York & Oxford: Columbia University Press, 1992), 53, 55.
26
Le Goff, History and Memory, 98.
27
See Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, 2.
28
Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, 87.
29
Smith, Ethnic Origins of Nations, 29.
30
Nora, Between Memory and History, 8.
25

14

d. j. b. trim
Memory and History

In both recording and representing the past, memory and historiography serve similar functions (and face similar constraints).31 However,
history and memory are far from being synonymous: some scholars
have explicitly argued for a difference between history and popular
memory; contended that history and memory are in fundamental
opposition; or characterised them as two very different phenomena.32
In fact, while the two are rightly regarded as distinct, there is often
considerable overlap between them.
In addition to the social construction of memories, those who experienced events might read chronicles or contemporary histories, and
later generations read early narrative histories. Thus, the shaping both
of memories and of collective memory reflected historical processes
and sometimes the work of historianseven while genuine, adapted
and purported memories, and representations, of historical events
shaped attitudes to them and thus also influenced the writing of
history.
Given this and given what we have seen about the role of story,
ritual, monument and representation (all of which embody a narrative), it is clear that, in describing, representing and interpreting the
past, the storyteller and the historian are points on a continuum, not
necessarily dichotomies. Both transmit knowledge of a collective heritage to a nation or ethnie; and both attempt to make it understandable
to an audience and significant for them. Both, in short, attempt to convey meaning.
At first the traditions of group-memory serve instead of history;
then for a time they co-exist alongside, and supplement, scholarly histories. However, collective memory usually breaks down, eventually, as
Pierre Nora, the French scholar of memory and place, argues; and after
its collapse, history, as written and reconstructed by historians, takes
its place as the authoritative source of information. Yet for many

Cf. Le Goff, History and Memory, 18.

Nora, Between Memory and History, 8; Eric Hobsbawm, Introduction:
Inventing Traditions, in Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, 13; Cornelius
Holtorf, Monumental Past: The Life-histories of Megalithic Monuments in MecklenburgVorpommern (Germany), Electronic monograph (University of Toronto: Centre for
Instructional Technology Development, 20022008; http://hdl.handle.net/1807/245),
2.8 (History and Memory) [https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/citd/holtorf/2.8.html].
31
32

the huguenots and the experience of exile15

cultures, especially pre- or quasi-literate ones, up to that point of commemorative breakdown, it is group memory, rather than the embodied
research of scholars, that is the chief vehicle for knowledge of the collective heritage.33 However, one can go further: arguably, only infrequently is memory truly replaced entirely by historiography, for a
collective consciousness of the groups past endures, even when its
contours are themselves shaped by the findings and arguments of
historians.34
Furthermore, historians have sometimes treated their task as in
effect a search for sources that buttress existing collective memory and
the myths of origins it generates. This has the potential to pervert an
historians findings from an abstract ideal of detached scholarship into
semi-fiction.35 Alternatively, if historians endorse the group-memory
of one section of nation or ethnie, it may even make historiography, for
a time, less reliable than the collective memory of other groups within
the national or ethnic community.36 For example, Eric Hobsbawm
asserts of the nineteenth century (which, as we shall see, witnessed a
renaissance of interest in the Huguenots and the first modern histories
of them), that the history which became part of the fund of knowledge
or the ideology of nation, state or movement is not what has actually
been preserved in popular memory, but what has been selected, written, pictured, popularized and institutionalized by those whose function it is to do so.37 Nevertheless, in such cases historians had not
repudiated memory but privileged one form of collective memory over
another.
All in all, to picture history and memory as dichotomous is surely to
exaggerate, since the two overlap to a great extent; even so, the potential for tension between them is undeniably great. The most obvious
examples are when individual memories, or group memory, declare
the reality of past events to be one thingbut history indicates that

Cf. Nora, Between Memory and History, 78.

Having attended social gatherings of modern French Protestants and descendants of Huguenot emigrants to Britain, the Netherlands, and the United States, I would
say that a fairly clear and reasonably consistent view of French Protestant history is
unquestionably still current; it is conserved and continued in conversation and story
telling. It reflects recent historical scholarship (of which many present-day Huguenots
are keen consumers), but it seems also to perpetuate older traditions.
35
Hobsbawm, Inventing Traditions, 7.
36
Cf. Nora, Between Memory and History, 8.
37
Hobsbawm, Inventing Traditions, 13.
33
34

16

d. j. b. trim

reality to be otherwise, based inevitably to some extent on memory,

but usually on a range of memories, many recalled almost immediately
and thus less subject to distortion by time or by social interactions
(or construction). In addition to these differences as to vnementielle
actuality, there can also be differences over moral qualities: group
memory can characterise the groups essential nature in certain terms,
whereas history may suggest it is at the least more nuanced, if not actually of a rather different character altogether. Memory can easily
mythologise; however, as a leading historian of eighteenth-century
France astutely observes, often self-proclaimed commonsense realists
[who] have gleefully debunked myths have underestimated the
role of myth as a historical force in its own right.38 Memory does not
simply equate to myth, and myth can be perpetuated and passed on in
history, because all historians are influenced, albeit to different extents,
by their own groups collective memory, which shapes their underlying
presumptions, and by the group-memory of those they investigate,
since the latter will inevitably be reflected in the sources historians
examine.
Nevertheless, history more often problematises than supports
group-memory and myth, and it has a greater potential than memory
to dissolve myth. Formal academic history is at its heart a critical discourse, as Nora observed; analysis and criticism are integral parts of
what an academic historian does, and achieving as much factual accuracy as possible is integral; his or her avowed objective is not to endorse
or underpin the collective self-understanding of a group, whereas that
is one of the story-tellers primary purposes and functions.39 Indeed,
whereas history can generate identity it can also dissolve it; but memory is regularly a primary constituent of identity, and, almost inevitably, is innately intertwined with it.
Huguenot Memory and Huguenot Identity
Jacques Le Goff neatly encapsulates what we have seen already:
Memory is an essential element of collective identity.40 From a very

38
David A. Bell, The First Total War: Napoleons Europe and the Birth of Modern
Warfare (London: Bloomsbury, 2008), 120.
39
Nora, Between Memory and History, 9.
40
Le Goff, History and Memory, 98.

the huguenots and the experience of exile17

early stage, the Huguenots had a powerful sense of the importance of

remembrance, and were shaped by their memories.
Even in the sixteenth century the Huguenots carefully, consciously
exercised memory, treasuring the (often violent) events of their past as
warnings for the future, or as encouragements. For example, the
Huguenots of central-western France, around La Rochelle, regularly
inscribed structures that had been destroyed by royal armies (and
sometimes been reconstructed, sometimes not), with long texts or
short comments, commemorating the circumstances of destruction,
so that they would not be forgotten; some of these were tablets or
plaques placed by civic authorities, but others were graffiti, testament
to the fact that memory was unofficial as well as official.41
In opposition to this trend was a widespread awareness, among the
elites on both sides, of the necessity of oubliance (forgetting) if peace
was to be established in France. As Philip Benedict observes, in
his penetrating study of the instruments of social memory in earlymodern France:
Every edict of pacification from 1563 forward included provisions
instructing the French to consider the memory of all that has occurred
on both sides since the troubles began in our kingdom to be to be
snuffed out and set aside as if they had never happened. The 1576 and
1577 peaces of Beaulieu and Bergerac added articles forbidding processions to be held because of St Bartholomews day, or other events that
might revive the memory of the troubles.42

Despite these strictures, the memory of nearly forty years of sustained

military and communal violence could not easily be erased, even at the
urging of leaders of both confessions, buttressed by the power of the
crownespecially because Catholics were as keen to commemorate as
Protestants.
In many cities, to be sure, both sides were, in effect, willing to forget; yet as Benedict argues, the mirroring tales of the true faiths
victimization or near-victimization by its seditious and violent confessionalother were widely disseminated and very influential. A number
of large, predominantly Catholic cities staged major annual rituals
See examples in Pierre Boismorand, Freddy Bossy and Denis Vatinel (eds.),
Protestants dAunis, Saintonge et Angoumois (Paris: Le Crot vif, 1998), 7780.
42
Philip Benedict, Divided Memories? Historical Calendars, Commemorative
Processions and the Recollection of the Wars of Religion during the Ancien Rgime,
French History, 22 (2008), 384.
41

18

d. j. b. trim

recalling how the city and its saints and relics had once narrowly
escaped falling into the clutches of violent Huguenot hagiomachs.
In contrast, a large number of Huguenot texts drew particular attention to the many massacres of which the Protestants were victims
and to the many battles Henri IV had to win in order to [establish]
his legitimate rights. As a result of this bi-partisan determination to
commemorate: Notwithstanding the commandment of oubliance, the
Wars of Religion continued to cast a long shadow over the subsequent
centuries.43
In exile, the Huguenots were determined to perpetuate the memory
of their persecution, emigration, and associated ordeals. Several chapters in this book explore this process but it is worth highlighting two
important socio-cultural structures that facilitated the conservation
and transmission of memory of the Huguenot heritage. First was
French Protestants very active engagement with the essentially new
business of journalism. As scholars have long recognised, very often
refugees directed their first conspicuous energy to the writing of
pamphlets. However, it was not only political newspapers [which]
grew up under refugee auspices; so, too, did journals devoted to science and letters.44 This engagement with the public sphere thus provided one important framework for the preservation and perpetuation
of memories and memory among the Huguenots; another was the
family. As Bertrand Van Ruymbeke argues: the familial nature of
Huguenot memory, wrongly perceived as a structural weakness, actually constituted its greatest strength. Families, genealogists, and amateur historians preserved an embellished individual and collective
memory. Huguenot identity, in France and in the Refuge, is rooted
in the gray area where memory and history overlap.45
It is clear, then, that Huguenots undoubtedly valued memory, for
the first and second generations of migrs fought against the voluntary or involuntary loss, of collective memory among peoples that can,
as Le Goff observes, cause serious problems of collective identity.46
Early-modern Huguenots would not have put the matter in those

Benedict, Divided Memories, 4023.

Reginald Lane Poole, A History of the Huguenots of the Dispersion at the Recall of
the Edict of Nantes (London: Macmillan & Co., 1880), 176, 177; cf. sources cited in n.8,
above and chapter 7, by Onnekink, below.
45
Van Ruymbeke, Minority Survival, 1718.
46
Le Goff, History and Memory, 53.
43
44

the huguenots and the experience of exile19

terms, but they do seem to have been well aware of the danger of losing
their identity.
The Huguenot identity, in France, the loss of which confronted migrs in le Refuge, was shaped not only by religious, but also by cultural,
economic and social factors, though these latter were themselves
shaped by the reality that the Huguenots were a religious minority.
Gallican Calvinism was not distinctive in terms of its doctrines, its
ecclesiology, or its attitudes towards discipline and the intersection of
church and society. Yet even in global Calvinist terms there were certain traits that were more marked in France than elsewhere, while its
Reformed attributes made it distinctive in French termsand also to
some extent in English terms. In England, there were Calvinist communities (of the godly as they dubbed themselves, or Puritans as others called them) but English Calvinists were, like Huguenots, a
minority. Thus, the Calvinist nature of Huguenot culture laid the seeds
both for a warm welcome and for a degree of scepticism, if not hostility, when French Protestants took refuge in foreign countries.
Huguenots were marked by their distinctive Reformed church
organizationeach congregation was governed by a consistory of
the pastor and elders, whose agents were the deacons; and each church
was represented at a colloquy or synod that met periodically to discuss
matters of mutual concern. The first Huguenot migrs to England
took this organisation with them (even forming what was, in effect, a
colloquy with the Italian and Dutch Churches of London, which also
were organised on Reformed lines).47 Whether this Calvinist ecclesiology had to be preserved became a key issue facing Huguenots in
England, one explored by Robin Gwynn in chapter 5. One of the
consistorys main purposes was to maintain the spiritual discipline
that was integral to Reformed Protestantism: moral lapses would be
judged by the elders, who imposed appropriate punishmentsranging
from public penance, fines or suspension from communion, to theulti
mate sanction of expulsion. This collective communal self-discipline
was alien to other Protestants, much less Catholics. The consistory
was, however, an instrument of support as well as of constraint. It coordinated poor relief, so that indigent Calvinists could count on institutionalised assistance, rather than relying on personal inclination to
47
See O. Boersma and A. J. Jelsma (eds.), Unity in Multiformity: The Minutes of the
Coetus of London, 1575, and the Consistory Minutes of the Italian Church of London,
15701591, HSQS, LIX (1997).

20

d. j. b. trim

charity, as with other Protestants. Other traits were not institutionally

created, but were significant. Although the extent to which Calvinists
wore sombre clothing has been exaggerated, they were more likely,
especially in the seventeenth century, to dress in black and less likely to
adopt particularly riotous dress and adornment. Marriage arrangements probably allowed for a greater emphasis on personal choice, as
opposed to arranged marriages, than among contemporary French
Catholics, but in any case marriage was largely endogamous, helping
to preserve distinctive characteristics.
These included unique naming patterns. As part of his attack on the
cult of Saints, Calvin forbade his followers to bestow saints names on
their children; while this was a prohibition not universally obeyed
among Calvinists, it was followed very widely.48 The Huguenots were
probably the strictest in their rejection of traditional saints names.
Philip Benedicts study of Rouen shows that among the five most popular names in Protestant baptismal registers were, for boys, Abraham,
Isaac and Daniel and, for girls, Judith and Saranames not used in
France previously, save among Jews. Now they were introduced into
the mainstream population. As Benedict observes: Saints names were
overwhelmingly Catholic, Old Testament names predominantly
Protestant, and the names of the apostles and other New Testament
figures cut across confessional lines. Strikingly, too, the percentage of
Old Testament names among the Protestant children in Rouen was
over 20 per cent higher than the percentage of such names bestowed
on infants in Geneva, the birthplace and stronghold of Calvinism. This
surely reflects the difference between a minority reformed congregation whose members had all joined out of conviction and a community
where the faith was imposed on all by law.49
All this meant that a Huguenot church really was a community,
rather than just a group of people sharing common doctrines and
liturgical practices. First, consistory, discipline and poor relief all
systematically directed the attention of Huguenots to their own
48
Philip Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1981), 105; see Guido Marnef, The Changing Face of Calvinism in
Antwerp, 15501585, in Andrew Pettegree, Alastair Duke and Gillian Lewis (eds.),
Calvinism in Europe 15401620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994),
15556; cf. Nicholas Tyacke, Popular Puritan Mentality in Late Elizabethan England,
in Peter Clark, Alan G. R. Smith and Tyacke (eds.), The English Commonwealth
15471640 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979), 92.
49
Benedict, Rouen during the Wars of Religion, 1056, 25758, 25660.

the huguenots and the experience of exile21

congregationthe nature of Reformed ecclesiology made French

Protestants likely to act communally. Second, all these characteristicsmade Huguenots stand out; so, too, as Harry Leonard stresses in
chapter 2, did their refusal to participate in the communal religious
rituals which, as well as being presumed to gain Gods blessings on
a community, bound it together in common practices and behaviours. Thus, in addition to the characteristic practices and institutions that focused their own attention inwards, accentuating group
identity, French Calvinists were separated from the geographic communities in which many lived. They did not have to have a separate
language, accent or skin colour to be clearly distinguishable from
the rest of the population. They were set apart by their distinctive,
confessionally-generated cultural and social practices and behaviour
patternssometimes even by their names! If they chose to emigrate,then, even if they took refuge in Reformed polities, they were
additionally set apart by a further distinctive, innate characteristic:
they spoke French. Language is closely linked to the formation of distinct ethnic or national identity50 and their language naturally branded
the Huguenots, when living in exile, as other.
In le Refuge, Huguenots perpetuated many of these distinctive traits,
at least initially, as Vivienne Larminie and Randolph Vigne bring out
in their essays in this volume.51 The cohesive group identity of French
Protestants was indubitably a strength, yet it was also a weakness. Their
Gallican Calvinism made them deeply alien even to those who sympathised with them as fellow Protestants. In particular it meant they
could not presume on the sympathies of conservative English Protes
tants. Fresh from their own wars of religion that had resulted in the
creation of a short-lived republic,52 Anglicans were as unsympathetic
to French Calvinists as to French Catholics and this was a complicating
factor for Huguenots in late-Stuart Englandan issue explored by
Greg Dodds and Robin Gwynn in chapters 3 and 5.53
Some of these aspects of Huguenot identity were the fruit of
Reformed theology and ecclesiology, but others arose from the
particular context of French Calvinists; and all were moulded by
Le Goff, History and Memory, 4.
Chapters 9, 10.
52
Borrowing the terminology of John Morrill, Englands Wars of Religion, in his
The Nature of the English Revolution (London & New York: Longman, 1993), 3344.
53
Chapters 3, 5.
50
51

22

d. j. b. trim

e xperienceby history. The Huguenots distinctive identity, including

idiosyncratic behaviour patterns and communal practices, could only
be preserved in exile by preserving and perpetuating collective memory. Yet the reality of Huguenot history in the eight decades after the
Edict of Nantes was that there were things French Protestants, despite
the high value they placed on collective memory, might well feel
uncomfortable recollecting.
Between History and Memory: Tensions in Identity
The tension between history and memory placed strains on identity.
Memories were often bittersweet, and their implications for identity
could be ambiguous. In the lands of the Refuge, too, memory could
result in Huguenots having a vexed relationship with la Patrie. As
Bernard Cottret observes, from the very beginning the Refuge
Churches acted as a reminder, and upheld, for the church of the desert,
which was still exposed to persecution or the hazards of the wars or
religion a living example of a society in which true worship of
God (as the Huguenots saw it) was in harmony with loyalty to the sovereign and state.54 But this created a dialectic between France and the
foreign land of refuge, which naturally gave rise at times to bitterness
and misunderstanding: lukewarmness, temporising, compromise
were all accusations levelled at the Protestants who remained in France,
yet so too were charges of religious fanaticism and excess.55 When it
came to the French state, bitterness was intensified, and manifested in
the wills of Huguenot migrs, as Vigne and Larminie show in this
volume.56
Part of the problem was that the Edict of Nantes, both the symbol
and expression of such religious liberty as the Huguenots enjoyed, had
been issued by the crown. No king after Henri IV was as sympathetic
to his Protestant subjects as the sometime Huguenot Henri of Navarre;
however, his son, Louis XIII, and (initially) his grandson, Louis XIV,
continued to uphold the rights of the Reformed Churches of France.

Cottret, Huguenots in England, 7.

Cottret, Huguenots in England, 78.
56
Chapters 9 and 10. Vigne gives examples of outright hostile language in the wills,
but in addition he and Larminie both cite evidence of testators regarding France as a
country best abandoned.
54
55

the huguenots and the experience of exile23

This was in contrast to the general hostility of wider society; hence the
Bourbon monarchy came to be seen as the source and preserver of
Protestant liberties. Whenever they [Huguenots] invoked the Edict of
Nantes, and appealed to the special royal tribunals the crown had
established to deal with confessional grievances, Protestants were submitting to the authority of the state and especially of the monarchy, on
which enforcement of the law and their legal privileges depended.57
In consequence, the Huguenots actually came to be defenders of
divine-right monarchy and criticised their own noble leaders who
led armed resistance to royal power in the early seventeenth century.58
In 1663, in a sermon that was published, one Calvinist pastor, Pierre
du Bosc, even called Louis XIV our sole source of strength, our safeguard, our fortress, and our place of refuge.59 Throughout much of the
seventeenth century, the Huguenots assertion of collective identity
[was] entangled with the issue of their obedience to the French crown.
Or as lisabeth Labrousse puts it, the Huguenots had become wholly
enveloped by, and dependent upon, his Majestys pleasure.60
The problem this created was two-fold. First, when the king changed
his mind about toleration, as Louis XIV gradually did, French
Protestants had cut from under their own feet many of the grounds on
which to criticise his decision. Huguenots [had] vied with Catholics to
exalt [the French monarchys] royal rightsrights which paradoxically served as one of the ideological justifications of the Revocation!61
Second, the Huguenots found it very difficult to express resentment of,
or urge resistance to, the very regime that was stealing their children,
destroying their churches, sending them as slaves to the galleys or
breaking them on the wheel. In practice, Huguenots resisted very valiantly and stoutly, witnessed not least by the large-scale emigration of
the 1670s and 1680s. Ideologically, however, as Labrousse observes,
57
Dianne C. Margolf, Identity, Law, and the Huguenots of Early Modern France, in
Van Ruymbeke and Sparks, Memory and Identity, 40.
58
lisabeth Labrousse, The Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot
Thought, in Alfred Soman (ed.), The Massacre of St. Bartholomew: Reappraisals and
Documents, International Archives of the History of Ideas, 75 (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1974), 246; Theodore K. Rabb, St. Bartholomew and Historical Perspective, in
ibid., 253.
59
Du Bosc, Les estoiles du ciel de lEglise (Rouen: 1663), 64, quoted in Labrousse,
Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought, 249.
60
Margolf, Identity, Law, and the Huguenots, 40; Labrousse, Wars of Religion in
Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought, 249.
61
Labrousse, Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought, 245.

24

d. j. b. trim

they were in total confusion.62 Only gradually did this change. Even
then, while some French Calvinists were willing to attack the Bourbon
monarchy and the French government, others found it hard to stop
being loyal subjects. As Walter Utt has shown, even the celebrated
Claude Brousson, eventually executed as a traitor for encouraging the
church of the desert to resist Louis XIVs regime by force, had initially
spilled much ink writing treatises intended to persuade the king to
change his minda fantastic notion, indicative of a theological leadership out of touch with reality. But Brousson learned from experience,
and he, together with Pierre Bayle, Pierre Jurieu and others, helped
lead a change in Huguenot thought, decrying instead of defending
absolutist monarchy, and arguing for genuine religious toleration.63
As a result, in the seventeenth century, certain aspects of the
Huguenot heritage became no-go areas, avoided in public statements
and problematic for private and family remembrance. This was deeply
ironic, because, From the very beginning, religious beliers were
entwined with the militancy of the movement [which] was, of
course, translated into political violence over the course of the civil
wars. This was an important part of Huguenot memory and their
records of their own history, as well as of their polemic, especially in
the wake of the St Bartholomews Day massacre. In its wake, some
Protestants had been prepared to think the unthinkable and to develop
political theories that, although unpalatable for many justified tyrannicide (and hence, potentially, the assassination of a king). And yet,
Protestants remained fundamentally loyal to the crown and the established order.64 Before the tide of oppression inexorably turned against
Labrousse, Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought, 251.
Ibid. See Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove; Israel, Group Identity and Pierre Bayles
Toleration Theory; John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment
Culture: Religious Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern
and Early Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006),
2021, 3234, 15354, 158, 16168, 17993, 41839, 474; F. R. J. Knetsch, Pierre
Jurieu: Theologian and Politician of the Dispersion Acta Historiae Neerlandica 5
(1971), 213242; idem, Pierre Jurieu and the Glorious Revolution according to his
Lettres Pastorales, in J. van den Berg and P. G. Hoftijzer (eds.), Church, Change and
Revolution: Transactions of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch Church History Colloquium,
Publications of the Sir Thomas Browne Institute, new series, 12 (Leiden: E. J. Brill/
Leiden University Press, 1991), 14566; chapter 7, by Onnekink, below; and, for a
memorable fictionalised depiction, Walter C. Utt. Home to Our Valleys! (Mountain
View, CA & Oshawa, ON: Pacific Press, 1977).
64
Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer, Introduction: tre protestant, in idem
(eds.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World 15591685 (Cambridge: Cambridge
62
63

the huguenots and the experience of exile25

them under Louis XIV, Huguenots were often reluctant to refer, at least
in print, to their own history during the wars of religion, because the
past actions of the Huguenots were said to reveal them to be subjects dangerous to the monarchy and potential traitors to the country.65 When they did address their history they might, as noted above,
even criticise those who had led them in resistance to the crown.
This tension between confessional loyalty continued even after the
Revocation, since many pastors were accustomed to asserting absolute
royal authority and were, as Labrousse puts it, in total confusion; they,
like Brousson, continued to try to persuade the king to change his
mind. Yet as we shall see, other Huguenots became fervent advocates
of taking up arms against their king, believing that revolt or military
aid to Louiss enemies might force an eclipse of the Sun Kings religious
policy; and this meant that the whole of Huguenot history, including
the wars of religion and their heritage of armed resistance to unjust
government, and of radical political arguments that kings had to rule
with the counsel or consent of the governed, could at last be recovered.
Just as the religio-confessional climate underwent a radical change, so
too did the way French Protestants thought, spoke and wrote about
their past.
Identity in the Era of Exile
This brings us to the role of history and memory in shaping Huguenot
identity in the era of renewed persecution and exile, from the 1670s
onwards. Huguenots did not face their last difficult choice when deciding between the desert and the refugebetween staying in their
homes and homeland or making new lives as strangers in a strange
land. If they chose they latter then, when they went into exile, they
faced, indeed, difficult decisions. They not only had to make economic
and social choices, but also had to face fundamental questions and
doubts about who they were and the nature of Huguenot identity.
Some questions reflected their ecclesiological organisation and
the religio-cultural practices that derived from them, though in the

University Press, 2002), 67; cf. Robert M. Kingdon, Myths about the St. Bartholomews
Day Massacres 15721576 (Cambridge, MA & London: Harvard University Press,
1988), 13682, 21819.
65
Labrousse, Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot Thought, 245.

26

d. j. b. trim

Netherlands and Switzerland these were shared by the host community, and elsewhere the Huguenots were able to avoid scepticism or
hostility on the part of locals by remaining largely detached from them.
As one recent study observes, in Brandenburg-Prussia and several
other German states, Huguenots were granted privileges enabling
them to form separate and distinct entities, or become a state within a
state. On the continent, it was common for Huguenot communities to
have their own administration, a separate jurisdiction under French
law, and their own churches and educational system.66 In contrast,
although Huguenots under British governments (whether in England,
Ireland or North America) were permitted their own churches and
consistories French refugees were supposed to integrate into preexisting towns and villages.67
It was in Britain, then, of all the lands where Huguenots took refuge,
that their identity was potentially problematic and this was especiallyso in the era of the Revocation. As noted earlier, the Huguenots
history of resistance to royal authority in France and their Calvinist
ecclesiology made them objects of suspicion to many in the Angli
can establishment in England; yet at the same time their history
of persecution, martyrdom and massacre, from even before the
St Bartholomews Massacre, meant there were many who instinctively
sympathised with their plight, in Anglican England and indeed in
Lutheran Hanover, as well as in the Reformed Netherlands and
Switzerland. The wealth and military experience of many migrs
made them valuable potential allies against an aggressive and expansionist France. Huguenots thus faced multiple choices over identity.
Even in exile, they could be Frenchmen, loyal subjects of a king whose
religious views they hoped would change; or Frenchmen, but in opposition to the French state; or persecuted Protestants; or trustworthy
allies in war against the Catholic enemy; or a prophetic community,
a new Israel; or simply new citizens or subjects of Britain, the Dutch
republic, the pays de Vaud and so forth.68
As this author and Andrew Thompson show, in chapters 6 and 8,
some Huguenots became active opponents of the French state, both in
Susanne Lachenicht, New Colonies in Ireland? Antoine Court and the Settlement
of French Refugees in the 18th Century, HSP 29:2 (2009), 231.
67
Lachenicht, New Colonies, 23132.
68
Cf. chapters 25 and 79, by Leonard, Dodds, Diller, Gwynn, Onnekink,
Thompson and Larminie, below.
66

the huguenots and the experience of exile27

arms and in the councils of rival states. In doing so they at last reclaimed
for French Protestant memory the history of the wars of religion, of the
vigorous Huguenot resistance that had once forced the crown to concede confessional pluralism, and of the Huguenot alliances with sympathetic states that had been a large part of Calvinist military success
in the sixteenth century. There was in fact no realistic prospect, by the
1680s, of a successful revolt against Louis XIVs military infrastructure.69 But with the Sun King engaged for almost a quarter of a century
from 1689 in two pan-European conflicts, there was a warm welcome
for Huguenot military, financial and logistical expertise across Europe.
Hopes that the Protestant powers might make concession of liberty of
conscience in France a condition of peace with France, or a strong
sense of anger at what was perceived as betrayal by the House of
Bourbon, turned many migr French Protestants into keen partisans
of Frances enemies. Thousands of Huguenots served in their armies,
including in invasions of French territory; others provided money,
matriel, propaganda, and policy advice to the allied war effort.70
Huguenot hopes that Protestant Europe, led by Anglican England
would force Louis XIV to restore French Protestant rights as guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes were long lived. Even after they were disappointed in the Peace of Rijswijk, which ended the Nine Years War
(or War of the Grand Alliance) in 1697, such hopes persisted among
some Huguenots.71 They faded entirely only after the Peace of Utrecht
in 1713 which ended English and Dutch involvement in the War of the
Spanish Succession, and which obtained only one minor concession
for the Huguenots: the release of 136 men condemned to servitude in
69
On Louis XIVs army, see Guy Rowlands, The Dynastic State and the Army under
Louis XIV: Royal Service and Private Interest, 1661 to 1701 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002); John A. Lynn, Giant of the grand sicle: The French Army,
16101715 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
70
See Gwynn, The Huguenots, the Protestant International and the Defeat of
Louis XIV; Matthew Glozier and David Onnekink (eds), War, Religion and Service:
Huguenot Soldiering, 16851713 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), chapters 2, 4, 68, 11
(by John Childs, Randolph Vigne, Harman Murtagh, Glozier, Onnekink, Dianne
W. Ressinger and Matthias Asche); Matthew Glozier, Schomberg, Miremont and
Huguenot Invasions of France, in David Onnekink (ed.), War and Religion after
Westphalia, 16481713 (Farnham & Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 12153; Laurence
Huey Boles, Jr, The Huguenots, the Protestant Interest, and the War of the Spanish
Succession, 17021714, American University Studies, series IX (History), 181 (New
York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, Washington, DC, etc: Peter Lang, 1997)and chapters
4, 68, by Diller, Trim, Onnekink and Thompson, below.
71
Lachenicht, New Colonies, 227.

28

d. j. b. trim

the galleys of the French Mediterranean fleet for Calvinist worship or

for having aided the flight of refugees. But the Protestant faith continued to be prohibitedand persecutedin France.72 The Reformed
Church remained in the desert.
The recovery of their history as warriors, rebels and theorists of a
right of resistance to royal sovereigns not only did not, for all their
military efforts, effect the restoration of the Edict of Nantes; it also
potentially could negatively influence perceptions of Huguenots in
England, as Greg Dodds shows in chapter 3. In any case, it affected
their own self-understanding. If migrs emphasised their military,
financial and logistical potential, it could engender suspicions or hostility in host countries; yet stressing their history as victims had the
potential to remove agency from them, making them merely passive
and dependent on others. This was particularly problematic in England
and its American colonies, where the Huguenots and their history
sometimes tended to be tangential to the debates in which they were
discussed. As Lisa Diller shows in chapter 4, the Huguenots were crucial to debates about economics, religious identity and political parties
in the embryonic British state. However, as Diller, Dodds in chapter 3
and Paul McGraw in chapter 11 all demonstrate, the Huguenots could
become a locus for debates that werent really about the reception of
the Huguenots and their place, as migrants, in the Anglo-British body
politic. They and their past were sometimes simple vehicles for expressing satisfaction or dissatisfaction about other issues and causes, ranging from royal policies, to the treatment of indigenous Protestant
Dissenters, to the danger posed by Roman Catholics. There was a danger, in accepting victimhood and passivity, that Huguenot concerns
could be sidelined, or even that a degree of contempt (for not resisting
Papists more vigorously) might be evoked.
Thus, whichever identities migrs adopted, they faced challenges.
In practice, the Huguenots did not adapt just one strategy, either in
rhetoric or in practice. All the different types of identity were claimed
by some Huguenots, in some places, over the thirty years after the
Edict of Fontainebleau in 1685. Not only were different strategies
adopted by different migrs, depending on their circumstances, but
also, as David Onnekink highlights in chapter 7, writers were not necessarily consistent in the rhetorical strategies they deployed, even in
Boles, The Huguenots and the War of the Spanish Succession, 249.

72

the huguenots and the experience of exile29

those first decades after the RevocationHuguenot identity was

already beginning to fragment. However, those thirty years were perhaps the high point of portraying, to others at least, the Huguenots as
valuable allies in making war on France. After the final death of hopes
that the Protestant powers would compel France to undo the
Revocation, those of the Huguenot ethnie abroad preserved and treasured memories of the Wars of Religion, of the massacres of the
1560s70s, of the dragonnades in the 1670s80s, and of their heroic
service in the armies of Britain, the Dutch republic and German states
in the 1680s90s. But while these parts of Huguenot history and
memory remained significant, the influence of the past on Huguenot
identity in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century present dwindled.
The historically contingent and memory-constructed character of the
Huguenot as persecuted martyr and/or valiant soldier was still cherished, yet, as Larminie, Vigne and McGraw reveal in their chapters, it
ceased to be fundamental to Huguenot identity. Huguenots continued
to value their language, but its use gradually diminished, even when
endogamous marriage was practiced; the pressure not to assert difference and other-ness by preserving a different language, eventually
told. Huguenots continued to value cross-border connections, especially to France, but typically also to other countries of the Refuge;
thus, they remained transnational in outlook, even as they began to
assimilate into their new homelands. This they did with great success,
being largely assimilated into host communities throughout the
Atlantic world.73 The Huguenot ethnie ceased to exist in a meaningfulsense and Huguenot became an alternative but always secondary
identity for English, Swiss, Dutch, German, and American men and
women, who had also frequently abandoned their Calvinism, though
there seems to have been no real trend of secularism in the nineteenthcentury Huguenot community.74
As Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, in his recent study of Huguenots,
memory and identity, argues: French Protestantism paradoxically survived in the diaspora by losing its core identity, i.e., its Gallican

73
Quotation from chapter 11, by Paul McGraw, below, p. 304 (though as he points
out, there were isolated, less assimilated, pockets). So completely were the Huguenots
assimilated that, e.g., in southern Africa, all French traces were entirely lost, both in
the language (Afrikaans) and in the culture, except for some surnames: I am indebted
to the Afrikaaner literary scholar, David Schalkwyk, for this observation.
74
Cf. Cottret, Huguenots in England, 240.

30

d. j. b. trim

Calvinism and French language, while espousing the religious and cultural traits prevailing in the host societies it encountered.75 Bernard
Cottret in his history of the Huguenots in England concludes
similarly:
The communities survived only in so far as they adapted, but, at the same
time, the more they complied the more they appeared to lose their
idiosyncratic character. Therefore, they were in a perpetual state of instability, and, with the renewal of each generation, or as a result of geographical mobility, they were confronted with the danger of losing their
identity.76

However, also paradoxically, it was the very loss of a genuine Huguenot

ethnic identity that led to a resurgence of Huguenot memory and the
creation of Huguenot historiography.
The Emergence of Huguenot Studies
The stories and traditions of collective memory were maintained and
provided the basis for an extraordinary nineteenth-century revival of
interest in the Huguenots and their history. Its initial impulse was a
growing awareness among descendants of original refugees that their
community was on the verge of forgetting its past (i.e., of losing its collective memory) and thus of losing touch with its history. But the interest in the Huguenot heritage was not to be limited to those of French
ancestry.
One way of negotiating the stress created by the danger of the loss
of identity that seemed to be a necessary concomitant of communal success in the eighteenth century, was to preserve a partial and,
increasingly, an imagined identity, alongside the new national identities. The emergence of history as an academic discipline at European
universities in the mid-nineteenth century provided an impetus to
the writing of Huguenot history, but it was encouraged by leaders
of the French Reformed Church in France and of the Huguenot community in Britain, as a deliberate endeavour to avert the loss of
memory.77

Van Ruymbeke, Minority Survival, 17.

Cottret, Huguenots in England, 267 and see 26466.
77
Cottret, Huguenots in England, 267.
75
76

the huguenots and the experience of exile31

As we shall see, the nineteenth centurys new enthusiasm for the

Huguenots was to take various forms and be expressed in various ways,
including in literature, music, drama and art. These creative successes
reflected the revitalised interest in Huguenot heritage; yet they really
transmitted, with artistic license, a representation of the Huguenots
that derived from collective memory, more than history. But the nineteenth centurys new enthusiasm for the Huguenots also had a scholarly manifestation: what has rightly been called a nineteenth-century
Huguenot renaissance.78
In 1852, Baron Fernand de Schickler founded the Socit de lhistoire
du protestantisme franais (SHPF). It still exists and its Bulletin is
still the journal of record for Huguenot history in the Francophone
world. In 1885 the Huguenot Society of London (today the Huguenot
Society of Great Britain and Ireland) was founded; its Proceedings are
the premier journal of Huguenot studies in the Anglophone world.
Meanwhile, in 1867 Samuel Smiles had published the first edition of
his path-breaking history The Huguenots, their settlements, churches
and industries in England and Ireland. Within 22 years, it had gone into
its sixth edition. In addition was the work of Henry Wagner, examined
in chapter 10, who set about recovering the fading Huguenot past
through genealogical research. Over a period of some sixty years,
Wagner (18401926) collected information on the Huguenot ancestry
of 997 English families. He created some 5,000 abstracts of Wills
and Administrations relating to testators with identifiably Huguenot
names, proved between 1617 and 1849, the great majority in the forty
years following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Drawing partly
on the research generated by the SHPF and partly on the work of
Smiles and other Huguenot researchers in Britain, in 1892 Schickler
published his three-volume history of Les glises du Refuge en
Angleterre in 1892, also a pioneering work.
The reconstruction of Huguenot history in the nineteenth century,
drawing both on collective memory and on the research of scholars,
took place in the high noon of Protestant memory culture. This was an
era in which the most successful histories of the Reformation were told
from an avowedly Protestant perspective; in which even religious
authors who wrote for a general audience and sold widely, such as
Ellen G. White, used the history of the Reformation and in particular
See Van Ruymbeke, Minority Survival, 1316 at 13.

78

32

d. j. b. trim

the heritage of the Huguenots, to make wider theological and spiritual

points.79 It was also an era in which Luther and Calvin were appropriated for group identity purposes by Calvinist scholars: for example, in
the Netherlands, where historians tried to utilise memory to shore up
and defend an increasingly fragmentary Dutch Protestant identity.80
These Protestant influences were felt in the emergent Huguenot historiography, which constructed a group identity born of a mythically
glorified self-perception of their history.81 This involved not only
group memory but also historiography, for one by-product of the
Huguenot revival was the researching and writing of scholarly
Huguenot history. This new scholarship ironically laid the groundwork for eventual exploding of some of the constituent myths of the
new Huguenot identity.
The new historiography was often characterised by rigorous scholarship, but while collective memory was tapped as a source, it was frequently endorsed; in effect, the new historiography at times was really
selective memory, even into the twentieth century.82 There was also a
tendency towards undergirding some cherished Huguenot myths; in
effect, some traditions were invented. Even when archival research
was critically and skilfully interwoven with oral tradition, it might be
in order to create a Protestant version of controversial episodes that
would challenge the Catholic version. Huguenot and Catholic historians to some extent fought old religious battles again, seeking to exonerate [their] own side, or to apportion guilt to the other. There was
an understandable desire to demonstrate the heroic virtue of early
Huguenot protagonists (and/or the wickedness of those who oppressed
them), which authors tended to take for granted; and a craving to
validate the antiquity of familial or communal roots, reflected in
the fascination of many self-proclaimed Huguenots with genealogy
and pedigrees.83 What emerged was a Victorian image of the original

See chapter 11, by McGraw, below.

Herman Paul and Bart Wallet, A Sun that Lost its Shine: The Reformation in
Dutch Protestant Memory Culture, 18171917, Church History and Religious Culture
88 (2008), 3562.
81
Van Ruymbeke, Minority Survival, 2.
82
Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomews Massacres, 217.
83
Jouhaud, Camisards, 11; H. G. Koenigsberger, Introduction, in Soman, Massacre
of St. Bartholomew, 1. Cf. Van Ruymbeke, Minority Survival, 16; Donald R. Kelley,
Martyrs, Myth, and the Massacre: The Background of St. Bartholomew, in Soman,
Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 202; Eric Hobsbawm, MassProducing Traditions:
79
80

the huguenots and the experience of exile33

migr Huguenot as austere characterised alternately as a fearless

hero or as a fanatic.84 Eventually historians were to demonstrate that it
was not just Huguenots who remained in France who sometimes
compromised their faith in order to survive; as scholars such as Walter
Utt showed, some of those who left France informed on their fellow
migrs to the French government.85 Such revisionism, though, awaited
the twentieth centurya hundred years earlier, there was a different
paradigm. In the eyes of their descendants, and of those who claimed
to have collectively inherited their values, the Huguenots who fled
France were devoted to and uncompromising in their faith, [and]
courageous. It was only natural to see their survival [as] heroic, not to
say edifying.86 The Victorian image was, however, sometimes a triumph of collective memory over historical vrit.
Despite these limitations, the work of the pioneer historians of the
Huguenot heritage in France, continental Europe and the Atlantic
World laid a relatively solid foundation on which all subsequent scholars have built. They preserved for the future much of the version of
history that survived up to that point in collective memory; they
opened up archives, made records and documents available in modern
editions, and popularised serious genealogical and historical research.
That Huguenot Studies is today a vibrant and flourishing subdiscipline is thanks to the work of the pioneer scholars of the late nineteenth century. But it is also due to subsequent generations who while
recognising that they stoodthat we standon the shoulders of giants
nevertheless also recognised that new historical methodologies open
up possible new interpretations and must be applied; and have recognised, too, that history and memory are always interpreted, at least to
some extent, through the prism of the present of the analyst and interpreter. Hence there is a need for a constant rereading of the past in
relationship to the present, which must constantly be questioned
anew.87 This Huguenot scholars have done and continue to do, not
least in the essays that follow.
Europe, 18701914, in Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, 29293; chapter11, by McGraw, below.
84
Cottret, Huguenots in England, 7.
85
E.g., Walter C. Utt, A small mistery from 1690 (Jacques Gautier), Bolletino della
Societ di Studi Valdesi, 127 (1970), 5558; Brian Strayer and Walter C. Utt, Un Faux
frre: le Sieur de Tillires et les rfugis huguenots aux Provinces Unies, 16851688,
Bull. SHPF, 150 (2004), 50716.
86
Van Ruymbeke, Minority Survival, 17.
87
Le Goff, History and Memory, 18.

34

d. j. b. trim
The Huguenots in Art, Literature, on the Stage and on Screen
in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries

It is striking, that after decades during which memories had faded or

lapsed, there was an extraordinary efflorescence of interest in the
Huguenot past in nineteenth-century Britain and France. It had popular and public manifestations, and was limited neither to scholars, nor
indeed to those of Huguenot descent.88
This may have owed something to the fact that, after over a century
of regular conflict with France (16891815)what has been called a
second Hundred Years War89England and France enjoyed a prolonged period of peace and even, briefly, in the 1850s, of alliance in the
Crimean War. But the public fascination with the Huguenots probably
owed even more to Romanticism, for the Huguenots had all the
romance of a lost cause; the Wars of Religion also were genuinely rich
in the violence, passion, and sensation that the new mass audiences
(produced by widespread education) demanded large helpings of, and
which became the staple fare of popular literature.90 In addition, in
their opposition to absolutist monarchy the Huguenots seemed, in
hindsight, to have been foreshadowing not only the democratic ideals
of the French Revolution but also more fundamental Romantic concepts of individual freedom and destiny.
The first signs of creative interest in the Huguenot experience were
manifested among French painters of the early nineteenth century. In
1821 VictorJean Adam painted that ambiguous Huguenot hero Henri
of Navarre pre-conversion and pre-accession to the French crown. His
painting Henri IV aprs la bataille de Coutras (now in the Muse
national du chteau de Pau) shows the King of Navarre (as he then
was) as an heroic leader of men, surrounded by wounded soldiers
under a gloomy skyan interesting blending of attempted realism and
outright romanticism. In 1833 JosephNicolas RobertFleury, whose
uvre mixed portraits and historical paintings, executed his striking
Scne de la SaintBarthlemy, assassinat de Briou, gouverneur du

88
I am indebted to Randolph Vigne for his advice on the Huguenots in 19th-cent.
British culture.
89
E.g., Franois Crouzet, The Second Hundred Years War: Some Reflections,
French History 10 (1996), 43250.
90
David Coward, Introduction to the Oxford World Classics edn of Alexandre
Dumas, La Reine Margot (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), vii.

the huguenots and the experience of exile35

Prince de Conti, 24 aot 1572, now in the Louvre (which can be found
on the cover).
It is notable that RobertFleury did not paint the murder of Gaspard
de Coligny, with which the massacre began and which was the subject
of many contemporary and later woodcuts, prints and other depictions; the artist thus theoretically adds to the iconography of the massacre and shows his originality. But choosing Briou, tutor of the young
Prince of Conti, who was of advanced years, allows RobertFleury in
effect to paint Colignys killing by another name. Thus, the painting
shows the murder of an essentially defenceless, elderly Calvinist man
(his religion signalled by his sombre black dress), cut down in the intimacy of his bedchamber by numbers of well-armed assailants who are
in the prime of life. Using Briou as a surrogate for Coligny means
RobertFleury could work on a familiar theme but it also allows him
to add to his scene the pathetic figure of the young prince of Conti
who, as some sources recount, attempted to save his old tutor with
his own body.91 This greatly adds to both the pathos and the violence
of the scene, since Conti has to be forcibly held back by one of the
attackers, who wears a prominent white cross on his helmet, reminding the viewer of the religious motivation of the killing, as does the
somewhat sinister figure of a monk, directly behind the boy. Meanwhile,
a well-dressed man looks on approvingly, wearing above his left elbow
the white armband that was the identifying mark adopted by those
who initiated the massacre. This figure is surely a surrogate for the
Duke of Guise, who, according to some sources, was an onlooker as
Coligny was butchered.
All these details suggest that the artist assumed in his audience some
knowledge of the actual events of the historical massacre. The painting
thus indicates the prominence of St Bartholomews in collective memory. It is additionally interesting from an artistic perspective: on the
one hand, it is a graphic and beautiful depiction of an appalling murder, yet on the other it also feels highly staged and artificial. It is a
(surely deliberate) triumph of striking staging and depiction over
dynamism, and of romanticism over realism. This, too, tells us something about the place of the Huguenots in collective memory.

91
This was a reasonably well-known episode when RobertFleury was painting:
e.g., it is highlighted in Massacre of St. Bartholomew, a lengthy narrative serialized in
the New York periodical The Correspondent, vol. 5 (Jan.July 1829), 125.

36

d. j. b. trim

Seven years later RobertFleury added a prosaic and uninspired

depiction of the Colloquy of Poissy in 1561a (failed) attempt to
resolve CatholicHuguenot differences by dialoguewhich is now at
the seat of the SHPF in Paris. In the 1850s, he returned to a Huguenot
theme with his apparently simple, but richly painted, Henri IV et Sully
lArsenal (now also at Pau). It shows the elderly (and by now Catholic)
Henri IV discussing policy with his (still Huguenot) principal minister, the duc de Sully, in an apparently domestic setting, though the title
tells us the room is somewhere in the Arsenal of Paris. It could be
interpreted as a commentary on the possibility of peaceful dialogue
across confessional boundaries.
Meanwhile, in England the distinguished literary figure Thomas
Babington Macaulay had composed his stirring poem The Battle of
Ivry, first published in 1824. This extraordinary narrative poem is
probably the first sign of a rebirth of interest in the Huguenots in
England, as well as France. It is compelling to read (or hear), characterised by evocative language and an urgent, driving metre; yet it is also
remarkably accurate historically. Twelve years later, in February 1836,
Giacomo Meyerbeers hugely successful opera Les Huguenots premiered at the Opra in Paris. Possibly the most commercially successful opera of the nineteenth century, it had its premiere at the Royal
Opera House in Covent Garden in 1842 and received its one thousandth performance at the Opra over seventy years after its first.92
In 1845 Alexandre Dumas pre published his novel, La Reine Margot,
set in the St Bartholomews Massacre and the two years that followed.
Dumas depicts Marguerite de Valois as a heroine who stakes all for
love and the Huguenot Henri of Navarre as a leader doomed by fate to
achieve greatness at the expense of personal happiness.93 La Reine
Margot was a an immense success; it greatly outsold (for example) its
rival of the day, Honor de Balzacs Les paysans, was translated and
went through numerous editions in Britain, and spawned two sequels
and a stage version.94
92
Matthias Brzoska, trans. Christopher Smith, Meyerbeer: Robert le Diable
and Les Huguenots in David Charlton (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Grand
Opera (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 199207, esp. 2067.
93
Coward, Introduction, xxii.
94
Moshe Sluhovsky, History as Voyeurism: from Marguerite de Valois to La Reine
Margot, Rethinking History 4 (July 2000), 193; cf. Coward, Introduction, xv, xxiixxiii;
David H. Solkin, Philibert Rouvire: Edouard Manets LActeur Tragique, The

the huguenots and the experience of exile37

By 1850 there was a decided public appetite for things Huguenot on

both sides of the Channel. One of its fruits was John Everett Millaiss
celebrated painting The Huguenot, which shows a Huguenot and his
(presumably Roman Catholic) lover; it is evidently from August 1572
for she is tying above his left elbow the white identifying armband used
by the perpetrators of the St Bartholomews Massacre, yet it seems
clear from his expression of tender regret as he cradles her head in his
hands, and her look of wistfulness bordering on desperation, that he is
about to take it off. (This, certainly, is how the painting has generally
been interpreted.) It was a great public success when exhibited at the
Royal Academy in 1852, so much so that it was the foundation of
[Millaiss] later reputation.95 This speaks to the huge public interest in
Huguenot history, but what is striking is how much is left to the viewer
to work outMillais provides the visual cues that allow the painting to
be decoded, but his original elliptical title leaves so much unsaid.
Instead, he assumes that a reasonably detailed knowledge of the events
of the massacre was fairly widespread. Thus, the painting also speaks to
the extent to which the massacre had (or was perceived to have) penetrated collective memory in Britain.
Perhaps partly inspired by Millais, the artistic interest in the dramatic (and romantic) possibilities of Huguenot history spread further
east. In the early 1870s a Latvian artist, Karlis Fridikh Huns painted the
wonderfully evocative character study An Old Warrior of the Time
of the Huguenots (1870), which shows a grey-bearded, helmeted,
craggy-faced veteran, and a stylised Scene from St Bartholomews
Night, showing a single murdered Huguenot and his grieving lover or
wife, receiving a mock-courtly bow from a stylishly-clad aristocratic
murderer (both are in the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow).
In 1875, in a painting now in the State Russian Museum in St Petersburg,
Vasiliy Dmitrievich Polenov depicted the arrest of a minor Huguenot
leader, Jacqueline de Montbel dEtremont, who is shown with the pale
and ascetic countenance of a martyr, being led away by three shadowy
halberdiers.

Burlington Magazine, 117, no. 872, Special Issue: Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century
Art (Nov. 1975), 702.
95
Alan Bowness, Art and Society in England and France in the Mid-Nineteenth
Century: Two Paintings before the Public, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society,
5th series, 22 (1972), 129.

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d. j. b. trim

The nineteenth-century paintings as a whole reflect a particular version of the Huguenot past, one which is indicative of collective (though
second-hand) memory, and yet which also shaped it in a new direction. The Huguenots are heroic figures, suffering at the hands of an
oppressive aristocratic elite; persecution has a personal, human cost,
to the Huguenots and their loved ones, rather than political, religious,
or wider socio-economic significance. Huguenots are thus emphatically romantic figuresthey are mythologised, rather than realistically
presented.
By the late nineteenth century the Huguenots were also providing
rich material for popular fictional re-workings of history. They were,
for example, a particularly rich source for G. A. Henty, Victorian war
correspondent, apologist for muscular Christianity and British imperialism, and prolific and hugely popular author of historical fiction for
children and adolescents.96 One of his novels is entirely based on the
same vital episode in Huguenot history already exploited by Robert
Fleury and Millais in paintings, Meyerbeer in opera, and Dumas in
literature: Saint Bartholomews eve: A tale of the Huguenot wars was
published in 1894. French Protestant soldiers also appear in four other
novels: The lion of the north: A tale of Gustavus Adolphus and the
Wars of Religion (1886); By pike and dyke: A tale of the rise of the Dutch
Republic (1890); By Englands aid: The freeing of the Netherlands,
15851604 (1891); and Won by the sword: A story of the Thirty Years
War (1900). Hentys novels favour a somewhat formulaic Protestantism:
in Won by the sword, his Scottish hero, a mercenary in the Catholic
French army, is nevertheless avowedly Protestant. But they also stress
the respectability of a military careerall his heroes are soldiers, or are
obliged to use force to save themselves and those they love. If these are
much more stories for boys than girls, Hentys fiction does present
heroines as well as heroes. His novels were, moreover, based on (indeed
at times closely followed the text of) serious path-breaking works of
archival history.97 Henty sold prolifically in his lifetime, and his fiction

96
See Godfey Davies, G. A. Henty and History, Huntington Library Quarterly 18
(195455), 15967; The Henty Society [website at http://www.hentysociety.org/]; Peter
Newbolt, Henty, George Alfred (18321902), Oxford DNB, online edn, May 2006
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/33827, accessed 8 July 2009].
97
E.g., the Preface and Note at the start of By Englands aid (both unpaginated)
commend to readers the work of two pioneering historians, John Lothrop Motley and
Sir Clements Markham, on which Henty declares he depended.

the huguenots and the experience of exile39

retains a devoted fan base, including among American evangelicals

who feel his works endorse Christian and family values.98
In the twentieth century, Walter C. Utt, historian of late seventeenthcentury Huguenots and Vaudois, turned from work on his major biography of Claude Brousson,99 to write three novels, two published in his
lifetime (the third completed in two parts after his death), all dealing
with Huguenots during the reign of Louis XIV. These, too, were novels
for older children and adolescents, though they, too, have a devoted
adult fan base. Although not selling as widely as Hentys novels, they
have sold on all six continents and been reprinted in paperback.100 Like
Hentys novels, the heroes are military men: one a Huguenot soldier,
forced to choose between his career and his conscience, who rescues
from persecution a Huguenot family, including a boy who becomes a
soldier in foreign pay, serving along with his saviour and mentor (like
those discussed in chapter 6). In contrast to Henty, however, Utt, an
American, was far from an apologist for imperialism; and was a prominent member of a pacifist Church. It is very likely, though, that Henty
was at least partly the inspiration behind Utts remarkable mid-life
turn from historical scholarship to historical fiction, for on his death
Utt owned one of Hentys novels on the American Civil War.101 As he
knew and liked Hentys oeuvre well enough to own at least one copy it
seems likely that Utt had read one or more of the early-modern novels.
The prose style, however, is entirely Utts own and arguably (albeit such
judgements are inevitably subjective) it is also more sophisticated.
There still seems to be a market for novels about Huguenots among
North American Protestants, at least in the area of childrens fiction, no
doubt building on the successes achieved by Henty and Utt. Several
childrens stories about Huguenots have been published in the 1990s
and 2000s, all but one by Inheritance Publications, a company which
seems to specialise in didactic and inspirational material for children,
from a Calvinist perspectiveother novels include a short series on
William of Orange. The Huguenots, in these literary versions, are again
98
According to the Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._A._Henty#
Biography [accessed 9 Aug. 2009].
99
Completed posthumously: Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove.
100
Walter C. Utt, The Wrath of the King (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1966);
Home to Our Valleys! (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1977); Walter C. Utt and
Helen G. Pyke, No Peace for a Soldier (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2007); Utt and Pyke,
Any Sacrifice but Conscience (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2008).
101
G. A. Henty, With Lee in Virginia (Chicago: M. A. Donohue & Co., n.d.).

40

d. j. b. trim

romantic heroes struggling against great odds, but they also stand for
religious faithfulness.102
There is, finally, also clearly a market for at least some cinematic
dramas about Huguenots aimed at adults. The 1994 motion picture La
reine Margot, an adaptation of Dumass novel, directed by Patrice
Cherau, and starring Isabelle Adjani, JeanHugues Anglade, Daniel
Auteuil and Vincent Perez, was critically acclaimed and enjoyed international commercial success. It has numerous scenes of graphic sex
and (less gratuitously, given the subject matter of the St Bartholomews
massacre) of mob, individual and state violenceand thus is definitely
not for children and adolescents. It adapts Dumass text, itself a free
adaptation of history, rather than being directly based on the events of
157274, yet the director declared that he and his team had undertaken research to get historical details right. The success of La reine
Margot testified that the Huguenots and their history are still capable
of capturing the public imagination and conjuring up myth and collective memory.103
Conclusion
To conclude this introductory chapter: the Huguenots were unique
because of their diaspora and the connections that the various migr
communities kept with each other. This afforded the Huguenots some
military and political power in the century and a half after the French
Wars of Religion, as foreign co-religionists not only felt impelled to aid
the Huguenots, but also sought to utilise their contacts and military
capability. Yet the transnational dimension also made them ever more
strangers; it thus created tensions for subsequent generations, since it
was both an important part of their identity and yet also something
they effectively eroded, in order to achieve assimilation. The Huguenots
102
A. Van Der Jagt, The Escape: The Adventures of Three Huguenot Children Fleeing
Persecution (Based on Historical Facts) (Neerlandia, AB & Pella, IA: Inheritance, 1993;
repr., 1997); idem, The Secret Mission: A Huguenots Dangerous Adventures in the Land
of Persecution (Neerlandia, AB & Pella, IA: Inheritance Publications, 1998); Katherine
Kirkpatrick, Escape across the Wide Sea (New York: Holiday House, 2004); Sabine
Malplach and Deborah Alcock, The Baron of Salgas: A True Huguenot Story by Sabine
Malplach; and: The Cross and the Crown & The Carpenter of Nmes: Two Huguenot
Stories by Deborah Alcock (Neerlandia, AB & Pella, IA: Inheritance, 2010).
103
Julianne Pidduck, La reine Margot (Champaign: University of Illinois Press,
2005) is a critical study from the disciplinary perspective of Film Studies.

the huguenots and the experience of exile41

formed the catalyst for some of the first debates about national identity
and immigration, and about the extent to which common values and
religion could substitute for common language and culture; their experience provides important evidence for modern debates about how
much immigrants can or should preserve their own institutions and
identity, and the extent to which, even in assimilation, they mould
those around them.
The Huguenots and their experience in transnational context also
provides important evidence for the influence of memory on history,
because of the extent to which memories of their turbulent past
influenced both Huguenot migrs and those around them. Frequently,
knowledge of the Huguenots history (or a version of their history constructed both among migrs and in their host communities) ensured
a welcome in foreign Protestant communities; yet at the same time,
especially in England, it meant they were associated with rebelliousness, resistance to authority, and other forms of controversy, which led
emigrants and their descendants to change their collective representation of their own past.
Furthermore, while the discourse of remembrance could produce a
powerful sense of the past in the present, it also, at the same time, could
sometimes obscure the very events on which it was based. History and
memory intersect, and there is interchange between them, because
real, adapted, and purported memories and representations of historical events were shaped by contemporary polemic and propaganda, and
by near-contemporary chronicling of those events, yet at the same time
they were shaping attitudes to those events and thus the writing of history and polemic. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century narratives of the
Huguenots, whether historical or fictional, have been shaped by longstanding memories (or myths), as well as by new, path-breaking scholarship. Memory thus continues to influence history.
***
In the 27 July 1998 issue of the popular American magazine, Sports
Illustrated, columnist Frank Deford lamented, I am from a forgottentribe. Not lost, you understand. Thats romantic: lost. My tribe is
simply forgotten. I am a Huguenot. A French Huguenot. Who remembers us?104

http://www.ctlibrary.com/ch/2001/issue71/14.45.html

104

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d. j. b. trim

This plaintive lament neatly encapsulates the Huguenot experience

of success both in assimilating and in rememberingthe answer to his
rhetorical question was that they themselves remembered. Not just the
original migrs and their children, but those descended, even remotely
from Huguenots, have preserved collective Huguenot memory and
ensured that Huguenot history flourishes. In every country of the
Refuge, they very successfully became part of the host community, yet
in most countries they retained a sense, even if only a limited and distorted one, of the Huguenot identity. Collective memory preserved
Huguenot identity, even if it has ended up being a rather different one
to that of c.1700; and Huguenot history has reinforced that identity.
But it is an identity that would surely have been very different had
memory completely broken down, or had history not been researched
and written when it was. The multifaceted interactions of memory and
historiography in transnational context, explored in the following
casestudies, explain much about the creation and historical development of the Huguenot diaspora.

CHAPTER TWO

The Huguenots and the St Bartholomews

Massacre*
H. H. Leonard
The awful violence of the massacre of St Bartholomews Day, 24 August
1572, continues to be an event both of history and, in a sense, of memory, for, unlike some great historical episodes, it is still relatively well
known today it is remembered. Estimates of the numbers killed in
1572 vary. The more conservative estimates suggest between 2,000 and
3,000 were killed in Paris in the course of a week. In the aftershock of
the next six weeks at least another 3,000 were killed in other French
towns, mainly in the North. A probable total of some 6,000 deaths in
all, although it could have been as many as 810,000; far short of the
70,000 claimed by nineteenth-century Protestants, but appalling just
the same.1 The death toll of all the massacres certainly exceeds those of,
for example, all the Islamist terrorist atrocities of the twenty-first
century and even beyond the impact on the Huguenot community
of such large-scale mortality, the memory of the bloody events of
St Bartholomews unquestionably shaped subsequent French and
Huguenot history in profound ways. The events of late summer and
autumn 1572 continue to generate considerable historiographical
controversy among scholars; and they had the power to stir wider
* An earlier version of this paper was given as the fourth Utt Lecture, at Pacific
Union College, in 2002. I am grateful to David Trim for his comments and
suggestions.
1
Philip Benedict, The St Bartholomew Massacres in the Provinces, HJ 21 (1978),
207; Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in SixteenthCentury Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), for Paris. It seems clear that
from the very first years after the massacres Protestants on the whole exaggerated the
numbers, while after a time Catholics minimised them, so that by the nineteenth century Protestants were claiming 90,000 dead while some Catholic writers were talking
of a few hundred! Even today we cannot be sure of the numbers: Denis Crouzet, La
nuit de la SaintBarthlemy: un rve perdu de la Renaissance (Paris: Fayard, 1994),
gives 8,000, J. H. M. Salmon, Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (London:
Methuen, 1975), 187 suggests as many as 13,000. I stick with the most conservative
figure for the present.

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h. h. leonard

controversy in France into the 1990s. The memory of St Bartholomews,

in sum, has not yet faded.
This essay is a synthesis of recent scholarship, rather than of original
research. It seeks to understand why the St Bartholomews massacres
occurred and it examines their legacy, which subsequent generations
of Protestants, within and without France, memorialised. It argues that
the massacres have to be seen in the context of the religious violence
that escalated into three civil wars in the 1560s, in which Huguenots
tended to attack objects, rather than people the mass, images,
shrines though also sometimes the priests who kept the system going;
Catholics, on the other hand, tended to attack the persons of heretics,
because of the prevalent concept of heresy as a deadly infection and
pollution. However, the nature of cities and towns as well as the communal nature of religion also contributed to the possibility of violence.
Ceremonial processions, whether to thank God for victory, to show
penitence in defeat, to ward off dangers of a more local kind, or to
mark Corpus Christi day, had all shown, before the advent of Protes
tantism, a united community at work in resolving the endemic earlymodern problems of famine, epidemic and poverty. The unwillingness
of Protestants to take part in these important rituals and their occasional willingness to attack them created divided communities in
which Huguenots were regarded as the reason and cause not only of
disunity, but also of whatever troubles befell the city or parish in which
they lived, and therefore made them targets.
But the pre-existence of religious and communal violence is only
one of the roots of the massacre of 1572. In the summer of 1572 Paris,
a city whose civic identity had traditionally revolved around its role as
the heart of a sacral monarchy (a point discussed below), was flooded
by Huguenot noblemen and their retinues, come to witness the marriage of Henry of Navarre to the sister of the king the marriage of a
Protestant to a Catholic. Parisians and staunchly Catholic nobles
regarded the marriage as symptomatic of the kings failure to act as the
first son of the pope ought, and crush heresy. Each of the three civil
wars had ended, not in victory, but in concessions to the heretics. The
Parisians had already shown their disapproval of the terms of the peace
treaty of 1570 by a tax strike. The marriage brought these passions to
the boil, aided by preachers who warned their congregations that God
would not let the marriage and failure to punish heretics go unpunished. A general eschatological excitement and anxiety raised the temperature still higher. Appalling violence was the tragic result, and a

the huguenots and the st bartholomews45

suspicion by Protestants of Catholic motives that went beyond the borders of France. For the next thirty years, until a Protestant (and survivor of St Bartholomews day) member of the House of Bourbon, Henry
of Navarre, succeeded to the French throne as Henry IV, Huguenots
were deeply distrustful of the Valois monarchy, ensuring peace could
not be made in France until 1598. But in addition, right into the eighteenth century, foreign Protestants associated both French Calvinists
and the French crown with massacre. St Bartholomews shaped the
triangular interrelationship of French Protestants, French government
and foreign governments for a century and a half.
*
How could the St Bartholomews massacres have happened?
The massacre of St Bartholomews day was not the first in France in
the sixteenth century and events in Paris in 1572 have to be seen in the
context of the religious violence that had previously escalated into
three civil wars in the 1560s. The violence of St Bartholomew was not
new but more intensive, for rioting and lynch-law had been pervasive
from 1562.2 Hostility to Protestants was particularly marked in Paris.
It was a large, bustling, cosmopolitan city, the largest in Northern
Europe. Its 300,000 inhabitants, confined more or less within its
medieval walls, crowded into its narrow streets, its five-storey multioccupancy buildings, its hovels, its mansions and its palaces.3 It was a
commercial and manufacturing centre, a capital city, host to a royal
residence, home to the Parlement and to the oldest university in
Europe. In short it was a magnet for all sorts and conditions of people.
It also had its poverty and crime problems that its city government
tried to deal with not with total success. This makes it sound like any
number of modern cities. But there was one important difference.
Paris was proud of its Catholicism. It is tempting to say that the majority of Parisians were fanatically Catholic except that one mans fanaticism is another mans loyalty to truth and principle. We shall return to
Pariss deep-rooted Catholicism later. For now it is sufficient to note
Menna Prestwich, Calvinism in France, 15591629, in Prestwich (ed.),
International Calvinism 15411715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 92.
3
Robert Descimon, Paris on the eve of St. Bartholomew: Taxation, Privilege and
Social Geography, in Philip Benedict (ed.), Cities and Social Change in Early Modern
France (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 6982; Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 9
2

46

h. h. leonard

that it was one of the distinguishing features of this large and exciting
city which one Catholic observer enthusiastically and significantly
compared to Jerusalem.4
In the hot and sultry August of 1572 Paris was even more crowded
than usual. Hundreds of extra bodies the nobility of France with
their households, retainers and servants had descended on the capital
for a royal wedding. Including a large number of Huguenot nobility.
Paris had never seen so many rich and highborn Protestants. They
were there for the wedding of one of their political leaders, the young
Henry of Navarre, to the princess Margaret, sister of king Charles IX.
The marriage of a catholic to a protestant was itself a rare event.
The marriage of a protestant leader to the kings catholic sister was
unheard of. It required a papal dispensation. The pope declined. The
marriage went ahead without a papal blessing. For most Parisians it
was an unwelcome marriage.
Unwelcome is too weak a word. Popular preachers, their churches
filled to bursting point, thundered from their pulpits against it.5
It could only bring divine judgment upon the capital city and the state.
For this was an era when people really did believe that God was active
in the natural and political world and that famines, floods, epidemic
diseases, monstrous births, comets, and even defeats in war were all
signs of Gods displeasure.6 Albrecht Drers masterly and haunting
image of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse bringing with them
Gods judgments of famine, disease and death were printed and imitated many times during the century. Preaching in Paris reflected this.
At least since 1557 when France suffered a disastrous defeat at the
hands of the Spanish at St Quentin the preachers had blamed whatever
troubles befell the city onto the presence of heresy. Such troubles, they

Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 38. It is notable that Huguenots also used Jerusalem
in reference to Paris, but in rather different ways. French Protestants regarded Paris as
a potential Jerusalem, if it could be cleansed of apostate religion: Crouzet, La nuit de
Saint-Barthlemy, 87, 121; and they called one of their unofficial house churches in
Paris Jerusalem, rather than the city as a whole: Nancy Lyman Roelker, One King, One
Faith: The Parlement of Paris and the Religious Reformations of the Sixteenth Century
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 270.
5
Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 45158 is the best account of the role of the Paris
preachers throughout the period leading up to 1572.
6
Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2000). They also observe that people saw God working through the
stars our word disaster literally means a negative star.
4

the huguenots and the st bartholomews47

warned, would continue until heresy was extirpated. They sounded

like Old Testament prophets. But they also linked the troubles around
them with the second coming of Christ for which people had to be
ready in these the last days. France suffered from what Denis Crouzet
calls severe apocalyptic anxiety.7 The final judgment was near. One
had to be ready. Being ready meant doing right. And doing right was
just what was not happening when a Catholic princess married a
Protestant. God, fulminated Simon Vigor, both one of the most popular and one of the most rhetorically violent Paris preachers, will not
suffer this execrable coupling.8
To summarize: in August 1572 Paris was more overcrowded than
usual; it was overcrowded with unwanted, lordly heretics and it was
overcrowded because of a marriage that would bring down upon
France and its capital city the judgments of God. Paris was on edge.
It was a city of raw nerves.
Paris had been on edge for over a decade. From the time that
Protestants began to appear in anything like visible numbers in 1557
there had been trouble. When the ultra-Catholic Duke of Guise killed
members of a congregation at Vassy in 1562 Paris welcomed him as a
heronever mind that his rash action precipitated civil religious war.
Something was being done at last. There were three civil wars between
1562 and 1570 and wars engender fear. Rumours circulated that the
Huguenots intended to destroy Paris. There was a certain collective
paranoia concerning Protestants. Of course, there was just enough evidence to make Parisian fears plausible. Huguenots in other towns had
at various times in the three civil wars taken over the administration,
expelled Catholic dissenters and on occasion killed some also.9
But conspiracy theory was the result, not the cause, of Parisian dislike of Protestants. It is perhaps difficult for some in these days of individualism to understand that religion in early-modern Europe was a
7
Denis Crouzet, Les guerriers de dieu: la violence au temps des troubles de religion,
vers 1525-vers 1610, (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990), I, 10362, 17273, 38687, II,
407, 627.
8
On Vigor see Barbara Diefendorf, Simon Vigor: A Radical Preacher in SixteenthCentury Paris, SCJ 18 (1987), 399410.
9
Philip Benedict, Rouen during the French Wars of Religion, (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press 1980), 125150, gives a full account of happenings in Rouen; he deals
more briefly with some of the other cities in Saint Bartholomews Massacres in the
Provinces; Penny Roberts, Calvinists in Troyes, 15621572, in Andrew Pettegree
et al. (eds), Calvinism in Europe 15401620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 100118 deals more fully with the problems facing the Huguenots in Troyes.

48

h. h. leonard

communal affair, worship a communal event, salvation a corporate act.

If you did not participate you were in effect saying that you did not
want to be part of the community, and it wasnt far from there to others
believing that you wished to destroy the community. In a sense they
were right. The old rituals bound communities together. Whether it
was the ritual of regular attendance at the Mass, the yearly taking of the
Eucharist, the weekly distribution of non-communion bread and wine
during Sunday service,10 or taking part in a procession, people showed
that they were in some sort of harmony with their fellows. Not to participate set you apart. And if you also wore more sombre clothes,
sought to live a rather more sober life, refused to take part in the nonreligious festivals of the community (somewhat riotous affairs), you set
yourself apart even more. There was, then, a strong social dimension to
Catholic suspicion and dislike of Protestants.
But there was also genuine theological hostility, reflecting doctrinal
divisions. What beliefs might separate a community so decisively as to
cause communal violence? Probably the two most important were the
beliefs about the Mass and religious processions. The views I portray
here are by and large those of the person in the pew and some of the
parish priests and may not do justice to the sophisticated theology of
the Sorbonne, but we are trying to see why ordinary people acted the
way they did. Parish Catholics normally made their communion once
a year, usually at Easter, but they watched the priest celebrate it every
week; or if they chose, as some did, more often. What did they see as
they watched? They saw the priest take the bread and the wine and lift
them up in consecration before the altar. And they knew without a
shadow of doubt that at that very moment the bread and wine became
the very body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ; that Christ was sacrificed on the altar for their sins; and that they were nearer to salvation
than before it had happened.11 Now, while the Catholic faithful gazed
in adoration at the uplifted bread and wine and worshipped their

On this, Dieffendorf, Beneath the Cross, 29.

Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 15621629 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 1920, argues that the Mass was principally a social act, that it
underscored the bond between the communicants themselves more than between
themselves and God. While there certainly was an important social dimension to the
Mass, or for that matter to the protestant Communion, one can elevate the social dimension higher than is warranted. An attack on the Mass was undoubtedly a dagger
stuck in the heart of the body social (20) but it was also blasphemy and a dagger stuck
into the heart of Christ. The two are not mutually exclusive.
10
11

the huguenots and the st bartholomews49

s aviour, all that Protestants saw was dangerous idolatry or superstition.

For them the bread was still bread, the wine still wine. To gaze and
kneel in adoration at a specially made wafer was, as they crudely
insisted, to worship a God of paste.
Such a view was clearly offensive to Catholics. Even worse, it was
blasphemy. It mocked the very body and blood of Christ. And everyone knew that to permit such blasphemy was to run the risk of divine
judgement. The city needed to be purged of such people. And there
were so many occasions on which such blasphemy could be seen to be
committed apart from the saying of mass. The most public of these was
the procession. Processions were held for various reasons. To celebrate
a victory; more often, to ask for divine favour in times of war, bad harvest and epidemic disease; and always on Corpus Christi day, simply to
celebrate the fact that God was with them in the form of bread and
wine. On this day the holy sacrament was taken through the streets in
solemn procession while the inhabitants knelt, or stood with heads
bared and bowed, having first suitably decorated their houses to honour the body of Christ as it passed. But processions involved not only
the Blessed Sacrament but also the whole community of the saints. The
aid of St Genevieve (the patron saint of Paris) was invoked by elaborate
city-wide processions no fewer than forty six times in the century,
fourteen of them between 1550 and 1570, while individual parishes
sought the blessing and protection of their own patron saint, whose
likeness was processed through the streets of the parish together with
holy relics, ranging from splinters of wood of the Cross of Christ
downwards. A typical parish might have as many as thirteen such
processions a year in addition to joining in the great city processions.12
All were powerful media, keeping the city in touch with heaven, the
saints working with God to provide solutions to every day problems as
well as catastrophic events. They also kept the city in touch with itself
since the great and the good processed while the ordinary people
looked on in wonder and in awe.
But to Protestants they were at best a waste of time: they had no
scriptural validity; they were superstitious idolatry; they could not
help peoples souls; they probably did a great deal of harm to their

12
Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 40; cf. Moshe Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris: Rituals
of Devotion in Early Modern France, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions, 3 (Leiden: Brill,
1998).

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h. h. leonard

spiritual lives. Now a Protestant who wanted to keep out of trouble

could do so by keeping his mouth shut and not attending Mass. But
there was little he could do when the Body of Christ or some holy relic
was processed through the streets. He could not, in all conscience,
adorn his house nor could he not kneel, or even doff his hat. So he
was a marked man, the more so if he was rash enough to make a counterdemonstration. As, of course, some did. The mass was mocked,
shrines were vandalised, processions interrupted, stones thrown,
swords unsheathed, lives lost. Reacting to increasingly radical Cath
olic rhetoric and heightened persecution, the Huguenots, as Arlette
Jouanna argues, had been radicalised in their turn and become more
aggressive.13
In sum, then, Protestants were an offence to the community; they
tore the seamless robe of parish and civic unity; they offended the
saints by whose aid Parisians were protected from the ills of this life
and assured of salvation in the next; they were, as heretics and blasphemers, an affront to God. Paris was polluted. For zealous Catholics
and the priests they listened to there was only one solution: the
offence the pollution had to be removed.
It seems that it is much easier for us to do unspeakable things to others once we have ceased to think of them as fellow human beings with
friends and families, hopes, fears and potential. It is part of what
Crouzet calls the animalisation of the reformation.14 That is why later
English radicals so objected to Edmund Burkes characterisation of the
revolutionary Paris crowd as a swinish multitude. Animals had no
rights. It is also why, at least in part, a civilised nation like the Germans
could create a holocaust: the Jews had been depicted as somehow less
than human. Something similar happened in sixteenth-century France.
The words used to describe heresy and heretics are significant:
vermin; predatory beasts; disease; infection; pollution; and d
emonic
agents.15 These were things sixteenth-century people did not tolerate

13
Arlette Jouanna, La France du XVIe sicle 14831598, 2nd edn (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1997), 45254.
14
Guerriers de Dieu, I, 263: lanimalisation du rforme. The fact that the Apocalypse
deals so much in the imagery of beasts may also have helped.
15
Crouzet, Guerriers de Dieu, I, 25462, 265; Luc Racaut, Persecution or Pluralism?
Propaganda and Opinion-Forming during the French Wars of Religion, in Richard
Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), Persecution and Pluralism: Calvinists and Religious
Minorities in Early Modern Europe 15001700 (Oxford, New York & Bern: Peter Lang,
2006), 6587.

the huguenots and the st bartholomews51

and feared. Vermin were fit only to be trapped and exterminated.16

Tolerating a cancer was out of the question if you could remove it.
Similarly, infectious people were isolated where possible. In the 1490s
when a venereal disease popularly called the pox swept through
Europe, the Paris authorities ordered that all infected Parisians should
be isolated in some way and that infected foreigners should leave the
city immediately. The disobedient were to be bound and thrown into
the river Seine.17 Drastic problems called for drastic measures. It is
not a coincidence that the same fate befell many of those killed on
St Bartholomews day.18 Heresy was a deadly infection not only to the
one professing it but also to all with whom he came in contact. Heresy
was ten times worse than the pox in that it killed mens souls as well as
their bodies. Worse still, heresy was an offence to God and He would
judge those who were negligent in removing it. Indeed, the judgment
was already upon them. Had not Daniel 9:27 foretold of those who
would make the sacrifice [the Mass] to cease and of abominations and
judgments to follow?19
But there was yet another reason why the Huguenots were disliked.
Heresy was regarded as treason. The French thought of their monarchs
as particularly favoured of God. Each king was anointed with holy oil
delivered in a holy ampoule by a heavenly dove at the coronation of
Clovis, the first Christian Frankish king, over a thousand years before.20
In the coronation oath French kings swore to keep the realm in the
most holy catholic faith and to root out heresy. They had been given
the papal title of Most Christian King (le roi trs chrestien) and each
French king was called the oldest son of the Pope. They were almost
priests: at their coronation they took communion in both kinds
something that only priests were permitted to do. They expected to
tend to the spiritual needs of their subjects and had a sacerdotal role.
16
Bruce Lincoln, Discourse and the Construction of Society: Comparative Studies of
Myth, Ritual, and Classification (New York: Oxford University Press, pb edn,
1992), 100.
17
Cunningham and Grell, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 267.
18
They too were disobedient and by metaphorical definition infectious. The dumping of the bodies in the Seine has been regarded as an ironic form of baptism but
I think it just as likely that it was seen as a means of cleansing the city of refuse. This
was, after all where most of the sewage ended up (Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 14),
and it is consistent with the throwing of executed heretic bodies on rotting heaps of
criminals and garbage.
19
Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthlemy, 195.
20
Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross, 45.

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h. h. leonard

Their model was the Old Testament king.21 The French monarchy was
(and had been since the late tenth century) a sacral monarchy, in which
the sovereign, mystically imbued with Gods presence and deputed
with some divine powers, effectively combined in his own person the
offices of king, quasi-priest and judge. To be a heretic was not only to
be a spiritual degenerate it was also to be a traitor. The traditional
French adage, One king, one faith, one law (un roi, une foi, une loi)
was much more than an aphorism; it described how contemporaries
believed the French polity wasand ought to be.22
This theoretical attitude was, moreover, expressed in juridical practice during the first six decades of the sixteenth century, resulting in
the execution of several hundred heretics.23 But when the young
Charles IX came to the throne in 1560, with his mother, Catherine de
Medici acting as regent, royal policy on heresy became at best inconsistent. There was a disjuncture between what ought to have been and
what was. Parisians saw Charles as simply too lenient. By 1572 he had
fought three wars against the Huguenots. Each time the war had ended
with the king making unthinkable concessions. Paris wanted a king
that would fight on, not make peace. A flood of pamphlets poured
from Pariss presses from the time of Charles IXs accession urging him
to be a modern David or Solomon, or even more significant, the new
Josiah. This built up an almost messianic expectation that the king,
learning the lessons of biblical and secular history, would play his role
as the divine agent to rid the state of heresy and avert the justice of
God.24 In these circumstances, royal policy was a let-down. Peace
seemed to reverse the policy on heresy that the wars pursued.
Of course, Parisians simplified both the problem and the kings

Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthlemy, 191205.

Holt, French Wars of Religion, 929, is particularly persuasive here; cf. Roelker,
One King, One Faith, 163, 314; Mark Greengrass, France, in Bob Scribner, Roy Porter
and Mikuls Teich (eds.), The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1994), 49, 5657; Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthlemy, passim;
Richard Bonney, The Obstacles to Pluralism in Early Modern France, in Keith
Cameron, Mark Greengrass and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Adventure of Religious
Pluralism in Early Modern France (Oxford, Bern, New York, etc: Peter Lang, 2000),
20929.
23
William Monter, Heresy Executions in Reformation Europe, 15201565, in Ole
Peter Grell and Bob Scribner (eds.), Tolerance and intolerance in the European
Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 49, table 4.1.
24
Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthlemy, 191205.
21
22

the huguenots and the st bartholomews53

position, but it was the way they perceived it. As far as they were concerned, when it came to the extirpation of heresy the king was not
entirely on board.
Two incidents in Paris illustrate this. The first concerns the Gastines
family. In 1569, during the third civil war, Philippe and Richard de
Gastines were caught celebrating holy communion according to the
reformed rite in their house. They were executed.25 Then their house
was torn down and in its place a pyramid with a large cross was erected.
There is a great deal to ponder here. Heresy had to be expunged
hence the executions. But the site of the false and blasphemous mass
had to be removed also. And then heresy had to be atoned for: hence
the cross upon the site. This was not triumphalism. It was the way in
which the community was cleansed and made right with God. It is not
difficult to imagine, then, the fury of the Paris mob when they learned
that one of the terms of the treaty of St Germain in 1570 was that the
cross of the Gastines was to be removed because it offended Protestants!
Passions ran high in the capital and the city authorities ignored the
royal order to remove the cross for over a year while the priests fulminated from their pulpits. Only when a second royal order was given
and then after several failures due to resistance - and only under guard,
in secrecy and at dead of nightwas the cross removed and re-erected
in the Cemetery of the Innocents. The fury died down eventually but
the event was not forgotten. It is significant that among the first victims
of the massacre of St Bartholomews Day were the friends and relatives
of the Gastines.
The second incident concerns the man who was probably the most
hated in Paris: Gaspard de Coligny, leader of the Huguenot military
forces. He was a traitor twice over. He was a traitor simply because he
was a protestant. He was even more of a traitor because he had fought
in three civil wars against the crown. And during the third, a royal
inquiry found him guilty of conspiring in the assassination of the Duke
of Guisethat same duke so beloved of Parisians because of his firm
stand against heresy. The inquiry, held as it was during the war, was
probably a propaganda move to blacken the name of the leading protestant nobleman and general. Since he was not around to be executed
he was hung in effigy. The effigy was then mutilated and left to rot as

25
Diefendorrf, Beneath the Cross, 83, suggests that the fury of the mob overcame
the judicial options of fine or banishment.

54

h. h. leonard

would have happened had he been there. But in 1570 peace was made
and Coligny was re-instated. A further commission of inquiry declared
him innocent of the conspiracy and he was welcomed back to the royal
court. Although he only spent five weeks there between 1570 and 1572
he was re-admitted to the kings council and was rumoured to be gaining influence over the king.26 Paris was predictably incensed and
once again, when the massacres began, Colignys body suffered all the
indignities that had been heaped upon it in effigy three years before.
In 1572, then, Paris was alienated from its monarch and from its city
government that sought to implement royal edicts. It deplored the
ending of each of the civil wars without an outright victory over heresy.
It deplored the concessions of toleration, however limited, that were
made to the Huguenots. It refused to pay the tax bill of 1570, which
was to be used in part to pay off the protestant armies that had to
be disbanded. It was maddened by the Gastines affair and the reinstatement of Coligny. It hated the arrogance of the Huguenot n
obility
who came in their droves to a marriage they deplored. And it listened
to its preachers when they said God sometimes raised up the common
people to do for Him what kings failed to do. Paris was on edge.
But that does not necessarily mean that a massacre was inevitable.
Paris had been overcrowded, resentful, listening to its preachers, worried about their kings attitude to heretics for twelve years without a
full-scale massacre taking place, although for both religious and economic reasons it was at times nearly ungovernable.27 The elements for
a massacre were there.
The catalyst that turned elements into awful reality was a bungled
assassination attempt on Gaspard de Coligny. A few days after the controversial marriage Coligny was wounded, but not killed, by an assassins bullet as he walked back to his lodgings from an audience with the
King. Who was responsible is impossible to determine.28 What is certain is that the Huguenot nobility in Paris became increasingly strident
in their demands for justice. In the face of increasing pressure for
action, Catherine de Medici and Charles IX panicked. Perhaps they
26
N. M. Sutherland, The Massacre of St Bartholomew and the European Conflict,
15691572 (London: Macmillan, 1973), is not alone in this view.
27
Barbara Diefendorf, Prologue to a Massacre: Popular Unrest in Paris, 1557
1572, AHR 90 (1985), 108283, observes that several years of bad weather led to food
shortages and high prices, which added to unrest in the decade leading up to 1572.
28
It seems very likely that the Spanish were involved: see Salmon, Society in Crisis,
186; Sutherland, Massacre of St Bartholomew, 42, 107.

the huguenots and the st bartholomews55

really did believe that the Huguenots had determined to kill the king
and his major advisers in revenge. Certainly the accounts we have of
the night meeting of 2324 August exude a sense of panic as well as of
determined and off-the-cuff planning. They agreed on a pre-emptive
strike. Coligny and the major Huguenot noblemen and their retainers
would be killed before they could cause any trouble. This is probably
all that was intendedbad enough and a massacre of sorts but hardly
the massacre that ensued. Two things turned this panicky and cynical
pre-emptive strike into the massacre we know about.
First, in order to ensure that things went according to plan the Paris
militia was called out. Nothing could have been more disastrous than
to have some of the most convinced Catholics in Paris armed and on
the streets. It conveyed a sense of dire emergency and confirmed
rumours that the Huguenots were bent on revenge.29 It also conveyed a
sense that they were doing the kings will. This was reinforced by the
words of the Duke of Guise who supervised the killing of Coligny,
This was done on the orders of the king. The news quickly swept
through Paris.
This was done on the orders of the king. The participation of many
of the people of Paris has to be seen as an awful but almost joyful celebration that after ten years of half-hearted war and unwanted toleration their king was at last on their side and fulfilling his sacred
coronation vows. The King had returned to his people and to his
Catholic duties. They would respond with holy joy. And their joy knew
no bounds when the rumour spread that in the cemetery of the Holy
Innocents a hawthorn tree, symbol of Christs passion, that had seemed
to be dead and had not blossomed for several years, had burst into
bloom. It was, to eschatologically anxious minds, a sign, a miracle of
approval. Not only had the king returned to his people; the King of
Kings stood in the midst of those who in this New Jerusalem of the
latter days were cleansing the city of the pollution of blasphemy.30
Once it had started the massacre was difficult to stop. Despite the best
efforts of the city government, the parlement and the crown, the rampage continued until it burnt itself out. Paris was for a week a city out
of control.

Diefendorf, Prologue to a Massacre, 1091.

Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthlemy, 52531 (at 526), is persuasive on this
point.
29
30

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h. h. leonard

The massacre spread with the news to a dozen other cities. The death
toll increased accordingly. Two points might be made about the massacres in other towns. First, those perpetrating them believed, or professed to believe, that they were doing the kings will. The same rejoicing
that I have suggested accompanied the massacres in Paris is to be seen
elsewhere, especially in cities with a Huguenot minority big enough to
pose a threat, and where there had been some sort of communal violence during the preceding decade.31 Second, very often the violence
followed a pattern also; it had had a ritual, symbolic nature.32 In the
past, Huguenots had vandalised and desecrated shrines, shouted abuse
at the mass, and roughed up priests to show that saints and priests had
no mystical, miracle-working power. On the other hand, for Catholics,
it was not enough simply to kill a heretic: the body had to be mutilated
and left to rot on or by the gallows without a Christian burial the fate
of common criminals: heretics were worse than common criminals.
Sometimes pages of the Bible or a Protestant tract were stuffed down
the throat of the dead person before they were burnt. The burning
pages were a symbol of the powerlessness of the Bible on which the
heretic placed so much faith. The communal violence of the period
had an awful theatre about it. And it followed the patterns of normal
judicial violence in an exaggerated form, even down to mock trials carried out sometimes over dead bodies.33
Of course, sometimes violence was just violence, carried out by
those whose psychotic natures thrive in such times. But on the whole
those who participated in the massacres of the late summer and early
autumn of 1572 did so because they believed they were carrying out
the work of God in the name of the king. They saw themselves as the
agents of divine retribution on those that had mocked and desecrated
their shrines and churches, blasphemed against the holy mass, divided
the community by their refusal to participate in the ritual events that
bound the community together.34 By their acts of violence they believed
that they would avert divine retribution upon their community by
31
Benedict, Massacres in the Provinces, 22021; idem, Rouen, chap. 2; Roberts,
Calvinists in Troyes, 10018.
32
Natalie Zemon Davis, The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-century
France, Past and Present, no. 59 (1973): 5191, repr. in Society and Culture in Early
Modern France: Eight Essays (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1975), 15288,
remains authoritative on what she first called the Rites of Violence.
33
Ibid.; cf. Benedict, Rouen, 5668, 12728.
34
Benedict, Rouen, 21819; Crouzet, La Nuit de la Saint-Barthlemy.

the huguenots and the st bartholomews57

ridding it of the blasphemy of heresy. Of course, not all Catholics in

Paris believed and acted like this. Some bravely sought to save their
protestant friends, neighbours and relatives from the violence. And all
over France there were those who turned from the massacres in revulsion. Whether they were the majority is difficult to determine. If they
were the majority they were very much the silent majority; perhaps
that silence came from the feeling that Huguenots were divisive, infectious, polluting and blasphemous. In other words they shared the murderers views even if they were repelled by their methods. As in
Germany in the 1930s all that is required is the silence, inactivity, and
therefore tacit consent of the majority, for the zealots to have their way.
Thus it appears to have been France in 1572.
*
What did it all achieve? There were international responses and domestic consequences and eventually international effects as well. Initially,
the international reaction was limited to words (and music) rather
than deeds.
In 1572, celebratory masses were said in Rome and Pope Gregory
XIII had a commemorative medallion struck, gruesomely depicting
corpses, but struck down by the angel of death, rather than the duke of
Guise or citizens of Paris.35 Three years earlier, Pius V had celebrated Te
Deums to mark victories over the Huguenots at Jarnac and Moncontour
during the third civil war, but this was a rather different kind of victory and Gregory XIIIs celebrations of slaughter became part of
Protestant legend but then, he had previously declared that he
desire[d] nothing else than the extermination of the Huguenots.36
A celebratory mass was also held in Paris following a solemn, citywide procession. Hearty congratulations came from at least Rome and
Spain.
On the Protestant side, there were condemnations but little else.
Elizabeth I of England gave the Spanish ambassador a rough ride: he
arrived at the court to find all the courtiers dressed in black, and she
gave him a tongue-lashing. But that was all. The only active diplomatic
35
The medallion is reproduced in Sutherland, Massacre of St Bartholomew, plate
facing p. 55.
36
A. Lynn Martin, Papal Policy and the European Conflict, 15591572, SCJ 11
(Summer 1980), 44, 45. Cf. chapter 11, by McGraw, below, p. 000.

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h. h. leonard

effort on behalf of the remaining Huguenots came from Poland, where

the elite refused to elect Charles IXs brother, Henry, Duke of Anjou, as
King of Poland (which had an elective monarchy) unless concessions
were made to the Huguenots.37 The English government clearly contemplated war, but the options were unattractive, as the lesson of
Henry VIIIs wars with France in the first half of the century, and
Elizabeths overt military intervention in the first war of religion
(156263), was that England needed a strong ally (whether external,
like the emperor, or the Huguenots as they were in 1562), to wage war
effectively against France, or it risked disaster. The Huguenots in 1572
apparently were disastrously weakened (though they were to bounce
back) while the Spanish Monarchy approved of the massacre and was
angry at England for supporting, albeit covertly, Dutch (and partly
protestant) rebels. This is not to say that foreign Protestants, especially
those in England, did not take the events of 1572 very much to
heart. As we will see, the reverse was true and this was not without
consequences.
But in the immediate aftermath, the most significant effects of the
massacres were domestic. The political leadership of the Huguenot
movement was all but wiped out. There was secondly a wider and
immediate effect on the French Protestant population: it was diminished, in many places dramatically. In addition to the dead, many
more, as contemporaries immediately recognised, fled abroad, particularly to England and Switzerland; so significant were their numbers
that those who had emigrated in the aftermath of the massacres made
up the bulk of some Huguenot communities in England. But thousands who had escaped with their lives returned to the Catholic fold in
the months that followed.38 In Rouen, for example, the membership of
the Huguenot church dropped from 16,500 to 3,000. Yet in Rouen only
a few hundred had actually been killed. Even so, Catholic parish registers reveal a flood of re-baptisms of Calvinist children making their

37
Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomews Massacres, chap. 5, especially 1036.
There were, of course, other reasons for the ending of this civil war: see James B. Wood,
The Kings Army: Warfare, Soldiers and Society during the Wars of Religion in France,
15621576 (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1996).
38
Haultain to Burghley, 27 Sept. 1572, CSPF, X (157274), 181, no. 575; Robin
Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain
(2nd edn, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001), 19, 38; Andrew Spicer, The Frenchspeaking Reformed Community and Their Church in Southampton 1567c.1620,
Huguenot Society Publications, New Series, 3 (1997), 1517, 21, 149, 150, 154.

the huguenots and the st bartholomews59

reintegration into the Catholic fold. Many adult Huguenots formally

abjured in the Cathedral. For many, no doubt, it was understandable
fear that led them to start attending mass again and to have their children re-baptised according to the Catholic rite. For others it might
have been a strategic move to draw attention away from themselves
while they prepared for emigration. But for still others, and these
might have been the majority, the enormity of the events of the 1572
seemed to have convinced them that they had been in error. Surely
God would not have permitted his elect to suffer in this way?
They believed that God was punishing them for their sin of heresy.
They returned to the Catholic fold for good and apparently with
conviction.39
In consequence, the St Bartholomews massacres constituted a significant turning-point for the Huguenots and in the wars of religion.40
As Prestwich observes, The momentum of conversion had already
slowed down by 1570, but in Normandy, Picardy, and the le-de-France
the effects of the massacre were dramatic and permanent.41 In 1582 a
leading Huguenot expressed his belief that the French Protestant
churches had lost two-thirds of their members in the aftermath of
massacres.42 And the figures from Rouen suggest this is credible, at
least in some parts of France. In general terms, massive abjurations
occurred in the North, the product both of the immediate shock [and]
the cumulative effects of years of insecurity. Abjurations in the 1570s
were less common in the South, where Calvinism had struck deeper
roots than in the North, but many southerners emigrated. But the loss
in numbers was much more marked in the North and thus a major
effect of the massacre was to heighten the geographical divide, so that

39
Benedict, Rouen, 12538, 14750; cf. Holt, French Wars of Religion, 9495; Robert
J. Knecht, The French Civil Wars (Harlow: Longman Pearson Education, 2000), 166
67. While Roberts reports a decline in Troyes, over the period 156272, from 89,000
Huguenots to a handful, there systematic persecution had wrought a steady decline
over the decade and the massacre of 1572 simply finished things off: Roberts, Calvinists
in Troyes.
40
Menna Prestwich, Calvinism in France 15551629, in idem (ed.), International
Calvinism 15411715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 97; cf. Sutherland, Massacre of
St Bartholomew, 2.
41
Prestwich, Calvinism in France, 97. On long-term trends in the French Protestant
population see Philip Benedict, The Huguenot Population of France, 16001685: The
Demographic Fate and Customs of a Religious Minority, Transactions of the American
Philosophical Society, 31: 5 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1991).
42
Quoted in Knecht, French Civil Wars, 166.

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h. h. leonard

eventually Calvinism became essentially a movement limited to southern parts of western France.43
Third and following naturally on the second were the effects on
Huguenot mentalit: the strain of suffering such concentrated persecution, often at the hands of their neighbours, inevitably had consequences. As Donald Kelley eloquently argues, the massacre became the
locus of swirling emotions, revolutionary implications [and] festering
resentments.44
Fourth, the massacres, and how they were remembered, significantly shaped Huguenot collective self-perception. Indeed, as Luc
Racaut argues, the massacre provoked a transformation of Huguenot
self-perception and identity.45 For the seventy years subsequent
to the Edict of Nantes the Huguenots themselves, at least in print
and in public declarations, were inclined to avoid mentioning the
St Bartholomews massacre or indeed the wider wars of religion, from
a desire to avoid controversy.46 However, while this is an interesting
phenomenon, it misses a crucial point. If many in the north felt the
massacre to be a sign of divine displeasure, there were many others,
mostly in the south, who looked at it differently. As avid readers of the
Old Testament, Huguenots were aware that God not only prospered
his people but also sometimes allowed disaster to befall them as part of
the refining process that was especially significant to believers in
the doctrine of the elect. A calamity was a call to repentance and
St Bartholomews Day became le jour de Seigneur, who had chastised his people. From 1572 the theme of the [Israelites] long march
across the Desert was invoked more frequently.47 August 1572 became
seen as a testing time and a punishment for lack of zeal and piety. Many
Huguenots, then, remained faithful despite the circumstances; and
although Huguenot numbers never approached the heights of the late
Prestwich, Calvinism in France, 9798.
Donald R. Kelley, Martyrs, Myth, and the Massacre: The Background of
St. Bartholomew, in Alfred Soman (ed.), The Massacre of St. Bartholomew: Reappraisals
and Documents, International Archives of the History of Ideas, 75 (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 202.
45
Luc Racaut, Religious Polemic and Huguenot Self-Perception and Identity,
15541619, in Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Society and Culture in
the Huguenot World 15591685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 36.
46
lisabeth Labrousse, The Wars of Religion in Seventeenth-century Huguenot
Thought, in Soman, The Massacre of St. Bartholomew, 24351; and see chapter 1, by
Trim, above.
47
Prestwich, Calvinism in France, 95.
43
44

the huguenots and the st bartholomews61

1550s again, French Protestants remained a force sufficient to be reckoned with. They produced texts such as Vindici contra tyrannos
(1579), which argued explicitly for the right of subjects to resist a king
who was guilty of tyranny and of murdering his own subjects; it was
one of the most controversial texts of the sixteenth century, and continued to be reprinted and translated into the middle and later decades
of the seventeenth century. While the situation changed after c.1600, in
the first thirty years after St Bartholomews, Huguenot literary, political, and military, activity was massively moulded by the massacres,
resulting in a new militancy.48 In sum, while the seventeenth century
was to witness a different approach, the stamp of St Bartholomews had
surely already been set on the French Reformed Churches.
In addition, even in the seventeenth century, the silence of Protestant
pastors (at least in public) and intellectuals about their trials during the
wars of religion does not mean that the Huguenots did not preserve
memories, told around the family fireside; the scale of the massacres
must have meant that many Calvinist extended families would have
lost at least one of their members. As already seen, many emigrants
had been impelled to flee the country by the St Bartholomews massacres and they made up a considerable proportion of some Huguenot
communities abroad; thus, for several years, memories would have
been as common and vivid among Huguenots in England, the
Netherlands and the Swiss cantons as in France itself.
Fifth, the massacre was prominent in the history and memory of
foreign Protestants, affecting powerfully how Huguenots were perceived abroad. Ever after, the Huguenots could always elicit sympathy
elsewhere in Europe certainly from Protestants, sometimes even
from Catholics based on the mass murders of 1572. Indeed, the
events of St Bartholomews provided a kind of template of persecution,
onto which various other nationalities could easily imprint their own
persecutory experience. The forcible ejection on 24 August 1662 of
Nonconformist English ministers from their pulpits was dubbed by
Racaut, Religious Polemic and Huguenot Self-Perception and Identity, 36. See
Kelley, Martyrs, Myth, and the Massacre, 181202; Robert M. Kingdon, Myths about
the St Bartholomews Day Massacres 15721576 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard
University Press, 1988), passim. The Vindici appeared in French editions as well as
the original Latin and was frequently reprinted: Etienne Junius Brutus, Vindiciae contra tyrannos. Traduction franaise de 1581, ed. A. Jouanna, J. Perrin, M. Souli,
A. Tournon, and H. Weber, Les classiques de la pense politique, 11 (Geneva: Librairie
Droz, 1979), includes a lengthy (though still incomplete) bibliography.
48

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h. h. leonard

those affected as Bartholomews Day, which allowed them to

[ evoke] images of martyrdom with deep, symbolic significance.49
This highlights the extent to which foreign Protestants often identified
with their French confreres not only as fellow believers, but also as
fellow martyrs or fellow persecuted believers, even though the
St Bartholomews massacres were entirely unique in scale. Certainly
preachers, pamphleteers and political leaders across Protestant Europe
were ever ready to see any persecution by the French government in
the grim shadow cast by St Bartholomews.50
In sum, then, intellectually the massacres only stiffened the resolve
of many (though as we have seen not all) French Protestants. Organi
sationally, too, the Huguenots bounced back from the loss of most of
their leaders. And ordinary Huguenots continued to be willing to fight
as soldiers to defend liberty of conscience.51 The massacres of 1572 did
not end the civil wars and the civil wars did not wipe out heretics. By
1598 the Huguenots had won the large measure of toleration they
desired. And they kept most of it until it began to be eroded in the
1670s and was revoked in 1685.
That they were able to do so owed much not only to their own intellectual and military resolve and reorganisation, but also to events
beyond their control, in which (however) they were keen partici
pants,making the most of the opportunities that chance or external
events provided them with. And here we come to the second set of

Anne Dunan-Page, Introduction to idem, Religious Culture, 15.

A few examples: Princess of Orange to Walsingham, Middleburg, 11 Jan. 1589,
CSPF, XXIII (1589), 1; anon., A Warning Peece for London: being a True Relation of the
Bloody Massacre of the Protestants in Paris, by the Papists and Cavileers (London:
1642); speech in the English Parliament, May 1679, recorded in Roger Morrice, in
Mark Goldie et al (eds.), The Entring Book of Roger Morrice [16771691] (6 vols.,
Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), II, 158; Gilbert Burnet, Relation of the Bloody and
Barbarous Massacre of about One Hundred Thousand Protestants, Begun at Paris and
Carried on all over France by the Papists in the Year 1572 (London: 1678); anon., The
Deplorable State and Condition of the Poor French Protestants Commiserated, and humbly Represented to all Princes and People of the True Reformed Church; with Reasons for
a Protestant League (London: 1681), p.1; [Benjamin Keach], Sion in Distress: or, the
Groans of the Protestant Chruch [sic] (London: 1681), 94; J. S., Popery displayd in its
Proper Colours. Wherein its Nonentity and Nullity is demonstrated by Undeniable
Arguments. With Several Remarkable Passages relating to the Present Times. Humbly
offered to the Honourable House of Commons (London: 1681), 8. (I am indebted for
these references to David Trim and Robin Gwynn.) And cf. chapter 3, by Gregory
Dodds, below.
51
Cf. chapter 6, by D. J. B. Trim, below.
49
50

the huguenots and the st bartholomews63

international consequences of the massacres, which were, however,

bound up with events in France.
Not the least significant of these was the death of the last of the
Valois kings, Henry III, without a male heir in 1589. His successor was
none other than Henry of Navarre, the young bridegroom whose wedding had been one of the conditions of the massacre of 1572. Protected
from death in 1572 but forced to become a catholic and a prisoner at
court, he escaped and led the Protestants in civil wars after about 1580.
He converted to Catholicism in 1593 when it became clear that he
could not take Paris, or possibly much of the rest of the country, without it.52 As a king sympathetic to Protestants but also a catholic he was
able to reunite the country and impose peace for the rest of his reign.
But good general and leader of men that he was, he could not have
done it without aid. Spain sought to have him deposed and sent forces
to aid those Catholics that would not accept him. Elizabeth of England
sent official aid to Henry in the 1590s after Spain declared war on her
in 1588 and protestant mercenaries from Germany formed a significant part of his military resources. During the last quarter of the century the Dutch were in revolt against their Spanish king and one of the
matters of contention was his unwillingness to grant toleration to
Protestants there.
Something like what we would call ideological warfare was taking
place. As in modern ideological warfare there were overt and covert
operations. The English, for example, helped both the French and the
Dutch Protestants covertly until the late 1580s and early 90s when they
supported the Dutch Rebels and the French Protestants openly with
money and men. Indeed, what happened then was not unlike what
happened during the Cold War. Covert operations on the other side
included the assassination of the Dutch rebel leader, William of
Orange, in 1585 and a series of unsuccessful attempts on the life of
Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was fortunate to have as her spymaster Sir Francis
Walsingham, who had been the English ambassador in Paris during
the massacre and whose skills the CIA would have admired.53 He was

52
Greengrass, France, 62 argues persuasively that even after four years of campaigning as the rightful king Henry was not accepted by most of urban France.
53
Cf. Robert Hutchinson, Elizabeths Spy Master: Francis Walsingham and the Secret
War that Saved England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2006); Stephen Budiansky,
Her Majestys Spymaster: Elizabeth I, Sir Francis Walsingham, and the Birth of Modern
Espionage (New York: Viking, 2005).

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h. h. leonard

also a committed Protestant, as were a number of Elizabeths ministers

of state, who pushed the policy of aiding their co-religionists overseas.54 And ambitious ministers of state as well as sober ministers of
religion saw these events as part of the last great conflict between the
forces of Christ and the forces of the Antichrist in rather the same way
as in the last half of the twentieth century world events were seen in the
light of the battle between the forces of communism and those of
democracy. In terms of their black-and-whiteness the world-views of
the sixteenth and twentieth centuries were not all that different.
Now, French Huguenots after the massacre did not create these
international events. But they were part of the picture and as such contributed to it. And one way they did so was by the propaganda that
flowed from the pens of the likes of Simon Goulart.55 He and his collaborators published a considerable body of material, sent men on diplomatic missions, and kept the plight of the Huguenots on the agenda
of the international protestant community. They were part of the propaganda campaign that accompanies ideological warfare. They also provided their fellow Huguenots with a series of stories of heroism and
terror that became activating myths: they energised the faithful and
gave them models of action in troublous times.
*
The significance of the massacres was felt not only at the time and in
the subsequent century. It is also identifiable today. The massacres constitute one of the most bitterly contested sites of collective memory,
historical imagination, and historiographical debate.
As one scholar wrote in 1974, in the light of a series of new
inter
pretations prompted by the four hundredth anniversary of
St Bartholomews:
The massacre has remained one of the most memorable events of
European history attested not only by its tenacious hold on the
54
See, for example Sir Charles Wilson, Queen Elizabeth and the Revolt of the
Netherlands (London: Macmillan, 1970); D. J. B. Trim, The secret war of Elizabeth I:
England and the Huguenots during the early Wars of Religion, 156277, HSP 27:2
(1999), 18999; idem, Seeking a Protestant alliance and liberty of conscience on the
Continent, 155885, in Tudor England and its Neighbours, ed. Susan Doran and Glenn
Richardson (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 13977.
55
On Goulart (or Goulard) and his collaborators, see Robert M. Kingdon, Myths
about the St Bartholomews Day Massacres 15721576 (Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard University Press, 1988).

the huguenots and the st bartholomews65

popular imagination, but also by the steady accumulation of scholarly
activity devoted to the circumstances of the Massacre, its causes and
effects, and its persistence as one of the major historical myths throughout the course of subsequent centuries.56

This judgment would apply equally well today. The motion picture La
Reine Margot (1994), which enjoyed international success, testified
that twenty years later the massacre retained its tenacious hold of the
popular imagination.57 As for scholarly activity, the 1990s saw debate
reach a height not seen for decades, with the publication of several new
interpretative works based on fresh research, which sparked intense
controversy, both within and without the academy and prompted further reconsiderations in the 2000s.58 Meanwhile, Pope John Paul IIs
carefully worded reference to, but non-apology for, the massacre, at a
1996 mass in Paris, held on St Bartholomews Day,59 contrasted sharply
with the French Catholic bishops apology to Jews for the Churchs
treatment of them in the Second World War. The events of 1572 have a
mythic quality, capable of generating emotion to an extent probably
unmatched by any other sixteenth-century event, and akin perhaps
only to the mass murders of September 11, 2001, March 13, 2004, and
July 7, 2005, in New York, Madrid and London. These events, signalling the apparent start of a new era of wars of religion, brought a new
relevance to St Bartholomews.

56
Alfred Soman Editors Preface to Soman (ed.), The Massacre of St. Bartholomew:
Reappraisals and Documents, International Archives of the History of Ideas, 75 (The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), viii.
57
Cf. chapter 1, by Trim, above, p. 40.
58
Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross; Marc Venard, Arrtez le massacre!, Revue
dhistoire moderne et contemporaine 39 (1992), 64561; JeanLouis Bourgeon,
Lassassinat de Coligny (Geneva: Droz, 1992); idem, Charles IX devant la SaintBarthlemy (Geneva: Droz, 1995); Crouzet, La nuit de la SaintBarthlemy; Mark
Greengrass, Hidden Transcripts: Secret Histories and Personal Testimonies of
Religious Violence in the French Wars of Religion, in Mark Levene and Penny Roberts
(eds.), The Massacre in History (New York & Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1999), 6988,
esp. 7475, 7985, 87; Arlette Jouanna, La SaintBarthlemy: les mystres dun crime
dEtat, 24 aot 1572 (Paris: Gallimard, 2007); and, most recently, Stuart Carroll,
Martyrs and Murderers: The Guise Family and the Making of Europe (Oxford; New
York: Oxford University Press, 2009), chap. 8. A good brief overview which skilfully
elucidates the issues at stake, the historiography, and the nature and problems of the
sources, is David Potters Introduction to chapter 5, The Era of the St Bartholomew
Massacre, in Potter (ed. and trans.), The French Wars of Religion: Selected Documents
(New York: St Martins Press, 1997) 12229, esp.12528.
59
Cf. D. J. B. Trim, Tumults, riots and seditions: persecution and violence in France
during the Wars of Religion, Liberty 102:3 (May-June 2007), 18.

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h. h. leonard

There are, moreover, parallels between the mass killings of 9/11

and St Bartholomews day; the similarities can illuminate not only the
events of 2001 but also those of 1572. I think we have to accept that, in
1572 as in 2001, people on both sides truly believed that right was on
their side. The western allies today might articulate it rather differently.
They do not claim that they are chosen of God, as both Catholics and
Protestants did in France, and as the adherents of Al Qaeda undoubtedly still do today, but the effect is the same: my rightness is selfevident; if you cannot see it you must be both perverse and corrupt.
So wrong is met with extreme force while both sides remain blind to
the genuine concerns of the other; as R. M. Kingdon observes, violence
in the name of religion not only continues in the modern world, it
also continues to feed on the mutual incomprehension we saw in the
sixteenth century.60 Wrong must be met by force because we have
allowed ourselves for millennia to be part of a culture of force.
This was certainly the pattern in early-modern France. The Hugue
nots did accept a reasonably generous peace settlement in 1598,
embodied in the terms of the Edict of Nantes, issued by the king and
former Calvinist, Henri IV, for whom control of Paris, the capital city
(and, as seen earlier, traditional centre of the French sacral monarchy)
was well worth a mass. But the past history of massacre and war meant
there were always enough influential leaders, both Protestant and
Catholic, who perpetuated the old hatreds, even though there were
also many with a genuine desire for peace.61 There were Huguenot
revolts in the 1610s and 1620s; and French Calvinists only renounced
force thereafter, and trusted in royal power to protect them from the
Roman Catholic majority, because their strongholds had all fallen to
the armies of Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu. While the king and
cardinal continued to concede limited religious toleration, it was not
out of a genuine spirit of reconciliation: instead, it was for politic reasons, since France was about to wage war against the Habsburg empire
and needed unity; and it was also in the belief that while persecution
would entrench Huguenot resistance, co-existence would allow for the
erosion of pluralism peacefully.62 The fruit of enduring confessional
hostility was that, in the 1670s and 1680s, Louis XIV, persuaded partly
Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomews Massacres, 219.
Cf. Cameron, Greengrass and Roberts, Adventure in Religious Pluralism.
62
See chap. 6, by Trim, below; and Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds.),
Introduction to Persecution and Pluralism, 44, and cf. 4142, 52.
60
61

the huguenots and the st bartholomews67

by his clergy, decided that the gradualist policy was not working and
instead imposed ever more rigorous persecution; eventually, in 1685,
the Edict of Fontainebleau revoked the Edict of Nantes and abolished
liberty of conscience.63
Armed force was the arbiter of religious dispute: the kings decision
was imposed by his armyso much so that dragonnade became synonymous with persecution, after the royal regiments of dragoons that
frequently enforced the kings will on his Huguenot subjects. But the
result was not only mass Huguenot emigration; it was also insurrection. Huguenots enlisted in the armies of the enemies of France, helping to inflict defeats on them and joined invasions of the south of
France, hoping to bring liberation to their confreres. And the Camisard
revolt in the south of France was a major threat for two years and took
another eleven to quell completely.64 On neither side had there been a
sincere desire for dialogue or to tolerate, even when limited pluralism
was the official policy.
Both sides, too, subscribed to a culture of force and the belief that a
polity must be confessionally unitary or it would not survive: there was
no concept that the principle of un roi, une foi, une loi might be fundamentally mistaken. In the end, the countries that benefited from
Frances confessional division were Great Britain and the Dutch
Republic not shining examples of religious liberty by todays standards, but significant for the degree of toleration they granted by seventeenth-century standards. Huguenot migrs fought in the British and
Dutch armies and Huguenot merchants and financiers powered the
wars their host nations waged against Louis XIV for almost thirty
years, which almost ruined France. Confessional hatred simply meant
perpetuating conflict and resuscitating it after periods of uneasy coexistence. Part of the reason for British and French mistrust of Louis XIV
was precisely the long history of French oppression of the Huguenots,
which Louis had so thoroughly and disastrously (for himself as well as
for many Huguenots) revivified.
Brian E. Strayer, The Edict of Fontainebleau (1685) and the Huguenots: Whos to
Blame?, in Bonney and Trim, Persecution and Pluralism, 27394.
64
See Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove, a superb study of Huguenot responses to Louis
XIVs persecutions in the 1680s and 1690s; cf. Agns de La Gorce, Camisards et dragons du roi (Paris: Michel, [1950]), an older, classic study of armed resistance; and Roy
L. McCullough, Coercion, conversion and counterinsurgency in Louis XIVs France
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), an authoritative study of the use of the army in religious coercion in the period c.168398 (chap. 4) and during the Camisard revolt (chap. 5).
63

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h. h. leonard

The St Bartholomews massacres, in conclusion, shaped the ideas

and actions of Huguenots, French kings and administrations, and
neighbouring states, for nearly a century and a half. It was not only
because the original events were so horrifying, but also because their
legacy was so significant, that they were remembered and debated for
a further three centuries, and they retain relevance in an era when religious war has sadly been revitalised.

CHAPTER THREE

Sham of Liberty of Conscience:

Huguenots and the Problem of Religious
Toleration in Restoration England
Gregory Dodds
The history and experiences of French Huguenots formed a significant
context for debates over the expansion of religious tolerance in
Restoration England. Events in England during the 1670s and 1680s
did not take place in isolation, but were shaped by the international
conflict between Catholics and Protestants. In particular, the policies
of Louis XIV that increased persecution of French Protestants heightened English anti-Catholic hysteria and provided plenty of material for
anti-Catholic propagandists. In 1672 Charles II issued the Declaration
of Indulgence, which sought to remove penalties against dissenters and
Catholics.1 The great fear for English Protestants was that Charles II,
whom many feared was a secret Catholic, would use the ruse of gradually expanding religious toleration to reintroduce Catholicism in
England. Tolerance, in the minds of many English Protestants, had
become code for the betrayal and destruction of the English
Reformation. While many Protestants feared that Charles was a secret
Catholic, by the latter half of the 1670s there was no doubt about his
younger brother Jamess Catholicism. James, the heir to the throne,
converted to Catholicism in 1668, married a Catholic in 1673, and
then stopped attending Church of England services in 1676. His public
declaration of Catholic belief came in 1673 when he refused to follow
the requirements of the Test Act and, as a result, had to step down from
his position as Lord High Admiral. The subsequent Exclusion Crisis,
which pitted Whigs, who sought a law barring James from inheriting
the crown, and Tories, who supported Jamess right to inherit the
Toleration was viewed by Charles as a way of binding dissenters to the absolutist
monarch. Brian Weiser has argued that Charles wanted dissenters to see their freedom
as a gift of grace, not of right, and to be aware that the free exercise of their religion
relied solely on keeping in the good graces of the king. Brian Weiser, Charles II and the
Politics of Access (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2003), 72.
1

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gregory dodds

throne, hardened political and religious sentiments and created deep

rifts in English society.
It came as no surprise that when James II ascended the throne in
1685 he renewed attempts to expand religious tolerance. James maintained, rather passionately at times, that his goal was not the destruction of English Protestantism, but rather religious freedom for his
subjects.2 Seriously complicating Jamess professions of religious openness, however, was Louis XIVs revocation of the Edict of Nantes in
1685. It could not have come at a worse time for James and played a
critical, though often overlooked, role in the rebellions against James
and his eventual overthrow in 1688. The revocation dramatically
increased persecution of Protestants, brought back memories of the
St. Bartholomewes Day Massacre, and intensified the exodus of
French Protestant refugees fleeing across Europe, with a contingent
landing in England.3 In 1681 Louis used his dragonnades, or dragoonsas they were often called in England, to intimidate and harass
Protestants who refused to convert to Catholicism. Following the
formal revocation in 1685, Protestant schools and churches were
confiscated. By 1686 a large portion of Frances Protestants had been
forced out of the country. It might seem that English Protestant anger
regarding French intolerance would strengthen a commitment to religious tolerance in England. If English Protestants believed that intolerance was wrong in France and that Huguenots should be tolerated,
should there not be an equal commitment to religious tolerance in
England? However, the opposite proved to be the case and James IIs
Declaration of Indulgence in 1687 precipitated his overthrow the
following year.
This chapter examines rhetorical arguments about Huguenots in
English polemical religious texts from the 1670s and 1680s. Within
these texts, English authors employed a well-developed anxiety of

2
James did not proclaim this policy of toleration immediately upon taking the
throne, but initially sought to assure Tories that he would not change the laws. When
he did attempt to expand freedom of conscience two years later he was viewed as being
untrustworthy. See John Miller, James II (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
2000), 120. Steve Pincus has argued that James was never interested in real liberty of
conscience. See notes 98101 below.
3
Huguenots began coming in to England in larger numbers after James IIs
Declaration of Indulgence: Gwynn, Conformity, 24. For a full analysis of Huguenot
emigration, see Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The history and contribution of the
Huguenots in Britain, Second Revised Edition (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001).

sham of liberty of conscience 71

French Catholicism to argue against broadening English religious

tolerance. These arguments became more potent with the revocation in 1685 and the intensified persecution of French Protestants.
References to Huguenot suffering, which were already being employed
during the reign of Charles II, became the perfect rhetorical argument
against James II and his policies. Anglican clergymen sought to remind
English nonconformists that if they allied with papists to advance tolerance in England, the papists would eventually use imprisonment,
inquisitions, and torture to destroy English Protestants.4 Any Protestant
who supported James IIs toleration, according to one anonymous
writer, was deluded by the present Sham of Liberty of Conscience.5
Rhetorical reminders of the French Wars of Religion therefore operated first as an attack on Catholicism and, second, as an argument
against English non-conformity. Conversely, prior to the revocation,
English Catholics and nonconformists argued that if Huguenots were
tolerated in France then they should be tolerated in England.
Furthermore, English nonconformists, such as William Baxter, argued
that it was hypocritical for conformists to welcome French Protestants,
who were not of the Church of England, while continuing to penalize
Protestant dissenters in England. All three of these groups, conformists, nonconformists, and Catholics, sought rhetorically to bolster their
arguments with reference to the memory and experience of French
Protestants.6 Huguenots thus became increasingly central to the problem of religious toleration and, therefore, the religious and political
turmoil in England during the 1680s.
Huguenots and anti-Catholic Rhetoric under Charles II
The crisis over the Catholicism of the heir apparent reached a new
levelof hysteria in the late 1670s. It was not uncommon for published
texts and sermons to mention French Protestants, but starting in 1678,

4
John Fell, Seasonable advice to Protestants shewing the necessity of maintaining the
established religion in opposition to popery (London, 1688; Wing F 620), 33.
5
Anonymous, A Letter to a Dissenter, in Anonymous, Fourteen Papers (London
1689; Wing B 5794), 53.
6
While I use the terms conformist, dissenters, and so on in this chapter, I do so
with the understanding that these are complex definitions that do not reflect uniform
groups of people. For more on the intricacies of conformity and Huguenot communities in England, see Gwynn, Strains of worship, ch. 5, below.

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with the Popish Plot, numerous publications began to focus on the past
and present plight of the Huguenots. Overt anti-Catholicism was
standard fare, but the newly heightened focus on French antiProtestantism signalled a new argument against both the succession of
James and, perhaps more importantly, the battle against expanding
religious toleration to dissenters and Catholics. With hindsight and
knowledge of both upcoming Huguenot persecution and the Glorious
Revolution, this approach seems unsurprising. In the 1670s, however,
Charles was still king and Louis XIV had not yet begun aggressively
harassing Protestants. After 1681 the stories of Huguenot suffering
were a powerful political weapon in the battles waged over religious
toleration. But intense persecution had not actually begun in the 1670s.
The emphasis on French Protestants in English print points to something else. What anti-Catholic propagandists needed in order to maintain strong penalties against English Catholics were stories of Catholic
violence and intolerance. If such stories were not available in current
events, then history, especially Huguenot history, had to provide the
lessons and teach another generation to fear Catholics.7
The major interest in the plight of French Protestants began with the
Popish Plot in the late 1670s and then increased with Louis XIVs more
aggressive decrees against Protestants in 1681. Before this, however,
some English Catholics used the freedoms experienced by Huguenots
to argue for greater tolerance of Catholics in England. In 1666, the
year of the Great Fire, Roger Palmer, the Earl of Castlemaine and a
well-known Catholic, published an apology asking for greater tolerance of English Catholics.8 Why, Castlemaine asked, may not we,
Noble Country-men, hope for favour from you, as well as the French
Protestants find from theirs?9 If Catholic France could tolerate
Protestants then why could not English Protestants tolerate loyal
7
Both Whigs and Tories realized the importance of public opinion. Publishing
moral histories became one of the primary methods for shifting and shaping society
views. See Tim Harris, Restoration: Charles II and his Kingdom (New York: Penguin,
2006), 211220.
8
Roger Palmer, Earl of Castlemaine, To all the Royalists that suffered for His Majesty,
and to the rest of England. The humble apology of the English Catholicks (London, 1666;
Wing C 1249).
9
Roger Palmer, Earl of, Castlemaine, A reply to the answer of the Catholiqve apology,
or a cleere vindication of the Catholicques of England from all matter of fact chargd
against them by their enemyes (Antwerp, 1668), 37: Wing C 1246. This was Castlemaines
response to William Lloyd, The late apology in behalf of the papists re-printed and answered, in behalf of the Royalists (London, 1667; Wing L 2683).

sham of liberty of conscience 73

Catholics?10 Castlemaine also pointed out the injustice of holding an

entire group responsible for the actions of a few: These neighboring
people sequester none for their Faith, but for transgression against the
State; Nor is the whole party involved in the crime of a few, but every
man suffers for his own and proper fault.11 Even more unjust was that
Recussants, after paying dearly for securitie and quiet, had been decimated by Cromwell and the Puritans.12 It was only right and fair that
loyal English Catholics, who had supported the reestablishment of the
Protestant Church in England, be given the same freedoms accorded
to French Protestants across the Channel. How, he wondered, did
other rulers refrain from violence against our Religion, and your,
tender breasts seem not to harbour the least compassion or pity?13
Castlemaine thus sought to reverse the standard English worldview
that depicted Catholics as the evil persecutors of Protestants. It was a
well-crafted argument. The English tradition of anti-Catholic histories
came into its own, of course, with Foxes Acts and Monuments, and
presented a picture of tolerant, freedom-loving, Protestants who were
brutally attacked by bloodthirsty Catholics. This Protestant self image
could no longer function, suggested Castlemaine, when France tolerated Protestants, while English Protestants did not tolerate Catholics.
To counter such arguments, English anti-Catholics needed new stories
of Catholic violence or, more easily come by, the threat of Catholic
violence in England. Ultimately, English Protestants would get both:
first the hysteria of the Popish Plot and then Huguenot refugees with
horrifying stories in the 1680s. Castlemaines argument was defeated,
not by William Lloyd and other English apologists, but by Louis XIV.
The year before Castlemaines Reply, William Lloyd had published a
strong defence of English laws and penalties against Catholics. Lloyds
text was then republished in 1673 as another response to Castlemaine.
Lloyd marshalled the classic, secular, defence for political or religious
intolerance: that it was not so much about religion and faith as about
the security of the state. Laws were established to protect the people
and the enforcement of known laws was neither an injustice nor a
10
Lord Acton would later write that the papacy was not pleased by Castlemaines
correlation of Catholics and Huguenots. This would also complicate matters when
James II later sent Castlemaine as his ambassador to Rome. John Acton, Lectures on
Modern History (Teddington, Middx: The Echo Library, 2007), 172.
11
Castlemaine, A reply to the answer of the Catholiqve apology, 38.
12
Ibid.
13
Ibid.

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manifestation of a lack of compassion. We only desire, wrote Lloyd, to

be Safe from those dangers, to which your Principles would expose us,
and against which neither Affableness nor Hospitality will secure us.
The Protestants of Ireland were never so treated and caressed by their
Popish Neighbors, as they were the very year before they cut their
throats.14 Just because English papists were, at the moment, acting
quiet and peaceful, it did not lessen the Catholic threatit actually
made it worse. Such reasoning did not allow for an understanding of
Catholic loyalty and portrayed Catholics as more seditious the less
seditious they appeared. Lloyd bluntly stated that the best Means of
our security, is, that which his Majesty has been pleased to require, viz.
The discreet Execution of his Laws.15 This was what differentiated the
semi-freedom of Protestants in France from the semi-intolerance of
Catholics in England. Lloyd wrote, In France then, whatsoever Liberty
the Protestants enjoy, it is by vertue of their Edicts: which how they
were obtained, we shall have occasion to mind you; and how they are
observed, let the poor Hugonots tell you. But if they were observed to
the full; should we therefore grant You that Liberty which is against
Law? because they are allowd that which you say is not against Law.16
The laws granting freedom to French Protestants, Lloyd insisted, were
not being respected by either local authorities or the Crown. And,
according to Lloyd, the laws requiring religious conformity in England
were necessary because of the Catholic actions in the past, both in
England and in France.17
William Lloyd therefore turned to history and memory. At present,
Catholics might be allowing Huguenots limited freedom in France, but
the history of Catholic intolerance should not be forgotten. Memory
was critical for Protestants if they wanted to keep the Reformation
alive. Sarcastically he asked, But pray what did you, when you governd
the Civilizd World? you hangd and burnd men, for no other cause but

14
William Lloyd, The late apology in behalf of the papists reprinted and answered in
behalf of the royalists (London, 1673; Wing L 2684), 39.
15
Ibid.
16
Lloyd, The late apology, 16. Edward Hyde, the Earl of Clarendon, similarly argued
Huguenots obeyed the law while Catholics, by being Catholics, renounced obedience
to the king. See Clarendon, Edward Hyde, Earl of, Animadversions upon a book intituled, Fanaticism fanatically imputed to the Catholick Church (London, 1674; Wing C
4415), 84.
17
Many bishops, Lloyd included, worked to support Huguenots in England. Robin
Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 164.

sham of liberty of conscience 75

their Faith.18 It should not be forgotten, he insisted that in England,

while it was Yours, did you give any Liberty at all? yet the Name of
Protestant was very well known here, and was sufficient for the burning
of any one that was known by it.19 Across the Channel, persecution of
Protestants had been even more intense. Naturally, he reminded
English Protestants of what happened on St. Bartholomews Day in
1572. In the dead-time of the night, he wrote, the whole City was in
Arms about them; they fell upon all the Protestants Houses and
Lodgings; they butchered them without distinction, Men, Women
and Children, till the Channels ran down with Blood into the River:
And scarce a Protestant was left alive.20 Lloyd then made the logical
leap and asked, Pray Sir, may it not well be said, that Papists cannot live
without persecuting Protestants?21 This was a seemingly difficult argument to make as it was Protestants, rather than Catholics, who were
doing the persecuting in England, but it was a sentiment expressed by
many Protestants and it was built on a well-ingrained fear of Roman
Catholicism. English anti-Catholic laws had to continue, they insisted,
because if Catholics were given tolerance then Catholic persecution of
Protestants would be the likely result. Such ironic reasoning was well
in place prior to the dramatic increase in anti-Protestant activity in
France. Rhetoric, therefore, preceded reality, but it provided a mental
context that would help Protestants make sense of what they witnessed
in the 1680s. The great problem for English Catholics, as well as for
both Charles II and James II, was that Louis XIV seemed to play
directly to the fears of English Protestants.
A similar sentiment can be found in Robert Barclays writings
on universal love and how far tolerance should extend to different
religious groups. While Barclay, a Quaker, supported tolerance,
Catholicism, by its very nature, was a persecuting religion. The pope,
wrote Barclay, had shown himself very Zealous and Violent to bring
all to a ready obedience to the least of his Commands, as by many
examples could be largely proved.22 For evidence, Barclay turned to
Lloyd, The late apology, 34.
Lloyd, The late apology, 16.
20
Lloyd, The late apology, 17.
21
Lloyd, The late apology, 21.
22
Robert Barclay, Universal love considered and established upon its right foundation
being a serious enquiry how far charity may and ought to be extended towards persons of
different judgments in matters of religion and whose principles among the several sects of
Christians do most naturally lead to that due moderation required (1677; WingB741),19.
18
19

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French history and the many Inhumain Butcheries and Massacres

committed both in France, and the Netherlands, upon Men meerly for
the matter of their Consciences.23 For Barclay it was abundantly manifest that there can be nothing more contrary to this Universal Love and
Charity than Romish Principles, and that no man of that Religion,
without deserting his Principles, can pretend to it.24 It was impossible,
he believed, for Romish Principles and brotherly love to coexist in the
same person. Therefore, acts of tolerance and charity by Roman
Catholics were, in fact, devious, hypocritical and subterfuge to later
violence.25 Just as Lloyd claimed that Catholicism was, by nature, incapable of not persecuting Protestants, so too Barclay stated that
Catholicism was intrinsically violent. In both Lloyd and Barclay we see
the same logic. Catholics might appear, at the moment, to be tolerant
and charitable, but the past told a different story and Catholics would
persecute again in the future and so, according to Lloyd, Protestants
could not extend tolerance to Catholics. This reverse logic to support
ongoing penalties against English Catholics was ultimately justified in
the minds of English apologists by the increased hardships of French
Huguenots. Texts such as Lloyds and Barclays established an antiCatholic rhetorical foundation for the propaganda and fear of the
Popish Plot which began at the end of 1677 and became a mass hysteria
in 1678.
The Popish Plot, concocted by Titus Oates and Israel Tonge, dramatically heightened English paranoia about renewed Catholic violence against Protestants.26 Not surprisingly, numerous books and
pamphlets were published that justified the Catholic threat by reminding readers of past Catholic atrocities. If England was going to defeat
the Catholic conspiracy then historical memory was absolutely critical.
In 1678 Gilbert Burnet translated and published excerpts from Franois
Eudes de Mzerays history of the French Wars of Religion and from
the writings of Jacques Auguste de Thou.27 Not surprisingly, Burnets
Ibid.
Ibid.
25
Barclay wrote that Protestants can see how much they act the Hypocrite when
they pretend Christian Charity to any that differ from them. Barclay, Universal love
considered, 19.
26
For a detailed analysis of the Popish Plot see John Kenyon, The Popish Plot
(London: Heinemann, 1972).
27
A translation of de Thous history of the French Huguenots and particularly the
massacre was also published in 1678. See Edward Stephens (trans.), Jacques-Auguste
de Thou, A true history of the Roman Catholicks designs and bloody contrivances
23
24

sham of liberty of conscience 77

text focused on 1572 and the massacre of French Protestants. The point
of the text, in the event that any reader managed to not make the connection to the Popish Plot, was clearly elucidated in the introduction
and conclusion. Burnet began by contrasting Protestant morality with
Catholic barbarism. According to Burnet, There are no Principles of
Morality more universally received, and that make deeper impressions
on the minds of all Men, that are more necessary for the good of
humane Society, and do more resemble the Divine Perfections, than
Truth and Goodness.28 A humane society, characterized by goodness
and truth, was Protestant. Catholic society was the opposite because
the Church of Rome teaches Barbarity and Cruelty, against all who
receive not their Opinions; and that Hereticks are to be delivered to
secular Princes, who must burn them without mercy.29 Cruelty and
inhumanity were fundamental Catholic doctrines. He wrote, Cruelty
and Treachery are become a part of their Doctrine, and they may join
them to their Creed.30 The problem was that Catholics were no longer
acting with quite so much obvious evil and had made cruelty and persecution the Secrets of their Religion, till a fit opportunity appear.31
The secret nature of Catholic plans for the future persecution of
Protestants had resulted in Protestant memory loss. Protestants had
forgotten to fear Catholic machinations. Burnet sought to correct this
memory lapse by detailing what had taken place in 1572.32 If any
Protestants were becoming charitable to Catholics and doubting that
Catholics would again use religious violence and persecution, the
History of the Parisian Massacre may satisfie them to the full.33 We
may be taught from such Precedents, he continued, what we ought
toexpect, when ever we are at the mercy of Persons of that Religion,
for the subversion of the Protestant religion in England. And how by the wonderful providence of God their treasonable and bloody conspiracies and designs have been discovered
and prevented (2nd edn, London, 1678: Wing T 1077A). This work also sought to link
the 1572 massacre with the 1678 Popish Plot.
28
Gilbert Burnet, A relation of the barbarous and bloody massacre of about an hundred thousand Protestants, begun at Paris, and carried on over all France, by the Papists,
in the year 1572 collected out of Mezeray Thuanus, and other approved authors (London,
1678; Wing R 814), 3.
29
Burnet, A relation of the barbarous and bloody massacre, 3.
30
Burnet, A relation, 4.
31
Ibid.
32
John Miller has also noted the prevalence of references to the 1572 massacre
during the Popish Plot. See John Miller, Popery and Politics in England 16601688
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 89, 1812.
33
Burnet, A relation, 4.

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who, if they be true Sons of the Church of Rome, must renounce both
Faith and Mercy to all Hereticks.34 This, of course, was the primal fear
behind the Popish Plotthat Catholics would violently take control of
the English government and then use violence against the Protestant
population. Catholics were secretly planning more massacres. It was
his duty to expose the secret by reminding his readers of Catholic history, even if it was over a hundred years in the past. The rest of Burnets
work contained the translation of texts detailing the killings of
Protestants. Burnets own voice returned for the final sentence to
remind his readers once again what they could expect if a Catholic
ruled England. We may easily gather, he concluded, What is to be
expected from that Court, and what we ought to look for, when-ever
we are at the mercy of Men, whose Religion will not only bear them
through, but set them on to commit the most Treacherous and Bloody
Massacres.35 Burnet had fixed the Protestant memory loss by reintroducing an agitated public to the details of St. Bartholomews Day
Massacre at a critical time when many people believed that Papists
were determined to assassinate the King and other Protestant Lords.36
Evidence of Catholic treachery was necessary to make the Plot
believable and given both the secret nature of the Popish Plot and the
reality of Catholic tolerance of French Protestants in 1678, it was critical for English authors to focus on historical accounts of the Massacre
and the Wars of Religion. Burnets was far from the only text designed
to reawaken a national anti-Catholic memory by describing, in detail,
the French massacre in 1572. One anonymous author unwittingly
recounted a cruel historical irony given what was soon to occur with
the Popish Plot in England. The massacre began, he wrote, because
certain people spread the rumor that the Hugonots (for so the Romish
Catholicks term the true Protestants in France) were in Arms (they
being all, alas, in their Beds, far from any such thoughts) and meant to
kill the King.37 French Protestants were massacred because Parisians
Ibid., 4.
Burnet, A relation, 47.
36
Burnet also directly criticized Charles II and later fled England during James IIs
reign. See John Spurr, England in the 1670s: This Masquerading Age (Oxford:
Blackwell, 2000), 202. Also see Richard L. Greaves, Secrets of the Kingdom: The Popish
Pot to the Revolution of 166889 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1992),
318.
37
Anon, An Account of the several plots, conspiracies, and hellish attempts of the
bloody-minded papists against the princes and kingdoms of England, Scotland, and
Ireland from the reformation to this present year 1678 as also their cruel practices in
France against the Protestants in the massacre of Paris (London, 1679; Wing A 387), 37.
34
35

sham of liberty of conscience 79

became paranoid that there was a secret conspiracy among Protestants

to kill the Catholic monarch and replace the Catholic government with
a Protestant one.38 In England during 1678 the exact opposite was taking place. Titus Oates was spreading the rumor that Catholics had a
secret plan to kill the Protestant king and replace English Protestant
rule with a Catholic government. The result, though not a massacre,
would be the deaths of at least fifteen innocent Catholics. But rather
than see the similarities of the situations, the author and, presumably,
his readers, saw such Catholic cruelty as substantiating proof of the
secret Catholic conspiracy in England.
The hysteria agitating the English populace was further heightened
by accounts of the French massacre that went beyond a description of
events and asked readers to picture how being in Paris in 1572 would
have looked and felt. By imagining the massacre, they were also being
asked to imagine what living under a Catholic government in England
would feel like:
Now let the tender hearted Christian Reader, but consider and ponder in
his Heart, how strange and horrible a thing it might be in a great Town
or City, to see at the least 60000 Men with Pistols, Pikes, Courtlasses,
Ponyards, Knives and other such bloody Instruments, run swearing and
blaspheming the sacred Majesty of God throughout the Streets, and into
Mens Houses, where most cruelly they massacred all whomsoever of the
Religion they met, without regard of Estate, Condition, Sex or Age, the
Streets paved with Bodies cut and hewed in pieces, the Gates and Entries
of Houses, Palaces and publick places died with Blood. A horrible Plague
of shoutings and howlings of the Murtherers, mixed with continual noise
of Pistols and Calivers, together with the pittiful cries of those that were
murthered, the Bodies cast out at Windows upon the Stones, drawn
through the Dirt with strange noise and Whistlings, the breaking open of
Doors and Windows with Bils, Stones and other surious Instruments,
the spoiling and plundering of Houses, Carts carrying away the spoils,
and dead Bodies which were thrown into the River of Soame, all red with
Blood, which ran in great Streams through the Town, and from the Kings
Palace into the said River.39

Readers of such accounts, which went on page after page, could

place themselves in the middle of the massacres and experience
A similar point was made in William Dugdale, A short view of the late troubles in
England briefly setting forth, their rise, growth, and tragical conclusion, as also, some
parallel thereof with the barons-wars in the time of King Henry III : but chiefly with that
in France, called the Holy League, in the reign of Henry III and Henry IV, late kings of the
realm (London, 1681; Wing D 2492), 601606.
39
Anon, An Account of the several plots, 38.
38

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the terror.40 The terror of the Popish Plot was thus tied to a history of
terror and took on dimensions far beyond any logical response to the
rumours peddled by Oates. The conclusion of this pamphlet made it
clear that the greatest of all the Papist conspiracies was not in the past,
but the present plan to destroy Protestantism in England. The author
reported that this Plot, in the general Opinion, is thought to be the
greatest and most Dangerous that ever was since the Reformation: For
as it has been of long Continuance, so it is laid Universal; for no less
than these three Northern Kingdoms were designed to be delivered
from that which they call Pestilent Heresie all the power and Wealth
of the popish Party was laid out to carry on the Catholick Cause.41
Connecting Oatess allegations to the history of religious violence
made the Plot eminently believable to an increasingly scared English
population. The last sentence made it clear that, ultimately, it was the
Devil behind the threat of Catholic violence: The Reader may see that
the Religion of the Papists is not from above (which is Pure, Peaceable,
and Gentle, and easie to be Entreated;) but from the Devil, who was a
Murther from the Beginning, and like a Roaring Catholick Lion, goes
up and down seeking whom he may devour.42 The purpose of such
texts was obviously to increase the fears of English Protestants and, in
so doing, support the ongoing investigations against English Catholics.
A secondary point, which would soon become a national obsession,
was the attempt to avoid having a Catholic monarch, namely the kings
brother James, inherit the throne. The Popish Plot made it clear to
English Protestants that Catholics had not left religious violence in the
past, or in France, and that a strong response to Catholic treachery was
justified and continued laws against English Catholics were absolutely
necessary. History, memory, and imagination were at the center of the
building anti-Catholic hysteria in England. At the heart of these
attempts to reconstruct an anti-Catholic memory was the history of
French Huguenots.

40
Another example of a text designed to spread fear of a Catholic coup can be
found in David Clarkson, The case of Protestants in England under a popish prince
if any shall happen to wear the imperial crown (London, 1681; Wing C 4569). Clarkson
also recounted the 1572 massacre in horrifying detail: the Catholick Assassinating
Spirit would naturally lead to massacres in England just as it had in France.
(ibid., 22, 29)
41
Anon, An Account of the several plots, 46.
42
Ibid.

sham of liberty of conscience 81

On the 25th of March 1679, the Speaker, Edward Seymour, gave

an impassioned speech against the Catholic conspiracy.43 Seymours
choice of Biblical passage upon which to build his message was rather
peculiar, but apparently was remembered by those who heard it.
Numerous authors would later recall Seymours speech, which sought
to link the futures of English, Scottish and French Protestant history.
Taking Song of Solomon 8:89 as his starting point, he told his
audience:
We have a little Sister and she hath no Breasts, what shall we do for our
Sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a Wall, we will
build on her a Palace of Silver; if she be a Door, we will inclose her with
Boards of Cedar. We have several little Sisters without Breasts, the French
Protestant Churches, the two Kingdoms of Ireland and Scotland; the foreign Protestants are a Wall, the only Wall and Defence to England; upon
it you may build Pallaces of Silver, glorious Pallaces. The protection of
the Protestants abroad, is the greatest power and security the Crown of
England can attain to, and which can only help us to give check to the
growing Greatness of France.44

French and English Protestants were linked; as were French and

English Catholics. There were good sisters and bad sisters. The good
Protestant sisters needed to care for each other. In particular, the
English government needed to better support French Huguenots. The
bad sisters were papists in France and England who were determined
to overthrow English Protestantism and enslave the English people.
He told his audience, Popery and Slavery, like two Sisters, goe hand in
hand, somtimes the one goes first, somtimes the other, in a doors, but
the other is always following close at hand.45 If the Popish Plot was
successful and Popery controlled England then slavery would surely
follow.46

43
See Andrew Swatland, The House of Lords in the Reign of Charles II (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2002), 230.
44
This speech was included in John Dunton, The Compleat statesman demonstrated
in the life, actions, and politicks of that great minister of state, Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury
(London, 1683; Wing C 5658), 61.
45
Dunton, The Compleat statesman, 62.
46
With all the vitriolic condemnations of popery and the conflation of Louis XIVs
policies with the nature of Catholicism, it is important to remember that Pope Innocent
XI was at odds with Louix XIV, was opposed to the revocation, and, eventually, condemned the dragonnades and persecution of the Huguenots. See John McManners,
Church and Society in Eighteenth-Century France: Volume 2: The Religion of the People
and the Politics of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 584.

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While there had been varying degrees of harassment and intimidation of French Protestants since the 1660s, in 1681 Louis XIV dramatically increased the persecution of Huguenots. He commissioned his
dragonnades to stay in Protestant households and cause as much
trouble as they could.47 The purpose was to either compel Protestants
to convert to Catholicism or harass them out of the country.48 The
policy worked and many Protestants fled France well before the Edict
of Nantes was revoked in 1685. In essence then, what were unfair characterizations of French Catholicism, as being intrinsically persecutory,
became real in the 1680s.49 No longer could English Catholics ask for
the same tolerance as Huguenots had in France. While this destroyed
the arguments of English Catholics it also fuelled the anti-Catholic
hysteria in England and supported the allegations of Protestant propagandists. Louis XIV thus placed Charles II, who was seeking to broaden
religious toleration in England, in an increasingly precarious position.50 Religious toleration was part of a secret plan to give Catholics
freedom and pave the way for a Catholic coup that would then result in
the denial of religious toleration to Protestants. However unlikely such
a grand conspiracy, it was believed by large portions of the English
Protestant population. Again, the historical irony is profound. Attempts
to broaden religious freedom for both Catholics and Protestant dissenters were interpreted as the first step towards the persecution of
English Protestants. In the words of David Clarkson, in reference to
the trial of the Catholic Edward Coleman: Coleman at his Tryal would
have us believe, that nothing was intended but the advance of Popery,
by the Innocent way of Toleration; that is no wonder, for he was then
concerned, if ever, to disguise their Design. But when he hath to do
with those who were conscious to the Plot, and with pleasure could see

Richard Baxter referred to French Prelacy and Dragoon Discipline as methods

employed in France to destroy Protestantism. His target, however, was also English
prelacy and Anglican discipline against dissenters. See Richard Baxter, Richard Baxters
penitent confession and his necessary vindication (London, 1691; Wing B 1341), 32, 78.
48
Robin Gwynn has noted that the dragonnades in 1681 led to the introduction of
the word refugee in England. Robin Gwynn, Roger Morrice and the Huguenot
Refugees, in McElligott, Fear, Exclusion and Revolution, 32.
49
For the significance of the dragonnades in English publications, see Anne DunanPage, Roger LEstrange and the Huguenots: Continental Protestantism and the Church
of England, in Anne Dunan-Page and Beth Lynch, Roger LEstrange and the Making of
Restoration Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 126130.
50
See John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3435.
47

sham of liberty of conscience 83

the bottom of it; then the Mask is off, then it is in plain terms the subduing of a Pestilent Heresie (for so is the true Christian Religion in the
Roman Stile now-a-days) and the utter ruine of the Protestant party.51
Toleration had become code for a Catholic conspiracy to destroy the
Protestant Reformation in England. Rather than viewing the renewed
persecution against Huguenots in France as an evil practice that should
not be imitated in England, many English Protestants saw it as conclusive evidence that Catholics should never be tolerated in England.
In 1681, English publications began commenting on the plight of
French Protestants. Edmund Everard reported that physicians, professionals, and tradesmen were being excluded from practicing their
crafts for no other cause than their Religion.52 The purpose, Everard
presumed, was to take away from them of the said Religion, all means
of gaining their Lively-hood; and to condemn them cruelly to dye of
hunger; as if there were left no more humanity for them neither in
their hearts nor in their Spirits.53 The alternative to such harassment
and starvation was emigration. Many of the most virulently anti-Catholic texts were anonymous. One such text, penned by a Gentleman at
London, focused on the persecution of Huguenots and what Catholics
would try to do in England. After recounting what he had learned in
letters from France, he stated that the actions of Louis XIV proved that
whatever pretence the Roman Catholicks make to the contrary, they
have always been, and still are Enemies of the Protestants; and that the
Protestants ought to look to be treated by the Catholicks as Enemies.54
The author then proceeded to recount the many ways how Protestants
were being persecuted in France, but added that he should need whole
weeks to tell you all.55 In sum, there was no method proper to ruine
them, which is not made use of including dungeons, the rack, separation from children and death in the midst of torments.56 The purpose
Clarkson, The case of Protestants, 23.
Edmund Everard, The great pressures and grievances of the Protestants in France
and their apology to the late ordinances made against them: both out of the Edict of
Nantes, and several other fundamental laws of France (London, 1681; Wing E 3529), 49.
Everard, a former Catholic turned Whig Protestant, was an opportunist who added
substantiating rumors to Oatess accusations. His accounts certainly cannot be trusted,
but his texts do represent the rhetorical use of French Protestants for English political
objectives.
53
Everard, The great pressures, 49.
54
Gentleman at London, The present state of the Protestants in France in three letters
(London, 1681; Wing P 3274), 12.
55
Gentleman at London, The present state of Protestants, 20.
56
Gentleman at London, The present state of Protestants, 21, 29.
51
52

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of the stories of French persecution was to emotionally connect English

Protestants to their brothers and sisters in France and thus strengthen
the campaign against English Catholics. And, in fact, the author related
that after hearing the stories himself he could not forbear taking my
turn to be a little in passion.57 Such passion only served to heighten his
determination to suppress the Catholic threat in England. He then
compared the persecution of Protestants in France with the executions
of Catholics in England. French Catholics plague and torment to death
more than a million of peaceable persons, who desire only the freedom
of serving God according to his Word, and the Laws of the Land, who
cannot be accused of the least shadow of Conspiracy while in England
we have put to death in a legal manner, it may be twenty wretched
persons (the most of which had forfeited their lives to the Law, for
being found here) convinced by divers Witnesses, who were the greatest part Papists, of having attempted against the Sacred Life of our
King, and the lives of millions of his faithful Subjects. Anyone who
might describe as cruelties what was happening to Catholics in
England should blush to death.58 This was how dramatically the persecutions in France had altered the position of Catholics in England.
What might have seemed unjustifiable, or at least distasteful, without
the widespread persecution of French Protestants now seemed a moderate and judicious response to a threat of monstrous proportions.
Some authors found a reverse type of comfort in the tales of
Huguenot suffering. One anonymous penman wrote that as these
Persecutions on the one side fright Christians, on the other side they
confirm them, putting them in mind, that Sufferings are the Livery of
a Christian.59 Presumably, the author would not have seen a similar
confirmation of true Christianity in the attacks on Catholics across
England during the same period. Numerous books were filled with
stories about children being separated from their parents with one
common rumour stating that Catholic midwives and priests atten
dedthe birth of a Protestant child and baptized the child. When the
parents later tried to baptize the child as a Protestant they were accused
of sacrilege and a criminal offense for rebaptizing a Catholic infant
Gentleman at London, The present state of Protestants, 30.
Ibid.
59
Anon., The horrible persecution of the French Protestants in the province of Poitou
truly set forth by a gentleman of great quality, an eye witness , in a letter to a worthy
friend (London, 1681; Wing H 2862), 2.
57
58

sham of liberty of conscience 85

into heresie.60 Parents were not allowed to teach their own children
and, in some cases, children were forcibly placed with Catholic families.61 These, for readers in England, were viewed as the worst forms of
persecution. It was cruel to be subjected to the dragonnades and suffer
loss of income and trade, but it was the ultimate terror to lose control
of ones own children and have those children possibly lost for all eternity. In a reference to Matthew 5, this anonymous author saw the
apocalyptic separation taking place between the sheep and the goats.62
The Catholic world had finally shown its true nature. Anything but the
most committed opposition to Catholicism in England would be a
reproach to the People of England and the Government thereof.63 The
Son of Man was readying his return and the end of time was fast
approaching.
The situation in France was rapidly heightening anti-Catholic rhetoric in England to the point where no longer was there a fear about a
localized conspiracy, but rather the realization that they were witnessing the final cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil.
Protestants in England needed to do two things: first, they needed to
continue to resist Catholicism; and second, they needed to welcome
Huguenot refugees. This author noted that in the final judgment Jesus
would say: For I was an hungred and ye gave me Meat, I was thirsty
and ye gave me Drink: I was a Stranger and ye took me in: Naked and
ye Clothed me, I was sick and ye visited me, I was in Prison and ye
came unto me.64 The naked strangers were clearly, so this author
believed, Protestants fleeing French persecution. The memory of
French Protestant suffering, as well as the awareness of renewed suffering in France, had thus become a central feature in the worldviews and
rhetoric of English Catholics, conformists, and dissenters.
Huguenots and the Rhetoric of English Dissenters
We have so far looked at the development of anti-Catholic rhetoric in
relation to the history and experiences of French Catholics. There is
60
Anonymous, An Abstract of the present state of the Protestants in France (London,
1682), 2: Wing A 140.
61
This was primarily to ensure that children whose parents converted to Catholicism
were brought up as Catholics. See McManners, Church and Society, 584.
62
Anonymous, An Abstract of the present state, 2.
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid.

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another aspect, however, that demonstrates the complexity and importance of French Protestantism for English political and religious discourse. English dissenters found a different use for appealing to the
memory and then reality of Huguenot suffering. Rather than use
Catholic persecution of Huguenots as an argument against expanding
toleration in England, some dissenters correlated French persecution
with English conformist arguments for the ongoing persecution of
English dissenters. They asked, in essence, how different really was
French persecution of non-conformists with English persecution of
non-conformists? How could English conformists condemn the persecution of Huguenots in France while those same Huguenots would be
nonconformists and, therefore, penalized in England? Perhaps the two
most prolific non-conformists were Richard Baxter and Henry Care.
Along with others, including William Penn, Baxter and Care argued
first for the same freedoms extended to French Protestants under the
Edict of Nantes and, second, they eventually supported James IIs calls
for religious toleration for dissenters and English Catholics.
Richard Baxter was an independent with a particularly interesting
personal history. After being associated with the Parliamentary army
during the Civil War, Baxter supported and helped bring about the
restoration of Charles II. He refused, however, the offer to become a
bishop in the Church of England and suffered varying degrees of harassment and persecution for the rest of his ministry. Using the categories of the time period it has always been difficult to define Baxters
theology. Where dissenting Puritans generally adopted Calvinism,
especially in terms of predestination, and episcopal conformists
adopted free-will Arminianism, Baxter was an oddity: a free-will,
broad-minded, dissenter with Puritan sentiments and lifestyle.
In 1662, when Baxter was told to stop preaching to his congregation in
Kidderminster because of ceremonial nonconformity, he responded
by noting that French Protestants did not stand at the sacrament.65 His
point was that Protestant churches across Europe differed in ceremonial aspects and it was unfair to not allow some disparity of practice
in England.66 Baxter later went further and compared the French
65
Richard Baxter, his account to his dearly beloved, the inhabitants of Kidderminster,
of the causes of his being forbidden by the Bishop of Worcester to preach within his diocess
(London, 1662; Wing H 2862), 39.
66
Roger LEstrange, the royal propagandist, responded in print to Baxter that external ceremonies were indifferent to salvation and therefore the king could enforce

sham of liberty of conscience 87

massacre of Protestants in 1572 with the laws against English nonconformists in 1662. Baxter wrote that when the Act of Uniformity
was passed, it gave all the Ministers that could not Conform, no longer
time than till Bartholomew-day, August 24. 1662. and then they must
be all cast out: (This fatal Day called to remembrance the French
Massacre, when on the same Day 30000 or 40000 Protestants perished
by Religious Roman Zeal and Charity).67 The connection between1572
and 1662, as both took place on St. Bartholomews Day, was unavoidable for nonconformists and strengthened their sense of righteous suffering. Many years later Baxter reflected on the fact that persecution
often lead to a growth of a movement. Who would have thought, he
asked, that the great French Massacre should have rather increased
than diminished the Protestants?68 In the same way, the lack of tolerance for English nonconformists had strengthened their numbers.
Baxter ultimately moved to a position where he saw true Christianity
among those who tolerated different opinions and a lack of Christianity
among those who sought to persecute others. He wrote, We take him
not to have the Wisdom and Love of a sound Christian, who cannot
love and bear with his fellow Christians.69 This was increasingly to
become the new dividing line between nonconformists like Baxter and
the established Church. While most dissenters remained fiercely antiCatholic and despised the popish established Church, some dissenters
would even begin to wonder if English Catholics should be tolerated.
Following the hysteria of the Popish Plot and then the renewed persecutions of French Protestants that sent refugees fleeing into England,
Baxter turned his attention to the growing French congregations in
England. The situation placed the established Church in a very awkward position. To deny entry to French Protestants was almost
unthinkable given the heightened anti-Catholicism in England and all
conformity for decorum and civility. LEstrange completely avoided any discussion of
the French Churches. See Roger LEstrange, A whipp a whipp, for the schismaticall animadverter upon the Bishop of Worcesters letter (London, 1662; Wing L 1325), 3940.
67
Richard Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, or, Mr. Richard Baxters narrative of the
most memorable passages of his life and times faithfully publishd from his own original
manuscript by Matthew Sylvester (London, 1696; Wing B 1370), 384. This text, which
included a biography of Baxter and a collection of many of his writings, was published
after his death in 1691.
68
Richard Baxter, The English nonconformity as under King Charles II and King
James II truly stated and argued by Richard Baxter (London, 1689; Wing B 1259), 267.
69
Richard Baxter, A search for the English schismatick (London, 1681), 34: Wing B
1399.

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the texts and sermons detailing the suffering of French Protestants. Yet
to allow French Protestant communities to exist in England and to
conduct services outside the established Church was to allow nonconformity. This was a major problem for conformist bishops and Baxter
wrote in his autobiography that many French Ministers sentenced to
Death and Banishment, fly hither for refuge: And the Church men
relieve them not because they are not of English Diocesans and
Conformity.70 With the support of Charles II, French refugees were
tolerated in England, but the vitriolic political situation placed them in
a precarious position.71 Furthermore, said Baxter, the rhetoric of conformity frightened people and was unfair to the Dutch and French
Churches in England, even though those churches were technically
tolerated by the Crown. We hate the spirit of pride and envy in
Preachers, wrote Baxter, who cannot endure to see others preferred
before them or worship God in another place, or in other words or
circumstances.72 These prideful preachers then frighten the people
by their loud allarm and cry of Schism; as if all were of a different
Religion or species of Communion, that differ from their book in
Word or Ceremonies. And then, by that blinding name of Different
Communions, alienate the hearts of the ignorant, and make them think
of the Dutch, French, and others that only differ from them in accidents, as the Papists do of us that are called by them Hereticks.73
Naturally, Baxter was also thinking of dissenters who were not even
given the consideration of being patronizingly accepted foreign
churches. How could the English government treat English nonconformists with less consideration than French refugees? Baxter also
asked, Do not the French Protestants deserve all their sufferings then
for calling the Church Bishops there Papists, and separating from so
Excellent a Government?74 If that was what really mattered, episcopal
ordination, then the French Protestants were better turn Papists, than
to continue such Protestants as they are.75 Baxter then invited his conformist readers to join him as a schismatic, for were they not all
Baxter, Reliquiae Baxterianae, 199200.
Baxter, English schismatick, 1415. Officially, James II required conformity of
French churches until the Declaration of Indulgence.
72
Baxter, English schismatick, 33.
73
Ibid.
74
Richard Baxter, The true history of councils (London, 1682), 49: Wing B 1438.
75
Richard Baxter, An answer to Mr. Dodwell and Dr. Sherlocke (London, 1682), 93:
Wing B 1184.
70
71

sham of liberty of conscience 89

Schismaticks both to Italian and French Papists?76 If conformist high

churchmen refused to tolerate dissenters then, in reality conformist
clergy were really the same everywhere, whether Protestant or Catholic.
They both demanded episcopal hierarchy and were prepared to persecute any who did not come into line. Baxter again turned to French
Protestants: Let them be Papists in France, and Protestants in England;
I contend not for names. But I wonder not at these Church-men, if
they unchurch the French Protestants, and condemn their Ministry
and Sacraments as none.77 English Protestants were almost by definition required to support French Huguenots and condemn Catholic
persecution. In doing so, however, they became supporters of French
non-episcopal dissenters. References to Huguenots thus became a
highly useful tool in the arsenal of dissenter rhetoric.
Prior to the renewed persecution of French Protestants, Baxter was
not the only one to wonder how French Catholics could tolerate
Huguenots while the Protestant church in England could not tolerate
other English Protestants. One of the rhetorical attacks aimed at dissenters was that by not supporting the official church they were aiding
the Catholic enemy. In essence, to be a dissenter was unpatriotic.
Robert Barclay, a Quaker apologist whose anti-Catholic rhetoric we
have already heard from, took great offence at this conformist argument. Dissenters, he complained, were condemned for separating their
burial places from the established churches. He then noted that conformists would also then have to condemn French Protestants for
doing the like from Papists.78 Particularly offensive was the conformist
suggestion that dissenters were advancers of the Popish Interest,
because we decry their Ministery and Churches.79 The bottom line was
that Protestants should not persecute other Protestants. William Penn
relied on similar logic in a 1682 letter succinctly explaining why
English dissenters should not be persecuted:
Because the French Protestants, who are the Dissenters from the
Established Worship of that Kingdom, are gratiously Received by the
King, and kindly Received and succoured by the People of England, and

Baxter, The true history of councils, 5.

Baxter, An answer, 6.
78
Robert Barclay, William Michel unmasqued, or, The staggering instability of the
pretended stable Christian discovered his omissions observed, and weakness unveiled
(London, 1672; Wing B 742), 4.
79
Ibid.
76
77

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the French King is highly blamed for Persecuting his peaceable Subjects;
and therefore much more Reason that Protestants should not persecuteone another, for it is to do the same things that is condemned in
others.80

For authors such as Baxter, Barclay, and Penn, it was the height of
hypocrisy for English conformists to condemn the treatment of French
Huguenots while continuing the persecution of English dissenters.81
One of the most opportunistic authors during the height of the
Popish Plot was Henry Care. To profit from the hysteria, Care began
publishing The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from Rome, which sustained a
continuous attack on Catholicism. But Care, a dissenter and a Whig,
also believed that the Tories, Anglican bishops and Royalists, were
almost no better than Catholics. By attacking Catholics, Care was
able to attack the Anglican hierarchy for being so much like the
Catholics. Cares Pacquets became a sensation and were matched by
Roger LEstranges Royalist weekly, The Observator. According to Lois
Schwoerer, LEstrange and Care led the way in reshaping popular
political rhetoric and Cares anti-popery writings helped to embed
anti-Catholic prejudice in the national consciousness.82 While Care
would continue his critique of Catholicism he later softened his language when he accepted a court funded position and began writing to
support James IIs calls for religious freedom, which included Catholics
and dissenters.83 Many of his contemporaries would see this as a hypocritical rejection of his earlier views, but Care was, in essence, continuing his attack on English conformity. James, he came to believe, was
authentically seeking real religious freedom that would benefit dissenters, Catholics, and foreign Protestants, such as the Huguenot refugees.
During the Popish Plot, however, his anti-Catholicism was in full
swing. If a Papist ever sat on the throne of England then what was
80
William Penn, Some sober and weighty reasons against prosecuting Protestant dissenters for difference of opinion in matters of religion humbly offered to the consideration
of all in authority (London, 1682; Wing P 1372), 2.
81
While Baxter sought toleration for dissenters, his ultimate goal was a comprehensive national church that could contain both dissenters and current conformists.
See N. H. Keeble, Take heed of being to forward in imposing on others: orthodoxy
and heresy in the Baxterian tradition, in David Loewenstein and John Marshall,
eds., Heresy, Literature and Politics in Early Modern English Culture (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 282305.
82
Lois G. Schwoerer, Care, Henry (1646/71688), in Oxford DNB, online edn,
[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4621 (accessed 15 Sept. 2009)].
83
Lois G. Schwoerer, The Ingenious Mr. Henry Care, Restoration Publicist (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 196.

sham of liberty of conscience 91

happening in France would happen here too, for in such a case (which
Heaven prevent) the persecution on all sorts of Protestants would be
much more bloody and cruel than that in Queen Maries days.84 The
reality of French persecution of Huguenots after 1681 made it highly
difficult for Tories to argue that Catholic governments did not want to
persecute Protestants.85 The plight of the Huguenots in France was also
useful to Care in another way. If we teaze our Protestant Brethren,
Care asked, Meerly on the Account of Non-conformity to our
Ceremonies; do we not justifie the French King in Harassing those that
differ from his Establisht Church, not only in Ceremonies, but most
material points of Doctrine too?86 If it was so evil for Louis XIV to
persecute Huguenots, then how could the Establish Church continue
to persecute English dissenters?87 Care used the anti-Catholic hysteria,
part of which he was personally responsible for, to push the cause of
English dissenters. That his real focus was dissenters rather than either
Catholics or Huguenots would become clear in a few years when he
saw non-conformists and Catholics as being on the same side in a
struggle against the Established Church.88
Roger LEstrange, the Tory polemicist and chief rhetorical rival of
Care, also turned his attention to the Huguenots, but from a rather
different perspective. For LEstrange it was vitally important to defend
the Huguenots while at the same time strictly adhering to the theory
of royal supremacy and religious conformity.89 The situation in France

84
Henry Care, The history of popery, or, Pacquet of advice from Rome the fourth
volume containing the lives of eighteen popes and the most remarkable occurrences in the
church, for near one hundred and fifty years, viz. from the beginning of Wickliff s preaching, to the first appearance of Martin Luther (London, 1682; Wing C 521), 208.
85
Another anonymous author noted that when they tell us that they remember the
Persecution of the French Protestants, acknowledge the Error and wickedness of their
Persecuting those of England; for till they do so, there are a Censorious sort of People
amongst us who will conclude, that tho some of our Clergy-men, would not have the
Arbitrary Power of France to prevail over them; yet that they do wish and hope, by that
Power, to prevail over, and yet again to trample upon English Protestants. Dissenters
were angry that conformists would denounce French persecution of Protestants while
supporting English persecution of dissenters. See Anonymous, A midnight touch at an
unlicensd pamphlet (London, 1690; Wing M 1999).
86
Care, The history of popery, or, Pacquet of advice, 208.
87
Also see, William Atwood, A seasonable vindication of the truly catholick doctrine
of the Church of England (London, 1683; Wing A 4182), 3334.
88
See Edward Andrew, Patrons of Enlightenment (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 2006), 8891.
89
LEstrange liked to pretend that Huguenots in England were conformists. This
was far from reality. See Gwynn, Conformity, 3239.

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did not, he argued, justify rebellion or disobedience against a ruling

monarch. According to LEstrange it was French Catholics, not French
Protestants, who were a threat to monarchical rule. Huguenots, he
said, obeyed the laws and supported the king. Catholics, on the other
hand, did not owe their highest loyalty to the monarch, but to the Pope.
This was why Catholic France should tolerate Huguenots and why
Protestants could not tolerate Catholics. Protestant Princes, wrote
LEstrange, cannot allow the same toleration to Catholicks in their
States, that Catholick Princes can allow to Hugonots; because Protes
tant Princes cannot be assured of the fidelity of their Catholick Subjects,
by reason they have taken Oaths of fidelity to another Prince, whom
they look upon as greater than all Kings. It is the Pope; and this Prince
is a sworn enemy of the Protestants.90 The Papists were themselves
Antymonarchists.91 Catholics, however, were not the only threats to a
king and England had its own Protestant antimonarchists. Dissenters
also were potentially seditious because they too failed to view loyalty to
the king as the highest obligation.
Several years earlier, LEstrange had laid out the classic case for
domestic intolerance and, in doing so, dealt with the questions raised
by dissenters regarding the Huguenots. In his treatise, LEstrange set
up a colloquy between a conformist and a nonconformist. The nonconformist asked how English conformists could more Tolerate a
Forreign Religion, then to indulge your own?92 No society can survive,
responded LEstrange, if its primary religion is internally divided. To
Tolerate One Church within Another, he responded, is to Authorize a
Dissolution of the Government both Ecclesiastical, and Civil. He then
added that by Toleration, a Kingdom is divided against itself and cannot stand.93 The issue here was not religious, but rather the pragmatic
functioning of a society. Naturally, dissenters were not satisfied with
such an answer and, as we have seen, wanted England to tolerate
them as episcopal Catholics in France tolerated French Protestants.
LEstrange ingeniously answered that if English dissenters wanted toleration in England, such as the Huguenots had under the Treaty of

90
Roger LEstrange, An apology for the Protestants of France, in reference to the persecutions they are under at this day in six letters (London, 1683; Wing A 3555A), 77.
91
LEstrange, An apology for the Protestants of France, 7478.
92
Roger LEstrange, Toleration discussd, in two dialogues (London, 1679; Wing L
1316), 37.
93
LEstrange, Toleration discussd, 38.

sham of liberty of conscience 93

Nantes, then Catholics should be tolerated in England, but not

Huguenots. This was not what he personally desired, said LEstrange,
but so it must be, if youl have your Toleration after the French Fashion.
Can you shew me that any Non-Conforming Roman Catholicks are
Tolerated There? Nay; Or that those of the Religion do Subdivide,or
break Communion among Themselves? Such an Instance might stand
you in some stead.94 Dissenters, of course, continued to argue that the
English state and church must be charged with hypocrisy if it supported the Huguenots while suppressing English dissenters. In 1685, as
James II came to the throne, William Penn wrote:
The French Protestants, who are the Dissenters from the Established
Worship of that Kingdome, are kindly received and succoured by
England. And when the French King is highly blamed by English
Protestants, and perhaps too by some English Catholicks, for Persecuting
his peaceable Subjects, shall we do the same things in our Kingdome
which we condemn in another? Therefore art thou inexcusable Man,
whosoever thou art, for thou that Judgest another, dost the same things.95

Perhaps the greatest irony of this debate was yet to come when
LEstrange, true to his royalist principles, grudgingly accepted James
IIs calls for religious tolerance. James also enlisted the support of
dissenters and soon Roger LEstrange, Henry Care, and William Penn
were all writing to support the rule of James II; with the latter two
producing tracts to buttress James IIs views regarding liberty of
conscience.
The Revocation of Nantes and the Fall of James II
The history and immediate reality of French Protestantism was highly
significant for conformists, nonconformists, and Catholics in England
and Huguenot history and experiences provided rhetorical opportunities and problems for all three groups. As we have seen, the appeal to
French persecution of Protestants was well established and a common
trope well before Louis XIV began to systematically attack Protestants.
The attacks by the dragonnades in 1681 and the official revocation

LEstrange, Toleration discussd, 37.

William Penn, Considerations moving to a toleration and liberty of conscience with
arguments inducing to a cessation of the penal statues against all dissenters whatever,
upon the account of religion (London, 1685; Wing P 1269), 3.
94
95

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of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 fit perfectly with the story already
being told in England.96 The threat to national interests and security
demanded continued religious intolerance. But history lessons of
Catholic atrocities from past decades could only move the argument so
far. What English anti-Catholics needed, and what Louis provided in
such a sensational fashion, was new persecution. Now English writers
could connect Catholicism with violence and then connect tolerance
of English Catholics with potential persecution of English Protestants.
While it was highly unlikely that a handful of English Catholics would
seek violently to persecute the English Protestant population, such
arguments built on earlier episodes of anti-Catholic hysteria and effectively ended any possibility of comprehensive religious toleration in
England. The events of 1688 are generally connected with the rise of
constitutional monarchy, greater democracy, and expanded religious
freedom. It is often forgotten how the overthrow of James II was viewed
by contemporaries, which was primarily as a defeat of the Catholic
threat to English Protestantism.
The Glorious Revolution, until recent decades, was portrayed as an
English victory for freedom and tolerance. In a sense, historians took
at face value the rhetoric of Whigs and anti-Catholic polemicists. More
recently, revisionist historians have followed the lead of John Miller
and suggested that James II was relatively moderate and was truly
seeking to expand religious freedom in England.97 Jamess overthrow

96
Robin Gwynn reports that between 40,000 and 50,000 Huguenots emigrated to
England during Louis XIVs reign, with the largest numbers arriving after Jamess
Declaration of Indulgence in 1687: Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 44. Gwynn also notes,
however, that James did not encourage emigration to England and was not particularly
welcoming to those who settled there (p. 174).
97
See John Miller, The Immediate Impact of the Revocation, in Caldicott, et al.,
eds., Huguenots in Ireland: The Anatomy of an Emigration (Dun Laoghaire: Glendale
Press, 1987), 161203; John Miller, James II and Toleration, in Eveline Cruickshanks,
ed., By Force or By Default? The Revolution of 16881689 (Edinburgh: John Donald
Publishers, 1989), 827; Miller, James II, 16788; Gary S. De Krey, Reformation
and Arbitrary Government: London Dissenters and James IIs Polity of Toleration,
16871688, in Jason McElligott, ed., Fear, Exclusion and Revolution: Roger Morrice and
Britain in the 1680s (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 1331; Mark Goldie, The Political
Thought of the Anglican Revolution, in Robert Beddard, ed., The Revolutions of 1688
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 107118; Mark Goldie, John Lockes Circle and
James II, HJ 35 (Sept. 1992): 5589, 569, 579, 584; Eveline Cruickshanks, Glorious
Revolution (New York: St. Martins Press, 2000), 1921; and, Justin Champion, Willing
to Suffer, in McLaren and H. Coward, eds., Religious Conscience, State and Law
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 1328.

sham of liberty of conscience 95

was the work of Anglican Protestants determined to maintain civil and

religious penalties against Catholics. Steve Pincus, however, has argued
that Jamess professions of support for toleration and liberty of conscience were a ruse and that his statements to French officials supporting the revocation of the edict of Nantes reflect his true feelings.98
James was determined to remake England into a Catholic nation.
Pincuss case is extensively documented and persuasive. However, we
should be cognizant of three things. First, Jamess views likely changed
over time and his interest in moving beyond liberty of conscience to
the reestablishment of Catholicism seems to have strengthened dramatically as his reign developed. Second, we should not take Jamess
statements to his French allies at face value. James, as proved by Pincus,
was perfectly capable of telling one group one thing while another
group the opposite. We must be careful deciding that we know whom
the truth and lies were told to.99 Third, royal absolutism, I believe, not
the liberty or coercion of conscience, was the ultimate motivation for
Jamess ideology and policy. The push for official liberty of conscience
in England was the packaging for Jamess absolutism. I suspect both
that Jamess thinking on the issue of toleration was inconsistent, often
disingenuous, and perhaps even muddled. However, what is increasingly clear is that the rhetoric of toleration, set within the international
context of France and Europe, had become a hollow language that only
served to heighten fear of Catholics, especially French Catholics, for
English Protestants. It is also important to note that Pincus places
Jamess overthrow within an international context and stresses that
Jamess Catholicism was an absolutist Gallican form and that it did not
have the support of either the Pope or the vast majority of English
Catholics. All of which brings us back to the central importance in
England of Louis XIVs determination to claim absolute religious control of Francea determination that resulted in the destruction of
French Protestantism.
James II came to the throne in February of 1685 and in October
1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes formally ending toleration
for Protestants in France.100 Within two years, however, James declared
Steve Pincus, 1688: The First Modern Revolution (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2009), 121122.
99
Pincus, 1688, 137.
100
James understood the problem Louis XIV posed for his domestic agenda
and attempted to suppress reports in England of French persecution of Protestants.
98

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full religious tolerance for Catholics and dissenters in England. The

English people, therefore, were faced with a complicated picture.
On the one hand, Louis XIV was pursuing a policy that Protestant
propaganda had led them to expect. Persecution was the natural hidden character of Catholicism and it had now come out into the open.
On the other hand, James II, also a Catholic monarch, was talking
about freedom and liberty of conscience.101 Many English Protestants
assumed this was part of a devious hidden plan; a plan to tolerate
Catholics in order to put Catholics in positions of power to be followed
by the subversion and ultimate persecution of English Protestants.102
Toleration was a Catholic fraud which had been exposed numerous
times in the past and, undeniably, by Louis XIV. The birth of a maleheir
to the throne in June 1688 made the prospect of a Catholic dynastynow
a reality. This, combined with James IIs attempts to enforce toleration
by royal absolute decree, alienated large swaths of the country and led
to his overthrow later that year.103 Extending religious freedom had
become the centerpiece of Jamess agenda, but it was made infinitely
more untenable by the relentless persecution of Protestants in France.
Many English Protestants were convinced that James IIs ultimate
objective was the destruction of Protestantism.104 In a letter to an
English dissenter, which was subsequently published in 1689, an
English Protestant voiced the opinion of many by arguing that liberty
of conscience could not possibly be the policy of James II given
the history of Catholic treachery and violence. The author wrote,
See John Miller, Popery and politics in England 16601688 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1973), 255. For a careful analysis of what the revocation meant for
James II, see Miller, Immediate Impact of the Revocation.
101
While James II, in principle, supported religious tolerance, he distrusted the
Huguenots and saw connections between them and both Monmouths rebellion and
with William of Oranges potential invasion. He also continued to censor their writings. See Matthew Glozier, The Huguenot Soldiers of William of Orange and the Glorious
Revolution of 1688: The Lions of Judah (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2008),
9293.
102
Richard Baxter wrote that the anti-Catholic sentiment was so strong that
dissenters who supported freedom of conscience were accused of supporting Popery,
or worse, being secret Papal agents. See Richard Baxter, Richard Baxters penitent
confession, 80.
103
See Andrew R. Murphy, Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and
Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America (University Park: Pennsylvania
State University Press, 2001), 13442.
104
See John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture:
Religious Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and Early
Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 6273.

sham of liberty of conscience 97

There are many things which would make a wise man suspect that
there is some farther Design than Liberty of Conscience in all this zeal
for repealing the Penal Laws and Test. For it would be very surprising
to find a Roman Catholick Prince whose Conscience is directed by a
Jesuit, to be really zealous for Liberty of Conscience.105 As proof, the
author sarcastically pointed to the mild and gentle usage of the French
Protestants by a King whose Conscience is directed by a tender-hearted
Jesuit.106 Just as in France, where there had once been toleration,
English Protestant Subjects will quickly find what a Popish liberty of
Conscience means.107 There is only one thing that is certain, he wrote,
that the Church of Rome is a persecuting Church, and the Mother of
Persecution. Will they then be deluded by the present Sham of Liberty
of Conscience; which they of that Church pretend to give? It is not in
their power, no more than in their Spirit: They neither will nor can give
liberty of Conscience; but with a design to take all liberty from us.108
The author then, again, turned to France as the ultimate proof of
Catholic designs against Protestants. The massacre was again brought
up, but this time with proof that it was not an aberration, but rather
timeless Catholic policy. In another letter an anonymous writer asked
dissenters supporting James II, How is it that you should not have perceived the Poison that was hid under the Liberty of Conscience offered
to them?109 This author then addressed the central point: You will, it
may be, tell us, that it looks ill in us, who so much complain, That we
have been deprived of Liberty of Concience in France, to find fault
with the King of England for granting it to his Subjects.110 However, the
real point was not toleration, but absolutism. French liberty of conscience was taken away in an absolutist and tyrannical manner, just as
the English enforcement of liberty of conscience was done in a tyrannical and absolutist fashion. Furthermore, anyone who assumed that
James II wanted true toleration must be very little acquainted with the
Spirit of Popery.111 According to this letter, English dissenters had been

Anonymous, A Letter to a Dissenter, in Anonymous, Fourteen Papers, 53.

Ibid.
107
Anonymous, A Letter to a Dissenter, 55.
108
Ibid.
109
Anonymous, A Letter of several French Ministers Fled into Germany, in
Anonymous, Fourteen Papers, 70. For Richard Baxters support of toleration in 1689,
see The English nonconformity.
110
Anonymous, A Letter of several French Ministers, 73.
111
Anonymous, A Letter of several French Ministers, 74.
105
106

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tricked by James and the proof was the history and experience of
French Huguenots.112
In a similar vein, a published letter by the Huguenot Pierre Allix
complained that for the advancing of Popery, he [James II] has neither
had any regard to the Laws of the Land, nor to the Oaths he had taken
to preserve them. Thus much I assert boldly, that since it cannot be
denyd, but that there was a Secret Treaty betwixt Lewis XIV, and
JamesII, we can less doubt, but that the End and Aim of the Treaty, was
the Ruin of the Protestant Religion.113 When Louis XIV talked James II
into an invasion of Ireland to try to reclaim his crown, it seemed to
prove true every English Protestant accusation against Catholics and
James. Anyone in England who could not see the reality of these secret
plots or perceive the fundamentally evil nature of Catholicism was
willfully blind and hoodwink themselves.114 It is, of course, impossible
to know with certainty the motives of James II. At the very least it
would seem that James wanted the English people to believe he supported full liberty of conscience.115 James was undercut, however, by
the history of Protestantism in France. For decades Protestants had
used the memory of the St. Bartholomewes Day massacre in 1572 to
argue that Catholics were essentially intolerant and that any present
tolerance was a Machiavellian deception that would eventually give
way to more attacks on Protestants. The revocation destroyed any
chance that James II would be able to effectively counter anti-Catholic
rhetoric in England.
English Protestant authors believed that they had uncovered the
anti-Christ in the person of Louis XIV and, by proxy, in the figure of
James II. The anti-Christ looks peaceful and charitable, but then
attacksthe unwary with violence and persecution. Another necessarily
112
Gary S. De Krey argues that James did have success working with dissenters.
What ruined Jamess plans was his impatient assault upon the Test Act. De Krey,
Reformation and Arbitrary Government, 30.
113
Pierre Allix, An account of the private league betwixt the late King James the
Second, and the French king in a letter from a gentleman in London, to a gentleman in
the country (London, 1689; Wing A 344), 1415.
114
Allix, An account, 15. Also see De Krey, Reformation and Arbitrary
Government, 24.
115
A case for Jamess authentic belief in liberty of conscience can be found in Gary
S. De Krey, Restoration and Revolution in Britain (New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2007), 23246. In several works, John Miller has established a foundation for reappraising James II and moving away from views of James that were established by Whigs
following the overthrow of Jamess government in 1688: see especially Miller, James II
and Toleration, 1314.

sham of liberty of conscience 99

anonymous author wrote, concerning Louis XIV, that reasoning by

the Instinct of the Devil, that if the Party of the Protestants were so
considerable, that they could preserve the State, they were able as well
to overthrow it, if a fair occasion should offer it self: For which reasons
grounded upon Antichristian Politicks, a Resolution was taken to suppress all the Protestant Party, and to bury in Oblivion all the good
Services they had done.116 The author then proceeded, in excruciating
detail, to recount stories of Catholics torturing Protestant men and
women.117 Sexual violence featured prominently in these accounts.
As we have seen in previous texts, this author too, argued that here,
in these tortures, could be found the true fundamental nature of
Catholicism. He wrote that cruelty was the true Spirit of Popery in all
Ages and Countries and that if Protestants loved their religion,
abhorred idolatry, cared for the law, were concerned about their nation,
desired to hold the Freedom of our Consciences and wanted to avoid
massacres that destroyed families, then Catholics had to be kept out of
England. Catholicism, so he wrote, was a Diabolical Sect that would
enslave England, just as it enslaved Protestants in France.118 The true
Spirit of Popery, was massacre, persecution, and slavery. This sums up
well the English anti-Catholic sentiment and rhetoric that was fueled
by the experiences of French Protestants. In reality, though, it was
probably not so much the real history of the Huguenots that fueled
English anti-Catholicism, but rather that reference to Huguenots had
become a powerful rhetorical device for English polemicists.
With the unsubstantiated hysteria of the Popish Plot, which provided a powerful anti-Catholic worldview and a rhetorical framework
for Louis XIVs real persecution of Huguenots, James was in an impossible position.119 In all likelihood it would have taken a recognizably

Anonymous, The absolute necessity of standing by the present government, or,

A view of what both church men and dissenters must expect if by their unhappy divisions
popery and tyranny should return again (London, 1689; Wing A 112), 4344.
117
For a similar work, see Gentleman of that Nation, Popish treachery, or, A short
and new account of the horrid cruelties exercised on the Protestants of France (London,
1689; Wing P 2958). According to this Gentleman, the persecutions in France over the
previous centuries meant that Catholics would always try to destroy Protestant
England.
118
Anonymous, The absolute necessity, 4647.
119
While I have stressed Jamess personal commitment to liberty of conscience, the
situation for James was complex and he had conflicting views of English dissenters.
Gwynn, in Huguenot Heritage, has demonstrated how James continued to apply pressure on various dissenting individuals and communities.
116

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Protestant monarch to extend equality to English Catholics. That a

Catholic monarch was attempting to do so in England while another
Catholic monarch, a close ally, was brutally suppressing Protestantism
in France ruined any chance of success for James. James, however,
believing himself guided by providence, pushed ahead and attempted
to bring religious freedom to England not through parliamentary laws,
but by absolute decree. At the center of this failure stand the Huguenots
and, more importantly for English sentiments, the history of the
Huguenots as a rhetorical device. By focusing on the development of
this rhetoric the Huguenots can be placed as one of the most central
issues leading to the 1688 overthrow of James II.
The interrelated concepts of history and memory were central to the
anti-Catholic rhetoric of James IIs opponents. There remains a pervasive notion that the Glorious Revolution, combined with the ideas of
John Locke, was a repudiation of religious intolerance and bigotry.120
It was anti-Catholicism, however, that drove opposition to James II
and at the center of this anti-Catholicism stood the history of French
Protestants. I have made five interrelated points in this chapter. First,
that the issue of French Huguenots was a central concern and useful
rhetorical device for English Catholics, conformists, and dissenters.
All three of these groups repeatedly returned to the issue of French
Protestantism to make their respective cases to the English reading
public. Though often ignored in studies of these decades, these rhetorical appeals go to the heart of the religious and political debates of the
period. Second, until Louis XIVs edicts against the Huguenots, English
polemicists were forced to rely on French history, particularly the St.
Bartholomewes Day Massacre, to argue that Catholics were bent on
destroying Protestantism. This was a difficult argument given the
ongoing persecution of Catholics in England and the relative freedom
of Protestants in France. Third, English dissenters powerfully defended
their dissent by contrasting French tolerance with English laws against

120
Gary S. De Krey has made a strong case for the importance of the dissenting
community and therefore the rationality of James IIs attempts to form a coalition with
them in order to expand religious toleration in England. But the history of early nonconformity has yet to be fully freed from post-1689 perspectives that divide English
Protestants into exclusively defined camps and that treat dissenting numbers as a small
fraction of what the church could command. James did not err in supposing that
this broad Protestant middle might be turned towards eliminating persecution and the
penal laws and providing relief, even for Catholics. De Krey, Reformation and
Arbitrary Government, 30.

sham of liberty of conscience 101

dissenters. It became increasingly difficult for conformists to maintain

penal laws against nonconformists given, first, the situation in France
and, second, the acceptance of French Protestant churches in England.
Fourth, Louis XIVs renewed persecution of Protestants in 1681,
followed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, appeared to prove
accurate all the accusations leveled against French Catholics by
Protestant polemicists. This effectively ended attempts by English
Catholics and dissenters to use French tolerance as an argument for
greater English religious freedom. Fifth, the fall of James II was directly
related to both the rhetorical context of Huguenot history and the
reported experiences of Protestant suffering after the Edict of Nantes
was revoked in 1685. It was simply impossible for James, a Catholic, to
argue for religious toleration in England while Louis XIV was persecuting Protestants in France. His insistence on doing so, especially in
an arbitrary fashion, created massive fear and distrust and led to the
destruction of his government. All five of these points come together
to demonstrate the singular importance of rhetorical appeals to
Huguenot history and persecution.
It would be possible to judge Protestant propaganda as shameless
fear mongering, and it perhaps began as simply that, but Louis XIVs
persecution of Protestants and then the revocation of Nantes lent vivid
credence to the accusations against English Catholics. While English
Catholics were, on the whole, undoubtedly loyal and of a different
mind than Louis XIV, they had little ability to proclaim their innocence in the face of Protestant suffering in France. The history, memory, and experiences of French Protestants, therefore, are linked to the
failure of Jamess push for liberty of conscience in England. It is possible to see in James a monarch who was attempting to chart a course
that was markedly different than that chosen by Louis XIV. The accumulation, over decades, of rhetoric and texts about the history and fate
of French Protestants, coupled with the policies of Louis XIV, inextricably linked Catholicism with violence in the minds of English
Protestants. James was overthrown and Protestant England was saved.
At the very centre of the worldviews that led to this event was the
memory and rhetorical use of Huguenot history.

CHAPTER FOUR

How Dangerous, the Protestant Stranger?

Huguenots and the Formation of British
Identity c. 16851715
Lisa Clark Diller
The Revocation of the Edit of Nantes had profound implications for
English foreign and domestic policy. Occurring as it did in 1685, the
Revocation and the resultant wave of French Protestant immigrants
contributed not a little to the context of the Glorious Revolutionand
the resulting tension between international Protestant loyalties and the
growing nationalism of the British. The Revolution of 1688 secured a
Protestant settlement for the throne, and starting with King Williams
wars, began over a century of off-and-on fighting against the popish
tyranny of France. These were not primarily wars of religion, but
scholars from Linda Colley to John Brewer have shown how heavily
they contributed to the modern British nation-state and its identity as
a bastion of Protestant liberty.
The Huguenots, as French Calvinists, embodied the very paradox at
the heart of this developing British national identity. They were victims
of the French Catholic monarchical tyranny, and thus justified both
the Glorious Revolution itself and the wars against the French. But
they were still French, and, congregating in London, controlled some
very lucrative elements of the merchant economy. Additionally, they
were not part of the Church of England, and as dissenters, they challenged the limits of the nascent Act of Toleration. To what extent could
these French strangers be incorporated into the civil society of the
British nation?
The possibilities for a British identity, made more urgent by the
union of the Scots and English crowns in 1707 and the settlement/
pacification of Ireland following the Revolution of 1688, were not
unrelated to the larger war against Louis XIVs universal m
onarchy.
The large Huguenot migration to England, Ireland, and other parts of
the British colonial world were part and parcel of these developments.
While their integration into the British polity was not without conflict,

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Huguenots intentionally promoted the religious and economic

affiliations they had with the British and identified themselves with
the burgeoning enterprise of the empire. Ultimately they were successful at affiliating themselves with the political and cultural priorities
of their host nation, but the manner in which they did this, and the
reception they received, is instructive for the student of early British
nationalism.
The first concern on the part of Londoners and other English men
and women does seem to have been with the nature of the foreignness
of this large group of immigrants. To the extent that they remained
distinctly French, to that extent they were a threat. Charles Davenant,
whose economic theories encouraged immigration, suggested that
they be scattered throughout the entire country, because they may
endanger the Government by being sufferd to remain, such vast
Numbers of em, here in London, where they inhabit all together, at
least 30000 Persons in two Quarters of the Town, without intermarrying with the English, or learning our language, by which Means
for several Years to come, they are in a way still to continue Foriegners,
and perhaps may have a Foreign Interest and Foreign Inclinations.1
When they lived in large numbers together, as they did in London and
Canterbury, it was disconcerting to the British who traveled through
their streets that they often didnt hear English spoken. Xenophobia
also strengthened with respect to Williams non-English courtiers and
fighting force (which included many Huguenot soldiers), because that
foreign soldiers are dangerous to Liberty we may produce Examples
from all Countries and all Ages.2 Historian John Brewer points out that
the Huguenot officer was a sufficiently familiar character to be parodied by Henry Fielding in Tom Jones as the soldier who had forgotten
his native tongue but had also failed to acquire English.3
The churches and their leadership were quite aware of the challenge
posed by this failure to blend in and scolded their parishioners lesttheir
deportment or excessive Frenchness alarm the neighbors. The consistory records in 1690 warned against any entertainment or frivolity
1
Charles Davenant, An Essay upon the probable methods of making a people gainers
in the ballance of trade (London: 1699; Wing D309), 28.
2
Davenant, An Essay, 29; Matthew Glozier, The Huguenot Soldiers of William of
Orange and the Glorious Revolution of 1688: The Lions of Judah (Portland, OR &
Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002), 70, 113, 114, 130, 131, 136.
3
John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 16881783
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 56.

how dangerous, the protestant stranger?105

which might scandalize the English nation which it is so much in our

interests not to offend, and cause our nation to be held in poor esteem
by them, which could lessen their compassion towards our poor refugee brethren and stem the flow of their charity and alms.4 The
Huguenots were rigorous in their enforcement of church discipline
and their scrutiny of those newcomers who asked for aid. The disrepute of one could bring disapprobation on them all.
Other Englishmen had more optimistic views on the ability of
strangers to integrate. Daniel Defoes work attempted to demonstrate
that with proper education immigrants could develop the character
needed to contribute to a rightly ordered society. Bringing [the immigrants] into the privileges and immunities of Englishmen would
in time make them so, he explained.5 Another polemicist argued that
the refugees have on all occasions, shewed their Loyalty, Zeal and
Affection, to the Present Government by supporting very cheerfully
the Charges and Taxes of the Land and wearing Arms for the Defence
of it.6 Even though he supported a general naturalization, Charles
Davenant argued that first generation immigrants should not be able
to vote, but that from their Sons indeed there is less to fear, who by
Birth and Nature may come to have the same Interest and Inclinations
as the Natives.7
But there was definite ambivalence in English attitudes towards
things French. French tastes were still seen as the height of fashion
and the Huguenots literally embodied this tension as they were valued
for the French artistic styles that they brought to Londonkeeping
the English up to date on the latest in cloth, glass, gardening and interior design.8 Four-fifths of the names in Huguenot church registers
around the turn of the century were in the textile trade. They dominated the fashion designers from year to year, determining the patterns
of the silk weaversfive of the seven top designers in the eighteenth

4
Cited in Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement,
c. 15501700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 242; Maureen Waller,
1700: Scenes from London Life (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2000), 26871.
5
Daniel Defoe, Some Seasonable Queries (London: 1697; Wing S4609A), 3; Alison
Olson, The English Reception of the Huguenots, Palatines, and Salzbuergers, 1680
1734: A Comparative Analysis, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 487.
6
The Case of the French Protestants Refugees, settled in and about London, and in the
English Plantations in America (London: 1696; Wing C1080A).
7
Davenant, An Essay, 27.
8
Waller, Scenes from London Life, 135, 136, 244, 372.

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century were French Protestantsand founded a completely new form

of hat-making. It seems the Huguenot refugees were well able to bring
trade secrets with them and so added to the British economy and society. People noticed that even poor immigrants decorated their houses
with a taste rarely displayed by their English counterparts. French gold
and silver smithsand glass-makers also influenced fashion.9 And the
Huguenot refugee Abel Boyer was a major cultural arbiter whose
works became best sellers.10
In sum, the anti-French element of British identity seems to have
been embodied in the notion that the British were first of all, not subject to the tyranny of kings like Louis XIV, nor did they subscribe to his
persecuting policies.11 And second, the British were not superstitious
papists. However, this identity was large enough to include the English
Catholics, who were generally able to distance themselves from complete association with subservience and irrationality.12 That sort of
Catholicism was connected with the French and so all sides of English
society (including their Huguenot immigrants) tried to avoid any link
with it.13
The complicated ways in which British citizens used Protestantism
to articulate their identity can, in fact, be seen in how wide a definition
of Protestantism they were willing to embrace. In general, it appears
that the Whig sympathies for international Protestantism and allowance for British identity in the same were not shared by those who
identified with the Tories or the high church clergy. The latter felt that
Anglicanism was central to the British nation. Jonathan Swift was
articulating the Tory concern when he argued that all the acquisitions
by this [Naturalization] act would increase the number of dissenters.14
At the end of Annes reign, with tensions over the Pretender and the
succession plaguing the nation, occasional conformity and religious
separation in education were also made illegal. The nation needed a
more tightly knit unity. Some felt that was in a stronger Anglicanism,

9
Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots
in Britain (London: Routledge, 1985), 6773.
10
See chapters 7 and 8, by David Onnekink and Andrew Thompson, below.
11
Matthew Tindale, An Essay Concerning the Power of Magistrates (London: 1697;
Wing T1302), 164.
12
Defoe, The Englishmans Choice (London: 1694), 1217.
13
Stephen Baxter, William III and the Defense of European Liberty, 16501702
(Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1966), 20713.
14
Cottret, Huguenots in England, 220.

how dangerous, the protestant stranger?107

others, like Daniel Defoe, that it was in a common sense of the defence
of the common liberties of Europe.15
Bishop Compton is one example of the complicated sort of reaction
devout members of the Church of England might have with respect to
the Huguenots. He was a good friend to them, well-known for his
advocacy on their behalf, even writing to his clergy, for the poor
French Protestants[I] do entreat the contribution of your charitable
care.16 It appears that his primary concern was the spread of Roman
Catholicism. He therefore saw the testimonies and commitments of
the Huguenots as promoting opposition to Catholicism not only in
England, but abroad. Ultimately, however, his final concern was always
the Church of England and not simply some sort of general international Protestantism.17
Archbishop Thomas Secker also embodied this tension Anglicans
felt regarding foreign Protestantsthey wanted to identify with them
and protect Protestantism abroad, but felt worried about heresy and
lack of orthodoxy and competition when those same Protestants came
to England. Nonconformity was fine when refugees were in the colonies or elsewhere outside Englandin those cases, aid and advocacy
were thickly lavished. It was when they were in England and might
tempt English men and women from their Anglicanism that the threat
resulted in discrimination. Clearly, for these bishops, support ofAngli
can institutions and theology was central and they pursued the support of foreign Protestants only when it did not threaten those ends.18
Secker, like other bishops before him, tried to convince the Hugue
nots to adopt the Anglican liturgy in their own language, partly by
tying financial aid to those churches that conformed, often to the chagrin of the refugees.19 The newly-arrived Jacques Fontaine gave the
Church the ultimate insult when he argued that tying the charity to
religious observance was the core of the problem: It seemedtomeavery
Papistical proceeding, much like what I had seen in France,come
15
Defoe, The Review, vol. 6, no. 7, 19 Apr. 1709 in William Payne (ed.), The Best of
Defoes Review (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), 156.
16
Compton to Strype, 1685, BL, Add MS 5853, f. 69; see also Sugiko Nishikawa,
Henry Compton, Bishop of London (16761713) and foreign Protestants in Vigne &
Littleton, Strangers, 360362.
17
Nishikawa, Henry Compton, Bishop of London, 361.
18
Robert Ingram, Archbishop Thomas Secker (16931768), Anglican identity and
relations with foreign Protestants in the mid-18th century, in Vigne & Littleton,
Strangers, 534, 535.
19
Ingram, Archbishop Thomas Secker, 52832.

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to Mass and you shall be exempted from Dragoons.20 Those Hugue

not congregations which did not were forced to rely on their own
resources.21 Clearly, in spite of the manner in which a larger, international Protestant identity might be forming, for a certain segment of
the English clergy (and possibly the larger population), loyal citizenship was deeply connected to a commitment to the Church of England.
The Act of Toleration in 1689 exacerbated this problem. To what
extent was toleration a good thing? Devout English writers as well as
Huguenot leaders wrung their hands over the mixed blessing that was
toleration. Clearly not persecuting was supposed to be an important
value marker for Protestants. But it also seemed to many that with toleration, religion in England had lost its moorings. The sense that people would convert to anything and change their religion to suit their
interestspecifically their economic interestwas the subject of David
Abercrombys 1690 tract A Moral Discourse on the Power of Interest. He
specifically used the Huguenots in France as an example, arguing that
there was no doubt some of them had converted to Catholicism to save
their positions and property. The power of economic interest over religious conviction and the fundamental Anti-Christian nature of forcing people to agree in religion were themes that his audience would
have understood. Closer to home, Abercomby pointed out, courtiers
under James II had converted to Catholicism in order to advance
themselves politically.22
Even those who supported toleration were worried about the erroneous beliefs that could spread unchecked as a result of it. Huguenots
experienced this as well as Anglicans and Dissenters. Starting in 1690,
the Huguenots also became very concerned about the Socinian views
they were seeing among their own people. The sense of belonging to an
international Protestant, even Calvinist community was perhaps
heightened by the anxiety about what John Marshall has called the rise
of an antitrinitarian international. Huguenot preachers petitioned
William and Mary to combat the evils of toleration and Socinianism
arguing that to tolerate Socinianism was to partake of its evil.23
20
James Fontaine [sic], A Tale of the Huguenots or Memoirs of a French Refugee
Family (New York: John S. Taylor, 1838), 129.
21
Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 95103.
22
David Abercromby, A Moral Discourse on the Power of Interest (London, by
Thomas Hodgkin, 1690), 90, 91, 158, 159 (Wing A83).
23
John Marshall, John Locke, Toleration and Early Enlightenment Culture: Religious
Intolerance and Arguments for Religious Toleration in Early Modern and Early
Enlightenment Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 432.

how dangerous, the protestant stranger?109

The influential, if not entirely popular, Huguenot theologian, Pierre

Jurieu, was staunchly against tolerationist principles. In fact, it appears
that John Locke had just finished reading Jurieus diatribe against heresy and toleration when he wrote his celebrated treatise.
Although the Huguenot concern to investigate and establish the
orthodoxy of the preachers in the British isles and Holland was counter to one strain of the prevailing current in the England of rationalists
like Locke and Toland and Stillingfleet, all were in agreement about the
dangers of the superstition of popery.24 Anti-Catholic language, then,
could bond everyonebecause now Catholicism was characterized as
superstition more than in the eschatological terms of Anti-Christ.
The devout wanted to position themselves so that their own beliefs and
practices could not be associated with irrational papist dogma.25 But
this unity represented by the Protestant Interest throughout the whole
world, as one sermon called it, was a reformation, a turning from sin
and profanity. The results of popery were debauchery, therefore the
best way to continue the Protestant interest, whether in the wars on the
continent or at home, was by curbing sin and pride in ones life.26
The Huguenot experience, and the attempts of English Protestants
to make sense of it, reveals the ambiguity not only about what kind
of Protestantism Britain should espouse, but also how wide its oftvaunted toleration should be. If British identity was forming in opposition to Catholic persecution, which identity was part and parcel of its
welcome to the Huguenots, its commitment to toleration was being
constantly put to the test. It was to encourage this identity as a tolerating society, that Daniel Defoe, after the passage of the 1709 Naturaliza
tion Act, exhorted the English to set aside their well-known xenophobia
and to take on the identity of those who were a safe harbour for the
persecuted:
Heres an occasion to remove the scandal, to fill all Europe with a report
of your generosity, and tell the world that the reproach Englishmen have
so many ages laboured under has been a mere slander, or at least that the
nation has reformed the vice, and contrary to the practice of their ancestors, are become the sanctuary and relief of the distressed foreigners..
[Then] you will retrieve that reputation that you lost when the Dutch
that came hither to bring over your deliverer, and indeed your d
eliverance
Marshall, John Locke, 422, 427; Cottrett, Huguenots in England, 209, 210.
Cottret, Huguenots in England, 249.
26
Advice to English Protestants; being a Sermon Preached November the Fifth, 1689.
(London: 1689; Wing A647), 3, 16, 17, 22.
24
25

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lisa clark diller

were paid, and cursed, and hurried home again Relieving these poor
people, and opening your hands and hearts to them will stop the mouth
of raillery and satire upon the nation.and be an eternal honor to the
nation of Britain in the ages to come. The blessing of him that is ready to
perish will come upon you.27

Liberty, then, was connected to bringing those who shared in the ideals of liberty and who were persecuted elsewhere. It was the right thing
to do according to the basic claims of Christianity and for those who
opposed tyranny.
In spite of the consistent efforts to provide for a general Act of
Naturalization that would cover all the French Protestant refugees,
there were many Englishmen arguing against that blanket incorporation. It appears that the primary line of reasoning against their naturalization was based on their economic threat. In what may be the
most famous speech against the Act, the Bristol M.P., Sir John Knight,
railed against those who would sacrifice our English Liberties to a
number of Mercenary Foreigners and proposes that foreigners would
always choose to send their profits back to the land of their origins.28
This concern with respect to the drain on the finances which immigrants would pose was clearly understood by the Huguenots.
Perhaps because of their minority status and self-governing
communities back in France, the Huguenots had a highly organized
system for caring for their own. They developed a thick network of
charitable organizations that paralleled the English ones, and the latter seem even to have modelled themselves on the former. William
Maitland, for instance, lauded the French School as an example for
other English charity schools in 1739.29 They started hospitals, found
jobs for new arrivals and extended loans and financial support to get
immigrants settled in London, smaller cities in the countryside, and
Ireland.30
27
Defoe, The Review, vol. 6, no. 56, 11 Aug. 1709, in Payne, Best of Defoes Review,
147, 148.
28
Sir John Knight. The Following Speech being spoke off hand upon the debates in the
House of Commons. (London: 1690; Wing K686), 3.
29
Eileen Barrett, Huguenot Integration in late 17th- and 18th-century London:
Insights from Records of the French Church and some Relief Agencies in Vigne &
Littleton, Strangers, 377381.
30
Martin Dinges, Huguenot Poor Relief and Healthcare in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Raymond Mentzer and Andrew Spicer (eds.), Society and Culture
in the Huguenot World, 15591685 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002),
167174.

how dangerous, the protestant stranger?111

Nancy Rothsteins study of the Huguenot weavers in Canterbury

and Spitalfields reveals the extent to which they also worked hard
to ingratiate themselves into the local community, forming business
partnerships with English men and womeneven marrying them.
When weavers who were excluded from the silk-weavers company in
Spitalfields banded together to demand inclusion, it was both French
and English petitioners who pleaded their case.31 The wealthiest
Huguenot weavers did not merely sink their capital back into their
businesses, but invested their money in the Bank of England and the
East India Company, like other wealthy Englishmen.32 The economic
splits within the community can be seen as reflected in the way in
which the wealthy were able to have individual acts of naturalization
passed and to invest in the Bank.33 Indeed, Huguenots seem to have
consistently acted within their economic class, rather than simply as a
faith community and this appears to have aided in their integration,
making them seem less of a threat.34
Clearly, however, there were ambiguities in the process of assimilation. Often it appears, as in the memoirs written by Isaac Dumond de
Bostaquet, that the Huguenots attempted to build on the shared history of persecution and Protestantism rather than on changing to
become English. The Huguenots didnt want to lose their identity
they were, in this sense, a conservative immigrant group and tried to
pass on their religious and cultural, and even political, identity to the
next generation, while at the same time making themselves as minimally obnoxious as possible to the host culture. Shared Protestantism
and the story telling of their persecution and forced migration helped
to do this. They defined Englishness as Protestant culture rather than
in some other ethnic characteristic.35
While historians such as Tony Claydon and Steven Pincus disagree
regarding whether or not Protestant identity was paramount in the
wars of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century (and certainly
31
The Case of a Great Number of Silk-weavers, as well French Protestants as English.
(London: 1695; C916).
32
Nishikawa, Henry Compton, Bishop of London, 359, 360.
33
Hillel Schwartz, The French Prophets: The Study of a Millenarian Group in
Eighteenth Century England (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980), 57.
34
Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 24.
35
Ruth Whelan, Writing the Self: Huguenot Autobiography and the process of assimilation in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers 470472; Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 48;
Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500
1700. (New York: Manchester University Press, 2006), 312.

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supporters of Williams war in Britain seemed as likely to use the language of opposition to universal monarchy and economic interest as
that of opposition to popery), the Huguenots definitely pitched themselves to the heads of European states as people who would help in
forwarding the Protestant side of that conflict.36 As part of the larger
international Calvinist community, their long history of emigrating to
Protestant states for refuge from persecution and maintaining ties
between those immigrant communities gave them a strong sense of
a Protestant network between states.37 Those who emigrated may
havebeen more militantly committed to that Protestant identity and
inmany of their host countries they worked (sometimes with success)
to promote a Protestant foreign policy, specifically targeted at Louis
XIV.38 Certainly their status as victims of persecution allowed observers like Gilbert Burnet to self-righteously declare that even Roman
Catholics in England did not think their situation was as bad as the
Protestants in France.39 Ultimately, then, the Huguenots and their supporters were very skilful in continuing the high levels of emotional
support for these victims by continuously releasing stories and memoirs of their persecution.40
At the same time, the English state often cared more about how
these refugees blended into the foreign policy of the state itself (i.e.,
war with France) and less about their religious affiliation.41 William
had Catholic Hapsburg allies, after all. In the fight against Louis XIV,
there were reasons for people of all faiths to join togetherLouis himself and his foreign and domestic policies provided that. In a typically
strongly-worded diatribe Daniel Defoe claimed that the French desire
to exterminate the English was so strong that English papists should
find little better quarter than others.42 The war was against Louis
Abercromby, 140.
Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 3841. This network was as much economic as it was
military and religious.
38
Both Catholics and Protestants found Louis XIV a villain, and the Catholic
Hapsburg allies of William kept this war from being associated only with religious elements. Craig Rose, England in the 1690s. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 117; Gwynn,
Huguenot Heritage, 2728.
39
Gilbert Burnet, Ecclesiastical Princes (London, 1682), 97.
40
Popish Treachery; or a Short and New Account of the Horrid Cruelties Exercised on
the Protestants in France. (London: 1689; Wing P2958); An Account of the Sufferings
and Dying Words of Several French Protestants under this present Persecution. (London,
1699; Wing A396).
41
Ingram, Archbishop Thomas Secker, 528.
42
Defoe, The Englishmans Choice, 12.
36
37

how dangerous, the protestant stranger?113

and his claims of universal monarchy, not against Catholicism or the

papacy.
And it was a concern about that kind of papist invasion of their
nation, and its equation with things French that caused concern among
some of the English that the Huguenots were pseudo-Catholics.
In 1692, one conspiracy theory involved the supposed Huguenot refugees rising for King James, declaring that there were several thousands
of the French who passed here for Protestants and go duly to the
French Protestant churches, who are indeed good Catholics and would
show themselves to be so upon King Jamess landing. In fact, the
Huguenots sometimes suspected that French Catholics stirred up
trouble among the immigrants just to bring disrepute on them, knowing the English propensity to believe the worst.43 The Fontaine family
dealt with constant accusations that they were secret Catholics. Jacques
Fontaine reported that in Taunton he was called a Jesuit in disguise,
who said mass in his own house every Sunday; as well in one word, as
a thousand, he is a French dog who takes the bread out of the mouths
of the English.44
This is why the Huguenots made constant attempts to remind their
hosts of their status as victims in this conflict with Louis XIV. The consistent insistence within the French churches that their members
reiterate their persecution stories, recant their Catholic conversions
where necessary and articulate their commitment to the true faith was
reinforced by their unwillingness to sponsor any of the French poor
who were less than orthodox in their Calvinism.45 The Bishop of
Worcester advised his clergy to promote the benefit of the French
Protestants in England, spending money on the refugees instead of
themselves and leading the laity by example in giving.46 And John
Evelyn commended the Bishop of Bath and Wells for his sermon condemning French persecution especially because the Bishop had been
accused of leaning towards Catholicism. Advocacy on behalf of the
Huguenots could sometimes secure ones reputation for being sufficiently Protestant.47

As cited in Cottret, Huguenots in England, 193, 265.

Fontaine, A Tale of the Huguenots.
45
Cottret, Huguenots in England, 200, 201.
46
Bishop of Worcester to his clergy, Mar. 1688. BL Add 27.448, ff. 340, 341.
47
John Evelyn, Diary, vol. II, ed. E.S. de Beer (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1955), 261.
43
44

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lisa clark diller

Huguenots, then, while fighting alongside their British comrades in

the war against Louis and his allies, were able to access more complex
elements of solidarity than simply Protestantism. There were times
when national identity and security were not made clear or established
by Protestantism alone. The economist Charles Davenant, even as he
argued for a greater political inclusion of the Huguenot immigrants,
reminded his readers that all things were not secure, because Religion
was out of danger.48 The Huguenot presence helped the English articulate that it was more than just Protestantism that they needed to be
concerned aboutthere was the despotism of universal monarchy.
However, the immigrants also understood that the opposition to the
French monarch was made more emotional and strident when British
citizens were reminded of his persecutory ways. French Catholic despotism that persecutedthat was the kind of popery that they
emphasized.
Because of their history of owing their liberties to protection by
the French monarch, Huguenots had often emphasized their commitment to royal power. The monarchs of England, too, were extremely
supportive of the protestant strangers. The support was not only
political, but economic. The royal invitation from William and Mary
made specific reference to English commitments to support, aid, and
Assist them in their several and respective Trades and ways of
Livelihood.49 And the committee established to disburse the charitable
funds was almost giddy in its reporting of the numbers of churches
built, refugees assisted in starting business, and migrants sent off to
the colonies.50
However, this consistent statement of loyalty to monarchs went
along with a fairly republican form of government within the churches
themselves and a sense among observers that their social organization
was almost democratic. Historian Bernard Cottret points out that
these stranger churches were often the most clear about the ways in
which civil and religious authority were not the same.51 In the development of British liberalism, with its established church and Act of
Toleration, Huguenot tensions regarding orthodoxy and toleration,
Davenant, An Essay, 224.
By the King and Queen a Declaration for the encouraging of French Protestants to
transport themselves into this kingdom (London: 1689; Wing 2505).
50
Declaration of Royal Grace and Bounty (London: 1695; Wing H2087).
51
Marshall, John Locke, 24547; Cottret, Huguenots in England, 23438.
48
49

how dangerous, the protestant stranger?115

the power of the clergy and loyalty to the state, both mirrored and
contributed to the national discussion regarding these issues.
The influential conformist Huguenot minister, Pierre Allix,attempted
to articulate this idea in his 1693 A Letter to a Friend. He argued that
Christians should not spend a great deal of time worrying about
whether it is lawful for them to pray for their governors who may be
accused of usurpation. Christians have nothing to do with the
Affairs of State, tho they may take cognizance of them as they are citizens A stranger who is bound by his oath to his own Prince, can
possess nothing in a foreign State, he hath no leave to trade in a strange
country any further than he submits himself to the laws of the Society.52
The latter sentence seems clearly targeted at assuring the English community of Huguenot loyalty. Political loyalty should be unconnected to
spiritual loyalty. In the Threadneedle Street church, for instance,
wealthy entrepreneurs such as Thomas Papillon set the tone for
fundamental support of the English crown over and against Louis XIV.
Robin Gwynns study of this church reveals that it seems impossible to
differentiate between its members religious identification as persecuted Protestants and their economic commitments and loyalty to the
English crown.53
And yet, many Huguenots also found that they were able to maintain what seemed often to be Whig sensibilities with loyalty to Tory
governments, when necessary. Active in coffee houses and attempting
to understand the party system, some Whig writers, such as Rapin
Thoyras and Emmanuel de Cize, laid out the ideologies in a manner
that associated Tories with the absolutism of Louis XIV.54 One of the
most prolific of Huguenot political writers, Abel Boyers political economic publications placed him firmly in the camp of supporting the
Whig party, the Bank of England, an expansive British identity and
wars to promote international trade.55 And so the Huguenots consistently positioned themselves as loyal to the English state and helpful in
expanding her wealth and trading relationships.
Pierre Allix. A Letter to a Friend (London: 1693; Wing A1225), 7, 12, 13.
Robyn Gwynn, The Huguenots in Britain, the Protestant International and the
Defeat of Louis XIV, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 416421.
54
Myriam Yardeni, The Birth of Political Consciousness among the Huguenot
Refugees and their Descendants in England (c.16851750) in Vigne & Littleton,
Strangers, 4056.
55
Abel Boyer, An Address to the Nobility, Gentry, Merchants and Proprietors of the
National Funds (London, 1711), 34.
52
53

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It is at this point that the Huguenots made themselves so valuable

with respect to the extension of the nascent British empire which
William was developing. The connection between economic growth
and population growth was increasingly popular and economists of
varying stripes from Josiah Child to Charles Davenant advocated the
benefits of great population growth for commercial dominance. For
this reason, they urged that the French Protestants, among others,
become naturalized citizens. Daniel Defoe contended, have we any
grievance in our trade at home but what increase of people would
redress it? Is your produce of corn or cattle too greatthough that be an
absurd notion in the mainbut is not remedied by the increase of people to consume it?56 The Whigs were also in favour of inviting the
Protestants of Europe to come enrich England, and of course, Defoe
features largely in these arguments (he thought a mixed population
was best for a nation).57 This appears to have been fairly unproblematic
with respect to the Huguenots, but the Palatinate refugees were discovered to include large numbers of Catholics, and thousands of them had
to be sent back as unsuitable as potential English citizens.58 In fact, the
arrival of the Palatines seems to have largely provoked the repeal of
the Naturalization Act in 1711.59 It seems that at least one factor in the
disparity in the treatment of these two groups was the ability of the
Huguenots both to provide for themselves and to invest sufficiently in
the burgeoning market capitalism of Great Britain.
Certainly the financial revolution owed a substantial amount to
the liquid capital provided by leading Huguenot merchants. John
Castaing, a Huguenot, was responsible for the early list of market
prices in Government loans, The Course of the Exchange, from which
evolved the Stock Exchange Official List, and the French church
invested its own money in the Bank of England, starting in 1695.
Of the 1,200,000 subscribed to the Bank of England in 1695, 123
newly arrived Huguenots provided 104,000 and a full 10 per cent

56
Daniel Defoe Refugees Englands good fortune, The Review, vol. 6, no. 35, in
Payne, The Best of Defoes Review, 136.
57
William OReilly, The Naturalization Act of 1709 and the Settlement of Germans
in Britain, Ireland and the Colonies, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, 494, 495; Oxford
DNB, s.v. Josiah Child, Carew Reynell, Charles Davenant; Gwynn, Huguenot
Heritage, 59.
58
OReilly, Naturalization Act of 1709, 496.
59
Olson, English reception, 481; Michael Duffy, Englishman and Foreigner
(Cambridge: Chadwyck-Healy, 1986), 16.

how dangerous, the protestant stranger?117

of the investors in the Bank were Huguenot immigrants or their

children.60
Defoe, who was a great defender of the Huguenots, also articulated
the idea that the primary goal of the state should be the increase of
wealth, for which people were needed, and that a larger British identity
was crucial for that.61 And further, he contended that Ireland could be
made profitable if there would be a great inducement to foreigners to
go and fill that country who would in time by marrying into English
and Scotch families become British.62 He was not alone. William Petty
seems to have been especially thinking of the Huguenots when he
argued in a tract published in 1690 that to sell land to foreigners,
increaseth both money and people, and consequently trade. Wherefore
it is to be thought that when the laws denying strangers to purchase,
and not permitting them to trade without paying extraordinary duties,
were made; that then the public state of things and Interest of the
nation were far different from what they are now.63
At this point, the connection came to be overtly made between the
challenge of the Huguenot integration and the need to govern and cultivate the expanding colonial territories. The French Protestant Durand
Dauphins memoirs were written explicitly to encourage settlement
in the colonies (although he preferred Virginia to Carolina, much to
the chagrin of his sponsors). While he was traveling, he was deeply
impressed by the Frenchman who accompanied the ship to the Amer
icas as a factor of rich London Merchants who were sending him over
with merchandise in order to try to establish trade with that country.64
In general, Dauphins gushing over the wealth and richness of Virginia
led him to advocate that it was wide open for the refugees to cultivate
and would replace their lost countryside quite effectively. This promotion of the sort of empire and extension of English commerce was
exactly what the English were happiest about with regards to the
Huguenot immigrants.
Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 155, 156; Schwartz, The French Prophets, 60.
Defoe, The Review, vol. 6, no. 41, 7 July 1709, in Payne, The Best of Defoes Review,
141, 142.
62
Defoe, Some Seasonable Queries (London: 1697; Wing S4609A), 4. This is echoed
by the Irish Protestant Richard Cox in Some thoughts on the bill depending before the
right honourable the House of Lords (Dublin: 1698; Wing C6725), 12.
63
William Petty, Political Arithmetic (London: 1690) in George Aitken (ed.), Later
Stuart Tracts (Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co., 1903), 66.
64
Durand Dauphin. A Huguenot Exile in Virginia (New York: Pioneer Press, 1934),
176, 177.
60
61

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John Locke and other Whig proprietors of the Carolina colonies

intentionally recruited Huguenots as a way of fulfilling the dual needs
of international Protestantism and the mercantile interests of Britain.
Locke, according to historian Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, very consciously formulated a naturalization policy that was more contractual
and voluntary than had been the case in England during the earlier
part of the seventeenth century. Locke believed that these naturalized
citizens would be perfect Englishmen as those that have been here
since William the Conquerers days & came over with him. Then,
sounding a bit like Defoe, he added for tis hardly to be doubted but
that most of even our Ancestors were Forainers.65 The liberal Whigs,
then, looked to the Huguenots as secure partners in furthering their
imperialist and mercantilist ideals.
The use of Huguenots to settle the colonies reveals a great deal about
what kind of polity England desired to become and to rule. As part of
her economic expansion, and as committed Protestants, the Huguenots
were crucial. But they were also not-quite English, and it was safer for
the liberal state to use them in growing their empire rather than try to
assimilate them during a time when the economy might not be able to
handle them.66 Their strong military contribution to the Williamite
settlement, first in battle and then especially as settlers in Ireland, made
it possible for their later participation in banking and manufacturing
and trade to bear fruit.67 Certainly, in their military service and subsequent integration into the empire, Huguenots appear to have started a
long tradition whereby immigrants have demonstrated their commitments and worthiness of citizenship by fighting for their host government. In fact, it has been argued that the years of relative ethnic peace
within the British leading up to the American Revolution were at least
partly made possible because the English could export their ethnically
problematic immigrants. Thus, they essentially passed on the problem
of what it meant to be English to the American colonies.68
Huguenot attempts to integrate into the English political economy
demonstrate the ways British citizenship was being defined in the late

65
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, From New Babylon to Eden: The Huguenots and Their
Migration to Colonial South Carolina (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press,
2006), 167.
66
OReilly, Naturalization Act of 1709, 496, 498.
67
Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 5.
68
Olson, English Reception, 488.

how dangerous, the protestant stranger?119

seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Linda Colley has argued

for a nationhood that was Protestant, not-Continental and not-
colonial. The Huguenot experience demonstrates that even continental influences would be welcomed with the right packaging. Expressing
and enacting their commitment to the same causes as the English elites
allowed Huguenots to prove their worth. They invested heavily in the
Bank of England, played significant roles in the armed forces, and
joined Anglicans and Dissenters in the Reformation of Manners movement. They were also intentional about articulating their status as a
beleaguered religious group, who had suffered righteously underCath
olic tyranny. In fact, they published and popularized the narratives of
their persecution, knowing just how important such stories were for
their English hosts and helpers. Clearly, their Protestant credentials
eased the concern British men and women often had for outsiders.
Welcoming those who share the identity and values of the host
country and who can add to its economic power seems obvious.
Liberalism remains committed to seeing to the economic well-being of
its citizens. Early in the formation of liberalism within England, however, tension arose between those who saw their essential quality as
that of Protestantism clashed with those who saw the attribute that set
England apart from others as its humaneness.69 Both myths would
eventually contribute in fundamental ways to the myth of liberalism,
progress and Anglo-American exceptionalism.
In spite of all this, however, it wasnt a simple case of English
Protestants recognizing their benighted brethren and welcoming them
with open arms. The debates over their proposed naturalization expose
the fluid and sometimes-conflicting boundaries regarding who should
be part of the British political community. William and Mary offered
the legal rights of voting and office-holding to individual Huguenots,
but during this period Parliament never passed a lasting general naturalization act giving all Huguenots these privileges. Many churches
and charities worked with and helped financially support the newcomers. On the other hand, mobs (most of them English artisans who
would have seen their strong influence in the cloth trade as an economic threat) demanded they be deported. In fact, there were constant
complaints about Huguenot immigrant competition with English craft
workers. Their own attempts to maintain their identity, their different
Olson, English Reception, 484, 485.

69

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patterns of eating and dressing, not to mention their bilingualism, contributed to the tensions. It was sometimes even rumoured that they
were secretly Catholics.
The debate was not solved, and during times when wars were going
badly, the succession seemed unsure, or the economy was failing, the
more narrow definition, the fear-filled position, could dominate. But
as this debate over the Huguenot experience shows, even in the earliest
days of liberalism, there were those arguing for a wider identity, for a
Protestant unity that could transcend ethnicity, for a commitment to a
liberty that encompassed Europe as well as England.
I argue that the Huguenots provide us with first modern case of the
debate about immigration and national identityjust at the time when
citizenship and the nation-state were being formulated. They functioned in the same way that immigrants often have for liberal democracies. They were important to fulfilling English ideals of themselves as
the freedom-loving Protestants fighting against international Catholic
tyranny and they provided useful economic skills. They worked hard
to demonstrate their commitment to English political and economic
institutions, developing a rhetoric that emphasized their common concerns. But they also created structures that reinforced their own identities and supported their sense of community, which provoked questions
about their fitness for naturalization. They thus provided a flash point
for English anxieties. In the Huguenot experience between the Glorious
Revolution and 1715, we find many of the early patterns for liberalisms
response to the economic and political complexities of immigration
and citizenship in the national community.

CHAPTER FIVE

Strains of worship: the Huguenots

and NON-CONFORMITY
Robin Gwynn
The Huguenots who came to Britain in the 1680s and 1690s were religious refugees. To remain undisturbed in their homeland, they had
simply to sign a statement abjuring the errors of John Calvin. Many
refused to do so, or felt so guilty at what they had done that they chose
to run the loss and dangers inherent in illegal flight in order to renounce
abjurations they had signed under duress.
Their actions speak eloquently of their religious determination, yet
some who found themselves stranded across the Channel on British
shores found they were expected to conform to an unfamiliar kind of
Protestant worship based on more Anglican ways than was their custom. This paper opens by analysing three early cases where conforming congregations ran into difficulties. It goes on to show that while
there were many practical advantages for the refugees in conforming,
their memory of their French roots was often too vivid to allow it, so
that there is an unmistakable movement back towards non-conformity
when opportunity permitted. The essay then examines the variety of
opinion and practice cloaked by the word conformity, noting how the
problematic relationship of conformity and non-conformity was not
confined to England and extended well into the eighteenth century.
***
As they fled, the refugees needed to decide where to make their new
home. Britain looked promising. Potentially, England was the most
powerful Protestant country. London was the largest Protestant city
in Europe, offering excellent employment opportunities. French
Protestant churches were already based in the city and in Westminster.
Other French-speaking churches around the country, at Canterbury
and Norwich and Southampton, shared with the Threadneedle
Streetchurch in London an existence and a Calvinist type of church
discipline and organization that dated back to the sixteenth century.Following the onset of the dragonnades in 1681, Charles II was

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r emarkably prompt and generous in the invitations he issued and the

concessions he offered.
Many of the refugees of 1681 therefore headed across the Channel.
Once in England, however, they came to understand unsettling currents in their new homeland which they had not appreciated before
their arrival. Potential causes for alarm included the persecution of
English Nonconformists, political uncertainty in the aftermath of the
Exclusion crisis, an avowedly Roman Catholic heir to the throne, and
Crown financial dependence on subsidies from Louis XIV.
Among royal policies which refugees could not have anticipated
while in France was Charles IIs determination that any new French
congregations in England should conform to the Anglican liturgy
translated into French. Charless decision had a long historical background. Archbishop Laud had been a bitter enemy of the French congregations in the country in the 1630s, and in the Civil War they were
mostly Parliamentarian sometimes outspokenly so. Moreover
there was obvious discordance between the persecution of English
Nonconformists after the Restoration and the welcome offered to
French refugees who shared very similar beliefs. If the new refugees
would conform, that dilemma would be resolved.
The gentry and clerical leaders of the refugees, and those managing
existing French congregations in England, appreciated the need not to
antagonize the Court at a time when Huguenots were under such
threat in their homeland. Many refugee clergy could see personal
advantages, greater opportunities and a strengthened social position, if
they conformed. In any event, the prime need in the immediate aftermath of the dragonnades was urgent action to relieve need and settle
the refugees. So the issue of conformity was not confronted head on.
Instead, the situation took months to clarify. What exactly did conformity mean? How were terms like Consistoire and Ancien to be
interpreted when translated into English as Vestry and Churchwarden?
How strictly was conformity to Anglican ways to be enforced? Just
how attached were the Huguenots to their structures and their memory of how they had worshipped in France? These questions surfaced
and evoked debate and stress in the refugee community in the years
after 1681.
***
Between 1681 and 1687, numerous new conformist congregations
were successfully established in England outside the London/
Westminster conurbation. Earliest were those at Ipswich (Suffolk) and

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity123

Rye (Sussex), founded in the immediate aftermath of the dragonnades.
They were followed by others: at Plymouth, Stonehouse, Barnstaple,
Bideford, Exeter and Dartmouth in Devon; at Thorpe-le-Soken and
Colchester in Essex; at Faversham and Preston, and Dover, in Kent; at
Wandsworth and Greenwich, now in Greater London; and at Bristol.
All of these survived into the eighteenth century.1
There were also a handful of other foundations which failed to take
root. Their ephemeral nature means that little is known of most of
these, but there is one exception for which we have enough evidence to
analyse the reasons for its failure. This was an attempted Huguenot
colony at Bocton Malherbe (now Boughton) and subsequently
Hollingbourne, near Maidstone.
The communitys failure has been little studied, and an earlier historian working through Archbishop William Sancrofts papers in the
Bodleian Library dismissed its internal bickerings as no more than a
storm in a Kentish teacup.2 However the colony is of real interest
because its beginnings seemed unusually auspicious, so it is worth
reading the tea-leaves to see if they have more to tell us.
The original settlement was the third major effort to settle new refugees away from London. The two previous attempts, organized from
the non-conforming Consistory of Threadneedle Street although the
resultant congregations were conformist, seemed to be working: one at
Rye, for fishermen, and the other at Ipswich, for linen weavers.3
Now a colony of a hundred persons was deliberately planted by the
Marquis de Venours at Boughton, on land he had purchased from the
Earl of Chesterfield.4 As with the community at Thorpe-le-Soken in
Essex, which was developing at around the same time, the intention
was probably to cater for refugee agricultural workers.
The Marquis provided not only land, but an element of social leadership the other settlements could not match. Charles Gourjault, Marquis
de Venours, was a leading Huguenot nobleman with estates in Poitou
which were forfeited and given to a son who stayed in France and
became Roman Catholic. He was one of the handful of leaders who
consciously sought to give international direction to the Huguenot
diaspora, becoming involved in negotiations for settling and s upporting
1
Gwynn, Conformity, 2930; Robin D. Gwynn, The Distribution of Huguenot
Refugees in England, HSP 21 (196570), 40436.
2
C.R.L. Fletcher, Some Troubles of Archbishop Sancroft, HSP 13 (192329), 240.
3
Gwynn, Distribution, 4178, 424.
4
Bodl., Tanner MS cxxiv, f. 225.

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the refugees not only in England but in the Netherlands, where he

assisted with the foundation of sanctuaries for Huguenot gentlewomen
at Haarlem and Amsterdam, and in Germany, where the church at
Berlin charged him to visit Hamburg and Denmark. He died in Berlin
in 1692.5
There was other significant backing for the Bocton venture. The
conformist Savoy church supported it. Charitable funds collected
nationally for the Huguenots provided some financial input, and in
February-March 1682 De Venours, Moses Charas and Daniel Poulveret
or Poulverel were paid 32 to discharge the charity for 43 French
Protestants sent there. The Archbishop of Canterbury was also involved
and supportive, appointing Jacques Rondeau as the minister for the
colony and requiring the local rector to allow the Huguenots the use of
his church.6
However the Boughton settlement proved too remote, and there was
no suitable market.7 Moreover there were divisions between the colonys founders, with trouble erupting between De Venours, Charas and
Poulveret. Rondeau reported to Sancroft that he had nothing to do
with these divisions but tried to keep the peace, and on one occasion
prevented the Marquis and Poulveret from fighting and perhaps killing
one another dans une des galleries de Bocton.8
When the settlement failed, Rondeau encouraged its removal to
Hollingbourne, which although nearby was significantly nearer to
Maidstone and to the River Medway. According to the minister some
thirty communicants, mostly from Picardy, went to Hollingbourne,
where they formed a properly constituted church with elected elders.9
Although the number was small, the congregation should have been
5
HSP 7 (190104), 145; Eugne et mile Haag, La France Protestante (ou Vies des
Protestants Franais), 10 vols. (Paris: E. Thunot, 184659), s.n. Gourjault; Mme
Alexandre de Chambrier, Henri de Mirmand et les Rfugis de la Rvocation de ldit de
Nantes, 16501721 (Neuchtel: Attinger Frres, 1910), 108, 1158, and appendix p. 46;
H. D. Guyot, Le Marquis de Venours (Groningen: n.p., 1906); HSQS, LVIII (1994), 75.
6
HSQS, XLIX (1971), 16; HSP 7 (190104), 1434; Corporation of London Record
Office [hereafter CLRO], ex-Guildhall MS 346, no. 260. Moise Charas, apothecary to
Charles II, was a former Paris physician, endenized in 1682: see Baron F. de Schickler,
Les glises du Refuge en Angleterre (3 vols., Paris: Fischbacher, 1892), II, 313; HSQS,
XVIII (1911), 1301. Daniel (de) Poulveret or Poulverel or Pulveret came from
Marennes, where he had been a naval officer in a French man of war (HSQS, XLIX
(1971), 161); he too was endenized in 1682 (HSQS, XVIII (1911), 151, 159).
7
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 143r.
8
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 137r.
9
Bodl., Tanner MSS xcii, ff. 1378, and cxxiv, f. 225.

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity125

viable. The ministers stipend of twelve shillings a week in what he
called a very deare countrey was not large, but Rondeau would have
had few other openings and was fortunate in that he had left France
comparatively early and so had been able to take resources with him
when he went. Poulveret complained that Rondeau received assistance
when he was richer than any other refugee minister. That may have
been exaggeration, but it also contained at least a grain of truth, since
Rondeau acknowledged he was not destitute and he apparently held
bank stock in the 1690s.10
Rondeau was a cultivated man, fluent in Latin as well as French, and
he also had the support of English parishioners. Sir Thomas Culpeper
(162697), who owned the nearby manor of Greenway Court and was
a writer on various subjects, most notably against usury, wanted
Rondeau to be able to preach at Hollingbourne. His and other English
families (Meredith, Cage, Herlackinden) were willing to contribute
our best endeavours towards his encouragement,11 while Sir Thomas
wrote strongly on his behalf to Archbishop Sancroft on 12 December
1684 that
though [Rondeau] cannot sue you, yet on his behalfe I shall alwayes sue
your Grace, as in a Petition of Right wee do to our gracious Soveraigne,
till you have purchased even your quiet by granting my humble and just
sute for him, the summe whereof is no more then this, that hee bee not
sleighted for his frank conformity, nor starved for his too much
modesty.

Another letter, presumably later but undated, continued to upbraid

Sancroft for your coldnesse to poore Monsieur Rondeau.12
Unfortunately the good will of the English did not extend to the
local Anglican vicar, Mr Thomas. He felt very strongly that those taking services should wear the correct garb in church: so strongly, indeed,
that he was willing to risk the wrath of the local rural dean and the
Archbishop of Canterbury himself to ensure he had his way. And for
their part, the members of Rondeaus French congregation felt equally
strongly on the same matter, although they had a diametrically opposed
10
Bodl., Tanner MSS xcii, ff. 145, 137, and cxxiv, f. 225; HSP 19 (195258), third
pagination, 36, 39.
11
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 143r; for Culpeper, see Anita McConnell, Culpeper, Sir
Thomas (1625/61697?), Oxford DNB, online edn [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/
article/6884, accessed 5 Oct. 2009].
12
Bodl., Tanner MS cxxiv, ff. 2278.

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idea of what the correct garb should be. This was the issue that broke
the Hollingbourne settlement.
The first shots in this ecclesiastical skirmish were fired when the
congregations reader, a Monsieur de la Contie, was shut out of the
church. James Wilson, the local rural dean, investigated and reported
back to Sancroft on 10 May 1683 that it was not Rondeau who had
excluded him, but Thomas, who objected to the fact that here was a
layman officiating in his church wearing a cravat and grey coat. (It was
also alleged that De la Contie had behaved badly at Boughton, but it
was his dress that was at the heart of the matter.) Rondeau was now
acting as reader in addition to his other duties which, Wilson noted, he
performed decently and reverently, with allowance onely for that
which is naturall to all French men, who seem to doe all things in
hast.13
Rondeau may not have been too unhappy with de la Conties exclusion, since he had little positive to say on his behalf.14 However Thomas
was still not satisfied, and early the following month Wilson was again
writing to Sancroft, this time to warn the Archbishop that Thomas
designed to shut the church doors against Rondeau unless he wore a
surplice. Wilson added that he had advised no action should be taken
without Sancrofts prior permission, since it was the Archbishop who
had authorized the congregation. However this warning came a little
late, for Thomas had already acted. By the vicars account, Rondeau
refused to wear a surplice, and he therefore gave order that Rondeau
was not to be admitted to the church without it. I conceive that he is
bound to doe it as a priest episcopally ordained, according to the laws
of the Church of England, Thomas informed Sancroft. It gives great
offence to severall of my parish who complained to me. Thomas argued
that it might cause public disturbance and undermine loyalty and obedience if Rondeau was allowed to continue in his practice.15
Rondeaus own account, in Latin, is slightly different. He told
Sancroft that he conformed exactly as did the ministers of the Savoy
church in Westminster. They used only a black gown (toga pullata),
with no surplice (superpelliceo). So did he. He had told Thomas that if
Sancroft positively ordered him to wear a surplice, he would do so. But
Thomas had shut the doors against him anyway.16
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 144.
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, ff. 1478.
15
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, ff. 134, 136.
16
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 136r.
13
14

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity127

It is unlikely that the surplice issue meant too much to Rondeau
personally. He was not the stuff of which martyrs are made, and he
probably viewed the matter as a thing indifferent. On this occasion he
accepted the requirement to wear the surplice; on another, he explained
he was open to making the sign of the cross in baptism.17 As he told the
Archbishop, he accepted the right of individuals to hold personal opinions on points of religion, whether concerning matters of faith or of
practice, a position confirmed by his actions in the 1690s when he was
first a covert, finally (after a letter exposing his position was intercepted) an open Socinian leader.18 In any event, whatever the depth of
his personal views, Rondeau showed himself a good judge of how his
congregation was likely to react when he resisted the wearing of a surplice for as long as he could.
He knew his people well. He had been minister of du Plessis-Marly
167982, and was allowed to leave his church by the Synod of the Ile de
France held at Lisy, Picardy, on 20 February 1682.19 Since most of the
Hollingbourne congregation came from Picardy, it is likely that it
included Huguenots who had known him in France and re-grouped
around their minister in England, a common phenomenon of the
Huguenot refuge. But however well they knew Rondeau, their memory
of services in their French homeland told them that wearing a surplice
could not be right, and some were as obstinate in their views as
Mr Thomas was in his. Rather than hear Rondeau in such a garment,
they were prepared to travel twenty miles to Canterbury, and twenty
miles back, presumably on foot or by cart on bumpy roads, to join in
worship at the French church there. It was inconvenient, tiresome and
doubtless expensive for them. It meant they had to leave Hollingbourne
on Saturday, and return on Monday. But they voted with their feet to
express their determination that services, even if they were in the
words of the Anglican book of common prayer translated into French,
should as far as possible be taken as they had been in France.20
The congregation languished, and while Rondeau hung on for a few
years with the aid of financial assistance from public collections and

Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 137.

LPL, MS 1029, no. 65. The minutes of the Consistory of the French Church of
Canterbury (Canterbury Cathedral Library, U47-A-7 sub 23 Feb. 1699) describe
Jacques as ministre hetrodoxe and leader of the schismatic Socinian group set up in
Canterbury by his brother, the silk merchant Claude Rondeau.
19
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 76r; Schickler, Les glises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, 331.
20
Bodl., Tanner MS cxxiv, f. 225r.
17
18

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doubtless from his English friends in the locality, he had retired to

London before the end of 1689.21
***
Around the same time as Rondeau was being deserted by part of his
congregation, another refugee minister was clashing with his flock
some twenty miles to the south, at Rye in Sussex. However, their situations were not the same. Rondeau allowed for different thinking and
sought a middle way, but had been undone by orders from the local
Church of England vicar. In contrast his colleague at Rye, Paul Bertrand
junior, showed the zeal of a new convert in enforcing Anglican ways in
his church and in consequence created division with no external
assistance.
Bertrand came from a family background of Protestant ministry, his
father having been pastor of Cozes. He was well educated, holding a
masters degree from the Academy of Saumur, and articulate. He threw
himself heart and soul into the Anglican Church, and was appointed to
Rye immediately after being ordained by Bishop Compton of London
in December 1681-January 1682.22
When he appointed Bertrand, Compton knew him to be an honest
man and firme to the Governement. He assured Secretary of State Sir
Leoline Jenkins quite rightly, as events were to prove that Bertrand
would not go a hairs breath less than the Service of the Church of
England in the Liturgy etc.23 Rye, in close proximity to the south coast
near the narrowest part of the Channel, was a town of heightened security requirements; Compton probably believed he had found the ideal
man for the job, someone on whom the local state and Anglican
authorities could rely.
Unfortunately, Bertrand had ideas not at all in keeping with those of
either the Consistory of the Threadneedle Street church, which had
organized the new settlement and maintained contact with it, or the
poor fishermen of whom it was primarily composed. Indeed by any
standard, his thinking seems extraordinary. A French Catholic bishop
supporting the actions that would lead to the Revocation of the Edict
21
CLRO, ex-Guildhall MS 346, no.68, and ex-Guildhall MS 279 sub 3 Oct. 1683 and
27 Sept. 1684; The Huguenot Library, University College, London [hereafter HL/
UCL], Bounty MS 2, pt. 5, account no. 12, and Bounty MS 6, 4 Dec. 1689. He returned
to the Hollingbourne area to serve the chapel of Huckinge 169097 as curate to the
Vicar, before moving to Canterbury: HSP 7 (190104), 145.
22
Schickler, Les glises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, 331.
23
PRO, SP 29/417, no. 275.

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity129

of Nantes in France the following year might perhaps be expected to
write in 1684 that he was confirmed in the widely held belief that a
Calvinist is one of the most dangerous subjects a monarchy can have,
but it is a shock to see such a sentiment penned by a minister to a
Huguenot refugee congregation.24 As Bernard Cottret has suggested, it
makes one wonder whether a crisis existed in French Calvinist society
even before the Revocation: there had been growing tensions between
the Christian flock and their betters whom they suspected of lacking
zeal.25
In the case of Boughton and Hollingbourne, we can review what
happened through a number of different eyes. Rye housed a s ignificantly
larger settlement local registers show that over a hundred French
people were buried there in the decade from 1682 to 169126 but
weknow about its internal troubles from only two documents. Both
were written from the same Anglican Tory perspective. The first is a
letter from Heneage Finch, Earl of Winchelsea, to Archbishop Sancroft
in February 1683. At the French congregations first settling in Rye, he
wrote,
there hath bin greate endevors and artifices used by the English fanaticks
there to pervert the French congregation, hoping to maike them as factious against the King and Church as themselves are, by endevoring to
perswade them to set up presbitery and not to comply with the Church
of England, which did cause some disputes between Monsieur Bertrand
and his congregation, wherein Monsieur Bertrand behaved himselfe
verie well, and by the prudence of the Lord Bishop of London [Henry
Compton] they are all reconciled, and have submitted themselves to the
Church of England. If the like care be taken in all other parts, the more
French that come over the more it will be to the riches and advantage of
the King and Kingdome.

It is likely enough that local English Dissenters were glad to see the
new settlement. They may well have hoped for a return to happier days,
for there had been previous Huguenot refugee colonies at Rye in the
Elizabethan and Jacobean period, and they had been non-conformist.27

24
un Calviniste est un des plus dangereux sujets quune monarchie puisse avoir;
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.984, f. 51v.
25
Bernard Cottret, The Huguenots in England: Immigration and Settlement c.1550
1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 163.
26
William Durrant Cooper, Protestant Refugees in Sussex, Sussex Archaeological
Collections, XIII (1861), 2023.
27
Schickler, Les glises du Refuge en Angleterre, I, 291302; W.J. Hardy, Foreign
Refugees at Rye, HSP 2 (18878), 40627.

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The Earl urged that great care be taken when any new refugee colony
was settled, and that action be taken against those English turbulent
fanaticks, who do not only every day disturb our church, but would
alsoe pervert those French that would willingly comply with the
Government. Once the French saw the laws against English Dissenters
severely enforced, he believed, they will for feare of the like punishment acquiesce more willingly from faction. He went on to bemoan
the failure to seize the opportunity of the restoration of the monarchy
in 1660 to force the Presbyterian French churches at Threadneedle
Street and Canterbury to conform, a failure he saw as the chiefe root
from whence all these evills spring.28
The second document is a letter from Paul Bertrand himself, sent a
year later in April 1684 to Charles Mossom,29 secretary to the committee responsible for administering public charitable funds for the
Huguenots (and therefore paying Bertrands salary). This angry and
indignant retort to rumours circulating in London that he neglected
his ministerial duties is now in the Rawlinson manuscripts in the
Bodleian Library,30 evidence that Mossom referred it to Bishop
Compton. The particular target of Bertrands vitriol was the Consistory
of the French Church of London, whose representatives on the
Committee had doubtless passed on the rumours.
While the church at Rye was conformist in accordance with royal
orders, and the congregation met in the parish church,31 the non-
conformist French Church of London had been largely responsible for
its foundation. In November 1681, the committee of which Mossom
was secretary urged the Threadneedle Street Consistory to consult key
members of the church and develop ideas for settling the recent arrivals who had flooded in since the onset of the dragonnades. Within a
fortnight one of the elders, Abraham Carris, had gone down to Rye
with the fishermen, and reported back that the magistrates agreed to
take them. A week later, the deacon Michel Savary was authorised to
buy provisions for their voyage, and the first two boats, with 37 people,
left on 6 December. Five further boats left for Rye later in the month,
and another elder, Matthieu Hebert, was sent to help the colonists
Bodl., Tanner MS xxxv, f. 210.
Also referred to in various manuscripts as Mosom, Masson and Mosson, but it is
as Charles Mossom that the name appears in the printed Account of the Disposal of the
Money (Wing M2858) in 1688.
30
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.984, ff. 512.
31
CSPD, 1682, 197.
28
29

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity131

settle in.32 Yet another church officer, the deacon Daniel Brulon, undertook to convey the entire fishermens catch to London and Westminster,
for which he was granted the freedom of the city of London. The government supported the venture, encouraging the local authorities in
their reception of the settlers and ordering that Brulons agents were
not to be molested or hindered.33
Bertrand made no acknowledgement of this background, but he
told Mossom in no uncertain terms that he did not expect to be
instructed on the duties and cares of a minister by the merchants or
wool carders of the London church. The real trouble, he said, was that
he wasnt Calvinist enough. He baptized sick children in their homes
and exhorted his flock to use the splendid Anglican prayers, but that
was not well received. If on the other hand he were to preach
Independency or at least prophesy happy deliverance from the ever
tyrannical yoke of the bishops, he would be the best man in the world.
He described the spirit of Calvinism as impudent and impassioned,
full of the indiscreet zeal of a ridiculous form of government.34
Yet that was precisely the form of government that his congregation
had chosen exile to preserve; Bertrand had put himself out on a limb,
and few if any refugees wanted to follow. While he suggested in 1684
that discord at Rye was a thing of the past in his congregation, such a
claim hardly squares with his own words. In any event, he seems to
have left Rye by the middle of the following year, when he was in
London, and he departed English shores in late 1685 to exercise his
ministry in the New World, in Maryland. His replacement, Pierre
Benech, was appointed to Rye in 1686.35
***
In the course of his diatribe Bertrand briefly mentioned the examples
of Ipswich and Wandsworth as further demonstrating that wherever
the spirit of Calvinism insinuated itself, nothing escaped its venom.
The reference to Ipswich is interesting, because the documents concerning that settlement talk about economic rather than religious difficulties, although it seems from an early newsletter of 3 September
1681 that the earliest suggestions of an Ipswich colony had expected it
HSQS, LVIII (1994), 689.
PRO, SP 44/66, p. 100.
34
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C984, f. 51.
35
HSQS, LVIII (1994), 148; Schickler, Les glises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, 335;
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C984, f. 72.
32
33

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would be non-conformist (within the patent of the French churches at

London and elsewhere).36 If Bertrand was right and there was indeed
tension between non-conformists and conformists at Ipswich, then all
the earliest conformist establishments in the wake of the dragonnades
experienced disruption.
For Wandsworth, there is clear evidence of a clash, or at least of a
reluctance on the part of the refugees to embrace conformity with the
enthusiasm their bishop would have liked. Wandsworth has long since
been swallowed up by the expansion of London, but at the time 20
was paid to Nicolas Lichere, an elder of the congregation, towards the
fitting a place there for the publick worship of the French Protestants
in mid 1682,37 it was separated from the London-Westminster conurbation by countryside, and fell within the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of
the Bishop of Winchester. The bishop at the time was George Morley
(15971684), who plays a central part in the Wandsworth story.
Morley was twenty years older than Sancroft, 35 years older than
Compton, and his career had taken him down different paths so far as
French Protestants were concerned. In the 1630s he had been one of
the central members of the Tew Circle which included Edward Hyde,
later Earl of Clarendon, and Gilbert Sheldon, later Bishop of London
and Archbishop of Canterbury, who were to sponsor him into the episcopacy immediately after the Restoration.38 A canon of Christ Church,
Oxford, and a Doctor of Divinity before the Civil War, Morley was
ejected in 1648 and became one of over a hundred Church of England
migr clergy in exile in the 1650s. He was happy to obtain support for
episcopacy from individual Huguenot divines like Samuel Bochart, a
defender of the divine right of kings. However as a strong vindicator of
the Anglican episcopal tradition, he was ambivalent with regard to the
foreign Protestant churches, refusing either to admit or to disown
them as true churches. With Clarendon and others of their sentiment,
Morleys refusal to worship at Charenton left a legacy of lasting bitterness amongst the Huguenots in Paris. In justifying his actions, he
explained that even if French Protestants

CSPD, 16812, 437.

CLRO, ex-Guildhall MS 346, no. 261.
38
B.H.G. Wormald, Clarendon: politics, history and religion 16401660 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1951), 244, 262; Walter G. Simon, The Restoration
Episcopate (New York: Bookman Associates, 1965), 211.
36
37

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity133

did not favour and encourage, yet they did not, at least they had nothitherto, condemned nor reproved the scandalous and rebellious proceedings of their Presbyterian brethren in England, against the King and
against the Church: which until they should do by some public act or
manifestation of their judgement to the contrary, I could not choose but
think they approved; or at least did not dislike what our Presbyterians in
England had done, and were still doing.39

After being transferred from the bishopric of Worcester to Winchester

in 1662, Morley inherited specific problems regarding French
Protestants at Southampton and in the Channel Islands. The Channel
Islands had been stranded in a curious situation following the English
Reformation, being French speaking and dependant on France for
ministers and having a Calvinist structure of Consistories, Colloquies
and Synods, yet being ruled by a country whose church was governed
by bishops. Steps were taken to bring Jersey into line with Anglicanism
in the 1620s and 1630s, but Guernsey remained Calvinist until the
Restoration.40 Morley therefore needed to nurture a still insecure
Anglicanism in the Channel Islands, and from his perspective the
French church at Southampton was a thorn in his side.
The French-speaking Southampton congregation, consisting of
Walloons and French, had been founded in 1567. Right from its origins, it had always had close mercantile and ecclesiastical ties with the
Channel Islands.41 These ties persisted, were indeed maintained until
the nineteenth century.42 Although the Southampton congregation
was at a low ebb around the time of Morleys appointment to Winchester,
its links with the Channel Islands remained unmistakable. For example, the ten burials recorded in its register between 1660 and 1664

39
Robert S. Bosher, The Making of the Restoration Settlement (London: Dacre Press,
1951), 49, 834, 1289; C.E. Whiting, Studies in English Puritanism from the Restoration
to the Revolution, 16601688, (London: S.P.C.K., 1931), 354.
40
See Schickler, Les glises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, chaps. 1721; G.R. Balleine,
A History of the Island of Jersey (London: Staples Press, 1950), especially chap.10; D.M.
Ogier, Reformation and Society in Guernsey (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1996).
41
Andrew Spicer, The French-speaking Reformed Community and their Church in
Southampton, 1567c.1620, Huguenot Society, New Series, 3 (1997), 1920 and
elsewhere.
42
Edwin Welch (ed.), The Minute Book of the French Church at Southampton 1702
1939, (Southampton: Southampton University Press, 1979), 1. Even the title subsequently given to the church register is significant: Registre des Baptesme, Mariages et
Mortz, et Jeusnes, de leglise Wallonne et des Isles de Jersey, Guernesey, Serq, Origny
etc, etablie a Southampton.

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included Elizabeth Gobey, native of Guernsey; Thomas Careye, son of

Mr Blanchelande of Guernsey; Mr Jean Baillehache of Jersey; and
Damoiselle Elizabeth Le Montais of Jersey.43
Little wonder, then, that in 1668 the Bishop summoned the French
minister at Southampton, Jean Couraud or Courauld, to appear in person before him to explain by what authority he undertook the cure of
souls and preached in his diocese. It was a difficult question for the
minister to answer, since Southampton like many of the other sixteenth
century foreign congregations did not have specific authorization but
claimed the right to exist through an extension of the 1550 letters patent granted to Germans and other foreigners (Germanorum et aliorum peregrinorum) that had enabled the foundation of the Dutch
and French churches of London. Faced by Morleys challenge, the
Southampton church sought the advice of Coetus, a meeting of those
two London foreign churches.44
The tricky nature of the situation rapidly became clear. Coetus learnt
that Morley was arguing that the exemptions in the 1662 Act of
Uniformity did not apply to the Southampton congregation because its
members were natural born subjects of the Crown.45 This was a dangerous attack, and a direct throwback to the actions of Archbishop
Laud in the 1630s. The 1662 Act provided that its penalties directed
against English Nonconformist congregations shall not extend to the
foreigners or aliens of the foreign reformed churches allowed, or to be
allowed, by the Kings Majesty, his heirs and successors in England.46
Lauds opening attack on the foreign congregations in England had
been to order the churches of Canterbury, Southampton and Maidstone
to instruct their English-born members to retire to their local Anglican
churches.47 Now Morley was similarly arguing that the members of the
Humphrey Marett Godfray (ed.), Registre, HSQS, IV (1890), 116.
Joannes H. Hessels (ed.), Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum. Tomi Tertii, Pars
Secunda. Epistulae et Tractatus cum Reformationis tum Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae
Historiam Illustrantes (4 vols. in 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 188797),
III, ii (1897), 2554.
45
French Church of London [hereafter FCL], MS 5, p. 537, and MS 45, sub 21 Sept.
1668.
46
A. Browning (ed.), English Historical Documents 16601714 (London: Eyre &
Spottiswoode, 1953), 381.
47
Schickler, Les glises du Refuge en Angleterre, II, 2324. Laud argued that the
permission of the forraigne Churches and discipline was the occasion of many factious
persons in his Diocese: J[ohn] B[ulteel], A Relation of the Troubles of the Three Forraign
Churches in Kent. Caused by the Injunctions of William Laud, (London: 1645; Wing
B5452), 10.
43

44

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity135

Southampton church could no longer be considered foreigners or
aliens.
Coetus advised delaying in the hope that Morley would drop the
matter, but it quickly became apparent that would not happen. It then
provided Couraud with a letter reminding the Bishop of the new King
Charles IIs promises to continue the foreign congregations in their
former liberties, and asking him to allow the Southampton church to
continue to meet as it had done for over a century. In the end, faced by
Charles IIs recently granted privileges to the foreign community at
Norwich even to thoseborn in the kingdom, Morley backed down.48
The bishop, then, was probing the weak points of the refugee
churches in England from the early years of his episcopacy, and probably had a clearer idea than any other member of the Anglican establishment exactly why he viewed them with askance. His stance was
founded in his memory of the 1630s and 1640s, when Lauds attack on
the foreign congregations in England was one of the charges that led to
the Archbishops impeachment, many members of the French churches
had been hostile to Charles I during the Civil War, and the continental
Protestant churches had failed to condemn the execution of King
Charles I as strongly as Morley would have liked. So when he was confronted by the new refugees of the early 1680s, he was hardly enthusiastic in their support. He was widely known as a charitable man,49 but
explained to Bishop Compton that he could not recommend a French
gentleman to a demys place at Magdalen College, Oxford, and that the
Hampshire collection for the 1681 brief was very small (although, he
added, he did what he could through his letters and example).50 Since
Compton continued to recommend refugees to his consideration,
when Morley agreed in November 1683 to do what he could for a minister, Brevet,51 and his wife and daughter, he took the opportunity to
spell out his reservations:
to deal plainly and truly with your Lordship, many even of the most zealous for our own Church, doe seem to apprehend, that the cherrishing of
those that are come in, and consequently the encouraging of more of

Hessels, Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archivum, III, ii, 25547.

Samuel Pepys, The Diary: A New and Complete Transcription, ed. Robert Latham
and William Matthews (11 vols., London: G. Bell & Sons, 197083), III, 293 n.2.
50
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.983, ff. 5455.
51
Elie Brevet, pastor of Bourgneuf until 1681, re-ordained in the Church of England
1682, later minister at the conformist French church of Greenwich 169395.
48
49

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robin gwynn
those to come in that were the beginners and are the maintayners of the
Presbyterian Discipline, may be dangerous to ourselves by theyr joining
(at least in opinion) with the most inveterate and most irreconciliable of
our enimies amongst ourselves here at home, I mean our Presbyterians;
who from a liberty allowed at first to a few strangers (especially French
and Dutch) to woorship God theyr own way, are grown to soe formidable a number amongst us, that they have once allready shut us out of our
own churches, and will doe soe againe, if God suffer us for the punishment of our sins against him, to suffer them to grow up amongst us
againe

Morley expressed the hope, therefore, that the only Huguenot ministers to be allowed into England should be such as Monsieur dOrtye52
and those of the Savoy-French Church are, while the others could go to
such places as Holland and Germany where they could be safe and
could be assisted without risking harm to ourselves. He also argued
that refugees should have to conform, noting that even in liberal
Holland, when the state contributed to the meeting place, worshippers
had to conform to the established religion.53
To give steel to his argument, Morley enclosed with his letter another
that he had just received from the Mayor and two other Southampton
leaders, asking Compton to discuss it with Archbishop Sancroft. The
Southampton authorities complained that the English Dissenters
believe the French Chappell here an Asylum and that theire resorting
thither protects them against the Law, it being the generall excuse of
those who are questioned by the Justices on the Statute of 3 K: Jac: 4
which wee now are putting in Execution. They asked that the French
church be forced to conform to the Church of England liturgy or to
admit only aliens.
The Mayors letter added that severall persons of quality in the
Channel Islands complained that when their countrymen returned
from Southampton, they come home debauched from the Liturgy of
our Church and some have then endeavoured to sett up private meetings there; which the complainants justly impute to the liberty and

52
Andr (de) Lortie, pastor at La Rochelle 167480. While he was still in France, in
1677, his treatise on communion had been translated by Compton (Edward Carpenter,
The Protestant Bishop: being the life of Henry Compton, (London: Longman, Green &
Co., 1956), 327). Re-ordained in 1682, Lortie was minister of the French church of the
Savoy in 168283 and was appointed rector of Paglesham, Essex, in 1683.
53
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.984, f. 50.

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity137

practice of this Chappell, to which the Islanders all resort, whilst they
are here.54
These were serious accusations, especially at a time when Dissent
was under severe persecution, and Morleys unease is palpable. It is
therefore no surprise that he moved strongly to ensure that the new
congregation at Wandsworth, at least, should be forced to conform to
the letter of Anglican law.
We do not know a great deal about the earliest months of the French
church of Wandsworth. There is no evidence that it was deliberately
founded in the same way as Ipswich, Rye and Boughton Malherbe,
with an existing church or prominent individual as sponsor. Like those
settlements, though, it had a particular trade at its heart, in this case
felt and hat making and dyeing. Wandsworth had a long connection
with hat making extending back to the Middle Ages. Its particular
advantage for the refugees was probably that its proximity to London
meant that a market was readily to hand, yet it was far enough away
from the capital to escape effective control by the recently chartered
Feltmakers Company.55 Individual French Protestants lived there long
before the Revocation, notably Nicolas Tonnet, who settled in
Wandsworth around 1630 and prospered there for the next fifty years.56
It is plain that Wandsworth was conformist from its foundation.
Under the policy pursued by the government and the crown in the
early 1680s, nothing else was acceptable, and it was only its conformity
that allowed the congregation to claim financial support from the collection made under the 1681 brief. Since the Savoy church minutes
have not survived, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its early
influence. As one would expect, the Wandsworth congregation made
much of its conformity when seeking Anglican support and financial
assistance, mentioning the Savoy in the process. There are two relevant documents, both unfortunately undated which has only added
to confusion caused by researchers and cataloguers assuming that
Wansor or Winsor must be Windsor whereas it is in factWandsworth.
Ibid., f. 48.
John Traviss Squire, The Huguenots at Wandsworth in the County of Surrey,
HSP I (18856), 2378; Norman G. Brett-James, The Growth of Stuart London
(London: London & Middlesex Archaeological Society and George Allen & Unwin,
1935), 4912. By the early 1690s observers noted the recent establishment of a great
manufacture of hats(as at Wandsor, Putney): Henry Horwitz (ed.), The Parliamentary
Diary of Narcissus Luttrell 169193 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), 286.
56
Squire, Huguenots at Wandsworth, 2323; HSQS, LVIII (1994), 36.
54
55

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robin gwynn

The earlier of the two is a memorial requesting Bishop Compton to

license a minister and a reader, and must predate the mid-1682 20
grant for a place of worship. Signed by 21 people, it explains that it was
expensive and inconvenient for them to get to the Savoy, and that they
mostly spoke only French.57
The second, later, document is addressed not to Compton but to
Archbishop Sancroft, and is almost certainly from 1686 when Compton
was suspended but while royal policy still strongly supported
Anglicanism. It relates that
Many French persecuted Protestantsdid settle in this parish, but having not the conveniency of a church did propose to the Lords of the
Comittie appointed by his Majestie that all of them were so much disabused of the prejudices and misreports that the enemies of the Church of
England did, at their first coming as well as in their native countrey, did
[sic] endeavour to infuse in their mind, that they did heartily desire to
conforme themselves to the discipline and rites of the Church of England.

The Lord Mayor and Bishop of London gave order that they should
have 20 for making unto us a fitt place for the service of God, and
twelve shillings a week for a minister conformable to the Church of
England. A place was rented at 5 p.a., and a carpenter hired, but the
total cost was over 140. Financial assistance was sought from individuals by the means of Mr Dumaresq, minister of the French Church
of the Savoye, and the petitioners now asked help with the 25 balance
outstanding.58
A further indication that the Savoy kept an eye on Wandsworth can
be found in its deputation to Threadneedle Street in 1685 to protest
that Mr Carron, hatter, was prosecuting others of his trade there.59 Yet
non-conformist Threadneedle Street also had more friendly contacts
with Wandsworth. One of the earliest gravestones surviving in the
Mount Nod graveyard at Wandsworth is that of Mr Andrew Mayer, a
Huguenot who died aged 33 on 11 March 1692. His legacies included
nothing to the Savoy, but 20 to the poor of the Threadneedle Street
church and 6 to one of its ministers.60

Bodl., Rawlinson MS C984, f. 258.

Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 114.
59
HSQS, LVIII (1994), 143. Carron replied he had not begun any lawsuits and
promised not to be involved in any way.
60
Squire, Huguenots at Wandsworth, 283, 307.
57
58

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity139

Whoever influenced the new Wandsworth foundation, and despite
its emphasis on its conformity, Bishop Morley clearly found the organization of the congregation unacceptable. On 10 August 1683 he issued
a sharp order respecting its government, insisting that
Whereas the French Church settled at Wandsworth under our Juris
diction has beene lately in some disorder for want of a due regulation:
We doe therefore appoint and ordaine that henceforward there be no
Consistory, but for supply thereof that they yearly chuse two Church
wardens, the one nominated by the Minister, the other by the heads of
Familyes, who are to be regulated by the Canons and our Articles of
Visitation in performance of theire duty; and that they call a Vestry consisting of the heads of Familyes soe oft as occasion shall require, according to the usage of the Church of England.61

However determined he may have been, Morleys age was against him,
and he died the following year. It is not known how long his order was
effective, but it did not last, which can only reflect the determination of
the congregation to preserve the type of government which it remembered from France and with which it was comfortable. The registers of
the church of La Patente, Soho describe Creuz as ancien et secrtaire
of the Wandsworth church in 1692.62 A congratulatory letter to newly
appointed Archbishop Wake in 1716 is signed by two Wandsworth
ministers and three anciens or churchwardens.63 In 1728/9 Peter Ribot,
Claude Baudouin, Peter Ruffe and Stephen Mahieu signed as anciens,
Mahieu also as secretaire.64 The church was being governed by
Consistory, not according to ordinary Anglican rules.
***
We have reviewed three of the earliest refugee churches founded in
the aftermath of the dragonnades of 1681, Boughton Malherbe/
Hollingbourne, Rye and Wandsworth. The leading agents of controversy differed: in one an Anglican vicar, in another a French minister,
in the third a bishop. The flashpoints also varied: garments that
the minister should or should not wear, lay control of the minister,
churchwardens or elders. But each case involved trouble over the
notion of conformity and what that involved. Moreover if we accept
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C984, f. 213.
HSQS, XLV (1956), 52.
63
Christ Church Library, Oxford, Wake MS xxviii, 31 Jan. 1716.
64
R.A. Shaw, R.D. Gwynn and P. Thomas, Huguenots in Wandsworth (London:
Wandsworth Borough Council, 1985), 28.
61
62

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Paul Bertrands word, there were also difficulties at Ipswich, while at

Thorpe-le-Soken the opening of the Consistory register again suggests
dissatisfaction amongst the refugees as it notes the arrangements made
to satisfy the Anglican regulations laquelle nous sommes obligez de
nous conformer.65
In each case the fresh memory held by the refugees of their traditional methods of worship made them reluctant to embrace Anglican
ways. They accepted that the Church of England was a Protestant
church; the continental churches had never been prepared to condemn
it or its liturgy.66 They were grateful for the refuge that had been offered.
They were prepared to accept episcopal leadership - after all, bishops
were already, at least nominally, superintendents even of the nonconforming French churches in their dioceses.67 Some ministers might
have been deterred from conforming by the requirement that they be
re-ordained to serve as Anglican clergy, believing it to be an insulting
denial of their past ordination.68 Doubtless lay refugees also did not
like the fact that their ministers had to be re-ordained, but it was not
something that directly affected them as individuals. It was when their
customary ways of congregational organization and worship were
attacked that their feelings erupted into open discontent.
We can better understand the clashes that developed if we recall that
we are dealing here not with one memory, but with two. The Huguenot
memory of the early 1680s was immediate. It was only months since
the refugees had fled their homeland. They had no doubts about the
proper form of worship they had fled to preserve. The pain of the dragonnades and the disruption of their communities were sharply defined
in their minds eyes. In many cases the anguish of guilt at having
betrayed their faith by signing an abjuration was still raw. But against
that sharply focused, immediate memory was set another, more blurred
by the passage of time yet equally real and pressing to those who held
it: the memory within the Church of England of Civil War, of the

HL/UCL, Burn Donation MS 28, p.2.

J. Durel, A View of the Government and Publick Worship of God in the Reformed
Churches beyond the Seas (London: 1662; Wing D2695), 7691.
67
Guildhall Library, MS 7412, vol. I, pp. 812, 878, 934. The situation, however,
was ambiguous; as one ally put it, you will finde upon the whole, that by the Kings
speciall favour they are exempt from Episcopall jurisdiction (Bodl., Tanner MS xcii,
f. 158v).
68
John-Armand Dubourdieu, An Appeal to the English Nation (London: 1718),
812.
65
66

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity141

execution of the sovereign, of bishops disestablished, of the world
turned upside down. It was that historical memory that had led to the
persecution of Nonconformity taking place in the 1680s, and it did not
sit easily with the welcome now offered to Huguenot refugees. Only
anti-popery, common to both memories and the strongest single ideology in the Britain of the day, encouraged their accommodation.
Once potential refugees from the continent became aware that
Charles II (and James II until 1687) insisted that any new foundations
of French churches in England must conform, many simply stayed
away. That became clear when the Edict of Nantes was revoked in 1685
and far more Protestants left France than the flood in 1681 who had
introduced the very word refugi or refugee into the English language.
In 168586, though, the new wave largely bypassed an England that
was now ruled by a Roman Catholic King and must have appeared
unsettled in the aftermath of Monmouths Rebellion. The startling difference between the timing of new arrivals going to London and to a
key city of the refuge in the Netherlands, Amsterdam, has recently
been highlighted:
Table 1. Arrivals at amsterdam and threadneedle street, 1681168669
Total settlements
for the Walloon community
at Amsterdam
1681
1682
1683
1684
1685
1686

475
331
195
118
675
1,246

Total arrivals at French

Church of London,
Threadneedle Street
1,182
691
339
208
283
607

Then in April 1687, this situation changed dramatically overnight

when James reversed his previous policies and issued his Declaration
of Indulgence for Liberty of Conscience. Hundreds of Huguenots at
once crossed the Channel, and thousands more followed later in the
year:
69
Gwynn, Conformity, 25. The Threadneedle Street church is the only one in
London for which we have full enough records to be sure of the picture.

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Table 2. Arrivals at amsterdam and threadneedle street, 16871688

1687
1688

Amsterdam

Threadneedle Street

1,067
989

2,497
715

These figures underline Huguenot reluctance to be forced into conformity with Anglican ways. They also show the attraction of England,
with its offer of employment opportunities and comparative safety
from Louis XIV across the Channel, both before the royal policy insisting on conformity had become widely understood in 168283, and
then again once that stumbling block had been removed in 1687. By
the end of the next decade, following the Revolution of 168889,
London housed by far the largest concentration of refugees in Europe,
and in numerical terms at least England had become the single most
important country of refuge.70
Notwithstanding the Declaration of Indulgence, there remained
strong practical reasons why Huguenots in England might wish to
conform. Three in particular stand out. First, conformity had the support of many natural leaders of the refugee community. Conformist lay
leaders like the Marquis de Venours or the Marquis de Ruvigny were
important sources of patronage and in turn had valuable social, political and Court connections; and most refugee gentry conformed.
Refugee ministers had more opportunities for employment or impro
ved pensions within the Church of England fold than outside it,
and others besides Paul Bertrand were attracted by the thought of
shaking off the shackles of lay control in the Consistory. Since pastors
played an important role in the refuge and were often sought out by
members of their flocks escaping France, their influence could be very
significant.
Second, it was a specific condition of the public financial collection
made for them after the Revocation, that refugees were only to benefit
if they lived in entire conformity and orderly submission to our government established in Church and State.71 No such condition had
applied to the earlier collection made at the time of dragonnades started
Gwynn, Conformity, 401.
BL, 190.g.13 (394).

70
71

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity143

in 1681. It appears that King James II and Lord Chancellor Jeffreys
intended the phrase to mean that only conformists were to receive any
relief,72 but English public opinion was so opposed that a compromise
was reached: it was interpreted instead as requiring all recipients of
assistance to produce a certificate that they had received Holy Com
munion according to Anglican usage. This forced an unpopular form
of occasional conformity on non-conformist refugees, who generally
viewed it as a necessity which, though objectionable, could be borne
since the French reformed church accepted the Church of England as
Protestant and the Threadneedle Street Consistory urged that it should
be held in high regard by all true Christians.73 If nothing else, the need
to produce the certificates meant that all those who accepted assistance
had no choice but to understand government preferences and experience a conformist service.
Third, and in the long term most important, only conforming
churches received assistance from public funds for the support of their
ministry. That certainly encouraged pastors to look seriously attheconforming option, and for ordinary laity it meant less financial p
ressure
if they worshipped in an Anglican manner.74 It rendered small, struggling non-conforming churches particularly vulnerable. During the
eighteenth century, as the descendants of the refugees of the 1680s and
1690s assimilated into the host population and the size of congregations declined, the pressure towards conformity increased.
These important practical matters weighted the scales in favour of
those French congregations in England which chose to conform to
Anglican ways. Yet despite the advantages of conforming, most first
generation refugees clung tenaciously to their French background and
tradition. Their memory did not fade, if anything grew in significance
in their minds, and they increasingly reverted to non-conformity after
1687 once they had freedom of choice. In round terms, in the 1680s,
for every three non-conforming French Protestants in London, there
were two that conformed. But by 1700, for every three non-conforming
French Protestants in London, there was only one that conformed.75

72
The Entring Book of Roger Morrice (6 vols., Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007),
III,54.
73
FCL, MS 135, ff. 12.
74
A similar situation existed in Ireland following legislation in 1695; Susanne
Lachenicht, Differing Perceptions of the Refuge? in Dunan-Page, Religious Culture,44.
75
Gwynn, Conformity, 35.

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robin gwynn

Between 1681 and 1687, during the years when royal policy dictated
the necessity for conformity as the price for establishment, all substantial new French congregations in England were conformist. In the
1690s, when there was freedom of choice, there was a total reversal: all
new foundations were non-conformist. Nor is it only in the capital that
one can see the trend to non-conformity. Two cases in the west country are particularly striking. The Dartmouth congregation, founded as
conformist, forced out its re-ordained minister and turned to nonconformity in 1691 even though that meant the loss of the 22 p.a.
stipend the conformist minister had been receiving. And at Plymouth,
where a conforming refugee congregation already existed, a non-conformist alternative was founded in 1689 and rapidly became much the
larger of the two.76
***
Until this point, we have been viewing conformists as if they were a
group of people uniformly willing to adopt Anglican ways. In reality,
that was far from the case. Indeed when James II and Jeffreys wished to
restrict assistance only to refugees living in entire conformity and
orderly submission to our government established in Church and
State, it is just possible that they were proposing to exclude not merely
non-conformists, but also conformists such as those at the Savoy
whose degree of conformity was suspect in the eyes of Anglican leaders of the Morley school. No such argument has ever previously been
advanced, so this suggestion requires some justification.
The Savoy church was the first of its conformist kind. At the time of
the Civil War, a group based in Westminster had broken away from
the Threadneedle Street church. After 1660, both sides petitioned
the restored monarchy, and Charles II licensed the members of the
Westminster congregation to continue to worship provided they submitted to the Church of England, under the imediate jurisdiction of
the Bishop of Londonand use the booke of common praiers by law
established in their owne French language, according as it is used in
the Island of Jersey. They were allowed as many ministers to performe
holy ordinances as shall be thought fitt provided theire names be first
76
HL/UCL, Bounty MS 7, Reglement of Nov. 1689; Alison Grant and Robin Gwynn,
The Huguenots of Devon, Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association for
the Advancement of Science, Literature and the Arts, 117 (1985), 167; Gwynn,
Distribution, 413, 422.

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity145

brought unto us and the persons presented by the Church-Wardens of
the said French congregation to the Bishop of London their Ordinary
to be by him instituted.77
The licence was reward for a position far more supportive of the
royalist cause than that of Threadneedle Street at the time of the Civil
War. Once granted, it was not easy to amend when both the Savoys
Jersey-based organization, and the translation of the Book of Common
Prayer being used, came to trouble the Anglican authorities. Ministers
in Jersey at the time of the Restoration did not make the sign of the
cross; nor did those at the Savoy. They did not wear surplices; nor did
those at the Savoy. Their congregations received communion standing,
not kneeling.
When such differences between the conformity of the Savoy and
normal Anglican practice are taken into account, it becomes easy to
see why attempts to settle conformist refugee congregations around
the country in the 1680s ran into difficulties. It was from the conformist Savoy church, not non-conformist Threadneedle Street, that the settlement at Boughton Malherbe was organized; the first 25 settlers are
specifically recorded in relief records as de la Savoye.78 But the local
Vicars insistence that their minister should wear a surplice was just as
objectionable, just as foreign to them as it would have been to nonconformists. Rondeau told the Archbishop nothing but the truth when
he explained that he conformed exactly as the Savoy church ministers
did and it was not good enough for the local Anglican authority.
Similarly the refugees at Wandsworth, even if their connections
were with the Savoy rather than Threadneedle Street, would have
expected to be governed through a consistory, which was the issue on
which Bishop Morley focused. The earliest surviving regulations for
the Savoy, dating from 1721, show it then had a consistory which met
weekly, with pairs of elders (whom the English called churchwardens)
taking turns to serve for a month at a time.79 Perhaps the newly formed
Wandsworth church set up a similar arrangement? If so, once again it
would have been conforming as the Savoy did but it was not good
Bodl., Rawlinson MS C.984, f. 5.
HSQS, XLIX (1971), 16, 226.
79
LPL, Fulham Palace MSS, Ruling for the Savoy Church approved by the Bishop of
London, 23 Nov. 1721, Des Anciens, articles 1 and 4, and Du Consistoire, article 1.
Another, undated paper in LPL, Fulham Palace MS 124, states there were about 24
elders (serving the daughter churches of Des Grecs and Spring Gardens as well as the
Savoy itself).
77
78

146

robin gwynn

enough for the Bishop, who wanted no consistory, but two Church
wardens, with one of them nominated by the minister.
Not all Anglicans thought alike on these matters. The Savoy found a
particularly staunch defender in Bishop Compton, who informed
Archbishop Sancroft in May 1686 that he felt
it would be an insolent demand in me, to require more of the French
Church in the Savoy, then the late King himself did in his constitution of
them. Which only requires their conformity according to the usage of
Gernsey and Jersey, where never surplice or sign of the Cross were ever
used or required: and where they have alwaies taken care of their
churches by way of Consistory.80

The fact Compton was obliged to put pen to paper is sure indication he
was being pressured to act to regulate the Savoy and push it in a more
precisely Anglican direction. Later in the same letter, he revealed the
source of that pressure. Unable to defend himself because he was
already unwelcome at Court although not formally suspended from
his bishopric until September, he requested Sancroft to do me the
favour to acquaint the King and my Lord Chancelour with thus much.
We know, then, that in early 1686 the Court was seeking better control of the Savoy, and also that it wished to restrict assistance to refugees from public collections only to those living in entire conformity
and orderly submission to our government established in Church and
State. And at the same time, it was proposing to ensure that the refugees were offered the purest possible model of Anglican worship in
French by lending its backing to Dr Pierre Allix. Allix was an eminent
and well-connected Huguenot pastor who had been at Charenton
before the Revocation. He was a Doctor of Divinity of both Oxford and
Cambridge, and he was very willing to conform. In June 1686, King
James II licensed him to conduct a church at Jewin Street without
Aldersgate or any other convenient place for worship in the French
tongue, butt in all things else exactly according to the use of the Church
of England. Control of the church, including its furnishings and adornments, was taken out of the Bishop of Londons hands and put in those

80
Bodl., Tanner MS xcii, f. 120. For Comptons welcoming attitude towards the
Huguenots see Sugiko Nishikawa, Henry Compton, Bishop of London (16761713)
and Foreign Protestants, in Vigne a& Littleton, Strangers to Citizens, 35965, and
Carpenter, Protestant Bishop, chap. XVII.

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity147

of the Archbishop of Canterbury, for to his care and inspection
alone, wee do think fitt to recommend and committ the establishment and regulation of the said French congregation. Comparison of
the draft and final grant suggest close government involvement in the
steps that were taken.81 So do Jeffreyss amendments to Sancrofts draft
of the brief for the collection, and the very generous provision of 500
from charitable funds for the establishment of the Jewin Street church.82
Perhaps, then, it was not mere coincidence that the grant to Allix was
for refugees who representedtheir firme resolution to live in entire
conformity and orderly submission to our government both in church
and state. Does the use of the precise same wording as in the brief indicate that Jamess government would have liked to confine charitable
funds to one approved type of conformity? Was that why Lady Rachel
Russell, who was well-informed through her close connections with
the Ruvignys, reported that Jeffreys was so strict about the qualifications of those who might receive help that many left him with sad
hearts?83
Allix had the support of Sancroft, Bishop Turner of Ely, and at least
one other, unnamed, bishop. To the last of these he wrote some years
later, I must come back to my settlem[en]t in a french congregation by
the help of your Lordship and of the late Archbishop. You thought
I could help our people to comply more with the Church than with the
dissenters: I did what I could in that business.84 Allix drew around him
a network of respected ministers: Jean Lombard of Angers, Claude
Grostte de la Mothe of Lizy, Jean Graverol of Lyons and Jacob Asselin
of Dieppe.85 The church he founded, which later became based at
St Martin Orgars, survived until 1823. However despite all its advantages, it never developed as James and his Lord Chancellor would have
liked. It never grew to challenge the Savoy, let alone Threadneedle
Street which remained much larger than either, whether in size or
prestige. The refugees memory of their worship tradition was simply
too strong. In fact, as we have seen, the total percentage of conformists
Compare PRO, SP 44/337, pp. 367, and SP 31/3, f. 336.
In HSP 7 (190104), 1757; HSQS, XXXVII (1935), xiv.
83
Lois G. Schwoerer, Lady Rachel Russell: One of the Best of Women (Baltimore &
London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988), 159.
84
Allix papers currently on deposit in HL/UCL, folio volume, no.194. The unnamed bishop was another of the seven bishops tried in James IIs reign.
85
HSQS, XXXVII (1935), xi.
81
82

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robin gwynn

as against non-conformists declined sharply for the remainder of the

seventeenth century.
***
Plainly, there were degrees of conformity, and it cannot simply be
equated with Anglican orthodoxy. The extent to which conformist
consistories could exercise their ecclesiastical discipline varied and
is hard to assess because too often we lack sufficient detailed evidence.Yet while it may be simplistic just to divide refugees into conformist and non-conformist, that broad division remained highly
meaningful. A striking feature of the early 1690s was the failure of
strenuous efforts by the Huguenots most outstanding leader, Henri
Massue de Ruvigny, later first Earl of Galway, to achieve unity across
the divide. He tried, and failed, on both sides of the Irish Sea. In
England in 1690,hefoundthe Threadneedle Street church unshakeable in its determinationdedonner les mains une union de charit,
mais non pas de gouvernement et de dependance.86 In Ireland, three
years later, he expended a lot of his prestige and powers of persuasion
into promulgating articles intended to weld the two sides into one
communion, but suffered a stinging defeatthat defined the limitations of his leadership and certainly weakened the ideal of a united
Corps du rfuge in Ireland.87
Memory of the form of worship in their lost homeland may not have
been the only factor in the desire of first generation refugees to maintain their traditional organization and church practices. The question
of conformity versus non-conformity may be more than religious. The
acceptance of conformity could imply that hopes of return to France
had been abandoned. Taking this further, could non-conformists have
seen their stance as one way of expressing support for those like Claude
Brousson who were willing to put their lives on the line to maintain
Calvinism within France and attack the Catholic church in graphic
language?88 Raymond Hylton suggests that just as there had always
been an unresolved dualism in France between Huguenots who would
resist openly and politiques prepared to accept some degree of compromise, so this dualism endured in exile, with the Conformist and
FCL, MS 7, p. 500; HSQS, LVIII (1994), 3278.
Raymond Hylton, Irelands Huguenots and their Refuge, 16621745: An Unlikely
Haven (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 1889.
88
For Brousson, see Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove.
86
87

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity149

Non-Conformist worshippers adhering, in rough fashion, to the
respective philosophy of passivity and that of resistance.89
The matter of conformity also impacted on the social and political
role people could play in their host society. The comparatively small
French community at Southampton in the early eighteenth century
provides a good example of the range of motivations involved in the
decisions that were made. The congregation there was of long standing, and we have seen it overcome both Bishop Morleys attempts to
make it conform in 1668 and later complaints about its non-conformity in the early 1680s. A generation later, though, the major part of the
congregation did conform. The first thoughts in that direction came
about shortly after the turn of the century, in 1703. The minister,
Antoine Cougot, was already re-ordained and held an Anglican rectory, and his congregation included well-integrated men of significant
social rank including Elias de Gruchy, who had served as Mayor, other
members of the town corporation, and the Duke of Marlboroughs
right-hand man, Adam de Cardonnel. However there was also opposition to conformity, and no action was taken at the time. Then in 1711
the Occasional Conformity Act was passed, disqualifying civic officers
who took communion in their parish church in order to qualify. The
result was a meeting of heads of families which decided by majority
vote to conform. The minority refused to accept the action and seceded,
resulting in there being two congregations in the town, one conformist, the other non-conformist. The schism underlines that the more
wealth and social status, the greater the need individuals might discern
to conform in order to take their rightful place in society.
Cougot was happy to follow the Savoy model, and the resulting conformist church elected elders rather than churchwardens. Then, a few
years later, another minister, de St Denis, wanted a more complete
degree of conformity and introduced churchwardens on the Anglican
model. The result was to split the congregation once again, resulting in
three different worshipping French communities in Southampton for a
period in the mid-1720s. The non-conformist congregation survived
for at least twenty years.90
***
Hylton, Irelands Huguenots, 180.
Welch, Minute Book, 68, 160ff; Andrew Spicer, The Consistory Records of
Reformed Congregations and the Exile Churches, HSP 28:5 (2007), 645; HSQS, IV
(1890), 1334.
89
90

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robin gwynn

This essay has been confined to the first generation of the refuge, when
memory of the French background was most acute; and it has dealt
only with England. However, the question of conformity was a key
issue wherever the Anglican Church and Huguenot non-conforming
congregations co-existed, and it continued to be so well into the eighteenth century. Hylton is particularly clear about the significance of the
divide for Ireland:
Just as it would be inconceivable when discussing the Huguenots that the
religious motivation should be downplayed; it is equally mistaken to
neglect or fob off the very intense differences of opinion that existed
within the French Protestant exilic communities over Conformity to
theEstablished church against the desire to resist conformity to maintain
the purity of the Calvinist faith. Many Huguenots in fact the majority
of those in Dublin, Portarlington and Cork (the three largest Huguenot
settlements in Ireland) in effect joined the tide of Dissent. Yet this
isprecisely what has been denied for the better part of two centuries
The occasion of friction within the Huguenot community between
Conformist (Anglican) and Non-Conformed (Calvinist) elements was
either studiously ignored or else minimized into insignificance In
view of the misrepresentations of the past it is necessary to state firmly
that the place occupied by the Huguenots, as regards religion, in the life
of Ireland would revolve around this question of Conformity vs.
Dissent.91

Across the Atlantic in the New World, the same frictions, the same
range of different motivations for the choice of whether or not to conform, the same questions about what conformity entailed, are all evident. For example, Bertrand Van Ruymbeke has argued with regard to
South Carolina that concern for full citizenship encouraged refugees
(outside Charleston) to conform in 17046,92 while Paula Wheeler
Carlo sees sheer poverty as the driving force behind conformity at New
Rochelle in colonial New York. Both writers show the continuation of
Calvinist practices. The conformist church at New Rochelle described
by Carlo was a plain building with rough unhewn stone outside, unadorned whitewashed walls internally, and plain, unpainted pews.
Surviving sermons of its minister between 1725 and 1741 were still
deeply Calvinist, made frequent mention of the Elect, were generously
peppered with anti-Catholic virulence, and did not recommend that
Hylton, Irelands Huguenots, 1789.
See his From New Babylon to Eden. The Huguenots and their Migration to Colonial
South Carolina, (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2006).
91
92

 strains of worship: the huguenots and non-conformity151

prayers should conform to or emulate the Book of Common Prayer.
The minister also rejected the use of the sign of the cross. So Carlo
views the conforming French churches as halfway houses between
Anglican beliefs and practices and Huguenot traditions which practised a hybrid Anglican-Huguenot faith.93
In recent years this same set of issues surrounding conformity has
arisen simultaneously in the historiography of all the Anglo-Saxon
countries where the refugees settled. Clearly it is going to need closer
examination in years to come. In particular, more studies are needed to
show how assimilation took place during the eighteenth century; the
nature of the English-speaking congregations in which the descendants of refugees ended up; and how the strong memory of the first refugees was dulled and (in some cases) their resistance to conformity
gradually eroded.

93
Paula Wheeler Carlo, Huguenot Refugees in Colonial New York: Becoming
American in the Hudson Valley (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 57, 59, 84, 89,
91, 934.

Chapter SIX

The Huguenots and the European Wars

of Religion, c.15601697: soldiering in national
and transnational context*
D. J. B. Trim
Much of the history of French Calvinists is military history, but historiography has not sufficiently done justice to the Huguenot penchant
for military service. There is still no overall history of the Huguenot
war effort in the French Wars of Religion (15621629), though this
partly reflects the destruction and dispersion of Huguenot archives.1
But while there are some studies of sixteenth and early seventeenth
century Huguenot military activity, they are relatively few in number
and most are short.2 In contrast is the body of scholarship on the
*The author gratefully acknowledges grants in the 1990s from the Huguenot
Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the University of London Central Research Fund,
the Royal Historical Society, and the British Academy, which made possible the archival research in Paris on which much of this chapter is based. Earlier versions were
given at the conference Huguenot Soldiering 16601780, London, 11 Nov. 2002,
as the annual Friends of the Walter C. Utt. Endowment lecture at Pacific Union
College, 17 Apr. 2009, and published as Huguenot Soldiering c.15601685: The
Origins of a Tradition in Matthew Glozier and David Onnekink (eds.), War, Religion
and Service: Huguenot Soldiering, 16851713 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 930this is
a revised and considerably expanded version of that chapter.
1
I adopt here the periodisation of Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion 1562
1629 (2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), rather than the more
traditional one of 156298, although the hostilities of the early seventeenth century
were more limited both geographically and demographically, and did not involve as
large a portion of the Huguenot community, as the wars of the sixteenth century.
2
Jean de Pablo, Contribution a ltude de lhistoire des institutions militaires
huguenotes, i. Larme de mer huguenote pendant la troisime guerre de religion,
and ii. Larme huguenote entre 1562 et 1573, Archiv fr Reformationsgeschichte
47 (1956), 6476, and 48 (1957), 192216; B. Dietz, Privateering in NorthWest
European Waters, 1568 to 1572, Ph.D. thesis (University of London, 1959); essays
in LAmiral de Coligny et son temps (Paris: Socit de lhistoire du protestantisme
franais,1974); and in Avnement dHenri IV, vol. I, Quatrime centenaire de la bataille
de Coutras (Pau: Association Henri IV, 1988); Ronald S. Love, All the Kings
Horsemen: The Equestrian Army of Henri IV, 15851598, SCJ 22 (1991), 51133;
Martine Acerra and Guy Martinire (eds.), Coligny, les protestants et la mer (Paris:
Presses de lUniversit de ParisSorbonne, 1997); Mark Greengrass, Financing
the Cause: Protestant Mobilization and Accountability in France (15621589),

154

d. j. b. trim

s ervice of French Protestant immigrants in the armies of the Maritime

Powers in the last two decades of the seventeenth century and first
decade of the eighteenth.3 However, these studies have tended to create
an impression that the history of Huguenot soldiering is essentially the
history of Huguenot migrs in the armies of Britain and, to a lesser
extent, the Dutch republic in the Nine Years War (168897) and the
War of the Spanish Succession (170213). Yet the contribution of
Huguenot soldiers to the wars against Louis XIV was not restricted
to British and Dutch armies.4 Nor was it groundbreaking in character
(as opposed to numbers); Huguenot service in foreign armies already
had a history of 120 years when they went with William of Orange to
England to overthrow James II in 1688.
The French Reformed military experience was frequently a foreign
one throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Many
Huguenots served in foreign armies even during the Wars of Religion.
In particular, they developed a very close relationship with the rebellious provinces of the Netherlands and their leader, William I, Prince
of Orange, which continued after his death in 1584 and the emergence
of a new nation, the Dutch republic (more formally, the United

in Philip Benedict et al (eds.), Reformation, Revolt and Civil War in France and the
Netherlands 15551585 (Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van
Wetenschappen, Verhandelingen: Afd. Letterkunde, [new series], no. 176, 1999), 233
54; D. J. B. Trim, Edict of Nantes: Product of Military Success or Failure? in Keith
Cameron, Mark Greengrass and Penny Roberts (eds.), The Adventure of Religious
Pluralism in Early Modern France (Oxford, Bern, New York: Peter Lang, 2000), 8599;
idem, Huguenot Soldiering; Alan James, Between Huguenot and Royal: Naval
Affairs during the Wars of Religion, ibid., 10112; idem, Huguenot Militancy and the
Seventeenth-century Wars of Religion, in Raymond A. Mentzer and Andrew Spicer
(eds.), Society and Culture in the Huguenot World 15591685 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2002), 20923.
3
Space does not permit the full bibliography (which includes many articles in
periodicals) to be cited here, but see esp. Glozier and Onnekink, War, Religion
and Service, chs. 28; Robin Gwynn, The Huguenots in Britain, the Protestant
International and the Defeat of Louis XIV, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers to Citizens,
41224; and Matthew Glozier, The Huguenot Soldiers of William of Orange and the
Glorious Revolution of 1688: The Lions of Judah (Brighton & Portland, Oreg.: Sussex
Academic Press, 2002). See also Robin Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and
Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (2nd edn, Brighton: Sussex Academic Press,
2001), esp. ch. 9; and the articles collected and repr. in Randolph Vigne and Philip
Rambaut (eds.), Britains Huguenot War Leaders (London: Instructa, 2002).
4
See Gozier and Onnekink, War, Religion and Service, chs. 914, on Huguenot
soldiers in the service of BrandenburgPrussia, BrunswickLneburg, Savoy, and
Russia.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion155

Provinces of the Netherlands). Throughout the seventeenth century,

a large French (and overwhelmingly Protestant) contingent was an
important part of the army of the United Provinces, playing a key
role in Dutch campaigns; but Huguenots also served as individuals
or in small groups in armies across Europe. In a very real sense,
then, Huguenot soldiering was always carried out in both national
and transnational context; after 1685 there was probably a quantitativechange in Huguenot soldiering (for it seems likely that the numbers of Huguenot soldiers in foreign service increased), but not a
qualitative one.
The longterm history of Huguenot soldiering is important because
it can help to answer some of the obvious questions about the French
Calvinist military experience, including in its golden age at the end of
the seventeenth century. How were Huguenots mobilised by foreign
armies? In what countries did they prefer to serve and why? This may,
in turn, give an insight into why so many served. What was the social
composition of Huguenot units? And what explains their combat
effectiveness?
The Huguenots were a significant group in the European mercenary
market for so long partly because of their fighting qualities, but also, in
part, because they were relatively easy to mobilise. This reflected, firstly,
the great influence of the nobility on the Calvinist movement; secondly, the fact that the Huguenotspartly due to the military threat
they faced in France throughout the sixteenth century and partly, perhaps, to the nature of Calvinismwere a heavily militarised group
within French society; but also, thirdly, that the Huguenots in the sixteenth century developed a long pattern of service in foreign Protestant
armies, especially that of the Netherlands, and this heritage helped
shape the choices of subsequent generationshistory and memory, as
well as culture, directed Huguenots, especially those of the middle and
lower nobility and their followers, towards soldiering. Fourthly, the
clientage ties of nobles and the Presbyterian structure of church organisation both leant themselves to military mobilisation; this was especially true in France during the wars of religion, but was also true for
French Calvinists in foreign armies. Finally, the Huguenots confessional zeal made them exceptionally fine combat troops. They generally served only Protestant powers and showed great commitment and
zeal in opposing the expansionist design of the Habsburgs and, later,
the Sun King of France.

156

d. j. b. trim
I

Huguenot soldiering originated around the year 1560, which was also
when the term Huguenot first was used; its derivation was obscure
even at the time but it originated as an insult used by their enemies,
but one that soon the followers of la Religion reforme applied to
themselves.5 Individual Huguenots served (some with distinction) in
the French royal armies during the Italian (or HabsburgValois) Wars
in the 1540s50s, but there was no such thing as Huguenot soldieringas a group experience until after the emergence of the Huguenots
as a clear, distinct and powerful group amongst the French nobility.
This occurred after the death of Henri II in July 1559. It is notable
that, whereas Calvinists were at most some 1012 per cent of the total
population of France, they may have comprised almost a third of
the provincial nobility, including a goodly number of greater nobles
and princes of the blood. They were not distributed evenly across the
country: whereas only one in a hundred of the noblesse of northern
Mayenne was a Calvinist, it was one in four of the nobles of the Beauce
region in northern France, more than one in three of those of the province of Quercy, and 40 per cent of the nobility of both the province of
Saintonge and of the election of Bayeux in Normandy.6
The Huguenot nobles came out in the three years after Henri IIs
death as protectors of their common coreligionists against local persecutors and Catholic mobs. In 1560 the Calvinist Louis I de Bourbon,
Prince de Cond, led an aristocratic conspiracy to seize, by force if
necessary, control of the regency of the boyking Francois II, which
was dominated by the ultra-Catholic duc de Guise. The plot failed and
Cond was briefly imprisoned, but Francoiss untimely death, succession by the still younger Charles IX and the consequent fall of the
regency resulted in Conds release.7 Calvinisms ability to attract
Jean Crespin, Actes des martyrs (Geneva: 1564), 99495.
David Potter, The French Protestant Nobility in 1562: The Associacion de
Monseigneur le Prince de Cond, French History 15 (2001), 310; JeanMarie
Constant, The Protestant Nobility in France during the Wars of Religion: A Leaven of
Innovation in a Traditional World, in Benedict et al, Reformation, Revolt and Civil
War, 701; Stuart Carroll, Noble Power during the French Wars of Religion: The Guise
Affinity and the Catholic Cause in Normandy (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998), 101; and see Philip Benedict, The Dynamics of Protestant Militancy:
France, 15551563, in Benedict et al, Reformation, Revolt and Civil War, 37.
7
Benedict, Dynamics, 4243; N. M. Sutherland, Calvinism and the Conspiracy
of Amboise, History 47 (1962), 11138. Huguenot claims (e.g. Crespin, Actes des
5
6

the huguenots and the european wars of religion157

nobles and its organized nature made its adherents a political force
that could not be swept away through repression. Furthermore, not
only did the Reformed faith attract nobles, but in addition probably a
majority of them were drawn from the noblesse dpe (the nobility
of the sword)almost 90 per cent of Calvinist nobles in the Beauce,
for example.8
This preponderance ensured that French Calvinism was militant
and militarised, and thus that it could not simply be suppressed by
persecution, as were nascent Protestant movements in Spain and Italy.
This became evident during the first episode in the history of Huguenot
soldiering, which came in 1562 with the outbreak of the first of eight
wars of religion that were to occupy most of the succeeding 36 years.
In the first war (15623) the Huguenots were able to muster troops
sufficient for both a main army in the Loire valley, under the Prince de
Cond and Gaspard II de Coligny, seigneur de Chtillon and Admiral
of France, and a secondary force, operating in Normandy, under the
comte de Montgommery. Added to these were some regional defence
forces. The infantry units were composed mostly of volunteers raised
through the various local reformed churches. As J. W. Thompson
observes, the Huguenot hierarchy of religious assemblies through
consistories, colloquies, and provincial synods not only helped unite
them into a national body ecclesiologically and theologically. It also
served to unite their forces, for the ecclesiastical framework was
turned to military purposes. Cond requested the reformed consistories of France in April 1562 each to use such means as you have
promptly to furnish soldiers; and the regional synod of Guyenne, for
example, resolved to have each church form an enseigne [company of
foot] and to group these into regiments by colloquys.9
martyrs, 994) that Cond was innocent, and the victim of a conspiracy by Guise, are
propaganda.
8
Constant, Protestant Nobility in France, 72.
9
Cond to glises rformes de France, 7 April 1562, in Mmoires du Prince de
Cond, in J.-F. Michaud and J.-J.-F. Poujoulat (eds.), Nouvelle collection des mmoires
pour servir lhistoire de France, depuis le XIIIe sicle jusqu la fin du XVIIIe, series 1
(Paris: 1839), VI, 629. See James Westfall Thompson, The Wars of Religion in France
15591576 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1909), 473; Benedict, Dynamics
of Protestant Militancy, 4244 (at 43); Andr Thierry, LHomme de guerre dans
luvre dAgrippa dAubign, in GabrielAndr Prouse, Andr Thierry, Andr
Tournon (eds.), LHomme de guerre au XVIe sicle (SaintEtienne: Universit de Saint
Etienne, 1992), 145; Andr Corvisier, Les Guerres de Religion, 15591598, in Philippe
Contamine (ed.), Histoire militaire de France, vol. I (Paris: Presses Universitaires de
France, 1992), 319.

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d. j. b. trim

In addition, however, the Huguenot forces drew heavily on the affinities of the noblesespecially for their cavalry. An estat from 1562, of
the princes, lords, knights, gentlemen and captains with the Prince de
Cond who have resolved to live and die together to maintain the gospel in France, indicates that Cond had some 4,000 nobles with him,
mostly in mounted units.10 Similarly, in the second civil war (15678),
the Huguenot army was distinguished by its high proportion of
nobles.11 Several of the Protestant leaders were captains of their own
companies of gens darmesthe elite, aristocratic heavy cavalry that
was the hard core of Frances standing army. The rankandfile of these
compagnies dOrdonnance (or gendarmerie) were mostly a captains
friends, extended family and clients.12 Some were formal members
of the captains (or his familys) affinity. They worse his livery and
were forbidden to remove it or to enlist in another company without
his consent. In other cases, recruits were drawn from the wider, informal aristocratic affinity: studies of compagnies indicate that 75 per
cent of the rank-and-file were drawn from the captains area of origin
or areas where he held government office; such men were attracted
by his name [and] reputation.13 As a result, such men tended to stick
together; thus, the Huguenots were able to draw off a few entire units
of the royal army.14 Even when they were not so tightly bound together,
10
Estat de partie des princes, seigneurs, chevalliers de lordre, gentishommes, capitaynes de lassociacion de Monseigneur le prince de Cond qui ont resolu de vivre et
mourir ensemble pour maintainir levangille en France, 7 Sept. 1562, PRO, SP 70/41,
ff. 5056, printed in Potter, French Protestant Nobility, 31328 (collated with BL,
Lansdowne MS 5, f. 181).
11
E.g., Sommation du Roy a ceux de la nouvelle relligion qui estoyent en armes
a s[ain]te Denis, Dec. 1567, and undertaking of Charles IX with Huguenot nobility
Bibliothque Mazarine, Paris, MS 2620, f. 17 and MS 2619, f. 35 (the latter is undated
but almost certainly from March 1568: cf. Wood, Kings Army, 21).
12
Robert J. Knecht, The French and English Nobilities in the Sixteenth Century:
A Comparison, in Glenn Richardson (ed.), The Contending Kingdoms: France and
England 14201700 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 74.
13
See Kirsten B. Neuschel, Word of Honour: Interpreting Noble Culture in Sixteenth
Century France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989); Robert R. Harding,
Anatomy of a Power Elite: The Provincial Governors of Early Modern France, Yale
Historical Publications, Miscellany, 120 (New Haven & London: Yale University Press,
1978), 201; Sharon P. Kettering, Patronage and Kinship in Early Modern France, FHS
16 (1989), 40910, 418; Wood, The Kings Army, 139; and, e.g., the roolle de la montre
(muster roll) of the gendarmerie company of Charles de La Rochefoucauld, 9 June
1567, Bibliothque Nationale, Paris, Manuscrits franais [hereafter BN, MS Fr.], 25801,
no. 185.
14
Certainly in the first civil war: see Potter, French Protestant Nobility, 3089,
309 n.12, citing CSPF, V (1562), 279, no. 571; see also the summary of gendarmerie

the huguenots and the european wars of religion159

they sometimes took the bulk of a unit, as for example in 1568, when
HenriRobert, duc de Bouillon joined the Huguenot army: he evidently was followed by 70 per cent of his compagnie de gendarmerie of
100 lances, as a new company of 30 was put in its place on the royal
establishment.15 In addition, great Protestant nobles were able to draw
on their affinities to create new units, of both cavalry and infantry.16
Furthermore, many reformedleaning aristocratic rankandfile of
the gendarmerie chose to serve the Calvinist cause, leaving their companies to join the Protestant forces as individuals.17 Catholics would
have called this desertion; the men in question, however, doubtless
believed they were simply obeying higher orders, those of God, rather
than of men (as Acts 5:29 enjoins). Such veterans, together with individual volunteers, whether from churches or noble affinities, had to be
formed into new unitspotentially a difficult task, but one that, in
practice, occurred swiftly. This suggests that most, or at any rate many,
men in each unit knew each other already, as members of the same
local church and/or of the same noble affinity.
II
How the first Huguenot soldiers were mobilised in the first and second
civil wars in France during the 1560s is important because it set a pattern for Huguenot soldiering in Europe for the rest of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. Of course, French Protestant soldiering was
initially against the French crown and this indicates why Huguenot
soldiering was mostly mercenary soldieringthere was consistently a
musters, AprilJune 1563, in BN, MS Fr. 3185, ff. 734, which shows that, within
weeks of the end of the first civil war, Huguenot nobles (including Cond, Coligny and
La Rochefoucauld) had their compaignies de gendarmerye again, so that probably the
latter had served under their captains command throughout the first war. The
Huguenot captains retained their companies to the beginning of the second civil war
and they were again placed on the royal establishment after both the second and third
wars.
15
Estat du paiement des Compagnies du gendarmerie, Jan. 1568, BN, MS Fr. 3193,
f. 198. The duc de Bouillons status as a Huguenot is discussed below, p. 168.
16
Potter, French Protestant Nobility, 30910, 31323 passim; and cf. also, e.g., estat of garrison of Dieppe, Dec. 1562, PRO, SP70/47, f. 197v: in two companies of arquebusiers commanded by the comte de Montgommery, 52 out of 460 men were
gentilshommes.
17
E.g., at the start of the third civil war, Jehan de SaintJehan left the company of
Philip de La Roche and went to England: see the company muster roll of 15 Sept. 1569
BN, MS Nouvelles acquisitions franaises 8628, f. 37.

160

d. j. b. trim

strong incentive for Huguenots to go abroad. Mercenary service was a

good way to make a living, but it was especially propos for members
of the nobility, whose raison dtre was making war. For much of the
last four decades of the sixteenth century (and again at times in the
first three decades of the seventeenth century), the Huguenots fought
against the Valois and Bourbon monarchs for the right to practice
their religion. Even during this period of focus on their native land,
however, their military endeavours were still connected to wider international and Protestant war efforts: first, in France the Huguenots frequently fought alongside foreign Protestant forcesGerman, English,
Welsh, Scottish and Swiss; second, throughout this period, French
Protestants served not only in France, but also in other theatres of war.
In the first war of religion (15623) the Huguenots were aided by
English troops sent by Elizabeth I; in the first war, too, Franois de
Coligny, seigneur dAndelot (brother of the Admiral de Coligny) raised
a large German force, and thereafter the Huguenots regularly hired
large numbers of German mercenaries, in each of the second, third,
fifth and eighth civil wars.18 However, arguably the most important
chapter in the history of mutual cooperation and military interchange
with foreign Protestants began in 1569. William I, Prince of Orange,
leader of the revolt of the Netherlands, had been badly defeated by the
Spanish in 1568; the end of his campaign overlapped with the outbreak, in the late summer, of the third war of religion (which was to
last until August 1570). Williams army was mostly German and Dutch
in composition, but it included a Huguenot continent of around 12
companies of horse and 2,000 foot, led by Jean de Hangest, seigneur
de Genlis (a cousin by marriage of William), and Louis de Lannoy,
seigneur de Morvilliers, who had held an important command in
Normandy in the first civil war.19 The following spring, in 1569, William
took the remnants of his army into France and joined the main
Protestant field army under Cond and Coligny. Williams brother,
Louis (or Lodewijk) of Nassau, took command of the fleet of Huguenot
privateers based at La Rochelle. He remained in command not only
until the end of the war in August 1570 but also thereafter; indeed, it
Elector Palatine to Henry Knollys and Christopher Mundt, 1 Sept. 1562, CSPF, V
(1562), 276, no. 561; Corvisier, Guerres de Religion, 320.
19
Edward Grimeston, A Generall Historie of the Netherlands: continued unto 1608,
out of the best authors (London: 1609), 45657. Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt
(London: Allen Lane, 1977), genealogical table I.
18

the huguenots and the european wars of religion161

was he who gave the ultimate order to the fleet to disarm two years
later.20 During the brief period of peace between the third and
fourth wars of religion, there was a renewed Turkish threat in the
Mediterranean. A force of Huguenots served the Venetians against
the infidels in 1571 and French Protestants may have been among the
French troops that fought for the Spanish in the crusade of Lepanto.21
In May 1572, William and Louis of Nassau launched a renewed
revolt in the Netherlands. Louis was responsible for leading an uprising in the south: he took Valenciennes and Mons with an army made
up of Huguenots, Walloon exiles, English volunteers and some German
mercenaries, with three Huguenots as his deputies: Genlis, the sieur
(or seigneur) de Poyet, and the celebrated Franois de La Noue.22
Louiss troops included almost 200 Huguenot gens darmes, in three
companies, and 612 Huguenot infantrymen in seven companies.23
Genlis, as we have seen, had served with the Nassaus in 1568 in the
Netherlands. In the 1560s Poyet had been lieutenant of one of Andelots
two companies of Gendarmerie; Louis made him Governor of Mons in
June 1572.24 It had been an integral part of the plan that Louiss army in
the southern Netherlands would soon be reinforced by a larger
Huguenot contingent, which Genlis returned to France to lead; and
that this would be a prelude to what Coligny, briefly chief adviser of
King Charles IX, planned would be a French declaration of war on
Acte, 15 May 1572, BN, MS Fr. 18587, f. 539.
Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of
Philip II, trans. S. Reynolds, 2 vols. (London: Collins, 1973), II, 1105.
22
Guillaume Baudart, Les Guerres de Nassau, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: 1616), I, 96, and
131 where Poyet is called sieur; Roger Williams, A Briefe discourse of Warre (1590),
21, and idem, The Actions of the Lowe Countries (1618), 8384, 98: page nos. are in The
Works of Sir Roger Williams, ed. John X. Evans (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972) [hereafter WRW]. Cf. A. E. C. Simoni, Walter Morgan Wolff: An Elizabethan Soldier and
His Maps, Quaerendo, 26 (1996), 668. Poyet is called seigneur in JeanFranois Le
Petit, La grande chronique ancienne et moderne, de Hollande, Zelande, WestFrise,
Utrecht, Frise, Overyssel et Groeningen, 2 vols. (Dordrecht: 1601), II, 266. Standard biographical and genealogical works shed little extra light on him and none on his actual
title.
23
These are peak strengths: see Estat et compte de la recepte et mise faicte []
pour le service de [] Conte Ludoviq de Nassau, 1 June8 Oct. 1572, in P. J. Blok (ed.),
Correspondentie van en betreffende Lodewijk van Nassau en andere onuitgegeven documenten, Werken van het Historisch Genootshcap te Utrecht, nieuwe serie, 47 (1887),
917; cf. M. Barroux, J. Balteau, M. Prevost, et al (eds.), Dictionnaire de biographie
franaise, 19 vols. to date (Paris: Librairie Letouzey & An, 1936[2001]), V, 11023.
24
Andelot to M. de Montmorency, 30 May 1567, BN, MS Fr. 3179, f. 39; Estat et
compte, 1 Jun.8 Oct. 1572, in Blok, Correspondentie van en betreffende Lodewijk van
Nassau, 93.
20
21

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d. j. b. trim

Spain and the despatch of a royal army into the southern Netherlands.
Genliss force was estimated at 40 ensigns of foot and 1500 horse, by a
Spanish soldier, who was part of the force that intercepted and engaged
it. But Genlis was defeated by the Spanish, taken prisoner, and later
ignominiously strangled in his cell.25
Charles IX lost his nerve, fearing a Spanish invasion and a Catholic
rebellion if he persisted in the planned invasion of the Netherlands,
and a Huguenot rebellion if he now defaulted on the plan. The result
was the Saint Bartholomews Massacre (analysed in chapter 2). The
death or imprisonment of most of the Huguenot leaders ensured that,
for the next few years, the Huguenots could only fight to survive.
Without French assistance, William of Orange, leading a German mercenary army to aid his brother, was driven back into Germany; the
garrison of Mons was thus cut off andeventuallyforced to accept
terms. But the mostly Huguenot garrison, despite their isolation, facing lite Spanish troops, made a defiant and resolute defence, that was
preserved in French Protestant memory, both in France and in the
countries of the Refuge. Over a century later, a Huguenot author
recalled how the brave Defence of Count Lodowick, assisted by
Mounsieur [sic] de La Noe and many of the French Nobility, made
the Siege of Mons very long and difficult.26
This southern extension of the second Dutch revolt of 1572 demonstrates well how Huguenots, Dutch and English cooperated towards a
common end. Although the grand design failed, it was French troops,
both in the planning and execution, which formed the major elementof
Louis of Nassaus army. Huguenot troops also rallied to Flushing, after
it rebelled and formed part of the forces serving the State of Zeeland.27

25
Baron J. Kervyn de Lettenhove (ed.), Relations politiques des PaysBas et de
lAngleterre, sous le rgne de Philippe II, 12 vols. (Brussels: Acadmie Royale, 1882
1900), no. 2443, VI, 46871 (at 468); cf. anon., Discours de la deffaicte des troupes du
S[eigneu]r de Genlis, BN, MS Fr. 18587, ff. 5413; Williams, Actions, in WRW, 9294;
Dictionnaire de biographie franaise, XVII, 57779.
26
L. Aubery du Maurier, The lives of all the princes of Orange, from William the
Great, founder of the Commonwealth of the United Provinces (1682), trans. T. Brown
(London, 1693; Wing A4184), 32. Cf. Williams, Actions, in WRW, 8792; and D. J. B.
Trim, Fighting Jacobs Wars. The Employment of English and Welsh Mercenaries in
the European Wars of Religion: France and the Netherlands, 15621610, Ph.D. thesis
(University of London, 2002), 112.
27
E.g., anon. reports to Lord Burghley, 12 and 16 July 1572, and convention between Magistrates of Flushing and Colonel Gilbert, 15 July 1572, in Lettenhove,
Relations politiques, nos. 2435, 2438, 2437, VI, 454, 458, 457.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion163

Later, Dutch recruiters targeted Huguenot migrs fleeing the St

Bartholomews massacre.28
The following year, in the spring of 1573, the comte de Montgommery
mustered an AngloFrench expedition in Plymouth to intervene in the
fourth civil war (precipitated by the Saint Bartholomews Massacre).
When peace in France was concluded in the summer of 1573,
Montgommery sent some of his Huguenot and English troops, under
his eldest son, to the Netherlands to aid William of Orange, who was
facing a crisis. They arrived in July 1573; so, separately, did some other
volunteers from France, including Poyet. All went straight into action,
either in the garrison of the hardpressed city of Haarlem, or in the
army William was leading in operations intended to raise the Spanish
siege of the city.29 Its capitulation in August, after William had been
held off, was a major blow to the Dutch cause. Meanwhile, the prince
had made Poyet his matre de camp generalcommander of a separate
field army. On the last day of August, less than a month after the fall of
Haarlem, Poyet and his force stormed the city of St Geertruidenberg
with a force of English, Scottish, French and Flemish companies, as
one of his Welsh soldiers later recalled. It was the first city captured by
the rebels for a year and a major boost to their morale.30
Poyet retained command of a separate force that included Huguenot
troops; under his command it operated in the province of Zeeland,
enjoying other successes over the Spanish, until his return to France
in May 1574 (where the fifth war of religion had just broken out).
As a Dutch historian recently argued, in 157273, Oranges best troops

Haultain and others to Burghley, 27 Sept. 1572, CSPF, X (157274), 181, no. 575.
D. J. B. Trim, Immigrants, the Indigenous Community and International
Calvinism, in Nigel Goose and Lien Luu (eds.), Immigrants in Tudor and Early Stuart
England (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005), 212; La Mothe Fnlon to Charles
IX, 27 Feb. and 19 Mar. 1573, in A. Teulet (ed.), Correspondance diplomatique de
Bertrand de Salignac de la Mothe Fnlon: Ambassadeur de France en Angleterre de
1568 1575, 7 vols. (Paris & London: Bannatyne Club, 183840), nos. 303, 307, V, 263,
281; Rekening of payments made to units of William of Oranges army, 15725,
Regionaal Archief Leiden [hereafter RAL], Archief der Secretarie 1033, ff. 12r, 43v; Le
Petit, Grand chronique, II, 25354; William of Orange to Poyet, 3 July 1573, Koninklijk
Huisarchief, Den Haag [hereafter KHH], A 11/XIV I/12, f. 341r; Williams, Actions, in
WRW, 135.
30
Commission to Poyet, 1 Aug. 1573, KHH, A 11/XIV I/12, ff. 2rv; Williams,
Actions, in WRW, 13536, 138, 143, 240n.; Le Petit, Grand chronique, II, 266; Baudart,
Guerres de Nassau, I, 13132; Thomas Morgan to Lord Burghley, 13 Sept. 1573,
in Lettenhove, Relations Politiques, no. 2625, X, 81112; cf. Evans, Commentary, in
WRW, 240.
28
29

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d. j. b. trim

were his Huguenot soldiers.31 Their attachment to the princes cause is

reflected in the fact that not all Huguenots left for home on the outbreak of the fifth civil war. Further north, in Holland, Huguenot companies served in Williams multinational army, which operated in
1574 against the Spanish besiegers of Leiden; the successful defence of
the city proved a decisive turning point in the history of the Dutch
Revolt.32 Huguenot companies were still in service with the rebels
when the mutiny of the Spanish army in the autumn of 1576 led to all
the provinces of the Netherlands joining Holland and Zeeland in revolt
against Spain. At this point the companies employed by the province of
Holland had their own matre de Camp des compagnies franoises, one
Antoine de La Garde, who had first served in the provinces pay in
1572.33 Thereafter, Huguenot soldiers would be in the service of a new
entity, created in January 1577: the United Provinces of the Netherlands.
Huguenot participation in the campaigns in the Netherlands during
15726 was the start of a close association with the Dutch rebelscum
republic that lasted till the War of the Spanish Succession. French and
Dutch Calvinists regarded the wars in France and the Netherlands,
waged against the oftenallied Catholic French and Spanish monarchies, as essentially the same conflict against idolatrous, antiChristian
religion. The Spanish had sent troops from the Netherlands to aid the
crown in the first war of religion, so it was also in the French Protestants
best interests to aid their fellow Calvinists in the Netherlands.
Furthermore, the Netherlandish and Huguenot nobility were extensively intermarried. At the highest level, the Counts of Egmont, Lalaing,
Hornes and Rennenburg and the Prince of pinoy were all part of
the extended Montmorency family, one of the greatest noble clans in
France, and their cousins included such Huguenot leaders as the
seigneur de Genlis and Admiral de Coligny, and possibly the Prince
de Porcien. William of Orange married as his fourth wife Louise de
31
Le Petit, Grand chronique, II, 267; Williams, Actions, in WRW, 138, 14243, 148;
Baudart, Guerres de Nassau, I, 126; William of Orange to officers of Poyets army, 15
May 1574, KHH, A 11/XIV I/12, f. 396. K. W. Swart, Willem van Oranje en de
Nederlandse Opstand 15721584, ed. Raymond Fagel, Henk van Nierop and M. E. H.
N. Mout (Den Haag: Sdu, 1994), 70.
32
Huguenot companies: e.g., receipts of payments to Captains Duran and dAultrain,
Leiden, 1574, RAL, Archief der Secretarie 1334 (unnumbered).
33
Muster rolls of companies of La Garde and Captain Duran, Nov. 1575, Het
Nationaal Archief, Den Haag [hereafter NA], Collectie Ortell 35; F. J. G. ten Raa and
F. de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger 15681795, vols. IIV (Breda: Koninklijke Militaire
Academie, 191118), I, 28.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion165

Coligny, the admirals daughter, having earlier wed (and buried) as his
third wife, Charlotte de Bourbon, a cousin of Louis de Cond and
Henri de Bourbon, King of Navarre.34 But ties of kinship were also
common at lower levels of the aristocracy; as David Potter shows, there
were numerous lineages which straddled the artificial divide between
France and the Low Countries in the sixteenth century.35 For ideological, strategic and familial reasons the Huguenots identified the Dutch
Revolt as a cause worth fighting for, and the Netherlands drew many
Huguenot soldiers.
III
The newly United Provinces of the Netherlands still had need of an
army to fight Spain. Huguenots provided a ready source of recruits,
especially since there was a relatively prolonged period of uneasy peace
in France after the sixth war of religion concluded in 1577. With peace
at home, some French soldiers found employment in Muscovy, though
their confessional allegiance is uncertain.36
However, the majority of Huguenots who served abroad did so
in Dutch pay. Three new companies of Huguenot infantry joined
the Dutch army in the autumn of 1577 and a steady stream followed
thereafter. From 1579, two French infantry regiments were in Dutch
pay. In the summer of 1580 the number of Huguenots serving in the
Netherlands briefly increased when Henry de Bourbon, Prince de
Cond (who had succeeded his father, Louis, as prince of Cond on
the latters death in battle in 1569, during the third war of religion),
made a visit to the Netherlands for meetings with William of Orange.
Cond and his entourage fought in one battle in northern Flanders
before moving on to discuss affairs of state with Orange, after which he
returned to France. For most of 1579 and 1580, Franois de La Noue
34
Parker, Dutch Revolt, 271, 273, genealogical tables I, III; Potter, French Protestant
Nobility in 1562, 313 n.3: the title of Prince de Porcien was used by Antoine de Croy,
who was, presumably, related to the great Netherlands noble family of Croy.
35
David Potter, The Private Face of Anglo-French Relations in the Sixteenth
Century: the Lisles and their French Friends, in David Grummitt (ed.), The English
Experience in France c. 14501558: War, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange (Burlington,
Vt. & Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 2089 at 208.
36
Graeme P. Herd, General Patrick Gordon of AuchleuchriesA Scot in
SeventeenthCentury Russian Service, Ph.D. thesis (University of Aberdeen, 1993),
135.

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was the senior French captain in the Netherlands and indeed one of
the most senior commanders in the Dutch army. La Noue rivals
Coligny and Montgommery for the status of greatest Huguenot soldier
of the sixteenth century. He had been one of the chief captains under
Louis of Nassau at Mons in 1572, and arrived in the Netherlands as
colonel of the first of the Huguenot infantry regiments, of 12 companies. Antoine de La Garde commanded the second, of 10 companies
plus a company of horse. The total Huguenot establishment in Dutch
pay was 2,500 men in the two regiments of foot, plus 400 horse, of
which half were described as edelen or noblemen.37
In August 1578, de La Noue was appointed marchaldecamp by
the States General and made commanderinchief of the States forces
in Flanders later that year; La Garde was La Noues sergeant-major and,
like his superior, was appointed to the States Council of War. La Noue
held command of the Dutch army of Flanders until his capture by the
Spanish in the late spring of 1580. La Noue was regarded highly by his
employers who, in addition to appointing him to senior army command, consulted him on wider strategic and political issues. He was
seen by the Spanish as sufficient a threat that, after they captured him
in May 1580 at the Battle of Ingelmunster, they held him in exceptionally harsh conditions. La Garde, meanwhile, commanded the defence
of Breda in 1581, and for his efforts there was made governor of the
important fortress of BergenopZoom. He held this post until he
took the field in 1583 as Maistre de lArtillerie of an army operating in
northern Brabant and was killed by a cannon ball. Over thirty years
later, La Gardes services lived on in memory. A Dutch chronicler (in a
work published in French and thus probably aimed partly at a Huguenot
readership) called La Garde one of the most valiant, wise and prudent
Captains who was ever employed in the wars of the Low Countries,
one who understood well the making of policy as well as the art of
war; he remained faithful until death.38

37
Le Petit, La Grande chronique, II, 41011, 424. Prince of Orange to States General,
4 Jan. 1580, RAL, Stadsarchief 3021; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, I, 5657,
61, 160.
38
See Henri Hauser, Franois de La Noue (15311591) (Paris: Hachette, 1892),
95125; P. Kervyn de Volkaersbeke (ed.), Correspondance de Franois de La
Noue, surnomm BrasdeFer, accompagne de notes historiques et prcde de la vie
de ce grand capitaine (Ghent, Brussels & Paris: n.p., 1854), 56210 passim; La Noue
to States General, 27 Dec. 1577, Archives des Affaires trangres, Paris, Mmoires
et Documents Franais [hereafter AAE, MDF] 242, ff. 32r37r; Le Petit, La Grande

the huguenots and the european wars of religion167

La Garde died serving under a French Catholic soldier, the marchal

de Biron. This was because in early 1582 and then again in 1583 there
was a great influx of French Catholic soldiers to Dutch service when
the duc dAnjou, the French kings younger brother, briefly allied with
the States General. Anjou eventually fell out with them over religious,
political and financial issues, but the French troops he brought with
him included some companies of Huguenots, under Jacques de Lorges,
count de Montgommery (who, as seen earlier, had served William of
Orange in 1573) and the count de Rochefoucault.39 In addition to this
largely Catholic French army, there remained in Dutch pay, throughout Anjous time in the Low Countries and on into 1585, Huguenot
companies, among them one of 100 lancers under de La Noues son,
Odet, sieur de Tligny, who remained in the Netherlands until 1585,
becoming the terror of the Spanish, as one historian puts it; he held
from July 1584 the rank of general of the cavalry.40
In the early 1580s, Huguenots contributed to the efforts made by
Dom Antnio, pretender to the Portuguese throne, to oust Philip II of
Spainthe chance to weaken the Habsburg king was an attraction to
the Calvinist soldiers and sailors who took part. Much of this effort
was naval, but in 15823 Huguenots served in the amphibious expedition led by Philippe Strozzi (who, ironically, in the third civil war had
commanded royal troops against the Huguenots), which unsuccessfully attempted to seize the Azores for Antnio. The expedition was
partly mounted from La Rochelle, where Antnio was based later in
1585.41

chronique, II, 410; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, I, 51, 2445; Baudart,
Guerres de Nassau, I, 43839 at 439 (translation mine).
39
Lord Cobham to Sir Francis Walsingham, 6 June 1582, Thomas Doyley to idem,
22 June 1582, John Cobham to idem, 4 Sept. 1582, Sir John Norreys to idem, 2 Dec.
1582, Thomas Stokes to idem, 2 Dec. 1582, CSPF, XVI (1582), 68, 180, 302, 48283,
nos. 74, 180, 49293. In light of the cross-border intermarriages highlighted above, it
is possible that there were also some Huguenot officers in the regiment of Picardy (the
French province bordering the southern Low Countries), which was sent to the United
Provinces in the summer of 1583: Cobham to Walsingham, 3 July 1583, PRO, SP
78/10, f. 1r.
40
Hauser, Franois de La Noue, 12425 (at 124); Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche
Leger, I, 6364, 108, 173, 183.
41
See Dietz, Privateering in NorthWest European Waters, 424, 426, 428; Jean
Franois Dubost, La France italienne (Paris: Aubier, 1997), 203; Lord Cobham to
Walsingham, 26 July 1582, CSPF, XVI (1582), 188, no. 187; Antnio to Pope Sixtus V,
Aug. 1585, BN, Collection Dupuy, MS 500, f. 152.

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IV

In 1584, the wars of religion had resumed and from 1585 to 1598 the
Huguenots attention was fixed on France, where Henri de Navarre
battled to become Henri IV of France and to settle the civil wars. Few
Huguenots served in foreign armies in these years; some fought with
German forces, but only when they intervened in France.
In 1587, GuillaumeRobert de La Marck, duc de Bouillon and sovereign Prince of Sedan, was joint commander of a large army, paid for
largely by Elizabeth I of England, that entered France to aid Henri de
Navarre and the Protestant cause. Ultimately defeated by Catholic
forces under the duc de Guise, the army consisted mostly of mercenaries. First among them were Germans, led by Baron Dohna, both cavalry (the reiters, whose fame lent their name to the entire force in
contemporary French usage) and infantry (landsknechts). There were
also Swiss infantry, led by Bouillon; but some Huguenots served with
them.42 Bouillons own statusGerman or Huguenotis debateable.
Sedan was a principality of the Holy Roman Empire (and Bouillon was
disputed between France and the Empire), so he could be regarded
as German. In practice, however, the rulers of the several small sovereign principalities on the borders of (or actually within) France were
regarded by contemporaries as foreign princes in France: among
them Guise, Bouillon and Navarre, but there were others as well.
These princes were wellintegrated into French aristocratic kinship
networks, typically owned large estates within France, commanded
French armies, served as gouverneurs of French provinces, and were
integral members of the French court and political scene. Bouillon was
himself a Calvinist (like his father before him); he was a cousin of
Navarre and brotherinlaw of one of the Huguenot military leaders,
Henri de La Tour (who inherited the duchy on GuillaumeRoberts
death in 1588). Bouillon effectively was a Huguenot himself, not a
German.43 In any event, the presence of French Calvinists serving
42
Estat de larmee des reistres and articles et capitulation of the army of the Prince
de Conty, duc de Bouillon and Baron dHone (Dohna) [1587], and Bouillon to Henri
de Navarre, 20 Aug. 1587, BN, MS Fr. 704, ff. 6970, 86, 72; Garrett Mattingly, The
Defeat of the Spanish Armada (London: 1959), 146, 14954.
43
E.g. Princes estrangers en France, AAE, MDF 28; Mmoires sur les Maisons de
Savoie, Lorraine, la TourBouillon et Rohan, AAE, MDF 186. Cf. David Parrott,
Richelieu, the Grands, and French Army, in Joseph Bergin and Laurence Brockliss
(eds.), Richelieu and His Age (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 1369; Arlette Jouanna,

the huguenots and the european wars of religion169

alongside his mercenaries does not invalidate the point that Huguenot
soldiering from the mid1580s was for 15 years occupied with France
itself. When Huguenots and Dutch were in combat alongside each
other, it was because the Dutch were intervening to aid their confreres
in France.44
In 1598 the Treaty of Vervins ended the war with Spain and the same
year the Edict of Nantes guaranteed freedom of religion for the members of Frances reformed churches and provided royal salaries to pay
Huguenot pastors; it also, as a guarantee against persecution by future
kings, created a state within a state, allowing the Huguenots the right
to maintain troops in some 200 towns, 100 of which could be fortified
and their garrisons paid by the crown. Although very controversial,
the terms of the Edict induced both Huguenots and Catholics to stop
fighting.45
With peace at home, the attention of Huguenot soldiers once again
turned outwards. Some may have served alongside Catholics in one of
two French contingents under the Holy Roman Emperor against the
Turks: one recruited in 1597, the other (made up entirely of noble volunteers) in 1599.46 Huguenots may also have been among the French
troops who served in Muscovy in the early 1600s: one French company
distinguished themselves in the service of Boris Gudunov (c.1605); a
corps of 5,000 Scots, French and Swedish soldiers served the Muscovite
government from 1608 to 1611. That the Scots and Swedes would have
been Protestants may give a clue about the confessional allegiance of
the French.47 As in the 1570s and 1580s, there is no question that most
Huguenot soldiers preferred to fight for fellow Protestants: from 1599,
the Netherlands once again drew them.

Le devoir de rvolte: La noblesse franaise et la gestation de ltat moderne (15591661)

(Paris: Fayard, 1989), 156, 171; Carroll, Noble Power, 1423, 39, 5051, 99; Frank
Delteil, Henri de la Tour, duc de Bouillon: Recherche rcente et complments, Bull.
SHPF 132 (1986), 7998.
44
Odet de La Noue to Turenne, 8 May 1591, Bibliothque de la Socit de lHistoire
du Protestantisme Franais, Paris, MS 7562, f. 21r; Howell A. Lloyd, The Rouen
Campaign, 15901592 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 184.
45
See the discussion in Holt, French Wars of Religion, 16670.
46
Trim, Huguenot soldiering c.15601685, 19.
47
Herd, General Patrick Gordon of Auchleuchries, 13841. The captain of the
Frenchmen serving Boris Gudunov was one Jacques Margeret (ibid., 139)the
Margerets may have been a Calvinist family as in 1713 one Paul Margarett was a surgeon in Colonel Blands regiment of Horse in England: C. E. Lart, The Huguenot
Regiments, HSP 9 (1911), 527. (I am indebted for this reference to Matthew Glozier).

170

d. j. b. trim
V

The surviving rebellious provinces of the Netherlands had in the preceding 15 years become firmly established; their considerable financial
muscle would allow the Dutch republic to punch above its weight and
maintain a disproportionate war effort for the next 120 years. Indeed,
in the 1590s Dutch troops had aided Henri IV in France, against the
Catholic League and its Spanish allies.48 The republic also, in the 1590s,
reorganised its army under the guidance of Maurice of Nassau,
William of Oranges son and eventual successor as commanderin
chief. Maurices reforms were administrative, logistical and tactical and
made the Dutch armythe staatse legera model for the rest of
Europe. But the northern Netherlands lacked the population base
necessary to recruit enough troops for its military purposes and so the
United Provinces made up the difference with mercenaries. English,
Scottish and German mercenary contingents were key elements of the
staatse leger throughout its history.49 And with the settlement of the
Wars of Religion by the Edict of Nantes, French mercenaries, too,
became an integral part of the States army.
In 1596 the States General had sought a French nobleman of quality
[and] of the religion to raise a regiment in France whose officers and
soldiers shall profess the religion, but conditions then obtaining in
France made recruiting this regiment impossible.50 By 1599, circumstances had changed and the Dutch found the men they wanted: a
Huguenot infantry regiment numbering some 1,500 men, commanded
by Odet de La NoueTligny (who, thus, resumed service in Dutch
pay), was shipped into the Netherlands.51 Tligny and his men distinguished themselves the next year in fierce fighting on the strategically
vital island of Bommel.52 In January 1601, command of the French
Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 23, 307 et seq.
Trim, Fighting Jacobs Wars; H. L. Zwitzer, De militie van den staat: Het leger
van de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden (Amsterdam: Van Soeren, 1991), ch. 3,
esp. pp. 3942.
50
Quoted in Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 41 (Franchois Edelman
van qualiteyt, die religie; officieren ende soldaten daerse professie doen vande
religie).
51
States General summary of extraordinary military expenditure, 1599, NA,
Collectie Aanwinsten 879, ff. 6v, 11r; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 51
164, 3523.
52
GuillaumeLouis of Nassau to Jean of Nassau, 26 June and 10 July 1599, in
G. Groen van Prinsterer (ed.), Archives ou correspondance indite de la maisondOrangeNassau, sries 2, vol. 1, 15841599 (Utrecht: Kemink, 1857), 43234; Jan Orlers,
48
49

the huguenots and the european wars of religion171

regiment passed to Henri de Coligny, seigneur de ChtillonsurLoing

(grandson of the Admiral de Coligny).53 In August that year Henri de
Chtillon commanded a detached, multinational force of 20 companies (of which only six were French) sent to reinforce the besieged fortress of Ostend.54 The French contingent, which included many
persons of quality, suffered heavy casualties, including Chtillon who,
in the autumn of 1601, was decapitated by a canon ball.55
Command of the French regiment passed to Lonidas de Bthune,
seigneur de Congy, though that of the Huguenot troops in Ostend
seems to have been exercised by Jean de Sau, Chtillons lieutenant
colonel. Also commanding was Jacques de Rocques, baron de
Montesquieu, who won the praise of the Governor of Ostend, General
Sir Francis Vere, for his worth and valour. Meanwhile, recruiting was
stepped up in France to replace the lossesand so successfully were
Huguenots enlisted that by the spring of 1602 there were 21 infantry
companies, with a total establishment of over 3,000 men. The French
regiment was, therefore, split in two, with Guillaume dHallot, seigneur
de Dommarville et Guichery, colonel of the new regiment.56 French
companies were rotated in and out of Ostend throughout the three
year siege of the city, until it eventually fell in the autumn of 1604.
Command of the Huguenot contingent in the beleaguered fortress was
exercised in 1602 by Captain Jacques du Fort; in 1603 by Captain
Brusse; and in 1604 by LieutenantColonel de Rocques. Huguenots
also served the garrison as engineers and gunners.57 Meanwhile,
Den Nassauschen Laurencrans: Beschrijvinge ende afbeeldinge van alle de Victorien,
so te Water als te Lande, die Godt Almachtich de [] Staten der Vereenichde Neder
landen verleent hefte (Leyden, 1610), 129; Agrippa dAubign, LHistoire universelle
(3 vols., Maill: 1620), III, 526.
53
State van oorlog (military budget), 1601, NA, Archief Raad van State 1226,
ff. 132r, 135v; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 3567.
54
J. Holcroft to Robert Cecil, 16 Aug. 1601, in HMC, Salisbury MSS, XI, 346;
Francis Vere et al, The Commentaries of Sir Francis Vere, ed. W. Dillingham (1657),
published in E. Arber and T. Seccombe (eds.), Stuart Tracts 16031693, intro. C. H.
Firth (New York: Cooper Square, 1964), 178.
55
Anon., Histoire Remarquable et veritable de ce qui sest pass par chacun jour au
siege de la ville dOstende, de part & dautre jusques present (Paris: 1604), 17r (personnes de qualit), 29v; Vere, Commentaries, 177, 192, 202; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het
Staatsche Leger, II, 165.
56
Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 1646; Vere, Commentaries, 202;
States General accounts for extraordinary military expenditure, 1602, NA, Aanwinsten
879, f. 30r; States General, warrant, 23 Nov, 1602 and States General to Henri IV, Feb.
1603, in Resolutin der StatenGeneraal van 1576 tot 1609, ed. H. Rijperman (The
Hague: Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatin, 1950), XII (16021603), 187, 489.
57
Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 2769.

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d. j. b. trim

in August 1603, Lonidas de Bthune had been killed near St

Geertruidenberg in tragic circumstancesif not exactly by friendly
fire, by friendly force: a pike thrust from an English soldier, while
Bthune was trying to break up a quarrel between members of his regiment and one of the States English regiments. This was not the first
time there had been quarrels between the two nations of English and
French in the States army, but Bthune was the highest-profile casualty. In the autumn, he was succeeded as colonel of the first French
regiment by Gaspard III de Coligny, brother of the late Henri and his
successor as seigneur (and later duc) de Chtillon. Chtillons close
cooperation with English troops in a campaign around Sluys the following spring surely helped to heal the wounds of Bthunes death. The
following year, when Guillaume dHallot was killed at the Battle of
Mulheim (9 October 1605), he was replaced as colonel of the second
regiment by Syrius de Bthune, Lonidass son.58
Thereafter, there was consistently a strong Huguenot presence in the
States army. In 16089 the United Provinces negotiated the Twelve
Years Truce with Spain and took the chance to retrench many mercenary units; that the French regiments were kept in pay, with the same
number of companies, is testimony to their value to the Dutch army.59
Gaspard de ColignyChtillon was appointed ColonelGeneral of the
Infantry in 1614, an office he held until 1638.60 In 1613, Syrius de
Bthune was replaced as colonel of the second French regiment by
his lieutenantcolonel, Jean Antoine de SaintSimon, baron de Cour
tomer; in 1615, a third Huguenot regiment was added, under the command of Franois de Laubespine, sieur dHauterive and marquis de
Chteauneuf.61 Further, the Huguenot regiments are known to have
kept their strength up by recruiting in France, so that any dilution of
their ranks with locals must have been smallthese were, and they
58
William Browne to Robert Sidney, 30 July and 10 Aug. 1603, in HMC, Dudley &
De LIsle MSS, III, 44, 48; Orlers, Nassauschen Laurencrans, 130; States General resolution, 14 Nov. 1603, in Resolutin der StatenGeneraal, XII, 517; Ten Raa and de Bas,
Het Staatsche Leger, II, 83, 166, 367; David Parrott, Richelieus Army: War, Government
and Society in France, 16241642 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 29;
Anon., Reduction de la ville de lEscluse (Paris: 1604), 5; Dictionnaire de biographie
franaise, VIII, 802.
59
Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, II, 164.
60
Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, III, 187; Parrott, Richelieus Army, 29.
61
Not Bertrand de Vignolles, Seigneur de Casaubon (pace Parrott, Richelieus Army,
29): see Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, III, 1878; and The forme of battaile of
horse and foot ordered by Prince Maurice, before Dornick, 11 Sept. 1621, in John
Cruso, Militarie Instructions for the Cavallrie (Cambridge: 1632), pt. iv, ch. 8, fig. 14.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion173

remained, French regiments, because Frenchmen constantly enlisted

to serve in them.62
For the Huguenot nobility, it became virtually the done thing to visit
the Netherlands and serve at least a season: from 1600 on with Maurice;
and, after his death in 1625, with his brother and successor, Frederick
Henry, Prince of Orange. Henri IV actively encouraged this. An
English colonel with many years in Dutch service observed that the
king regularly urged his nobles to gain military experience by serving
the Prince of Orange; consequently, he made the Low Countries
swarm every year for three or four months with his Princes, Nobility
and his Gentry.63 And the pattern set in Henri IVs reign outlasted
him. To be sure, from the late 1610s, Catholics were among the French
troops in Dutch pay; but Calvinists predominated.64 Henri, duc de
Rohan, colonelgnral of the Swiss Guards, and his younger brother,
Benjamin, visited the Netherlands in the summer of 1606 to fight for
Maurice. This did incur Henri IVs displeasure for France was supposed to be neutral, so one of the grands (and an important official of
the French army) serving against Spain was extremely provocative. Yet
Rohan did not return home until the campaign season had concluded,
leaving only in November.65 FrdricMaurice de La Tour, the new duc
de Bouillon and a nephew of Maurice of Nassau, after whom he may
have been named (their mother was Maurices half-sister, Elizabeth of
Nassau), served in the States army from 1621 to 1635; his service
included holding the important office of Governor of Maastricht, a
post occupied during the Spanish siege in 1634. Bouillons younger
brother, Henri de La Tour, vicomte de Turenne (later the celebrated
marchal de France) also started his military career under Maurice of
Nassau. Many other young French nobles either did likewise, or served
62
E.g., extraordinary military accounts, 1605, NA, Aan. 879, f. 68v; Browne to Lisle,
15 June 1606, in HMC, De LIsle & Dudley MSS, III, 282; and this was standard practice
for foreign regiments in the staatse leger, cf. Trim, Fighting Jacobs Wars, ch. 7.
63
Lord Wimbledon, The Demonstrance of Cavallerye, BL, Royal MS 18.C.xxiii,
f. 74, printed in Charles Dalton, Life and Times of General Sir Edward Cecil, Viscount
Wimbledon (2 vols, London; Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1885), II,
329. Henri IVs deliberate encouragement of French service in the Dutch army was
also recognised by contemporary Catholic soldiers, e.g. cf. Articles concernant le service du roy et lestat et necessit de ses affaires en son arme, 17 Sept. 1621, Bibliothque
Sainte-Genevive, Paris [hereafter BSG], MS 847, f. 108v
64
Parrott, Richelieus Army, 31.
65
Parrott, Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army, 170; Browne to Lisle, 12
Nov. 1606, HMC, Dudley & De LIsle MSS, III, 329; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche
Leger, II, 83.

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d. j. b. trim

in the staatse leger at some point, including the authors of many influential military treatises published from the 1610s to the 1640s. A strong
aristocratic component was typical of the Huguenot units in Dutch
pay; so, too, was the presence of sons and grandsons of men who had
fought for William in the 1570s and 1580s (including Tligny and the
grandsons of the Admiral Coligny). There were particular influxes of
such volunteers in 16067, when the Dutch republic was threatened by
a great offensive directed by the celebrated Spanish general, Ambrogio
Spnola, and increased its army in response; and in the early 1620s,
following the resumption of hostilities between the United Provinces
and Spain at the end of the Twelve Years Truce.66 The strong family
connections and high aristocratic component suggest that, as with the
Huguenot units of the 1560s, recruiting for Huguenot units in Dutch
pay in the seventeenth century was done via affinity connections,
including kinship networks and extended clienteles.67
VI
Meanwhile back in France, the Huguenot parallel state was a major
irritant in the French body politic. The regents of the young Louis XIII
and then the king himself (after reaching his majority) sought to
restrict the political and military rights of the Huguenots as part of a
general programme of increasing royal power. Huguenots repeatedly
took up arms but unlike in the period 156298, never with the complete support of French Calvinists; the scale of Huguenot mobilisation
and military activity in the seventeenth century did not match that of
the sixteenth century and, as Alan James suggests, the history of
Huguenot warfare in France in this period is largely one of internal
divisions, impotence and futility. In the 1610s, Rohan, with his brother,
66
Cf. Parrott, Richelieus Army, 2830, 37; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger,
II, 83, 277, 279 n.31, 3645; Trim, Fighting Jacobs Wars, 188, 3378; Browne to
Lisle, 15 June 1606, HMC, De LIsle & Dudley MSS, III, 282; list of French captains
in the 1607 state van oorlog, NA, Archief Staten-Generaal, 8043, unfoliated; entries in
album amicorum of Bernard ten Broecke Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague, MS
133.M.63; William Crosse, A generall historie of the Netherlands. Newly revewed, corrected, and supplied with observations omitted in the first impression, by Ed. Grimeston.
Continued from the yeare 1608 till the yeare 1627 by William Crosse. The second impression (London: 1627), 1436; Carleton to Chamberlain, 11 July 1623, in Dudley Carleton
to John Chamberlain, 16031624: Jacobean Letters, ed. M. Lee, Jr. (New Brunswick,
N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), 305.
67
Parrott, Richelieus Army, 29.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion175

Benjamin, seigneur de Soubise, and other Huguenot warriornobles,

including the duc de La Force, acting against Bouillons advice, led the
Huguenots in ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against the regents for
Louis XIII, their conflict becoming part of a wider period of civil war,
the so-called revolt of the princes (which include Henri II Bourbon,
Prince de Cond who had, however, abjured his faith as a young
child).68
In the 1620s Rohan led the Huguenots in three more wars against
the encroaching power of crown. The first, from 162022, ended with
the Treaty of Montpellier in October 1622 (and Rohans brief imprisonment in 1623); though not the last war, it broke the back of the
Protestant state and army. Nevertheless, in 1625 Rohan and Soubise
persuaded the citizens of La Rochelle to defy the king and a wider rising ensued in the west of France and in Languedoc; a short-lived peace
in 1626 was followed in 1627 by more sustained hostilities that revolved
around the siege of La Rochelle (16278); Soubise commanded in the
city in 1625-6 and commanded a Huguenot contingent as part of
English operations (ultimately unsuccessful) to relieve the siege of La
Rochelle. The citys capitulation on 1 November 1628 was not quite the
end of the war, for, in Languedoc, Rohan and his troops and the garrisons of some Huguenot towns held out until Rohan and the French
Reformed Churches finally submitted to Louis by the terms of the
Peace of Als, on 27 June 1629. But the English failure to relieve La
Rochelle and the citys fall effectively marked the death knell of
Huguenot armed resistance within France. Louis XIII and Cardinal
Richelieu, having destroyed the political and military rights of the
Huguenots, nonetheless continued to allow a limited right of public
worship as well as liberty of conscience; however, when the crown
eventually decided some decades later to revoke the Edict of Nantes,
the Huguenots no longer had the means to resist.69
Huguenot soldiering was henceforth outside France, but even in the
1620s Huguenots continued to soldier in foreign armies, not least
68
James, Huguenot Militancy, 210, 21516; Holt, French Wars of Religion,
17981.
69
See papers concerning Rohans imprisonment in Montpellier, Feb.Mar. 1623,
Soubise to the inhabitants of La Rochelle, 13 Jan. 1625, and papers concerning the resistance and final capitulation in Languedoc, Mar.June 1629 (including copy of the
articles of the Peace of Als), LPL, MS 3473, ff. 71r78r, 112r, 210r17r; Holt, French
Wars of Religion, 18288 (at 187), 19093; Parrott, Richelieu, the Grands, and the
French Army, 170; James, Huguenot Militancy, 21113, 21623.

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because many French Protestants believed Rohans resistance was futile

and would only poison the king and cardinal against their Reformed
subjects. In the 1620s, the Dutch republic was on good terms with the
French crown which, under Richelieu, was increasingly antiSpanish.
This coincidence of interests meant that when, in 16278, English
naval squadrons and troops aided the defenders of the great Huguenot
stronghold of La Rochelle in the last of the wars of religion, they did
so against the urging of their Dutch allies. The Dutch supported the
French crown against Calvinist militants, because civil war in France
reduced the support France could lend the republic against the common Habsburg enemy. Nevertheless, the Dutch were no less committed to the Protestant cause (the common cause as Protestant writers of
all nationalities regularly referred to it) and continued to recruit heavily from among the Huguenots, who, back in France, increasingly faced
restrictions on their right to worship. Significantly, for those Protestants
in the French army, there were obstacles in the path of promotion.
It is true that Richelieu appointed Chtillon, Rohan and Bouillon,
and other Huguenot nobles (including La Force and Charles de
Blanchfort de Crqui), to high commands in the French army.
Chtillon, Crqui and La Force each became Marshal of France. In the
autumn of 1629 command of two of 3 great Armies assigned to the
Italian front were vested in Crqui and La Force; Chtillon and La
Force were (as we shall see) given army commands on the northern
frontier in 1635 and 1638; and Chtillon was valued enough that he
was granted 50,000 livres by the crown in 1636. Now, none had a good
record in command of French armies (as opposed to French troops
serving in or with the Dutch army): in 1635 Viscount Scudamore, the
English ambassador in Paris, reported home that Chtillon and La
Force, then in joint command of an army operating in alliance with
Prince Frederick Henry, had sought excuses to avoid taking the
field. The same two (or so a contemporary alleged), when facing an
invading Spanish army in 1638, stood with arms folded a mile and a
half from their enemies and did nothing with twentytwo thousandfoot and seven thousand horse.70 Thus, it may seem, on the face
of it, that elite Huguenot soldiers, at any rate, faced no penalties for
70
Parrott, Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army, 145, 157, 163, 170; Thomas
Edmondes to Elizabeth, Electress Palatine, 29 Oct. 1629, Folger Shakespeare Library
[hereafter FSL], MS X.c.60, fo. [2r]; Scudamore to the Secretary of State, 18 Sept. 1635
and early Oct. 1635, BL, Add. MS 35097, ff. 5r, 7r.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion177

their faith, or at least received only their just deserts from the French
government.
In fact, however, none of the Huguenots appointed to army command ever received Richelieus full trust. The elevation to army command of Bouillon simply reflected the fact that he was a sovereign
prince and could not be ignored; his younger brother, Turenne, one of
the most celebrated French generals of the seventeenth century, had to
wait until after Richelieus death in 1642 to receive a full command and
be made marchal. Chtillons son, Gaspard IV de ColignyChtillon,
only received high military office after he abjured his faith in 1643.71
Although Rohan was employed as an army commander by Richelieu
in 16356, the cardinal continued to distrust him. In March 1637, he
was held responsible for the collapse of the French army in the
Valtelline, although David Parrott shows that, in fact, royal officials
who starved it of money were more culpable than Rohan. The criticism
of Chtillon and La Force in 1638 was equally harsh, because their
army was much weaker than its establishment strength; thus, as Parrott
argues, their cautious strategy had been, in the circumstances
entirely justified.72 Clearly, however, neither had received unqualified
support.
As for Chtillons gift from the king in 1636, it was actually a reimbursement (and probably only a partial one) of his own expenditure
on the army under his command (with La Force as his deputy) in
Flanders in 1635when, contrary to Scudamores claims of inactivity
or reluctance, the French force, with their Dutch allies, had been active
enough to fill the residents of the southern Netherlands with fear.73
Itis impossible to know how many of the 12,000 French troops were
Huguenots, but Chtillons men joined the Dutch in a wave of looting

Thomas de Longueville, Marshall Turenne, intro. Francis Lloyd (London:

Longmans, Green & Co., 1907); Dictionnaire de biographie franaise, VIII, 804; Mark
Bannister, Cond in Context: Ideological Change in Seventeenth-century France (Oxford:
Legenda, 2000), 4748
72
Parrott, Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army, 157, 1634 (at 163), 170.
For the armys strength, see Bernhard Kroener, Die Entwicklung der Truppenstarken
in den franzosischen Armeen zwischen 1635 und 1661, in Konrad Repgen (ed.),
Forschungen und Quellen zur Geschichte des Dreiigjhrigen Krieges, Schriftenreihe der
Vereinigung zur Erforschung der Neueren Geschichte, 12 (Munster: Aschendorff,
1981), 202.
73
Parrott, Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army, 17071, 145; Ren Vermeir,
In staat van oorlog: Filips IV en de Zuidelijke Nederlanden, 16291648 (Maastricht:
Shaker, 2001), 117.
71

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and plundering that drew anguished (and overstated) contemporary

complaints about the horrible sacrileges, tyrannies and inhumanities,
practiced against men, women, girls and nuns, such as posterity will be
able to never believe that had been perpetrated among Christians in
any century.74 It is noteworthy that both French and Dutch troops profaned and then burned Catholic churches and other sacred sites and
particularly targeted icons of the Virgin Mary, and that the two
Huguenot commanders of the royal French army apparently made no
attempt to check their men.75 This suggests enduring Calvinist proclivities, and thus may explain why they were not fully trusted.
Indeed, Chtillons preferment to command in 1635 in Flanders
reflected the fact that he had been the successful commander of the
large (and mostly Huguenot) French contingent in Dutch employ,
including in the Spanish Netherlands, and continued to be on good
personal terms with the Prince of Orange. The French government
could hardly do other than appoint him to command an army operating with Frederick Henry against the Spanish army of Flanders.76 His
appointment also reflected Chtillons bitter, inherited feud with the
Guise clan (dating back to the 1560s), while the appointments of La
Force and Crqui also reflected the notorious antipathy between the
Guise and the Huguenot nobility in general. Richelieu had his own
inherited feud with the Guise and consistently made appointments to
high military command in order to keep them marginalized. Richelieus
appointments of Huguenots to senior army rank reveal, not generosity
to Huguenots, but instead the cardinals acceptance of military reality
and his strategy to exalt himself and diminish his rivals.77
Increasing religious repression in France led to a gradual but intensified trend amongst the Huguenot nobility of conversion to Roman
Catholicism, not least among those who wanted the noblemans traditional military career, with its opportunities for gain both intangible
(acquiring an honourable reputation) and tangible (appointment to
lucrative offices, plunder, etc). But progression in the military h
ierarchy
was increasingly difficult for those who persisted with Protestantism.
74
Quoted in Vermeir, In staat van oorlog, 117; see Kroener, Entwicklung der
Truppenstarken, 19798.
75
Vermeir, In staat van oorlog, 117.
76
Frederick Henry to Chtillon, 18 March 1635, and Chtillon to Frederick Henry,
n.d., BSG, MS 3338, ff. 8r, 249r.
77
Parrott, Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army, 1558, esp. 157; Carroll,
Noble Power, 12437.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion179

We have seen that Gaspard IV de Coligny-Chtillon and Turenne were

among those who converted, but there was also considerable pressure
on minor and middle-ranking Huguenot nobles who wanted to serve
as soldiers; this is well brought out, along with the dynamics of abjuration or passive conversion, and how these could divide families, in
R. A. Mentzers careful study of the Lacger family of Langudeoc.78 But
while many Calvinist nobles converted, many others were still unwilling to give up either their faith or a military career. With promotion
opportunities in the kings army dwindling, the staatse leger provided
an admirable alternative, not least since the States recruiting increased
handinhand with the intensification of the Thirty Years War
(161848).
In the spring of 1625 the Dutch took on a fourth French infantry
regiment, when a unit commanded by Henri de Nogaret de La Valette,
comte de Candalle, which had been in Venetian service, was taken into
the United Provinces employ. A fifth regiment was added in 1634,
under the command of Hercule, baron de Charnac. In the mid1630s
the French corps commanded by Chtillon, serving in the main Dutch
field army in Flanders, consisted of all five infantry regiments, plus
four cavalry squadrons.79 This was the high water mark of the Huguenot
contribution to the Dutch army; throughout the 1640s, as the war
wound down, and then after the conclusion of the Peace of Westphalia
in 1648, the staatse legers strength was consistently and considerably
condensed. The Huguenot regiments were all kept in service, but the
unit establishments were reduced.
The baron de Courtomer had been replaced as colonel of the second
regiment in November 1629 by Isaac de Perponcher, sieur de
Maisonneuve; he was replaced in turn by Charles de RechineVoisin,
sieur des Loges in April 1645. The sieur dHauterive kept command of
the third regiment throughout the Thirty Years War, but in April 1639,
Candalle was succeeded as colonel of the fourth regiment by Philippe
Henri de Fleury de Culan, sieur de Buat (who was replaced in turn,
two years later, by Louis dEstrades). Charnac ceded command of
the fifth regiment in November 1637 to Louis du Plessis, sieur de
Raymond A. Mentzer, Jr, Blood and Belief: Family Survival and Confessional
Identity among the Provincial Huguenot Nobility (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue
University Press, 1994), 7480, 16876.
79
Estat des Troupes de larme de Messieurs les Estats, BSG, MS 3338, ff.
179v82v.
78

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d. j. b. trim

Douchant. Finally, Gaspard III de ColignyChtillon was colonel of

the first regiment until his final retirement from Dutch employ in 1638;
the command passed initially to Maurice de Coligny, before the
ColonelGenerals son, Gaspard IV de ColignyChtillon became
colonel in 1644 (having by this time, as noted above, converted to
Catholicism).80 The PerponcherMaisonneuve and Hauterive families
retained command of two regiments into the 1670s.81
Huguenot soldiers also served the Dutch outside the staatse leger. In
the 1630s there were many French troops in the employ of the Dutch
West Indies Company. This private trading company was charged with
conducting Dutch operations against the Portuguese and Spanish possessions in the New World; a large garrison in Pernambuco was definitely Huguenot, not just French, as we know from the correspondence
of its chaplain, part of which has survived. To serve these Huguenot
troops in South America, French churches were built in Pernambuco
and Recife.82
VII
The Dutch Republic was the biggest seventeenthcentury employer of
French Protestants up to 1688. Huguenot soldiers did not, however,
serve only the StatesGeneral. In 1610 the United Provinces and
France had successfully waged the brief Jlich succession war to install
a Protestant (and thus antiHabsburg) claimant as Duke of Cleves
Jlich; the French corps, which included (though it was not composed
only of) Calvinists, had been commanded by Henri, duc de Rohan.
(The Dutch corps also included some 3,000 Huguenots, in the regiments of Chtillon and Bthunethe latter under its then lieutenant
colonel, de Courtomer).83 In the early 1620s, Huguenots fought for the
Elector Palatine in his unsuccessful struggle against the Holy Roman

Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, III, 18890, IV, 24650.
John Stapleton, Jr, Forging a Coalition Army: William III, the Grand Alliance,
and the Confederate Army in the Spanish Netherlands, 16881697, Ph.D. diss. (The
Ohio State University, 2003), 260n. The Perponcher family ultimately settled in the
Dutch Republic, becoming naturalized: ibid., 261n.
82
B. N. Teensma (ed.), DutchBrazil (Rio de Janeiro: 1999), vol. III, Vincent Joachim
Solers Seventeen Letters 16361643, passim, but esp. 7, 84, 1245.
83
Simon Stevin (Dutch military engineer), treatise on Jlich campaign, c.1611, BN,
MS Fr. 654, ff. 7r45 at 24v25v; Ten Raa and de Bas, Het Staatsche Leger, III, 14.
80
81

the huguenots and the european wars of religion181

Emperor.84 In the late 1620s and on into the 1630s, others served King
Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, the Republic of Venice, and the
Protestant prince and military entrepreneur, Bernard, Duke of Saxe
Weimar. Among those who served Gustavus Adolphus were the sieur
dAurignac, later the author of an influential military treatise, the Livre
de guerre. Venice recruited one Huguenot regiment in the mid1620s,
and Rohan and his entourage served the Serene Republic in 1630
Rohan contracted to raise a 6,000strong corps in France for the Serene
Republics service; in the end, he was unable to meet his obligations,
but he and his entourage were in Venetian service through the campaign seasons of 1630 and 1631. Rohan ended his long and varied military career as a gentleman volunteer with SaxeWeimar, being mortally
wounded at the battle of Rheinfelden (28 February 1638).85
The Elector Palatines younger son, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, took
several Huguenot officers with him to England in the 1640s, where
they served in the English Civil War. Other Huguenot soldiers joined
the army of Charles II after the Restoration, among them Louis Duras,
a nephew of the great Turenne. Although his uncle (and brothers) had
eventually converted to Catholicism, Duras maintained his Protestant
faith, which explains his taking service in Protestant England. His military experience stood him in good stead in England and he held a
number of offices, eventually rising to become commander-in-chief
of the army. He was ennobled as Earl of Feversham and in 1685, while
the Edict of Fontainebleau deprived his fellow Protestants in France
of the rights granted by the Edict of Nantes, Feversham superintended
the successful campaign against the Duke of Monmouths rebellion;
contemporary opinion differed as to his contribution to the eventual
victory, but he did bear responsibility for the campaign.86 He was James
IIs commander-in-chief during William IIIs invasion of England in
the autumn of 1688, but quickly wrote to William to assure him that

84
Probably seconded from the French regiments of the staatse leger: cf. Olivier
Chaline, La bataille de la Montagne Blanche 8 novembre 1620, in Lucien Bly and
Isabelle Richefort (eds), LEurope des traits de Westphalie: Esprit de la diplomatie et
diplomatie de lesprit (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), 318.
85
Parrott, Richelieus Army, 29, citing Aurignac, Livre de guerre (1663), as P. Azan
(ed.), Un tacticien du XIIe sicle (Paris, 1904); H. Layard, The duc de Rohans Relations
with the Republic of Venice, 16301637, HSP, 4 (189193), 21824, 290; Parrott,
Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army, 170.
86
Philip Rambaut, A Study in Misplaced Loyalty: Louis de DurfortDuras, Earl of
Feversham (16401709), in Glozier and Onnekink, War, Religion and Service, 4758.

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d. j. b. trim

hewould not oppose the Princes advance.87 Perhaps Fevershams greatest contribution to British history was his order to James IIs army to
disarm and disband in the face of William of Oranges invasion, which
played a key role in ensuring that the Glorious Revolution was almost
bloodless.
By the 1660s and 1670s, individual Huguenot officers had also
begun to find employment, if only shortterm, in the armies of German
and Scandinavian Protestant princes. Others are known to have served,
briefly, in Hungary, combating a renewed Turkish threat. This trend
reflected the increasing difficulties of both French Calvinists in general, and the Huguenot nobility (with its traditions of military service)
in particular, in the face of an ever more repressive religious regime,
though not all those who took up service abroad had faced sanctions
in the French army because of their confessional stance, or at least not
directly.88 However, in the 1650s through to the early 1670s, foreign
employment of Huguenots seems to have been mostly of individual
officers and specialists with the exception of those in Dutch pay.
Meanwhile, the power of the French monarchy had been greatly
expanded by a new king, Louis XIV, who in 1685 was to revoke the
Edict of Nantes, ending Frances less than nine decades of confessional
pluralism. By then, Louis and his two great ministers, Louvois and
Colbert, had already reshaped the French army and navy, making
them into the most powerful in Christendom. France first flexed its
new military muscles in 1672, when it invaded and nearly overwhelmed the Dutch republic. French Protestants were finding life in
France ever more difficult, even though the Revocation was still thirteen years off; for them, it was a bitter blow to see their traditional ally
brought low by the same army that supplied the persecutors of the
dragonnades. For European Protestants at the time, it seemed an awful
blow. Gilbert Burnet, a Scottish bishop who became one of the counsellors of William of Orange, later recalled that Louis XIV and his army
poured through the Dutch defences like a land flood. With collective
memory of the Reformation informing his views, Burnet, a few years

87
Feversham to Dartmouth, 13 Dec. 1688, encl. Feversham to Orange, Yale
University, Beinecke Library, MS Osborn fb.190, vol. 4, no. L.345.
88
E.g., Brian Strayer and Walter C. Utt, Un Faux frre: le sieur de Tillires et les
rfugis huguenots aux Provinces Unies, 16851688, Bull. SHPF, 150 (2004), 50716
(at 509), which is to be preferred to the brief account of Tellires [sic] in W. A. Speck,
The Orangist Conspiracy against James II, HJ 30 (1987), 45362 (at 4579).

the huguenots and the european wars of religion183

later in the early 1700s, wrote that this was the fifth great crisis, under
which the whole Protestant religion was brought.89
Although Turenne, veteran of Dutch service but by this time a convert to Catholicism, assisted Louis in command in the field, it is notable that numerous Huguenots deserted from the French army during
the invasion. In its aftermath the Dutch were shaken out of their complacency and realised that citizen militias could not protect them from
a large modern army. There was once again a largescale employer
wanting to recruit Huguenots. Five Huguenot infantry regiments
fought against their king during the FrancoDutch War (16728).
Although after the conflict these dedicated French regiments were disbanded, many French officers and men remained in the States service
in nominally Dutch regiments. A good example is JacquesLouis,
comte de Noyelles, who began his military career as an ensign in
William of Oranges lite Blue Guards regiment. In 1674 he was promoted captain in the same regiment and, in 1681, became its colonel.
He eventually rose to the rank of general, becoming a naturalized
Dutch citizen.90
Of course, a new wave of military emigration followed the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes; common religious sympathies ensured
that the refugees found a ready welcome in the Dutch Republic, albeit
employment opportunities in the Dutch army remained limited until
1688the year of the Glorious Revolution, but also the first year of the
Nine Years War. Nevertheless, recent revisionist attempts to play down
the significance of the Huguenot component of the Dutch army in
168588 probably go too far, for, as we have seen, there were already in
1685 Huguenots serving in nominally Dutch regiments, who must be
added to the post-1685 migrs who did find Dutch employment.91
These included three specifically French companies of nobles, raised in
1686; but most Huguenots, again, served in Dutch regiments, including eighty-eight of the officers in Williams elite regiments of Blue, Red,
and Life Guards.92
89
Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnets History of his own Time: From the Restoration of
King Charles II, to the Conclusion of the Treaty of Peace at Utrecht, in the Reign of Queen
Anne, 4 vols. in 6 (London: R.H. Evans, J. Mackinlay, W. Clarke, and R. Priestley, 1809),
I, ii, 449, 433.
90
Stapleton, Forging a Coalition Army, 111, 25961; Burnet, History, I, ii, 450.
91
See Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness and Fall (corr. pb
edn, Oxford, 1998), p. 840; cf. Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 5254.
92
Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 5354, 6365.

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The perception within the Dutch republic was that James II of

England was in league with Louis XIV, who had almost conquered the
United Provinces in 1672 and whose latest war was threatening the
republics prosperity. Thus, Williams invasion of 1688 was regarded in
the republic as being directed as much against the Sun King as the hapless James Stuart. This made the Huguenots particularly appropriate to
use in the powerful invasion army, which was made up of 15,269 of the
best troops of the staatse leger (including the Blue Guards and Horse
and Life Guards).93 The number of Huguenots who took part in the
invasion is impossible to calculate because we do not know how many
were in regular Dutch regiments, though certainly the armys generals
of horse and artillery and its chief of engineers, three of William of
Oranges personal aides-de-camp, and fifty-four officers in the Blue
Guards were French. But in addition to the troops in the regular regiments of the staatse leger there were some 5,000 English, Scottish and
Huguenot volunteers (so that the invasion army had an actual total
strength of about 21,000 men); of these at least 800 were Huguenots.94
The Huguenot contribution to William IIIs conquest of England
was the culmination of twelve decades of military service to the Dutch.
Thereafter, however, the Huguenot military experience was no longer
centred on the Netherlands and was to diversify considerably.
VIII
This survey hopefully conveys a sense of the long Huguenot heritage of
military experience before the diaspora of final years of the seventeenth century. This heritage is important, because the identification of
Huguenot soldiers with foreign armies had led to the creation of a
transnational, confessional, military identity that to some extent transcended French identity. This must not be exaggerated, as many of the
elite, in particular, looked back to France for personal and family
advancement. This led many to convert to Catholicism. Nevertheless,
the extent to which Huguenot military service, well before the late
93
See Israel, Dutch Republic, 84549; and Stapleton, Forging a Coalition Army,
115n., 2089, the source for the figure given above, which must supersede the figure of
14,352 regular Dutch troops given by Israel, Dutch Republic, 849 and Glozier, Huguenot
Soldiers, 105, because Stapleton uses more detailed archival sources for the army.
94
Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 53, 1056; Stapleton, Forging a Coalition Army,
115n., 208.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion185

1680s, was foreign and helped shape the identity of the families
from which recruits were drawn, and of individual soldiers themselves,has not been sufficiently acknowledged or examined. Likewise,
the employment of French Calvinists abroad for a centuryanda
quarter before the Revocation and concomitant mass emigration
constitutes an important and generally overlooked foundation for
the emergence of transnational Huguenot identity in the decades
after 1685.
A number of other issues emerge as important. One is the role of the
nobility, not only as generals, but also as officers and in the rankand
file. This is worth emphasising since modern historiography tends to
portray mercenaries as being drawn, mostly, from the scum of the
earth, albeit sometimes captained by nobles.95
It has already been seen that, at the beginning of the wars of religion,
the Huguenots recruited through aristocratic affinities. A high proportion of noble volunteers (glittering Frenchmen in the words of one
English observer)96 was characteristic of Huguenot units at least until
the midseventeenth century, reflecting wider French practice; as
David Parrott observes, the French armies that fought the Thirty Years
War were recruited through the clienteles and influence of the nobility, especially the provincial aristocracy. They had access to a system of
subcontracting through relatives and lesser noble supporters, who
could themselves carry out the local recruitment of units of soldiers.97
This recruitment via affinities was one of the factors that made the
Huguenots attractive to the Dutch.98 Into the 1680s, kinship and
friendship networks provided the basis for much of the recruiting for
William IIIs Huguenot units.99
Moreover, Huguenot nobles not only recruited through their solidarit connections: they also themselves served in the ranks. Thus, like
English and at least some Scottish, Irish and Italian mercenaries,
French Protestant soldiers were often nobles or their immediate

Cf. discussion in Trim, Fighting Jacobs Wars, 647, 6971.

Carleton to Chamberlain, 11 July 1623, in Jacobean Letters, 305.
97
Parrott, Richelieu, the Grands, and the French Army, p. 143; cf. idem, Richelieus
Army, chs. 3, 5.
98
States General resolution, 15 Aug. 1596, quoted in Ten Raa and de Bas, Het
Staatsche Leger, II, 41.
99
Cf. Carolyn Lougee Chappell, The Pains I Took to Save My/His Family: Escape
Accounts by a Huguenot Mother and Daughter after the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes, FHS 22 (1999), 67.
95
96

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d. j. b. trim

dependants.100 This meant that a high proportion of Huguenot units

were members of the second estate, or noblemen, while even those
who were not had close ties to the men who made up the lite of the
units in which they served.
This remained true right down to the 1690s. As Matthew Glozier
observes: The story of the Huguenot soldiers who fought under
William of Orange in 1688 is essentially that of the Huguenot nobility
in exile.101 After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes there were many
more Huguenot refugees than there were officers commissions in
units in the service of the United Provinces or friendly German states.
Preference in migr Huguenot units was given to officers who had
been holding French commissions immediately before their flight and
in consequence many Huguenots of good birth (even some who had
previous military experience as officers) had to serve in the ranks. As
Harman Murtagh notes, in 1689 some five hundred former officers of
the French army (by definition, nobles, if only minor ones) served in
the ranks of the regiment of horse and three regiments of foot that
were the core of the Huguenot contingent in Ireland; indeed in the
cavalry regiment the officers and all other ranks may have been from
the noblesse.102
This aristocratic influence partly explains the considerable numbers
of Calvinist Frenchmen willing to engage in military service, since war
was both the prerogative and the raison dtre of the noblemanparticularly of those subsets of the nobility, like the country gentry,
among which Calvinism was strong. Then, too, there were always great
nobles willing either to serve abroad or to go into exile and then serve
foreign princes, around whom lesser nobles with their followers could
and did cluster. Moreover, the natural ties of affinity and hierarchy
helped to provide a basis for organisation, not only of specially
recruited units (as with the Huguenots serving the Dutch republic
100
Cf. Trim, Fighting Jacobs Wars, pp. 70, 26086; Dubost, La France italienne,
614, 2424; and Gregory P. Hanlon, The Decline of a Provincial Military Aristocracy,
Past and Present, no. 155 (May 1997), 748.
101
Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 2.
102
Chappell, Escape Accounts 6 n.11; Harman Murtagh, Schomberg, Ruvigny and
the Huguenots in Ireland: William IIIs Irish War, 168991, in Glozier and Onnekink,
War, Religion and Service, 95109; Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 5355, 65. In a review of
Huguenot Soldiers, in Albion 36 (2004), 131, Robin Gwynn, doyen of Huguenot studies, questions Gloziers assertion that most, if not all of the common soldiers in these
regiments came from respectable families; but Murtaghs study confirms Gloziers
characterisation.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion187

from the 1570s onwards), but also among the mass of exiles that fled
France in various waves, most notably after the Revocation in 1685.
The relative speed with which an inchoate agglomerate of refugees was
mobilised and organised into highly capable fighting units in the late
1680s is very strikingthat social structure provided a basis for military structures is an important point to bear in mind.
So too, however, is the fact that, as in 1562, many Huguenots were
deserters from royal forces. No doubt many of the volunteers who
fought for the Dutch republic, Brandenburg, Great Britain and
other states in the 1690s were simply angry migrs with a desire for
vengeance and an apocalyptic world view.103 However, many exiles
were veterans, who could be readily integrated into new military
organisations. In the 1680s and 1690s the proportion of refugees with
military experience was probably lower than in the late sixteenth or
early seventeenth centuries, simply because the Protestant community
had been demilitarised since the 1620s. Nevertheless, the veterans supplied a vital hard core around whom the remainder (who were often
kin or clients in any case) could be moulded more readily than if they
did not exist. This was true, as we saw, in the 1560s and was equally
true in the 1680s. It was surely true in the 120 years intervening. It is a
striking fact that the formation of the Jacobite Irish exiles into an effective corps in French pay in the same period owed something to similar
dynamics.104
In addition, Huguenots were quickly integrated into the army of the
Netherlands, in particular, because of the long tradition of service in
Dutch pay, with three and four generations sometimes fighting for the
United Provinces. As for integration into other armies, tradition is,
again, important here. After all, Huguenots had fought alongside
English, Scottish, German and Swiss soldiers from the 1560s70s all
the way down to the 1680s. There was no reason to feel suspicion of or
alienation from soldiers of different nationalities. Ethnic diversity was
something the Huguenots (and indeed their colleagues of varying
national backgrounds) would have taken for granted.

103
Pierre Jurieu, the great Huguenot theologian of the late seventeenth century,
identified the Revocation as the death of the two witnesses of Rev. 11: 710, and thus
an imminent sign of Christs second coming and the judgment; it also, of course,
implied that France (and French Protestants) would be at the centre of the final events.
104
Cf. Guy Rowlands, An Army in Exile Louis XIV and the Irish Forces of James II
in France, 16911698, Royal Stuart Paper, no. 60 (2001).

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Finally, why did so many Huguenots become soldiers? No doubt

for many exiles soldiering was just a job, useful and necessary in
staving off starvation. But then, for well over a century, French Protes
tants had voluntarily exiled themselves precisely to fight. Probably
profit was a consideration for many, both financial and honorific.
However, it is clear when considering the history of Huguenot soldiering that Huguenot soldiers had a strong preference for serving other
Calvinistsor at least for serving against what they would have
regarded as antiChristian enemies.
Huguenots fought for Catholic powers in the 1570s and 1590s, the
1620s and 1670s, but they did so briefly and in small numbers and, in
any case, against the Turksas bad an enemy of reformed Christendom
as the Papacy, even to many zealous Protestants. Parrott shows that
confessional allegiance helped to determine where French nobles
undertook military service in the early seventeenth century.105 Those
Huguenots who served Charles I did so under the leading of a Cal
vinist prince, Rupert of the Rhine. Although the Netherlands was by
earlymodern standards highly pluralistic, rather than a Calvinist
society, the Dutch Republic came close to being a Calvinist state and
William of Orange relied greatly on the support of the reformed
church. Similarly, although Calvinism lacked widespread popularity in
Brandenburg and Prussia, it was the faith of the Elector and his
Court.106 And in Stuart England, although a Calvinist national church
was missing, there was widespread commitment to helping Huguenot
refugees and a connection with William of Orange. If Calvinist military service was not always confessionally motivated, it was consistently confessionally directed.
There is certainly no doubt that most Huguenot soldiers were seeking more than honourable and profitable employment. Some of the
hundreds of Geneva-based French migrs who left Switzerland to
join William IIIs newly-established Huguenot regiments in England
in 1688 may have done so simply because this service was more likely
to be profitable, but for many of the men in question the key issue was
Parrott, Richelieus Army, 29.
Judith Pollmann, From Freedom of Conscience to Confessional Segregation?
Religious Choice and Toleration in the Dutch Republic, in Richard Bonney and D. J. B.
Trim (eds.), Persecution and Pluralism: Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early
Modern Europe 15501700 (Oxford, Bern, New York, etc: Peter Lang, 2006), 12348;
Bodo Nischan, The Second Reformation in Brandenburg: Aims and Goals, SCJ 14
(1983), 1867.
105
106

the huguenots and the european wars of religion189

that, in Williams service, they expected to fight Catholics and this

religious motivation was of great importance to Huguenot refugees.107
In 1689 a considerable number of officers and men transferred from
units in the Netherlands and Britain to join the attempt by the Vaudois
to regain their Alpine valleys. This was not only an enterprise with
small chance of success; the Huguenot volunteers were paid poorly,
if at all, and faced execution if captured by the French army. Yet a number of officers accepted loss of officers rank, serving in the ranks, even
in this somewhat dubious enterprise. As Charles de la Bonde, sieur
dIberville, Louis XIVs ambassador in Geneva, ruefully wrote to the
royal war minister: You would scarcely believe the esteem in which
all the Calvinists hold [the Vaudois], based on the notion that they
are the earliest repositories of their beliefs. In 1692 and 1693, many
Huguenot veterans transferred from Ireland in order to serve in
the Allied army about to invade the south of France via the duchy
of Savoy, even though they had just been given the opportunity to take
up land grants in Ireland, by then (relatively) pacified.108 In Dauphin,
the Huguenots and their Vaudois allies took the chance to plunder,
as all soldiers did, bringing away greate booty; but they targeted
Catholic sacred places and burnt severall Churches.109 The Nine Years
War took on a more secular character in the 1690s, though recent
revisionist studies suggests confessional factors remained more significant than traditionally granted by scholarship. In the War of the
Spanish Succession, states pursued secular concerns in their policy
but the Protestant interest remained an important factor in generating popular animosity and engendering support. In any case, such
secularising trends as there were, to some extent passed Huguenot
soldiers by.110
107
Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, 18586; Glozier, Huguenot Soldiers, 701, and NB
62: Most Huguenots remained steadfast in their faith and most deserved the implicit
trust of William of Orange in terms of their religious fidelity.
108
Ibverville to Louvois, 22 Nov. 1689, AAE, quoted in Walter Utt, Home to Our
Valleys! (Mountain View, CA & Oshawa, ON: Pacific Press, 1977), v. See Utt & Strayer,
Bellicose Dove, 79, 82; and Raymond Hylton, The Huguenot Settlement at
Portarlington, 16921771, in C. E. J. Caldicott, Hugh Gough and Jean-Paul Pitton
(eds.), The Huguenots and Ireland: Anatomy of an Emigration (Dublin: Glendale Press,
1987), 297315.
109
Anon. newsletter, 11 June 1692, FSL, MS L.c.2100; NB that the typescript transcription [available at http://10.1.5.20/local/newdig/newdig.htm] mistakenly transcribes dauphoney as danghoney.
110
Cf. Andrew C. Thompson, After Westphalia: Remodelling a Religious Foreign
Policy and David Onnekink, The Last War of Religion? The Dutch and the Nine

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The confessional motivation of the Huguenot troops is also evident

inand helps to explaintheir combat effectiveness. The Duke of
Schomberg, William IIIs commander in Ireland, declared that the
three Huguenot foot regiments with him on the Irish campaign were
worth twice the number of any others in his multinational army.111
The duke, a Huguenot by adoption,112 was of course biased, but the
fighting prowess of the Huguenots was widely acknowledged. To some
extent, it reflected their social origins: members of the nobility were
brought up to follow a code that privileged, indeed glorified, skill at
arms, personal courage, and military prowess more generally.113 Their
clients and kin from the third estate may have been more prosaic about
martial glory but had a close identification with their aristocratic fellow rank-and-file. Huguenot units thus had unit cohesion and this
helped lend durability and reliability.
However, a substantial element in the Huguenots combat effectiveness, since the early days of the guerres de religion, had been Calvinist
confessional fervour, which had always been an important part of
Huguenot soldiering. Calvinists across Europe were known for singing
psalms, throughout the second half of the sixteenth century and first
half of the seventeenth century.114 For Calvinists in France, however,
psalm-singing was not only a form of devotional; it was a also means
of bracing themselves for and sustaining themselves in the heat of battle. Psalm 68 became known among French Protestants as the battle
hymn (psaume des batailles) because it was a favourite before going

Years War, in Onnekink (ed.), War and Religion after Westphalia, 16481713 (Farnham
& Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 4767, 6988; Jeremy Black, Introduction to idem
(ed.), The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987),
56; Laurence Huey Boles, Jr, The Huguenots, the Protestant Interest, and the War of the
Spanish Succession, 17021714, American University Studies, series IX (History), 181
(New York, Bern, Frankfurt am Main, etc: Peter Lang, 1997).
111
CSPD, 168990, 401.
112
Vigne, Preface to Britains Huguenot War Leaders, v; cf. Matthew Glozier,
Marshal Schomberg (16151690), the Ablest Soldier of His Age: International Soldiering
and the Formation of State Armies in Seventeenth-century Europe (Brighton: Sussex
Academic Press, 2005).
113
E.g. see Trim, Edict of Nantes, 902 (and sources cited there); Glozier, Huguenot
Soldiers, 57.
114
W. Stanford Reid, The Battle Hymns of the Lord: Calvinist Psalmody of the
Sixteenth Century, in Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies 2 (1971), 3654; Alec
Ryrie, The Psalms and Confrontation in English and Scottish Protestantism, Archiv
fr Reformationsgeschichte 101 (2010), 12930.

the huguenots and the european wars of religion191

into action.115 But whichever psalms were sung, the passion imparted
by the process of worship stood the Huguenots in good stead once in
combat. At the Battle of Coutras (1587), just before Henri IVs cavalry
charged, a participant later recalledsharing a personal memory he
treasuredthat the men made communal prayer and some sang from
Psalm 118. They were heard in the opposing compagnies dordonnance
and many Catholic nobles cried out loud enough to be heard, They
tremble the cowards, they confess themselves. But as a Catholic veteran quickly cautioned his fellows: When the Huguenots make these
sounds, they are ready to charge hard. The hard charging of the aristocratic Calvinist cavalry, caught up in religious fervour, swept the much
larger Catholic army to destruction.116
The same confessionally generated fighting qualities were still evident a century later, but to the general Calvinist zeal that seems always
to have been present among Huguenot soldiers was now added a new
factor: collective personal and group memory of the humiliations and
torments heaped upon Huguenots by the French army, against which
they regularly fought. At the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, when units of
the French army were serving under James IIs command, the Huguenot
regiments were rallied at a critical stage in the battle by the cry:
Forward, my friends, gather your courage and your resentment; there
are your persecutors.117 Courage is an inner quality but resentment
entails remembrance. When Nicolas Catinat defeated the Allies under
the Duke of Savoy at the battle of Marsiglia in 1693 the Allied army was
routed, but its Huguenot regiments refused to retreat and were almost
wiped out.118 A substantial part of the reason why the Huguenots
fought to the bitter end is surely that they were in combat with the very
instrument of their persecution and, as the incident at the Boyne suggests, their memories of oppression were still fresh.

115
Thierry, Lhomme de guerre, 146. Psalm 68 was also popular as a battle hymn
among the Huguenots close allies and confrres, the Vaudois (who up to the 17th cent.
lived in southern France as well as in what today is northern Italy): e.g., cf. Giorgio
Tourn, The Waldensians: The First 800 Years, trans. Camillo P. Merlino, ed. Charles W.
Arbuthnot (Turin: Claudiana, 1980), 14849.
116
Aubign, LHistoire universelle, III, 53; cf. Mattingly, Defeat of the Spanish
Armada, 13945.
117
Quoted by Murtagh, Schomberg, Ruvigny and the Huguenots in Ireland, 103.
118
Cf. Trim, Huguenot Soldiering, 30.

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d. j. b. trim

Thus, French Calvinists could be fashioned quickly into very effective members of both Huguenot and foreign armies thanks to several
factors. These included social structure and confessional zeal, but
crucially also a long heritage of service in foreign Protestant armies,
and this service history and the history of persecution in France featured strongly in both individual memories and collective memory.
When French Protestant refugees joined the armies of BrandenburgPrussia, Britain, the Dutch republic, Geneva, and the Vaudois, they
were following a wellworn pattern, the fruit of history and memory.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Models of an Imagined Community: Huguenot

Discourse on Identity and Foreign Policy
David Onnekink
Introduction
Now we groan under hard Bondage, as the People of God did heretofore in Egypt; but God will deliver us out of it with a strong Hand and
stretched out Arm. Now we are terrified with the Power of our Enemies;
But since tis against God they wage War [] Hell fight for us himself.1 This statement was delivered in a sermon by Claude Brousson,
the remarkable Huguenot pastor and subject of a renowned study by
Walter Utt and Brian Strayer.2 Brousson responded to the persecution
of the Huguenots, and suggested a pacific course of action. He also
suggested an identity model for the Huguenot community by comparing it to the people of Israel in bondage.
The 1680s, 1690s and 1700s constitute a particular painful episode
in the history of French Protestantism. The dragonnades were followed
up by the infamous Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, after which
hundreds of thousands of Huguenots fled their native country and
found refuge in Protestant states, such as England, the Dutch Republic,
the Palatinate and Brandenburg. During these years, the Huguenot
exiles developed a sense of community, purpose and commitment. As
such the Huguenots became a transnational community, but because
of their hope of return, one with national aspirations. Given the situation, there was also tension between the hope of return and the need to
integrate into the societies the Huguenots had found refuge in.
1
Claude Brousson, The support of the faithful in times of persecution, or, a sermon
preachd in the Wilderness to the poor Protestants in France (London, 1699), 82. The
sermon is not dated but was preached before 1695, and translated and republished
immediately after his death. The international readership of the works of these
Huguenots meant they were often translated. In this article, I have made use of the
English version when possible.
2
Utt and Strayer, The Bellicose Dove.

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The 1680s in particular also witnessed an important shift in international affairs. In 1684 a truce was concluded between France and
Austria, which for the moment alleviated tensions between the two
great powers. Around the same time, however, the triangular relationship between the Dutch Republic, France and England started to
become troubled. The accession to the throne of the Catholic James II
in February 1685, and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October
of that year, intensified the sense of crisis in the Protestant world. The
influx of Huguenots into the Dutch Republic significantly boosted
such sentiments. At the same time, rumours of a renewed AngloFrench alliance against the Dutch Republic raised the spectre of a repetition of the 1672 invasion. Although the Glorious Revolution put
such fears to rest, 1689 witnessed the outbreak of a long-expected war
between the Allies and France.
As is well known, many Huguenot soldiers were caught up in the
Nine Years War, followed by the War of the Spanish Succession, in
which many Huguenots fought as soldiers on the Allied side, against
their compatriots. The galvanising effect of the Huguenots on the war
effort was very significant.3 At the same time many Huguenots served
the war with the pen. They wrote tracts in defence of the war, constructed William III as a Protestant hero, and criticised the regime of
Louis XIV. They were ultimately disappointed.4
In most literature it is assumed that the identification of the
Huguenot exile community with the wars of the Allies was natural.
However, the Huguenots were caught up in several paradoxes. Firstly,
the creation of a transnational community, affiliated with the Protestant
International,5 rested uneasily with the national aspirations of the
Huguenots. The geographical or spatial identity of the Huguenots
therefore became a concern. Secondly, there was a tension between the
need for constructing an exile community whilst at the same time
maintaining a desire for return. The war effort necessitated demonisation of Louis XIVs regime, but hope for return problematised such an
attitude. Thirdly, as suppressed citizens of France, the Huguenots
might feel justified to stage a revolt against the King, but as Christians
Matthew Glozier and David Onnekink (eds), War, Religion and Service: Huguenot
Soldiering, 16851713 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); cf. chapter 6, above.
4
Utt and Strayer, The Bellicose Dove.
5
Robin Gwynn, The Huguenots in Britain, the Protestant International and the
Defeat of Louis XIV, in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers.
3

models of an imagined community 195

and citizens of the Kingdom of God, their duty was to endure suppression rather than to take up arms. In sum, the Huguenot exiles needed
to rethink their identity in a spatial, temporal and ethical sense.
These three dimensions of national identity (spatial, temporal and
ethical) have been discussed by poststructuralist scholars of international relations, such as Lene Hansen, who argues that identity is
intertwined with the conduct of foreign policy. According to her the
connection of these three dimensions of national identity and
views on foreign policy is a discursive one. There is a constitutive relationship between representations of identity and foreign policy []
identities are simultaneously constituted and reproduced through formulations of foreign policy.6 Indeed it would be impossible to distinguish policy and identity, for identities are produced, and reproduced,
through foreign policy discourse.7
It is the purpose of this article to investigate how Huguenot exiles
imagined their own identity,8 and what the consequences were for
their attitude towards the Grand Alliance and France. Although the
exiled Huguenots obviously did not conduct any foreign policy as
such, they did extensively comment on the foreign policy that the
Dutch and British conducted vis--vis France. This article will propose
four different models of Huguenot identity, which will be explained
later on. Each model is characterised by the three dimensions as
described above. These views on foreign policy were interacting with
the self-perception of the Huguenot exiles, but also with perceptions of
the kingdom of France. The Huguenots constructed their own identity
vis--vis an image of Catholic France and her king.
In order to uncover these models, the article is based on a select
number of Huguenot writings (histories, sermons, published letters
and political pamphlets) by a small circle of distinguished Huguenot
authors: Pierre Jurieu, Abel Boyer, Michel Le Vassor and Guillaume de
Lamberty.9 This selection is based on the fact that most of these
authorswere connected to the court of William III, which strengthens

6
Lene Hansen, Security as Practice. Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War
(Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), xvi.
7
Hansen, Security, 26.
8
The term imagined community is of course inspired by Benedict Andersonss
celebrated Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
(London, 1983).
9
De Lamberty was not a Huguenot, though. See my explanation on p. 197.

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david onnekink

the presupposition that they considered themselves part of a community and felt associated with the wars of the Grand Alliance. At the
same time, their different backgrounds and ideas account for varieties
of opinions within the community. It is by no means certain that they
were representative for the whole Huguenot community, nor that their
network was coherent. The selection can, however, serve as a practical
case study and uncover discursive patterns.
The Huguenot network
Before focusing on the discursive community, let us briefly discuss the
Huguenots in question, a small group of Huguenot authors that were
connected through their affiliation with William III. It is interesting to
see how a number of these Huguenots, who employed themselves by
using a pen, gravitated towards William III, with whom they often
associated their cause. In particular, the Earl of Portland played an
important role in what could be described as a network. Portland had
a history of hospitality to exiled Huguenots.10 These Huguenots can be
divided into several spheres. There were parliamentary agents, such as
Ren Saunire de LHermitage,11 a French refugee who moved to
London in 1687, and who as from 1692 became an official agent of the
States General in London, and supplied Grand Pensionary Anthonie
Heinsius with many details on parliamentary affairs.12 Saunire was a
French refugee who moved in the circle of Charles de Saint-vremond.13
Saunire was tutor of the Earl of Portlands children.14 He was
acquainted with Jean de Robthon, who was also known to Portland
via Dijkveld, who met Robthon in 1692 and was well pleased with
him after his published pamphlet to induce Parliament to support the
continental war.15 Later Robthon would become agent for the Court
10
David Onnekink, The Anglo-Dutch Favourite. The Career of Hans Willem
Bentinck, 1st Earl of Portland (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), 124.
11
Linda and Marsha Frey, The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession: An
Historical and Critical Dictionary (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press 1995), 400.
12
His dispatches are in BL, Add. MS 17677.
13
D.C.A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France in the Reign of Louis XIV (s.l.,
1866), 301.
14
According to the Anthonie Heinsius index/database compiled by A.J. Veenendaal:
http://www.inghist.nl/Onderzoek/Projecten/BrievenAnthonieHeinsius1702-1720/
Index.
15
Dijkveld to Portland 26 Oct. 1692, Correspondentie van Willem III en van Hans
Willem Bentinck, eersten graaf van Portland, ed. N. Japikse, RGP Kleine Reeks 23, 24,
26, 27, 28, 5 vols (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 19271937), vol. 28 (1937), 302.

models of an imagined community 197

of Hanover, in which capacity he continued to correspond with

Portland. There were also history writers; Michel le Vassor and Paul
Rapin de Thoyras, had acted as tutors to the Earl of Portlands son,
Lord Woodstock. Michel le Vassor was a priest who had initially
defended Catholicism by the pen. His De la Vritable Religion was published in 1689, but in 1695 he was converted to Protestantism. In 1700
he published a critical history of Louis XIII, which he dedicated to
Woodstock;16 it caused a diplomatic row, and the French put Portland
under pressure to dismiss Le Vassor from his services.17 Paul Rapin de
Thoyras fled France in 1686, but found the climate in England dissatisfactory. He went to the Dutch Republic where he joined a French regiment of volunteers in Utrecht. In 1688 he joined William in his
expedition to England, and fought at the Battle of the Boyne. In 1693,
via the mediation of Belcastel and Galway, he became tutor of Lord
Woodstock, in which capacity he travelled from England to Holland
back quite frequently. In 1698 he was with Portland in Paris, and in
1701 he joined Lord Woodstock on his Grand Tour through Europe.18
He was the author of the History of England. Guillaume de Lamberty
(c. 16601742), probably of Swiss rather than Huguenot descent, was
in London in 1689 and travelled from there with Dijkveld to the United
Provinces.19 Between 1698 and 1700 he was secretary for the Earl of
Portland. He was the author of Memoires pour servir lhistoire du
XVIII sicle, a very detailed account of developments in international
politics after 1698. Lastly, Abel Boyer, although not specifically connected to Portland because of his service to Princess Anne and governorship to the Duke of Gloucester, was a prolific author. A last sphere
was that of propagandists, such as Pierre du Moulin and, most notably,
Pierre Jurieu. The last, incidentally, also acted as a spy for William,
depending on his network of agents in France.20
M. le Vassor, History of the Reign of Louis XIII etc. (3 vols, London, 17001702).
28 December 1699, 4 January 1700, N. Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State
Affairs from September 1678 to April 1714 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1857),
vol. IV. 598, 600.
18
D. Onnekink, Het fortuin van Henry Bentinck (16821726): de grillige carrire
van een Engels-Nederlands edelman, Virtus (2004), 5472.
19
According to Henry Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of
William III (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1977), 20, Lamberty was
in England in 1689, and returned to the continent with Williams adviser Lord
Dijkveld.
20
See his correspondence in PRO, SP 84/220; also e.g. Nottingham University
Library, MS PwA 2716. For evidence of Jurieus support for William III, see F.R.J.
Knetsch, Pierre Jurieu: Theologian and Politician of the Dispersion Acta Historiae
16
17

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david onnekink

The personal connection between most of these authors may have

fostered a sense of community. In this context the concept of a
Protestant International has been coined, the idea that there was a
Protestant international solidarity mainly among exiled Huguenots, of
what John Bosher described as a cosmopolitan diaspora.21 And yet the
specific self-construction of the exiled community was not straightforward. It could be interpreted in a political sense, as an exiled community at odds with their monarch. Robin Gwynn, for instance, speaks of
he Huguenots in Britain and their involvement in the defeat of Louis
XIV.22 Matthew Glozier has emphasised the military dimension of this
Protestant International, whereas Bosher focused on the role of merchants.23 Neither of these interpretations is exclusive of others, but they
do seem to focus primarily on political, military and commercial
aspects, whereas in fact Huguenots often depicted themselves also as a
purely religious community. In the remainder of this article I would
like to focus on four different religious models of identity and their
consequences for foreign policy views: the wars of religion, Hebrew,
pastoral and apocalyptic models. Although they are presented here as
pure models, it should be noted that narratives often integrated, and
arguably even mixed up.
The wars of religion model
For many Huguenot authors, the wars against Louis XIV were paradigmatic for their interpretation of recent events. The framework of the
European coalition wars was typically employed by historians of contemporary events, in which 1688 figured as the starting point, the year
Neerlandica 5 (1971) 213242, 228. Cf. G. Das, Pierre Jurieu als middelpunt van een
spionnage-dienst, Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis 41 (1926), 372382.
21
I.e. J. F. Bosher, Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the
Seventeenth Century, WMQ, 3rd series, 52 (1995), 77102, 78. For a critique of
the concept, see L. H. Boles, The Huguenots, the Protestant Interest, and the War of the
Spanish Succession, 17011714 (New York: Peter Lang, 1997).
22
Gwynn, The Huguenots in Britain, the Protestant International and the Defeat
of Louis XIV.
23
Matthew Glozier, The Huguenot Soldiers of William of Orange and the Glorious
Revolution of 1688. The Lions of Judah. (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2002);
Matthew Glozier, Marshal Schomberg (16151690) The Ablest Soldier of His Age:
International Soldiering and the Formation of State Armies in Seventeenth-Century
Europe (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005); Bosher, Huguenot Merchants and
the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century.

models of an imagined community 199

in which an international alliance against France emerged. The Grand

Alliance consisting of the Dutch Republic, Britain and Austria, easily
gained the support of the exiled Huguenot community. At face value,
the narrative of the struggle against French universal monarchy lacks
an obvious religious dimension, but on closer reading, that dimension
is pervasive. The temporal identity of the Huguenots was constructed
around a history of repression, in which the wars of religion in the late
16th century were paradigmatic.
This is not immediately obvious in the historiography of Abel Boyer.
For him, 1688 is the central event which functions as a prism for international affairs. The history of King William the Third, published immediately after the death of the King, is placed squarely within the
paradigm of the Glorious Revolution: the frontispiece shows an allegorical illustration of William III. But that event did have religious
implications; in the background is a depiction of what appears to be
the landing fleet of 1688, and the motto Religion & Libertas. This
motto is repeated in the text, where he compares Annes ministers
favourably with those of William, for having signalizd their Zeal for
the Protestant Religion, and the Liberties of England.24 The narrative is
clearly framed within the view of resistance against French expansion.
In his dedication, Boyer notes that The sudden Death of that great
Man struck a general Consternation among those who lookd upon
him as the only Support of the Liberties of Europe, against the Growing
Power of France.25
Guillaume Lamberty published his Memoires pour servir lhistoire
du XVIII sicle: contenant les negociations, traitez, resolutions, et autres
documens authentiques concernant les affaires dtat as from 1724.26
Like Boyer, he centres his work around the wars against Louis XIV. It is
a remarkably detailed account of developments in international politics, some of which he must have experienced at close hand. His secretaryship to the Earl of Portland between 1698 and 1700, who was then
involved in the negotiations with France on the Partition Treaties of
Abel Boyer, The history of King William the Third (3 vols, London, 17021703),
frontispiece.
25
Boyer, The history of King William, preface.
26
Guillaume de Lamberty, Memoires pour servir lhistoire du XVIII sicle: contenant les negociations, traitez, resolutions, et autres documens authentiques concernant les
affaires dtat : liez par une narration historique des principaux evenemens dont ils ont
t prcdez ou suivis, & particulirement de ce qui sest pass La Hae (14 vols, The
Hague, 172440). On Lamberty, see Frey, Treaties, 237.
24

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david onnekink

the Spanish Empire, provided him with experience as well as first hand
documentation; indeed, rather than a chronology, the Memoires is
essentially a collection of original documents providing a detailed
account of the events that lead to the great War of the Spanish
Succession. De Lamberty begins his overview in 1698, although the
introduction rather traces the origins of conflict back to 1688 and
the establishment of the Grand Alliance against France. Clearly, the
Memoirs serve to provide a narrative to describe the battle against the
exorbitant power of France.27
At the same time, however, Lamberty weaves an alternative theme
through his history. This becomes clear at the beginning of his work,
where he situates his narrative within a Protestant framework. The
book is dedicated to the Republic of Bern, whom Lamberty praises for
its conduct in the Second Villmergen War of 1712, in which the
Protestant cantons of Bern and Zurich defeated Catholic cantons. The
juxtaposition between the European conflict and the wars of religion
contextualises the war against Louis XIV within the longer history of
the wars of religion in Europe. The works of Lamberty and Boyer thus,
in a subtle way, contextualise the European conflict as part of the wars
of religion which had ravaged Europe, particularly France, ever since
the Reformation. In this manner, recent history is spatially and geographically rooted in both the French wars and the international wars
of religion. This also becomes clear from Michel Le Vassors History of
the Reign of Lewis XIII, which, also adds a more pronounced ethical
dimension to the analysis.28 It was dedicated to Lord Woodstock, the
son of the Earl of Portland, to instruct him about the developments
which Europe has with Amazement beheld for thirty years together.29
Le Vassor, like Boyer and Lamberty, constructs his history within the
paradigm of French expansion, and refers to Woodstocks father
Portland, who (as ambassador to France in 1698 and favourite of King
William)witnessed key events.30 Woodstock should learn from this
history how the Dutch Republic struggled to maintain her freedom
in the face of French as well as Spanish aggression, referring explicitly
to Philip II who was fierce and bloody.31 Le Vassor, who has spoken to
Lamberty, Memoirs, 1.
Le Vassor, History,
29
Le Vassor, History, vol. I, dedication (no pagination).
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid.
27
28

models of an imagined community 201

Gilbert Burnet on occasion, takes the bishops History of His own Time
as an example. He argues that the reading of History, is the most
proper means to form the Mind and Inclinations, but also to confirm
in you the Good Sentiments of Religion, Virtue and Probity.32 In this
way Le Vassor continues the medieval and still popular tradition of the
Frstenspiegel. However, Le Vassor makes it clear from the start that
his study, which includes bloody battles and Protestants in France
oppressed, and in Hungary, in Germany and the United Provinces supported,33 is not simply a political history of Europe, but a confessional
interpretation of those events. Indeed, Le Vassor can pinpoint precisely
where it all went wrong again: the frontispiece shows an illustration of
the assassination of Henry IV in 1610.
As historians, Boyer, Lamberty and Le Vassor endeavour to integrate confessional history in a subtle manner into the political narrative, presumably for to reach a wider audience and appear to be
objective. In pamphlets, the role of religion is much more emphasised
in more persuasive prose. This was so because the pamphlets that will
be analysed addressed much more urgent matters, namely the need to
intervene in France for the sake of the very survival of Protestantism.
Still, pamphleteers wanted to make the argument acceptable for politicians who may not be swayed by religious considerations per se. This
becomes clear in The Lawfulness, Glory and Advantage of giving
Immediate and Effectual Relief to the Protestants in the Cvennes, a
pamphlet written by Abel Boyer in 1703 which was also translated into
Dutch.34 Its purpose was to persuade the Maritime Powers to intervene
on behalf of the Cevennois. In the second year of the War of the Spanish
Succession, a revolt had broken out in the Cvennes in the south of
France organised by the Camisards. Protestantism in that area had a
long and complicated history. The sacred light (according to Boyer)
had been kindled by the Waldensians and Albigensians in the
late Middle Ages, and had survived the croisades.35 Protestantism
had taken root after the Reformation, but severe repression from the
French crown had caused it to mutate in a more ambiguous form of

Ibid.
Le Vassor, History, Preface, 1.
34
Abel Boyer, The Lawfulness, Glory and Advantage of giving Immediate and
Effectual Relief to the Protestants in the Cvennes (London, 1703).
35
Boyer, The Lawfulness, 16. The word crusade, a translation of croisade, only
emerged in 1706.
32
33

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david onnekink

Christianity, with strong emphasis on emotion, prophecy, trances and

Entempore Speeches. However, Boyer takes pains to emphasise that
these are Protestants nonetheless; their peculiarities must be understood in the light of their isolation and extreme persecution, but those
living in an Over-Philosophical Age should try to appreciate this.36
However, rather than dwelling on theological niceties, Boyer focuses
on much broader themes. The context of this problem is apparently
strategic, rather than religious: The hasty and prodigious Growth of
the French Power has justly alarmd Europe.37 It is the French aspiration
for Universal Monarchy that is central.38 Boyer matches the Universal
Monarchy discourse closely; the French king is guilty of unwarrantable Encroachments upon his Neighbours; his violent Oppression and
Persecution of his own Subjects, and his daring the very Majesty of
Heaven, by the Haughtiness and unbounded Ambition.39
Boyer emphasises the lawfullnes, Glory and Advantage of intervention. As to the lawfulness, Boyer points to the fact that Grotius accepts
the possibility of lawful insurrection. Moreover, according to Boyer,
Let the Cevenois go under what Name soever in other Countries, they
ought not with English Men, and Protestants, to pass for Rebels, since
they act upon the same Principle, by which the late Revolution was
happily accomplished.40 Upon this principle, Boyer calls for transnational allegiance: For the Honest, the Publick-spirited, the True
Protestant, in a Word, the True English Man, heartily wishes for, and
would chearfully contribute towards the Support of the Cevenois. One
could image the phrase True English Man to be an echo of Daniel
Defoes 1701 The True-Born Englishman in which he stressed that
Huguenot immigrants as well qualified as True-Born Englishmen
because of their loyalties and values and religion.41 It is an ingenious
stroke, because Boyer connects the pro-glorious revolution discoursewith transnational Protestant loyalty. As such he constructs a
European Protestantism with blurred confessional boundaries, which
includes Huguenots, Camisards and English Anglicans. This identity
construction is necessary in order to make his case for English intervention. Reminding Protestant Englishmen of the tyrannical regime of
Presumably he meant Ex Tempore. Boyer, The Lawfulness, 1920.
Boyer, The Lawfulness, 4.
38
Ibid.
39
Ibid.
40
Boyer, The Lawfulness, 5, 6.
41
Daniel Defoe, The True-born Englishman. A Satyr (London, 1701).
36
37

models of an imagined community 203

James II, they might be more receptive to the fate of Frenchmen suffering under Louis XIV. Boyer calls upon the traditional role of the
English monarch as defender of European Protestantism and contextualises the current troubles in the historical French Wars of Religion:
during near Thirty Years that the Wars about Religion lasted in France,
She [Queen Elizabeth] did constantly interpose, and supported the
Protestant Party, sometimes with Men, but oftener with Money, so that
she had near half of that Kingdom depending on her.42 Ingeniously as
well, Boyer applies the title of the Kings and Queens of England,
Defender of the Faith, to the justification of foreign intervention for
the sake of assisting our Protestant Brethren in France.43
Still, Boyer takes pains to show that it is not just about religion,
indeed, a great many Roman Catholicks are actually in Arms in
Conjunction with the Cevenois; so a great many more would join with
them to assert their Common Liberties.44 Indeed, he needed to spell
out more secular advantages for England as well. Despite the tremendous efforts of the Duke of Marlborough and Prince Eugene, because
of her superior defence lines France will never be brought to her knees,
as has become clear in the Nine Years War. The advantage of a diversion in the south therefore becomes obvious.45
Similar themes appear in The Sighs of France in Slavery, Breathing
after Liberty, published in 1689, which contains two (presumably fictional) memorials from French agents, in which the juxtaposition of
the regimes of James II and Louis XIV figures prominently.46 Authorship
is unclear, but according to F. Knetsch, it was probably written by
Michel le Vassor, with Jurieu as editor as well as co-author. This is
interesting, for Le Vassor was still a Catholic in 1689, albeit one increasingly critical of his church.47
Perhaps more than the other works discussed, this pamphlet struggles to come to terms with the ethical and temporal identity of France.
The pamphlet speaks of suppression of the French nobility, parlementsand churches under the present regime. The English translation
Boyer, The Lawfulness, 7.
Boyer, The Lawfulness, 10.
44
Boyer, The Lawfulness, 12,
45
Boyer, The Lawfulness, 11.
46
[Michel Le Vassor], The Sighs of France in Slavery, breathing after liberty (London,
1689).
47
F. R. J. Knetsch, Pierre Jurieu, theoloog en politicus der refuge (Kampen: Kok,
1967).
42
43

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is targeted directly at an English audience, the publisher suggesting in

the preface that the account is a representation of what England might
have looked like should James have remained on the throne.48 The tone
is not religious, rather Jurieu and Le Vassor argue that the French,
should, like the English, Dutch and Germans, aspire for the Return of
Liberty, and the Design of shaking off that hideous Yoak that rests
upon their shoulders.49 In this discourse France is not seen as the
enemy or evil per se, rather it suffers from misfortune.
Textual analysis helps to uncover more specifically modes of identity. Jurieus and Le Vassors emphasis on the return of liberty suggests
that demonisation of France is out of the question, indeed the temporal connotations suggest the possibility of shifts in identity. The verbs
to return and to shake off underline the possibility for change; France
is not beyond redemption.50 The temporal construction both looks forward as well as backward. France is inhabited by A free People, and
who have derived the name of Francks or French-men from their
ancient Liberty.51 The restoration of ancient liberties incited native
Frenchmen, both Protestant and Catholic, to initiate change. It is also
the King of France that is capable of change. According to Jurieu and
Le Vassor, the present situation will leave the Dauphin with a Skeleton
of a Kingdom and an imaginary Crown.52 However, the Dauphin, who
is full of good nature [] will much rather choose to Reign as a Father
under the ancient Laws of the Kingdom, than to command as a Tyrant
that sets himself above the Laws.53 Whereas, then, the current court is
evil, it is not beyond redemption, and Jurieu and Le Vassor more or
less dedicate their pamphlet to the Dauphin to show the state of affairs
in all its misery. The rhetorical strategy enables Le Vassor and Jurieu to
flesh out the Infernal Barbarities54 whilst at the same time keeping
options open.
Still, focus on these barbarities unequivocally makes clear the ethical identity of France in the current circumstances. Le Vassor and
Jurieu take pains to show how Catholics as well suffer under the
authority of the present regime, whereas Calvinists are persecuted.
[Le Vassor], Sighs.
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 4.
50
Ibid.
51
[Le Vassor], Sighs,
52
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 5.
53
Ibid.
54
Ibid.
48
49

models of an imagined community 205

Isay nothing of that Persecution it self; the King will quickly see all
he has gaind by this Conduct.55 Indeed, they argue that with the flight
of the Huguenots abroad, commercial enterprise has collapsed.56More
over, The Calvinists have just occasion to complain of these Violences;
but the Gallican Church has still more reason.57 It is argued that the
King has a boundless Empire over the Church.58 For all these reasons,
Huguenots, as French citizens, have the right to intervene. As Michel le
Vassor argued, Huguenots cannot be blamed if they picked up weapons to defend their conscience, because they were driven to Extremity
by the frequent Infractions of the most inviolable Edict that ever was.59
Huguenot authors, then, constructed the political history of Europe
around the coalition wars against Louis XIV, but they did so by associating the wars with the wars of religion. It was a way of connecting the
wars of religion in France with the disastrous events that followed after
1685, but also to logically connect these to the European wars. In analysing these events, the Huguenots constructed their own identity and
its connection with France. The spatial construction of the Huguenots
as Frenchmen therefore tied them to the Kingdom of France. But at
the same time, they were part of the international Protestant community. Protestantism thus becomes a spatial signifier. The ethical construction presented France as suppressor and the Huguenots as
suppressed citizens, which gave them the right to resist. In a temporal
sense, the conflict is presented as rooted in the wars of religion. But as
seen in 1598, France seemed redeemable through secular means. All
this suggested a clear foreign policy: Huguenots should support the
Grand Alliance, which the Allies saw as a struggle against Universal
Monarchy but which the Huguenots argued was also a war of religion,
in which they strove for acceptance of their faith in France. The purpose was to change the regime and return home.
The Hebrew model
Whereas the Wars of Religion model tried to accommodate the War of
the Grand Alliance with the armed struggle of Huguenots in the past
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 10.
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 16.
57
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 10.
58
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 7.
59
Le Vassor, History, 2.
55
56

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and calls for military action, the Hebrew model was more ambiguous.
Next to regarding themselves as suppressed Protestants or French citizens, quite often the Huguenots identified themselves with the Hebrew
people.
The identification was, of course, not unusual among early modern
Calvinists. The Dutch Reformed, for instance, developed an elaborate
second Israel theology.60 In England as well, references to Israel
amongst Puritans were common during the Civil War, as well as during the reign of William III.61 Naturally, for European culture, partly
rooted in biblical history, references to the people of Israel were common, but the political Hebraism, as it is described, was particularly
pervasive in the early modern age.62 It was far more specific in its parallels. Although it concerns the political history of Israel, is was strongly
prophetic in nature; prophetic not so much in the way of foreseeing the
future, but as describing a moral chronological cycle of sin, fall and
redemption of nations. This interpretation of events was based upon
an interpretation of what the German theologian Martin Noth
described as Deuteronomistic literature in the Bible.63 It entailed a theological interpretation of political events mirrored on biblical books
such as Deuteronomy and I and II Kings. Although this type of Hebraism
seems to have been common in early modern Europe, it was most popular among nations that identified themselves as pure and embattled,
just like the Old Israel. Hence Calvinist states such as revolutionary
England and the Dutch Republic embraced Hebraism. So, the association with the people of Israel in the Old Testament was popular and
grounded in sound theology, but for these Huguenot authors it was
otherwise also aptly chosen. In both cases a people were exiled from
their land and brought to another land, in which, however, they were
not real citizens. That, in a way, made both groups transnational communities with national aspirations, complicating the spatial identity of
the Huguenot community considerably.

60
E.g. C. Huisman, Neerlands Isral. Het natiebesef der traditioneel-gereformeerden
in de achttiende eeuw (Dordrecht: Van den Tol, 1983).
61
Tony Claydon, William III and the Godly Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1996).
62
Cf. Gordon Sochet et al. ( eds.), Political Hebraism: Judaic Sources in Early Modern
Political Thought (Jerusalem and New York: Shalem Press, 2008).
63
Cf. Richard Adamiak et al. (eds.), Justice and History in the Old Testament: The
Evolution of Divine Retribution in the Historiographies of the Wilderness Generation
(University of Michigan: John T. Zubal, 1982), 43.

models of an imagined community 207

Huguenots compared themselves in a temporal and spatial sense to

the people of Israel in Egypt or in exile in Babylon, also implying an
ethical identity which was typified by the concepts of exile (a punishment for sin) and slavery (the result of evil oppression). Like the people of Israel, the Huguenots were exiled from their land, and suffering
as slaves. If the Huguenots were slaves, the King of France was pharaoh. Likewise, the Huguenots could see themselves as the Israelites in
exile in Babylon, the empire of evil that also loomed ominously in the
Book of Revelation. Pharaoh was a tyrant, and so, then, is the King of
France. Indeed, the word tyranny figures frequently in pamphlets,
and was often connected to slavery. The self-identification of the
Huguenot exiled community was inextricably connected to the construction of France as a tyrannical regime.
In this perspective, the King of France, like pharaoh, could be
demonised. But Huguenots were careful to do so. Although Michel Le
Vassors book on Louis XIII reportedly incurred the wrath of Louis
XIV, it tends not to be directly critical of the King, but follows the
traditional modus of accusing his advisers.64 The first volume, for
instance, ends with a positive view on Louis XIII, who feared God,
loved Justice and was willing to do good to his people.65 Despite their
respect for Louis XIII and Henry IV, few Huguenots had qualms
about presenting Louis XIV as a tyrant. The frequent references to
tyranny and despotism construct France in the present condition
as decidedly unchristian. The biblical association with tyranny in
conjunction with slavery was presumably interpreted as a link to the
people of Israel and pharaoh. It was, in connection with Calvinist
resistance theory, often associated with oppressive leaders who suppressed Protestantism.
But the phrases tyranny and Despotick power66 go further in
that they, like pharaoh, refer to rulers that are not merely unchristian,
but outside the context of Christendom altogether. Indeed, Le Vassor
and Jurieu contrast the rule of the French monarch unfavourably with
that of other Christian princes, albeit Leopold of Austria or Charles II
of Spain Catholics.67 The French, Jurieu and Le Vassor suggest,

Le Vassor, History, 2.
Le Vassor, History, 623.
66
I.e. [Jurieu and Le Vassor], Sighs, 4.
67
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 4.
64
65

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are treated with a harshness unknown to all people who live under
Christian Princes.68 Rather, the King of France is in the same league as
that other despot, the Ottoman sultan. The authors compare the financial policy of Colbert with that of the Mahometan Princes of Turkey,
Persia, and Mogull who also have made themselves Masters of
Property of all Funds, and the Possession of which they give to whom
they think fitting.69 The Unhappy Tyranny is the Cause that the finest
Countries in the East are become Desarts.70 Just as these Oriental
states, France is changing for the worse. The spatial construction in
which the kingdom of France is presented as essentially oriental and
despotic, like eastern regimes, is clear here. The oriental construction
reverberates with Old Testament narratives on Egypt or Babel. The
kingdom of France had become essentially pagan.
Still, the identification of France with Egypt or Babylon was problematic, since it remained patria for many Huguenots. Religious identity and nationalistic feelings seemed at odds here. In fact, rather than
demonising, Jurieu constructs self and other in a different way. His
patriotism easily takes over when he describes France as the finest
Countrey in Europe, the Noblest part of the World.71 Le Vassor is also
unable to demonise his native country, rather he bemoans the troubles
that have overcome it.72
The Hebrew construction, then, presented the Huguenots as an
exiled people, suffering from a tyrant but waiting for the return to their
native country. But the model was ambiguous. Whereas, of course, the
people of Israel were dependent upon Divine intervention rather than
reliant upon military strength (in the words of Claude Brousson: the
Battle is not Ours, but Gods.73), the second Israel concept often
allowed for the possibility of armed struggle for the sake of defending
the faith. Moreover, even though French Huguenots considered themselves to be in a desert, it was still a beloved native country rather than
a foreign land.

Ibid., 4.
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 22.
70
Ibid., 22.
71
[Le Vassor], Sighs, 4.
72
If I am not in a Capacity to do my Country Service, I have the Liberty to deplore
its Misfortunes. Le Vassor, History, 5.
73
Brousson, The support of the faithful, 82.
68
69

models of an imagined community 209

The pastoral model

The pastoral, unlike the Hebrew model, was not ambiguous at all. The
war against Louis XIV of the Allies was a war of liberation and one to
end the religious struggle in France. This conflict did not square with
the image of the exiled Huguenot community as part of the body of
Christ.
First, we must see how the Huguenots imagined themselves a persecuted community based on the model of the first Christians in the
Roman Empire. This can be illuminated by focusing on Pierre Jurieus
Pastoral Letters to the Huguenots in France, published as a pamphlet in
1686.74 The subtitle, Directed to the Protestants in France, who groan
under the Babylonian Captivity, suggests a Hebrew model, rather than
a New Testament one a clear example of the fact that these models
were easily mixed up in discourses. But the format of Jurieus letters is
exactly that of the epistle of the apostle Paul. Indeed, the opening
words of the first letter are nearly exactly those of the epistle of Paul to
Titus: the Grace and Peace of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ be
with you all.75 The intertextual connotations would have been immediate for anyone reading this letter. Jurieu frames the Huguenot community as the Christians in the Roman Empire. Evidently the addressees
are to understand that their position is similar to that of the small
Christian community facing pagan Roman oppression. This framing
adds significant weight to Jurieus exhortations to the Huguenots, as
the identification with Paul obviously asserts authority. But it also provides a frame of reference. The epistle to Titus, just like Timothy,
focuses in particular on strengthening the resolve of the church leaders
in the face of adversity and bad theology, which need to be countered.
The importance of this becomes clear from the contents of the letter.
Protestant Church leaders in France are to persevere in the face of
Catholic pressure to convert, to which some have subdued. Hence the
Huguenot community is constructed in a spatial, temporal and ethical

74
Pierre Jurieu, Pastoral Letters. Directed to the Protestants in France, who groan
under the Babylonian Captivity (London, 1688).
75
Jurieu, Pastoral Letters, 3. According to the King James Bible, Titus 1:4 runs:
Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.
The 1599 Geneva Bible: Grace, mercy and peace from God the Father, and from the
Lord Jesus Christ our Saviour.

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way as transnational, rooted in Christian history and suffering from

persecution.
Yet in this model as well, Catholic France is not a binary other. Like
the pagan Roman Empire, Catholic France may yet be converted to the
true religion. According to Jurieu, despite all the superstitions, the
Catholic Church is redeemable.76 Since France has the ability to change,
indeed, Catholicism itself has the ability to change, demonisation discourse is rare, since it would cut off the possibility of any reasonable
adjustments. In a letter supposedly sent to Jurieu by French Protestants
in 1685, before the Revocation, and published as a pamphlet, Jurieu is
mild.77 It reflects on a conference on the reunification of the Huguenots
with the Catholics, and Jurieu insists that the Huguenots should not
give in. At the same time, however, he admits that French church is
one of the purest within the Catholic church, since in other parts many
Romish evils are still around.78 There is no question of demonisation;
obviously, the situation is still such that Jurieu does not want to antagonise the King too much, a fear that after 1685 becomes different. Hence
the tone of the 1686 Pastoral Letters has hardened. The Huguenots, he
wrote, are sighing in the prison of Babel. He speaks of the present
persecution. Huguenots in France must defend themselves against the
deceptions of bishop Bossuet, who seduces them.79 Despite Jurieus
severe criticism there is still no utter demonisation of the French
church or the King, since the situation might still be solved, and the
Catholic church in France shows the potency to redeem herself.
Moreover, nor can Jurieu afford to demonise the Catholics completely.
Bishop Bossuet accused the Protestants as heretics and schismatics,
and Jurieu needs to show that he is not responsible for the schism, nor
completely opposed to Christian reconciliation.80
The pastoral model, then, calls for dialogue, rather than violence.
Of course, very few Christians were pacifists per se. The just war
Jurieu, Pastoral Letters.
Pierre Jurieu, Lettre de quelques protestants pacifiques, au sujet de la renion des
religions, lassemble de MM. du clerg de France, que se doit tenir St Germain-enLaye, le du mois de mai (Paris, 1685). I have made use of the Dutch translation, Brief
van eenige Vreedlievende Protestanten, geschreven aan de Vergaderinge van de
Geestelijkheyt van Vranckrijck, die den [] der maant Mey 1685 tot St. Germain en
Laye sal gehouden werden ter Materie van de Hereeniging der Religien (The Hague,
1685).
78
Jurieu, Brief van eenige Vreedlievende Protestanten, 6.
79
Jurieu, Pastoral Letters, passim.
80
Referred to in Jurieu, Brief van eenige Vreedlievende Protestanten, 1213.
76
77

models of an imagined community 211

t heoryallowed for armed struggle for a just cause, but only in the context of secular concerns. In their capacity as Christians, the Huguenots
should rather suffer persecution, as the New Testament Christians did.
Hence, within this pastoral model, armed struggle within the context
of the Grand Alliance was unlikely. Just as the Christians survived the
Roman Empire by having faith and perseverance, rather than stage a
revolt against the Emperor, the Huguenots were to wait, perhaps even
die, and be rewarded with eternal life.
The apocalyptic model
However, the New Testament also yielded another conceptual model.
In his famous prophetic work, The Accomplishment of the Scripture
Prophecies, or the Approaching Deliverance of the Church, Pierre Jurieu
seems to suggest that ultimately it is not the wars against Louis XIV
that will bring deliverance, for his information seems to indicate that
the total Reformation of France, shall not be made with bloodshed.81
Jurieu prophesied the approaching End of the Antichristian Empire of
the papacy and of the coming of the Kingdom of Christ.82 A deeper
layer of reality than the raging of worldly kingdoms and peoples was
the rise and fall of the satanic kingdom, which would be brought down
by God himself. This was a development that was practically autonomous, for who could influence the decrees of God? Since the reformation will be achieved without bloodshed, the Huguenots could easily
be relieved of the duty to fight.83 In another context, Willem Frijhoff
described such prophecies as prophecies of hope, which, apart from
their eschatological dimension, served to galvanise the commitment of
an embattled minority community.84 The temporal nature of prophetic
writings thus strengthened the resolve and coherence of the Huguenot
community in exile.
It is in The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies that Jurieu
constructs the Papacy, rather than French tyranny, as the Antichristian
81
Pierre Jurieu, The Accomplishment of the Scripture Prophecies, or the Approaching
Deliverance of the Church etc. (London, 1687), second part, 268.
82
Jurieu, The Acomplishment, 3.
83
Jurieu, The Accomplishment, second part, 268.
84
W. Frijhoff, Prophesies in Society. The panic of June 1734 in idem, Embodied
Belief Ten Essays on Religious Culture in Dutch History (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002).
Frijhoff for example studies several Dutch Catholic prophecies which predict the liberation of the Dutch Republic by Catholic powers.

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david onnekink

Kingdom.85 The juxtaposition of the Antichristian Empire of the

papacy and the [] Kingdom of Christ is absolute.86 That is so because
in his view tyranny alone is not the only or sufficient indicator of the
antichristian realm; it goes hand in hand with idolatry and the great
corruption of manners.87 The three ethical indicators tyranny, idolatry
and corruption are associated with the spatial signifiers Egypt, Babylon
and Sodom.88 The realm of antichrist is everywhere the manifestation
of the vices of these earthly kingdoms are visible. As such, the Greek
Church, for instance, is seen as a manifestation of the realm of antiChrist, for there is Idolatry, there is Babylon; for there they invocate
Saints, and worship Images and Relicks.89 But the Greek Church is not
the antichristian realm. Despite the spatial designator, the antichristian
realm is an abstract connotation, it exists in a spiritual sense. However,
Jurieu still makes an explicit geographical reference, for we may look
for the capital of this Anti-christian Empire in Rome, and find the man
of sin, the head of the Babylonish Empire, in the Pope.90 Thus, if Jurieu
constructs a spatial identity it is mostly associated with the papacy.
Whereas the Gallican church is redeemable, the Roman church is
another matter; according to Le Vassor, she is a cruel and implacable
Enemy.91
Spatial identies were therefore multilayered. Jurieu can argue that
although in France there is Babylon, France is not Babylon itself. There
is no inherent paradox between criticising the French government and
still exhibiting patriotism. Still France figures prominently in Jurieus
eschatology. The end of times is associated with great persecutions.
These have been manifestly present in recent history: in Piedmont,
France, Hungary, Moravia, Poland, Silesia and Transylvania Protestants
have been persecuted as from about the 1650s. Still, it is in France that,
according to Jurieu, the great prophecies will manifested. This will
occur between the years 1685 and 1710 or 1715.92 It will happen in
France, because it is here that currently the great persecution takes
place, which Jurieu argues will be in the geographical centre of the
Jurieu, The Accomplishment, title page.
Jurieu, The Accomplishments, 3.
87
Jurieu, The Accomplishment, 119.
88
Jurieu, The Accomplishment, 120.
89
Jurieu, The Accomplishment, 124.
90
Ibid.
91
Le Vassor, History, 7.
92
Jurieu, The Accomplishment, pt ii, 244.
85
86

models of an imagined community 213

Babylonian Kingdom, which he takes to be France. Several other

details persuade Jurieu that France will be the place where the final
prophecies are fulfilled.93 In this sense, the spatial reference thus gains
significance: the geographical location of France has a particular role
to play in the final showdown. The year 1685 is, of course, decided by
the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.94 And it is the Protestants in
France, rather than the Huguenots in exile, that will play a particular
role as the witnesses of the true faith, as mentioned in Revelation.
However, eventually France will be humbled because of her sins, but
not be ruined, for upon its strong foundations a Protestant kingdom
will emerge, to the benefit of other Protestant states. France will thus
rebel against the kingdom of Antichrist.95
Even though the apocalyptic model therefore does not entirely call
for a passive waiting, it seems far removed from the secular wars
against tyranny and universal monarchy. In this model, the Huguenots
must wait for imminent divine intervention. The Kingdom of France is
part of Babylon, its regime will be destroyed but France itself will be
redeemed.
Conclusion
Huguenot apologists constructed multiple identities of themselves.
The paradoxical nature of their situation complicated their strategy:
should they fight against Louis XIV as French suppressed citizens, or
should they wait for Divine intervention, as Christians? Should they
integrate in their host societies, be ready for imminent return or construct a transnational identity?
In this article, is has been argued that Huguenot authors used discursive models in order to understand their own identity and decide
upon a proper course of action. This identity was constructed vis--vis
the kingdom of France. The paradoxical nature of their situation was
Jurieu, The Accomplishment, pt ii, 245 ff.
Jurieu predicts that after a symbolic 3.5 years or 42 months (see Daniel 7:25) of
the so-called Great Tribulation, a sudden relief will take place. Remarkably, between
the revocation and the coronation of William III (and thus the end of the Babylonian
Kingdom in England) are exactly 3.5 years. Remarkably as well, 1715 is the year of
the death of Louis XIV. Jurieu himself was quick to point out that his predictions were
just the interpretation of an individual, and should not be seen as fully reliable. Jurieu,
The Accomplishment, second part, 2445.
95
Jurieu, The Accomplishment, second part, 265.
93
94

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david onnekink

reflected in the self-constructed identities. Spatially, it is not easy to see

how a transnational group of exiles could foster a sense of community
other than through discourse. Ethically, what would the identity of that
community look like? As we have seen, it wavered between a group
with political aspirations, like for instance the Jacobites, and a group
that contented itself as remaining part of a transnational Christian
church. Temporally, the Huguenots wrestled with the problem of integration versus return, with passive endurance or active involvement.
A disclaimer must be made here, namely that the models discussed
in this article are by no means completely developed nor exhaustively
studied. Nor do they suggest straightfoward courses of action. Nor
indeed can we be sure that the Huguenot authors consciously developed such models at all. Nevertheless, they do make clear that
Huguenots tried to frame their role and identity in various discursive
patterns. We need to make allowances, of course, for the fact that there
were few pure strategic and religious conflict discourses. In practice
different discourses were mixed. Tony Claydon has described this rhetorical strategy as a blunderbuss strategy: arguments did not have to
be coherent to increase their effectiveness.96 The wavering between
multiple identities also had an impact upon the ethical identity of the
Huguenots. If for a political group, the connection with the wars
against Louis XIV was natural, as some historians suggest, for a
Christian community that connection was not at all clear. Jurieu, for
instance, utilised both the pastoral, apocalyptic and the Hebrew model,
whereas at the same time was very active in the actual war against
Louis XIV in propaganda and espionage. Whether Huguenot authors
realised the incoherence of their discourse is unclear. Moreover, further research should enlighten us about discursive strategies. Certain
writings may have attempted to discursively integrate Huguenot aspirations into the grand narrative of the Grand Alliance in order to influence allied strategy, whereas others were clearly of a pastoral nature
and intended to circulate in Huguenot circles only. What we may tentatively conclude, however, is that the Huguenots constructed a highly
complex imagined community, which implied alternatives courses of
action.
96
T. Claydon, Protestantism, Universal Monarchy and Christendom in Williams
War Propaganda, 16891697, in E. Mijers and D. Onnekink (eds.), Redefining William.
The Impact of the King-Stadtholder in International Context (Ashgate: Ashgate, 2007),
133.

models of an imagined community 215

There is, however, another conclusion to be drawn, and that is the

remarkable fact that the Huguenots managed to construct an imagined community at all. The diaspora had led to chaos, it not only
caused a split between French Protestants and exiled Huguenots, it was
also hard amongst the exiles to maintain a sense of community at all.
That they managed to do so across borders, indeed, that a transnational discursive community did come into being at all, is testimony to
the energy and imagination of the authors and illuminating evidence
of the emanating public sphere of later seventeenth century Europe.
Within the context of this volume of essays, it is also testimony to the
extraordinary power of memory as a temporal construction in the
forging of the Huguenot exile community.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Huguenots in British and Hanoverian

external relations in the early
eighteenth century
Andrew C. Thompson
The impact of the revocation of the Edict of Nantes on European history was extraordinary. It prompted a huge population movement
around Frances borders and beyond. Wherever the Huguenots went
they changed fundamentally the societies where initially they sought
refuge and eventually found a home. Huguenot craftsmen and designers transformed their new surroundings and the networks of Huguenot
exiles were able to use connections, familial and otherwise, to further
trade in an increasingly capitalised European market. Beyond culturaland economic change, though, the Huguenot diaspora had other
impacts. News, as well as trade, was able to flow easily across Europe,
thanks to Huguenot connections. Information, of course, had an economic value in its own right, as Jrgen Habermas and others have
argued.1 Yet the transfer of information could also be turned easily
towards more political purposes. Assimilation was not the only option
for first-generation exiles. They continued to hope that the ebb and
flow of European politics might be turned to their advantage in the
specific sense that something might be done to humble Louis XIV and
allow the return of Huguenots to their homeland. As time went by,
and the prospects of this happening began to fade, Huguenot energies
were turned towards a more general aspiration. Huguenot propagandists and leaders found themselves acting as Europes conscience,
arguing the case for religious toleration and calling on Europes protestant princes to defend their co-religionists when they were threatened
with persecution.

1
For the links between news, trade and the growth of capitalist society, see Jrgen
Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere trans. Thomas Burger
(Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).

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andrew c. thompson

To explore all of these themes lies beyond the scope of this chapter.
Yet within its compass it is possible to pursue several interesting lines
of enquiry. Much fruitful work has been done on what might be called
the local dimension to Huguenot studies exploring the impact of
diaspora communities in their new surroundings and, with the aid of
extensive genealogical study, discussing how those communities
evolved and changed over time.2 There is enormous value in such work
and it is an excellent example of the ways in which the concerns of
professional historical practitioners and amateur contributors can
overlap and cross-fertilise in important and stimulating ways. However,
there is also considerable value in seeking to put the Huguenot story
into a broader context of international experience and encounter.
In recent years there has been a strong move away from writing history within a national context and boundaries. Much emphasis has
been placed on how connected the world was, even before the twenty
first century. It is not entirely coincidental that this move has taken
place within a world in which the processes of globalisation are clear
for all to see from the instantaneous contacts made possible by the
rise of global communications technology, through the huge growth in
air travel overcoming borders and broadening perspectives to the
increasingly global nature of problems from financial crises and terrorism to the challenges posed by how to continue to support life on
the planet. While the move towards a more supranational perspective
on historical writing may be as tied to contemporary concerns as other
important historiographical shifts, there is merit to it nevertheless.
Huguenot history, with its inbuilt sense of the global, has much to offer
transnational perspectives. As this chapter will demonstrate, Huguenots
thought about themselves as belonging to a community that could not
be confined within national borders and used this insight to make
claims on behalf of Protestants as a whole.
The court was also an important institution in many European
countries and historians have become increasingly interested in it in
recent years. As this chapter shows, courts offered a variety of opportunities for Huguenots. They were centres of conspicuous cultural consumption and therefore offered opportunities for the employment of
skilled craftsmen and painters.3 Yet court patronage did not stop with
2
The very title of Randolph Vigne and Charles Littleton (eds.), From strangers to
citizens (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2001) underscores this impulse.
3
The essays in Vigne & Littleton, Strangers, part III, serve to open up this theme.

the huguenots in external relations 219

the field of design. Court power might be projected through the

medium of representational culture but it had a hard edge to it as well.
Courts were the arena in which military patronage was discussed and
dispensed and soldiering was another profession which exiled
Huguenots latched on to quickly and successfully.4 While courts were
the spaces in which decisions, such as promotions to regimental colonelcies, were made, they were also the places where the broader strategic direction of foreign policy was formulated. Consequently, for
Huguenots anxious to ensure that their cause remained high on the
foreign political agenda, courts were very much the place to be. Courts
provided manifold opportunities for social, economic and political
advancement.
The study of Huguenot influence at and around court in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth century is therefore of particular
interest. It helps in assessing the success of the broader Huguenot
political programme and it also allows discussion of how identities and
ideas could transcend national borders. While a pan-European survey
would be illuminating, the present chapter instead restricts itself to
consideration of the Huguenot impact on a narrower set of courts
that of London and those of the several duchies that came together to
form the electorate of Hanover. The choice is deliberate. There are several similarities between Huguenot exile communities and the new
Hanoverian monarchs who found themselves on the British thrones
after 1714. Both were interested in the fate of Protestantism within
Europe. Both had perspectives beyond the merely insular. Yet, in some
ways, the ascent of the Hanoverians to the British thrones came too
late for the Huguenots to achieve their objectives.
The chapter begins by discussing the protestant position in Europe
at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes before considering the impact that the influx of Huguenot refugees made to North
German protestant courts.5 It highlights some of the ways in which
Huguenots were involved in the life of the Guelph courts and shows
how Huguenots were at the heart of the complicated dynastic story of

4
For an overview, see David Onnekink and Matthew Glozier (eds.), War, religion
and service: Huguenot soldiering, 16851713 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); cf. chapter 6,
by D. J. B. Trim, above.
5
For a recent studies on the protestant courts other than the ones discussed
here, see Guido Braun and Susanne Lachenicht (eds.), Hugenotten und deutsche
Territorialstaaten (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2007).

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andrew c. thompson

the house that would ultimately obtain the British thrones. It explores
Huguenot efforts to alert British and German political leaders to their
cause and discusses how far Huguenot aims were achieved in the series
of conflict with Louis XIV that dominated the last years of his reign.
The chapter begins by looking at Huguenot encounters largely through
the lens of individuals but then expands to look at broader policy
issues. There are also some final reflections on the ways in which the
Huguenot story was subsumed into larger narratives of displacement
by subsequent generations.
The Huguenot departure from France was one chapter in a broader
European story of confessional strife. While 1685 was a landmark
within the history of Protestantism in France, from the perspective of
many European Protestants it had a depressingly familiar ring about it.
In the aftermath of the Thirty Years War, Protestantism seemed to be
in retreat on several fronts. In central Europe the forces of the catholic
reformation were making their presence felt. Large swathes of territory
were coming back to the tender arms of the mother church. In the
Holy Roman Empire, while open warfare had been brought to an end,
the Westphalian settlement, with its complicated mechanisms for regulating confessional relations, ensured that the venue of confessional
conflict had switched from the battlefield to the courtroom. The nature
of conflict had been transformed but it was still there and, again, the
balance seemed to be shifting in favour of the Catholics. The reasons
for this were several. The Habsburgs, as Holy Roman Emperors, had
been able to reassert their authority and their staunch support for the
Catholic church was of considerable importance. In a world in which
dynastic rulers had to think carefully about how to provide for their
offspring, the church provided a useful source of gainful employment.
This option was, of course, not available to protestant rulers and promotion within the secular Imperial hierarchy was also difficult for
non-Catholics. Consequently, the pull of patronage was increasingly
forcing rulers, as well as ruled, back towards Catholicism. Whereas in
the sixteenth century Protestantism had seemed to offer considerable
secular advantages to rulers and precipitated a series of princely conversions, the direction of traffic had now been reversed.
Yet there are also good grounds for seeing 1685 as a particularly
fateful year for European Protestantism. In February Charles II of
England, Scotland and Ireland had died to be succeeded by his openly
catholic brother, James, duke of York. The efforts that had been made
during the last years of Charless reign in parliament to exclude James

the huguenots in external relations 221

from the line of succession on the grounds of his faith had finally failed.
Days before his death, Charles had been received into the Catholic
church, confirming what many had suspected for some time about his
personal faith. How the Church of England would survive a catholic
supreme governor remained to be seen. Protestant lights were being
extinguished in other parts of Europe as well. In the Palatinate, the
elector (another Charles II, as it happened) died childless in May 1685.
His territories went to his Catholic Pfalz-Neuburg cousins. The Elector
Palatine had been the first major prince within the Empire to convert
to Calvinism in the sixteenth century and his lands had provided material and spiritual support for the protestant cause ever since.
When Louis XIV decided to bring protestant toleration to an end
through the Edict of Fontainebleu in October 1685 it seemed, therefore, to fit into a broader pattern of protestant retreat. The scale of the
exodus that followed was new and shocking but events in France could
be easily assimilated into a larger frame of reference. Several of the
elements that characterised protestant thinking about catholic behaviour were present. There was the association of catholic rulers with
tyranny, which expressed itself in the form of persecution. Blame for
the kings actions was also placed on an unholy cabal of clerics around
him.6 This fell neatly into narratives of dangerous clerics, exercising
undo influence over secular rulers, and reinforced anxieties about the
dangers of priestcraft. In some senses, therefore, the task for refugee
Huguenots should have been relatively straightforward. For those with
eyes to see, it was clear that Protestantism faced a real and present
danger within Europe. Whether this meant that something would be
done about it, however, was an entirely different question.
Huguenot refugees found a safe haven in protestant territories
throughout Europe following the Revocation and their impact was felt
wherever they went. Those territories closest to France, such as the
United Provinces and protestant Swiss cantons like Vaud, were obvious
places to go, but Huguenots also travelled further afield, reaching
Brandenburg in considerable numbers. The physical presence of the
Huguenots in Berlin is readily apparent even now the French church

6
Brian E. Strayer, The Edict of Fontainebleau (1685) and the Huguenots: Whos
to blame?, in Richard Bonney and D. J. B. Trim (eds.), Persecution and Pluralism:
Calvinists and Religious Minorities in Early Modern Europe 15001700 (Oxford, New
York & Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 27394.

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andrew c. thompson

in the Gendarmenmarkt was built between 1701 and 1705 when

Huguenots made up perhaps a quarter of Berlins population. The
Great Elector was keen to increase the population of his territories,
especially in some of the more sparsely populated rural areas, and the
Huguenots offered a ready source of new subjects. Population size
was seen as a proxy for political strength in this period so the Electors
willingness to support immigration was unsurprising. Yet there were
other destinations for Huguenots in north Germany. Some 3500 found
homes in north German protestant states and the Hanseatic towns.7
For present purposes, those who settled in the duchies of Calenburg
and Celle are of most interest.
Calenburg and Celle were part of a uniquely complicated form of
early modern state the Holy Roman Empire. The Empire was a veritable patchwork of territories and jurisdictions in the late seventeenth
century. The Emperor enjoyed some measure of authority over some
three hundred territories.8 The Guelph family had ruled various territories in the north-west of the Empire for some time. The senior branch
of the family were dukes of Brunswick-Wolfenbttel and the cadet
branch held the duchies of Calenburg and Celle, although it was different branches of the family that ruled in each territory. Duke George of
Calenburg had moved his residence to Hanover in 1636 and he left the
duchy to his oldest son Christian Ludwig on his death in 1641.
Christian Ludwigs uncle Frederick died childless in 1648, leaving his
own duchy of Celle to Christian Ludwig. Christian Ludwig promptly
decided that Celle, with its larger geographical area and greater wealth,
was preferable to Calenburg so upgraded his duchy, leaving Calenburg
to his younger brother, Georg Wilhelm.
The Huguenot impact on the dynastic manoeuvrings of the Guelph
family was soon to become apparent.9 One of the cardinal duties of any
early-modern ruler was to ensure that their line was continued successfully into the next generation. Marriages were therefore driven not

7
Andreas Flick, Huguenots in the electorate of Hanover and their British links,
HSP 27 (2000), 335.
8
This number excludes the Imperial knights in south-west Germany whose territory often amounted to little more than a castle and the surrounding village.
9
The following draws on Ragnhild Hatton, George I (London: Thames and Hudson,
1978), ch. 1, Karin Feuerstein-Praer, Sophie von Hannover (Regensburg: Friedrich
Pustet, 2004), 6180 and Maria Kroll, Sophie: electress of Hanover (London: Gollancz,
1973), 5279.

the huguenots in external relations 223

primarily by love but by political necessity. Georg Wilhelm was aware

of these pressures when he arrived at the court of Heidelberg with his
youngest brother, Ernst August, in 1656. The pair were en route to
Venice to indulge in the pleasures of the carnival. In Heidelberg they
met Sophia, twelfth of the thirteen children of Frederick V and
Elizabeth Stuart, the winter king and queen of Bohemia (so called
because Frederick, Elector Palatine, had ruled only for a season in
Prague as elected king before the Habsburgs ejected them by force and
reassumed control of Bohemia). The unmarried Sophia was living at
the court of her eldest brother, to which he had returned following his
restoration in 1648. At 26 she was relatively old to still be unmarried
but familial exile during the Thirty Years War probably explained this.
Georg Wilhelm clearly saw something in the palatine princess and
indicated to her brother a willingness to marry her. Georg Wilhelm
was himself under a certain amount of pressure to marry from his
estates. His eldest brothers conversion to Catholicism had created
worries about the continuation of a line of protestant dukes.
Having contracted in haste, Georg Wilhelm began to repent once he
arrived in Venice. Perhaps he was reminded of the advantages of a
bachelor life-style. Nevertheless, familial honour meant that he could
not simply walk away from the arrangement so a solution had to be
found. Ernst August agreed to step in and fulfil his brothers promise
by marrying Sophia. However, such fraternal largesse came at a price.
Ernst August extracted an agreement from Georg Wilhelm that, if he
did not marry Sophia, then he would not marry at all. Ernst Augusts
reasoning was that such a promise would increase his own chances of
eventually inheriting some of the Brunswick duchies himself (although
there were still a large number of ifs and buts in his calculation).
Nevertheless, Georg Wilhelm was prepared to accept the price and
Ernst August married Sophia in autumn 1658.
How, then, does this rather convoluted story of marital indecision
relate to Huguenot concerns? The answer can be found in the further
dynastic developments of the 1660s. Ernst August and Sophia fulfilled
their dynastic duties quickly and a son, Georg Ludwig, was born in
1660. As yet, he had no territory to inherit but this was soon to change
as well. In 1665, the eldest brother, Christian Ludwig, died without
issue. Georg Wilhelm followed the path set by his brother in 1648 and
decided to upgrade from Calenburg to Celle as well. The next brother,
Johann Friedrich, initially demurred, claiming Celle for his own, but
he eventually accepted Calenburg instead. Ernst August sided with

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andrew c. thompson

Georg Wilhelm in the dispute and was rewarded with the county of
Diepholz for his trouble.
French influence was strong at Johann Friedrichs court in Hanover,
although it was more catholic than protestant because Johann Friedrich
had also converted to Catholicism in 1651. Ernst August and Georg
Wilhelm were close to William of Orange and so wary of the rise of
Louis XIVs power. Yet it was Huguenot, rather than Catholic, influence that was to create problems for Ernst August next. Ernst Augusts
plans for the advancement of his own rapidly growing family relied on
his brother keeping his promise and remaining unmarried. This promise had come under pressure because Georg Wilhelm had taken a fancy
to a young French noblewoman, Elonore dOlbreuse. Born in the
Poitou in January 1639, Elonore was travelling in the entourage of the
Calvinist princess of Tarente when she encountered Georg Wilhelm at
the court in Kassel. While not quite love at first sight, Georg Wilhelm
was sufficiently taken with Elonore to persuade Ernst August to ask
Elonore and her companion, Mademoiselle de la Motte, to join
Sophias suite for the trip that the two brothers and Sophia were planning to Italy for the winter of 166465. This initial effort was rebuffed
as Elonore elected to follow her mistress to The Hague instead.
Undeterred, Georg Wilhelm abandoned his trip south and journeyed
to the United Provinces instead. Sophia was persuaded to invite
Elonore to join her as a lady-in-waiting in Osnabrck and when she
and her husband travelled with Elonore to Celle, Georg Wilhelm
promptly entered into a morganatic marriage with Elonore (the difference in their respective social statuses was too large for anything
else to be considered).
Elonore gave birth to a daughter, Sophia Dorothea, in September
1666. Although the likelihood of Sophia Dorothea, as both illegitimate
and a woman, succeeding to her fathers titles was small, her existence
was worrying to the dynastic plans of Sophia and Ernst August.
These worries were confirmed by Georg Wilhelms subsequent actions.
Elonore was raised to the status of Imperial countess in 1671, partly
because of the strongly anti-French stance that Georg Wilhelm took.
In April 1675 Georg Wilhelm married Elonore formally and ensured
that Sophia Dorothea was retrospectively legitimated. Sophia Dorothea
had now become a potentially valuable bride even at the tender age of
nine and a queue of suitors soon formed. The queue was sufficiently
long to make Ernst August and Sophia realise that the only way in
which they could ensure that their dynastic ambitions were fulfilled

the huguenots in external relations 225

was for their son, Georg Ludwig, to marry his first cousin, Sophia
Dorothea and this ambition was eventually completed in November
1682. Ernst August was able to extract a dowry of 100,000 Taler from
his brother and Sophia Dorothea was also to receive an annual allowance of 4,000 Taler from her father.10 The fate of this marriage was to
have important consequences for the fulfilment of Huguenot political
aims in a variety of ways but before considering these, it is important
to consider the broader impact that the Huguenots had on the court
in Celle.
The Huguenot community in Celle was different from those in many
other places in two particular aspects. The first is that, because of
Elonores presence, it pre-dated the revocation and the second was
that it was firmly rooted in the life of the court. Elonore had surrounded herself with a number of her compatriots and co-religionists.
She used a room in the ducal palace in Celle to hold French services
and this room was also used by the small Huguenot community in the
town.11 A number of those employed at the court were French and
although not all were Huguenot, a majority were. Most of the musicians in the court orchestra were catholic but the company of French
comedic actors was protestant. The longevity of the French community
in Celle meant that a degree of religious indifference emerged that
would have been unthinkable within France, perhaps because in a foreign context the differences between the French and German courtiers
were greater than the religious divide.12
Nevertheless, when the clouds began to darken, Georg Wilhelm was
prepared to step in to help Huguenot refugees. More than a year before
the revocation he issued an edict promising a safe haven in Celle.13
Like other princes, Georg Wilhelm hoped that Huguenot merchants
and craftsmen would provide economic stimulus. The significant
influx of high-ranking Huguenots also served to stimulate courtly life
in Celle. Although Beuleke has suggested that the impression that,
after Prussia, the highest number of Huguenot refugees found new

Hatton, George I, 401.

Andreas Flick, The court at Celleis completely French: Huguenot soldiers in
the duchy of Brunswick-Lneburg, in Onnekink and Glozier (eds.), War, religion and
service, 199.
12
Wilhelm Beuleke, Die Hugenotten in Niedersachsen (Hildesheim: August Lax,
1960), 146; Flick, Court at Celle, 197.
13
Flick, Court at Celle, 202.
10
11

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andrew c. thompson

homes in Celle is not supported by the surviving records,14 the impression is, of itself, revealing. Gregorio Leti, a protestant convert, who left
a detailed picture of life at the Celle court, noted that the best way to
gain acceptance was to appear as a soldier, huntsman or musician and
there is some truth to his claim.15 While some Huguenot officers had
always plied their trade in the service of foreign princes, the number
increased dramatically after 1685. Georg Wilhelm was an anxious as
any other late seventeenth-century German prince to increase the size
of his army because of the implied increase in his power and status that
this would bring and so he was willing to provide employment for a
number of Huguenot officers. The cadet school at Celle provided training for several Huguenots whose families were to serve Georg Wilhelm
and his successors for considerable periods.16 Like the rest of the soldiers in Georg Wilhelms army, they were involved in a series of campaigns in the 1680s and beyond against the Turk on behalf of the
Emperor and then in the Nine Years War and the War of the Spanish
succession.
Huguenot involvement in the military of their adoptive territories
was about more than mere employment. It was also a potential means
of curbing the power of Louis XIV. In this sense, the wars of the Grand
Alliance, begun by William III and continuing to the Peace of Rastatt
in 1714, offered an inviting opportunity to further Huguenot aims.
How successful this would be in practice depended on the ability of
Huguenots to convince their new employers that Huguenot aims were
worth including in general war aims. How, and with what success,
Huguenots in Britain and beyond were able to do this will be discussed
further below but it is necessary first to complete the complicated marital history of Georg Ludwig and Sophia Dorothea.
Sophia Dorotheas marriage to her cousin in 1682 had clearly not
been made in heaven. It was designed to secure specific dynastic and
political aims and neither party thought much about romantic attachment. Sophia Dorothea had to leave her mother and fathers court at
Celle and reside at Hanover instead. She lodged initially in the Altes
Palais opposite the Leine Schlo which had been constructed after the
Beuleke, Hugenotten, 16.
Flick, Court at Celle, 203.
16
Ibid, 204. The most notable example was Jacques dAmproux du Pontpitin. His
regiment had a long and distinguished career in the Hanoverian army, as did many of
his descendents.
14
15

the huguenots in external relations 227

duke of Calenburg moved his residence to Hanover in 1636. The court

in Hanover was dominated by Ernst August and Sophia. Sophia in particular was a stickler for court etiquette. This aspect of her personality
helps to explain her dislike of Sophia Dorotheas mother. Sophia had
always been acutely aware of the hierarchy of social ranks that governed all aspects of courtly society. Both her parents and grandparents
had been monarchs. Her husband aspired to become an Elector of the
Holy Roman Empire immediately below a monarch in the accepted
European order of precedence. Consequently Elonore, despite her
noble birth, was not her equal and Sophia was not above commenting
in her letters on the damage that she felt had been done to the Guelph
bloodline by the introduction of the Huguenot noblewoman her
niece, the duchess of Orlans responded to one such tirade on the subject by agreeing that this was the sort of thing that happened when
mouse droppings had been mixed into the pepper.17 Something of
Sophias dislike of her mother was probably apparent to Sophia
Dorothea. She avoided court society where possible, spending mornings in her apartment either asleep or writing letters and walking with
her own companions in the afternoon.18
Sophia Dorothea saw relatively little of her husband during the first
years of their marriage. Georg Ludwig was frequently away on campaign and he also made several trips to Italy, although his new wife was
able to join him there in 1685. A son, Georg August, had been born in
1683 so, dynastic duties performed, Georg Ludwig felt under no obligation to remain monogamous. In this he followed the accepted practice among elite males of the time; what was less acceptable was for his
wife to adopt the same attitude. Nevertheless, Sophia Dorothea did
and she began an affair with a Swedish noble in Hanoverian service,
Count Phillip Christoph von Knigsmarck. It was difficult to keep
such things secret and Sophia Dorothea was warned about the
inappropriate nature of her conduct. Undeterred, the relationship continued until one night in July 1694, when Knigsmarck, who had
switched to Saxon service, was intercepted on his way to Sophia
Dorotheas apartments in the Leine Schlo and was never seen again.
Elisabeth Charlotte to Sophia, Versailles, 27 Oct. 1710, in Eduard Bodemann
(ed.), Aus den Briefen der Herzogin Elisabeth Charlotte von Orlans an die Kurfrstin
Sophie von Hannover, 2 vols. (Hanover: Hahn, 1891), ii, 258, no. 740.
18
W.H. Wilkins, The love of an uncrowned queen, 2 vols. (London: Hutchinson &
Co., 1900), i, 92.
17

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andrew c. thompson

Divorce proceedings were quickly put in place and by the end of the
year a separation had occurred. The real reasons for the divorce were
left opaque. Instead it was suggested that Sophia Dorothea had been
planning to desert her husband.19 Under an agreement reached
between Ernst August and Georg Wilhelm, Sophia Dorothea was to
spend the rest of her days under close supervision, primarily in the
castle of Ahlden.
Sophia Dorothea was accompanied by a number of Huguenot servants, as well as a reformed minister who acted as her spiritual advisor,
during her confinement in Ahlden. Sophia Dorothea, in common with
other people of her rank and background, spoke French regularly. In
her confinement she also seemed to value the companionship of servants from her mothers country. Some of the German soldiers given the
task of guarding the disgraced princess expressed worries that the
presence of so many French servants increased the chance of intrigues
but to little avail. Indeed, a Huguenot officer, Gabriel de VillarsMalortie, took charge of Ahlden in 1711.20
The acrimonious nature of the split between Sophia Dorothea and
Georg Ludwig also increased suspicion of the Huguenots at the
Hanoverian court. This was not helped by the actions of the English
envoy James Cresset. Cresset had been critical of the process that led to
Sophia Dorotheas confinement and had made some rather impolitic
remarks in a dispatch about her innocence that found their way back
to Hanoverian officials. Efforts were made to get Cresset recalled but
without success. Hanoverian suspicions increased when Cresset married a distant relative of Sophia Dorothea, the Huguenot noblewoman
Louise Marie de la Motte in December 1694. Cresset found himself
drawn further into Huguenot politics. He tried to get his master,
William III, to raise Sophia Dorotheas plight when William met Georg
Wilhelm at Het Loo, in the Dutch republic, in 1696. Further Hanoverian
pressure led to Cresset being temporarily stationed in Hamburg but he
remained active in Lower Saxon politics until 1703.21

19
Georg Schnath, Die Prinzessin in Ahlden: Sophie Dorotheas Gefangenschaft,
16941726, in idem, Ausgewhlte Beitrge zur Landesgeschichte Niedersachsens
(Hildesheim: August Lax, 1968), 169.
20
Schnath, Die Prinzessin in Ahlden, 171, Flick, Huguenots in the Electorate of
Hanover, 3367.
21
Schnath, Die Prinzessin in Ahlden, 2068.

the huguenots in external relations 229

Elonore remained an indefatigable campaigner on her daughters

behalf. Her actions made relations between the courts of Celle and
Calenburg difficult. Georg Ludwig was particularly keen to ensure that
Elonore was unable to exercise too much influence over her grandson, Georg August. Elaborate preparations were made on the occasions when Georg August was allowed to visit his grandmother to
ensure that he was not unduly distracted. These measures could have
knock-on effects. When Georg August visited William III at Het Loo,
his companion and former tutor Phillip Adam von Eltz was given
elaborate instructions about how to deal with the question of Georg
Augusts maternal relations. Von Eltz was supposed to suggest to
William that when Georg Wilhelm died, Elonore had expressed the
desire to return to France and seek Louis XIVs protection. The none
too subtle undertone was that she proposed to abandon her protestant
faith. This particular line would undoubtedly have interested William.
Concerns about Protestantism and succession were looming large on
his political agenda. The death of his sister-in-law Annes eldest son,
the duke of Gloucester, had made ensuring the future of the protestant
monarchy in Britain a top priority for him. William listened attentively
to von Eltzs claims, although he did point out the dangers of throwing
stones in glasshouses two of Georg Ludwigs own brothers had converted to Catholicism. Nevertheless, he made clear that he had told
Elonore to tone down her advocacy. His words must have had some
impact because it was only after his death that Elonore resumed
efforts to raise awareness of her daughters plight in Britain. Even then,
Elonores efforts went largely unrewarded, as Anne, on Cressets
advice, was reluctant to get involved.22
On one level, Elonores problems were purely personal. Yet they
also typify the broader difficulties that Huguenots faced. Williams
reactions are a reminder of one of the important factors that impinged
on the ability of Huguenots to get their message across in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Exiles had to rely on the good
will of those in power to intervene to help them. The domestic situation in Britain that William faced made it hard to secure his attention.
Although the Glorious Revolution of 1688 had made Protestantism
within the British Isles secure in the short term, concerns about the
long-term future remained. A protestant succession, to underwrite the
Ibid, 21011.

22

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andrew c. thompson

provisions put in place by the Bill of Rights, was ultimately secured

with the Act of Settlement in 1701. This placed the succession to the
British thrones after Anne in the hands of Sophia of Hanover and the
heirs of her body being protestant. At a stroke more than fifty closer
blood relations were excluded from the line of succession. From the
Huguenot point of view, the difficulty was that if Protestantism seemed
threatened within the British Isles, then persuading the relevant people
that action needed to be taken to help Protestants outside Britain
became commensurately more difficult.
Another factor within this process was the tension between differing versions of Protestantism and debates about the nature of true religion. On the one hand there were those within Britain who saw the
Church of England as part of a broader European protestant movement and were keen to emphasise the common reformation heritage
of all protestant churches. Such people would see the body of Christ as
an organic unity and, picking up on Pauline teaching, would argue that
an attack on one part was an attack on the whole. Such people were
found at the low church end of Anglicanism or among protestant dissenters (who had a deep vested interest in eschewing the claim that
there was no truth outside Anglicanism). Politically speaking, they
tended to be Whigs. On the other hand there were also those who
thought that the Church of England held a monopoly of truth and
were deeply suspicious about foreign Protestants. They tended to have
a high church perspective and be politically Tory.23 Attitudes towards
Huguenots were consequently filtered through these two perspectives
and questions of assimilation and integration played their part as well.
Individuals who could play a role in bridging gaps and providing
perspectives beyond the purely national were, therefore, important.
One such Huguenot figure who was to provide a vital, but sometimes
obscure, link over a number of years was Jean de Robethon.24 His
career also exemplified the way in which concerns about European
Protestantism were intertwined with politics at the Hanoverian and,
subsequently, British courts. Little is known of Robethons early life.
23
For a discussion of the evolution of these positions, see Tony Claydon, Europe
and the making of England, 16601760 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2007), 23541. Cf. chapters 3 and 5, by Gregory Dodds and Robin Gwynn, above.
24
The following draws heavily on Matthew Kilburn, Robethon, John (d. 1722),
Oxford DNB; online edn, May 2009 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/23821,
accessed 16 Sept 2009]. It also includes material from D.C.A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles
from France, 3rd edn, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: privately printed, 1886), II, 199207.

the huguenots in external relations 231

He was probably born in Authon in Perche. His father was a lawyer in

the parlement of Paris and he was raised as a Calvinist. Following the
revocation, his father and brother decided to convert. Jean, however,
sought his fortune outside of France. He may have travelled to Britain
after 1685 where his uncle, the Huguenot pastor Claude Groteste de la
Mothe had settled, or spent some time in the United Provinces. By
1693 he had become a naturalised British subject. It was also in this
year that he became secretary to Ludwig Justus Sinold von Schtz, the
extraordinary envoy of Georg Wilhelm and Ernst August in London.
Sinold von Schtz was well connected. His father had been chancellor
of Celle and his sister was married to Andreas Gottlieb von Bernstorff,
his fathers successor. Like Cresset, he had also found a bride from
among Elonores French entourage and was married to Anne des
Lesours.25 Having worked for the Georg Wilhelms representative in
London for a few years, Robethon moved on to bigger and better
things. He was secretary to Portland during his embassy to Paris
in 1698 and he became confidential secretary to William III when
Portland retired from public affairs in September 1698. Robethon
remained with William until his death and then returned to the continent. His next employer was Georg Wilhelm of Celle and again
Robethon acted as confidential secretary. Georg Wilhelm died in 1705.
Sophia and Ernst Augusts plans now came to fruition. Celle was joined
to Calenburg and Robethon transferred his service to Georg Ludwig.
He was to remain in Hanoverian service until his death in 1722. He
accompanied Georg Ludwig to London in 1714, after the latter had
succeeded to the British thrones as George I.
Robethon was, in many ways, an ideal advisor. His long and varied
European experience meant that he was well connected at most courts.
He retained contacts with his French relatives, and so had access to
information about what was going on inside France. In the period
after William IIIs death he was able to provide his Guelph masters
with considered commentary on the fluctuations of British domestic
politics. He was also a committed protestant and so was in a good position to push his political masters in a direction likely to benefit
Huguenots and the protestant cause more generally.26 He was an almost
25
Georg Schnath, Geschichte Hannovers im Zeitalter der neunten Kur und der englischen Sukzession, 16741714, 4 vols. (Hildesheim: August Lax, 193882), IV, 53.
26
Andrew C. Thompson, Britain, Hanover and the protestant interest, 16881756
(Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2006), 501, R. Pauli, Jean Robethon und die

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andrew c. thompson

ideal type of the protestant international. Yet even this short summary
of his career shows the levels of interconnectedness, in both people
and ideas, with some of the other themes discussed in this chapter.
It is therefore necessary to focus more directly now on the policy,
as opposed to the personnel, of international relations to assess
Huguenot impact.
The international situation provided Huguenots with a variety of
opportunities. The prevalence of conflict in this period enabled them
to press their claims for a resolution of their grievances. On at least
three occasions, Huguenot exiles planned invasions with Williams
overt aid to recover their lands and restore Protestantism within
France.27 The rest of the chapter, however, focuses not on the late seventeenth but the early eighteenth century. Some work on the impact of
Huguenot propagandistic efforts on the course of international relations exists already.28 The perspective offered here is more positive
about the effectiveness of Huguenot efforts. Both Huguenot campaigns
inside France to unseat Louis XIV and the ways in which these were
justified are explored.
The War of the Spanish Succession was the result of diplomatic failure. It had been clear for some time that an agreement would have to
be reached about the fate of the Iberian Peninsula following the death
of the last Spanish Habsburg, Carlos II. Both Louis XIV and William
III had been keen to avoid armed conflict and efforts had been made to
ensure a peaceful transition of power through a series of Partition treaties. The death of the agreed compromise candidate, a Wittelsbach
prince, before Carlos made matters more complicated. When Carlos
died in 1701, Louis backed the claims of his grandson, Philip, duc
dAnjou, while the Habsburgs decided to support the Archduke
Charles. William, still mindful of containing the power of France,
had little choice but to back his erstwhile Habsburg allies and conflict
Thronfolge des braunschweig-lneburgischen Haueses in England, Nachrichten
von der Kngil. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften und der Georg-Augusts-Universitts
zu Gttingen, 16 (1881), 40937; and idem, Confessionelle Bedenken bei der
Thronbesteigung des Hauses Hannover in England, in idem, Aufstze zur Englischen
Geschichte neue Folge ed. Otto Hartwig (Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1883), 37991.
27
For a short overview of all the invasion attempts in the period, see Matthew
Glozier, Schomberg, Miremont and Huguenot invasions of France, in David Onnekink
(ed.), War and religion after Westphalia, 16481713 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009),
12153.
28
Laurence Huey Boles, Jr, The Huguenots, the protestant interest and the war of the
Spanish succession, 17021714 (New York: Peter Lang, 1997).

the huguenots in external relations 233

commenced. While Spain was to be one of the theatres of operations,

there was also fighting in Italy, America, southern Germany and the
Low Countries.
With conflict taking place across such a variety of locations, the
resources of both France and her opponents were stretched considerably. In the circumstances, it is unsurprising that attempts were made
to take the fight into the very heart of the enemys territoryall the
more because Louis XIV was willing to support both financially and
militarily various invasion plans by the exiled Jacobite court to recover
the British throne. Huguenot discontent within France still seemed to
offer the chance to reverse the tables.
Almost as soon as war broke out, a revolt started in the Cvennes.
The region had been an area of traditional Huguenot strength. Like
other Huguenot strongholds, the inhabitants had been subjected to
dragonnades for some time. Protestantism was effectively forced
underground. The seeming success of the royal campaign also contained, however, the seed of future trouble. Faced with the prospect of
conversion or exile, Huguenot nobles had either decided to conform or
flee. Their financial position allowed them to emigrate, although their
longstanding sense of loyalty to the crown might also pull them in the
opposite direction. Such a choice was not open to those further down
the social scale. With a certain amount of official influence removed,
the Huguenot peasantry became increasingly radicalised. Millenarian
belief grew. In the context of such persecution, it is easy to see why
ideas of the imminence of a second coming might gain purchase in the
course of the 1690s.29
These pressures came to a head in June 1702. Abraham Mazel, one
of an ever-growing band of prophets in the Cvennes, claimed to have
a received a vision that required him to drive out priests, using force
if he had to, in order to prevent them from destroying Gods creation. His immediate target was Franois Langlade, Abb de Chalia.
Langlade enjoyed a considerable local reputation as a tormentor of
Protestants. His house had been used to imprison locals caught trying
to flee to the safety of protestant Geneva. Mazel gathered a group of
malcontents together, attacked and set fire to Langlades house, freeingvarious Protestants in the process. The unfortunate abb jumped

W. Gregory Monahan, Between two thieves: the protestant nobility and the war
of the Camisards, FHS 30 (2007), 542; cf. Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove.
29

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andrew c. thompson

out of an upstairs window, only to be captured and dragged off and

murdered by a vengeful mob.
Following the murder, matters escalated quickly. The royal authorities were anxious that such an assault on their authority should not
go unchallenged. Their efforts were opposed by a guerrilla force of
Huguenots, led by Jean Cavalier and Roland Laporte. The rebels
became known as camisards, probably derived from an Occitan word
for the type of shirts they habitually wore. Using techniques that would
now be described as asymmetric warfare, they waged a bloody campaign of ambushes with the occasional pitched battle against the might
of Louis XIVs army.
Allied commanders finally realised the revolt might have huge
potential for disrupting the French war effort. Yet, it was only once
Cavalier began to enjoy some success that those outside France took it
seriously. Cavaliers early victories proved to be a drain on French
resources, forcing Louis to divert troops from other theatres. Backing
the rebels was not necessarily straightforward, however. The absence of
noble leadership was problematic because of worries that the rebels
wanted to bring about social, as well as religious and political, change.
British agents travelling to region to assess whether it was worth supporting were told that the rebels were perfectly willing to put themselves under the command of the local protestant nobility but
volunteers were not forthcoming.30 The initial surge of revolt had been
headed off by 1704 when the new royal commander, Marshall Villars,
managed to reach an agreement with Jean Cavalier. Laporte was less
convinced and sporadic fighting continued until 1710 but it was
small scale compared with early years of the war. Boles has argued that
allied support for the camisards was largely still-born.31 Some British
efforts were made to support the uprising through the actions of British
naval squadrons in the Mediterranean.32 Miremont decided to use the
opportunity to move a body of Huguenot exiles to Piedmont in the
hope of capitalising on the unrest in France, as well as adding recruits
to his forces from among the refugees.33 Yet there was also a certain
30
Roy L. McCullough, Coercion, conversion and counterinsurgency in Louis XIVs
France (Leiden: Brill, 2007); Glozier, Schomberg, Miremont, 142, 544.
31
Boles, Huguenots, chs. 56.
32
Andrew Wellum-Kent, The role of frigates in Royal Naval operations in the early
eighteenth-century Mediterranean, unpublished BA dissertation (University of
Cambridge, 2008).
33
Glozier, Schomberg, Miremont, 1434.

the huguenots in external relations 235

degree of ambivalence in the response of members of the grand alliance to events in the Cvennes.
Concerns about hierarchy and its defence go some way to explain
this reticence. A related reason was concern about supporting rebellion and what that might mean for the existing political order throughout Europe. Notions of the divine sanction for the powers that be were
still common. Therefore, Huguenots also had to advance arguments
to support the legality of abetting rebellion. Abel Boyer published a
work defending the actions of cvenol Huguenots in 1703.34 In it he
argued that, contrary to the common perception, the camisards were
not, in fact, rebels. Drawing on the authority of no less a personage
than Hugo Grotius, Boyer claimed that subjects are not bound to obey
the Magistrate, when he decrees any thing contrary either to the Law
of Nature or of GOD.35 The thrust of Boyers argument was that intervention was not only permitted but indeed advisable when a prince
had, in effect, declared war on his own subjects through the operationof tyrannical policies. The defence of the innocent offered ample
justification for interference in the internal affairs of another state.
He coupled the philosophical justification with a lengthy historical
description of how what was happening in the Cvennes was based
on the same principles that had inspired the Glorious Revolution and
that support for the Huguenots would fit into a pattern of support
for European Protestantism stretching back to Elizabeths reign.36
Arguments in favour of intervention might strike more of a chord
with us now but the ways in which Boyer had to downplay the novel
aspects of what he was suggesting indicate the rhetorical and practical
difficulties in which he found himself. Forcing Huguenot concerns
onto the agenda of powers pursuing conflicts for a wide variety of
reasons was always going to be difficult, not least when allied commanders like Marlborough had to think about the relative costs and
value of intervening on behalf of the Huguenots.

34
[Abel Boyer], The lawfulness, glory and advantage of giving immediate and effectual relief to the protestants in the Cvennes together with the ways and means to succeed
in such an enterprise, 2nd edn (London: 1703).
35
Ibid, 6. I draw here on my The protestant interest and the history of humanitarian intervention, c.1685c.1756, in Brendan Simms and D. J. B. Trim (eds.),
Humanitarian interventiona history (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2011), 6788.
36
Boyer, Lawfulness, 610.

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andrew c. thompson

Nevertheless, figures like Abel Boyer continued to wage an information war on behalf of the Huguenots in particular and the protestant
cause in general.37 Boyer himself is an apposite representative of this
broader movement.38 He was probably born in upper Languedoc
around 1667 and entered a protestant academy in the hope of the following the familial tradition of becoming a pastor before the revocation. He left France for the United Provinces and spent some time in
the Dutch army before resuming his studies at Franeker University in
Friesland, in the Dutch republic. He travelled to Britain after the
Glorious Revolution with a letter of introduction from Pierre Bayle
to Bishop Gilbert Burnet, a vigorous Protestant Internationalist and
counsellor of William III. Boyers early interventions in the public
sphere were driven by a desire for patronage and to secure his financial position. He dedicated his new French teaching manual to the
duke of Gloucester in the hope of securing the task of instructing the
boy. He published other reference works and acted as a translator of
French literature. His output became more political at the turn of
the century. Boyer was drawn into the world of news and its transmission. He began writing the foreign news for the newly founded Post
Boy in 1705. To perform this task, Boyer needed a network of extensive
contacts to furnish him with information and it is probable that he
drew on letters from Huguenot correspondents in Amsterdam and
beyond. He had become a newsletter writer as well, sending information about goings on in London out to a network of correspondents.
Boyer hoped to become the editor of the official paper The Gazette in
1710 but when this failed he founded his own publication, The political
state of Great Britain, in 1711. This monthly periodical contained news,
including parliamentary reports, and accounts of recently published
books and pamphlets and was read widely. Some of his newsletters
may have even found their way to Hanover after 1714 when the

37
G. C. Gibbs, Some intellectual and political influences of the Huguenot migrs
in the United Provinces, c. 16801730, Bijdragen en mededelingen betreffende de
geschiedenis der Nederlanden 90 (1975), 25587 and idem, Huguenot contributions to
the intellectual life of England, c. 1680c. 1720, with some asides on the process of
assimilation, in J. A. H. Bots and G. H. M. Posthumus Meyjes (eds.), La Rvocation de
ldit de Nantes et les Provinces-Unies 1685 (Amsterdam & Maarssen: APA Holland
University Press, 1986), 181200.
38
For a biographical details, see G. C. Gibbs, Boyer, Abel (1667?1729), Oxford
DNB, online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/3122, accessed
17 Sept 2009].

the huguenots in external relations 237

Hanoverian ministers were keen to keep a close eye on goings on in

London.39
Boyers decision to move into news in the first decade of the eighteenth century is an interesting one. It may have been simply economic.
With an expanding public sphere in the aftermath of the lapsing of the
Licensing Act in 1695 it was now much easier to make a living from
newspapers than when he first arrived in Britain. That said, Boyers
change of direction may also have been influenced, at least in part, by
events in the world around him. He had published, albeit anonymously,
a tract in defence of his Huguenot frres in 1703. The support for the
Camisard rising had not been as great as he might have hoped. Perhaps
the option to report more extensively and regularly on foreign events
provided a means to keep the struggle against Louis XIV and the suffering engendered by the French monarch at the front of the public
mind. The rise of the public sphere created numerous economic opportunities but it was advantageous to those who had a particular political
agenda to push as well. Where force of arms had failed, perhaps the
pen could succeed.
The point about news reporting was that the very selection of which
items to cover and how much attention to devote to them made an
implicit point. Boyers choices in this respect, even after hopes of securing immediate aid for Huguenots had faded, are revealing. For example, during the crisis in the Palatinate triggered by Elector Karl Phillips
decision to take control of all of the Heiliggeistkirche in Heidelberg, The
political state of Great Britain consistently provided extensive coverage
of the crisis and the response of British ministers to it over forty
pages of the June 1720 edition were devoted to an update on the crisis
and it was the opening item in the issue.40
Boyers career encapsulates some of the changes with which
Huguenot propagandists had to deal. While there were some schemes
to invade France after the camisard uprising, Glozier is probably right
to describe them as being increasingly fanciful.41 It has often been
thought that the purchase of the Calvinist international was decreasing in this period an influential collection on the subject stops its
coverage in 1715.42 From the Huguenot perspective, Robin Gwynn has
Thompson, Britain, Hanover, 86.
Ibid, 88. Political State of Great Britain, xix (1720), 60042.
41
Glozier, Schomberg, Miremont, 150.
42
Mena Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism, 15411715 (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1985).
39
40

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andrew c. thompson

linked notions of international protestant solidarity closely to the

struggle against Louis XIV.43 Considered within this context then
it might appear that Huguenot efforts left something to be desired.
As this chapter has shown, for a variety of reasons persuading the
British to support the Camisard revolt was fraught with difficulties.
The occasions on which it could be said, despite efforts to cajole and
persuade, that policy was altered significantly to take account of
Huguenot pressure were small. While Huguenots in Britain had to
compete with the problems of partisan political culture and worries
about the survival of the social hierarchy, in Hanover the situation
was slightly different. Here, the court remained a central focus of
Huguenot activity. Yet, as the situation in Celle showed, being so
closely tied to the fate of a particular court and a particular individual
brought with it dangers as well as rewards. In some ways, the Huguenots
who found refuge at the court of Celle were far from typical. They
enjoyed the protection of a Huguenot princess and the community was
well established, even before the Revocation. Yet the reputation and
position of that community was to become subject to the vagaries of
domestic context in which it found itself. The collapse of Sophia
Dorotheas marriage and Elonores efforts to push her daughters
cause, almost regardless of the political consequences, sent shockwaves
through Hanover and Celle. Suspicion of the Huguenots and all things
French grew. From a public relations perspective, the divorce was little
short of a disaster. It was also an illustration of the more general point
that Huguenot experience and expectation was very susceptible to
changes in the relative positions and power of their new-found patrons.
The refugee existence was frequently an uncertain one.
Yet to focus solely on immediate failures is to miss something
important. As the public sphere expanded, the nature of power and its
presentation was being transformed. Where once it had been sufficient
to convince a few elite individuals to make things happen, a broader
stratum of society was now taking an active interest in the political
process. Here Huguenot involvement in news-gathering and distribution was to prove crucial. The consistent Huguenot emphasis on the
tyrannical nature of Louis XIV had some impact on the way in which
the struggles against him were portrayed in public. The presentation of

43
Robin Gywnn, The Huguenots in Britain, the Protestant International and the
defeat of Louis XIV, in Vigne & Littleton (eds.), Strangers, 41224.

the huguenots in external relations 239

the wars was one of the means used to garner support for them and, as
Tony Claydon and others have argued,44 the religious aspects of the
struggle had tended to be underplayed. More importantly, though,
Huguenot writers made a significant contribution to debates on toleration and its desirability. At the time of the revocation, intolerance was
still intellectually respectable. Arguments could be mustered in its
defence that convinced a good many.45
By the middle of the eighteenth century the intellectual landscape
had shifted. This was not to say that persecution had ended and freedom of conscience reigned supreme far from it. Rather, the growth of
Enlightenment thinking meant that it was the persecutors who now
found it difficult to justify their conduct. Intellectual and philosophical
shifts had helped but so had the steady flow of information about practical instances of persecution. One of the ways in which the story of the
growth of tolerationist thought can be told is to focus on particular
individuals and the reception of specific texts, such as the work of
Baruch Spinoza and John Locke. However, it is also important to
remember that to create the context in which their work could be
received and appreciated, it was necessary for many other authors to
push the message of toleration, even if it arrived with less theoretical
sophistication than could be mustered by professional philosophers.
Journalism and passing on news of the horrors that the Huguenot
community experienced within France helped raise short-term awareness but it also contributed to a greater awareness, in the long term, of
the undesirability of such practices. It reinforced a sense of collective
memory that helped to shift expectations and political values. The
message of the importance of toleration was spread as much by sermons and political pamphlets as it was by intellectual treatises. In this
respect, Huguenot authors and pamphleteers were part of a large, but
generally unacknowledged, republic of letters that was slowly altering
the European intellectual scene.
Local studies of Huguenot experience performed and perform a
vital role in securing identity and perpetuating memory. Yet, as this

Claydon, Europe and the making of England, 15892.

Mark Goldie, The theory of religious intolerance in Restoration England, in Ole
Peter Grell, Jonathan I. Israel and Nicholas Tyacke (eds.), From persecution to toleration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 33168, John Marshall, John Locke, toleration and early enlightenment culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2006), ch. 15.
44
45

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andrew c. thompson

chapter and others in the volume illustrate, there was always an inherent tension between Huguenot assimilation and the broader European
context in which Huguenot identity operated. Huguenots had a significant vested interest in ensuring that Europes protestant powers survived. Consequently, they were willing supporters of efforts to ensure
that the protestant succession was secured in Britain. This was not,
however, an end in itself but a means to something larger. It slowly
became clear that a return to France was unlikely and, perhaps, even
undesirable. Yet, the story did not end there. Huguenot writers, their
views shaped by Huguenot history and collective memory, had helped
to create a political and intellectual world in which the fate that they
and their forebears had suffered had become intellectually disreputable. Practical politicians could no longer ignore this fact.

CHAPTER NINE

Exile, Integration and European Perspectives:

Huguenots in the Pays de Vaud*
Vivienne Larminie
The Pays de Vaud, on the northern and eastern shores of Lake Geneva
and on the east bank of the upper Rhne, might appear to have been
the ideal land of exile for French Protestants.1 It was conveniently
placed for Huguenots fleeing their former strongholds in Languedoc
and Dauphin, yet protected by the Jura and the Alps. French-speaking
yet Reformed, it was politically neutral and relatively free from the
fickle favours of princes, with their unstable dynasties and shifting alliances. The front door-way to the Pays, the independent but vulnerable
republic of Geneva at the western end of the lake, was of course a
familiar destination as the training ground of their ministers; some
families had established a bridgehead there early on through a son
engaged in trade or banking. The back doorways, the mountain passes,
provided well-trodden if hazardous escape routes in times of crisis.
During the exoduses associated with the sixteenth century wars of
religion and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in
1685, many French Calvinists duly took these routes but then travelled rapidly onwards.2
It has been estimated that, in the years around the revocation, about
200,000 of an estimated Reformed population of 850,000 opted to
leave France. Between 1680 and 1700 just over half of this number at

* The early stages of my research in Vaud (19961998), which underpin what follows, were funded with assistance from the British Academy and from the Open
University (where I was then an associate lecturer), for which I am most grateful.
1
The Pays became, with slight boundary adjustments, what is now the canton of
Vaud when it joined the Confederation in 1803.
2
For an overview of the refuge, see: Le Refuge Huguenot en Suisse: Die Hugonotten
in der Schweiz (Lausanne: Muse Historique de lAncien-Evch, 1985). See also:
L. Gacond, Bibliographie des Refugis Huguenots en Suisse aprs la Rvocation,
Revue Suisse dHistoire 36 (1986), 36891.

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vivienne larminie

least 450,000 passed through the territories of the Swiss Confed

eration.3 Protestant Bern, the largest and most powerful canton, bore
the brunt of the traffic, followed by Zurich, its neighbour and rival for
dominance. These city states of the northern plateau straddled the
route to Germany and thence to the Netherlands, and for the vast
majority of French emigrants they represented merely transit camps
along the way. Only 6,000 at most made a permanent home on Swiss
soil, most of them in Vaud, where they settled principally by the lake in
Lausanne, Vevey and Morges, but also up the Rhne valley. The indispensable modern study of the statistics and structures of refuge in
Vaud found that the number of refugees grew rapidly between 1685
and 1688, reaching a peak in 1690 and 1691. Little impact on figures
was made by the so-called Glorieuse Rentre of 1689 which saw the
return by Waldensian refugees in the Pays to their valleys in Piedmont,
and these people (confusingly also termed Vaudois) were in any case
a distinct religious community, Savoyard rather than French. On the
other hand, the end of the war of the League of Augsburg in 1697 saw
notable emigration of Huguenots to Germany and the Netherlands,
but there was a renewed influx following further persecution in 1698,
bringing numbers of refugees again up to about 9,000. More than half
then moved on, but later crises like the revolt in the Cvennes again
replenished the flow somewhat.4
Both economic and political pressures worked to limit severely permanent settlement in Switzerland. Agricultural productivity was barely
sufficient to maintain the existing population and imports carried a
heavy price of strategic dependency; industrial activity was very modest.5 This perhaps should not be exaggerated: even at the time observers might detect defensive special pleading; and as one modern

3
M.J. Ducommun and D. Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant dans le Pays de Vaud
(Fin XVIIedbut XVIIIe s.): Aspects dune migration (Publications de lAssociation
Suisse pour lHistoire du Refuge Huguenot, vol. 1/Bibliothque Historique Vaudoise
[hereafter BHV], vol. 1, Geneva: Droz, 1991), 11, 13.
4
Ducommun and Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant, chap. 2.
5
See e.g. F. de Capitani, Vie et mort de lancien rgime, Nouvelle Histoire de la
Suisse et des Suisses (Lausanne: Payot, 2nd edn. 1986), 42339; R. Braun, Le Declin de
lAncien Rgime en Suisse: un tableau de lhistoire conomique et sociale au 18e sicle
(Paris: Editions de la Maison des sciences de lhomme, 1998); De lOurs la Cocarde:
Ancien Rgime et Rvolution en Pays de Vaud, eds. F. Flouck, P.R. Monbaron,
M. Stubenvoll and D. Tosato-Rigo (Lausanne: Payot, 1998), parts 1 and 2; M. Blanchard,
Sel et diplomatie en Savoie et dans les Cantons suisses aux XVIIe et XVIIIe sicles,
Annales, 15 (1960).

exile, integration and european perspectives243

historian has pointed out, by the turn of the seventeenth century, Bern
was filling its coffers through disengagement from foreign conflict to
the extent of being able to lend to the British and Dutch governments.6
None the less, there was a continuation of the well-established tradition of economic emigration in search of employment as mercenary
soldiers, private tutors or engineers.7 The precarious concord between
the Protestant and Roman Catholic cantons of the Confederation, the
desire of all confederates not to compromise their hard-won neutrality
and independence, and somewhat paradoxically, the engagement of
many Swiss in French regiments, made them vulnerable to the manipulations of King Louis.8 The impetus was thus to shift the problem of
French refugees on to someone else.
Moreover, in the Pays de Vaud peculiar disincentives to the establishment of French expatriates were in play towards the end of the seventeenth century. Originally a possession of the dukes of Savoy, this
territory had been conquered by the Bernese in 1536 and converted to
their own brand of Erastian Protestantism, derived from Huldrich
Zwingli. A Presbyterian system of local classes was organised and controlled from Bern by its councillors, commonly referred to as Leurs
Excellences. There were also colloques, but no general clerical assembly
equivalent to that in Scotland to challenge the secular powers.
Ministerial training at the Acadmie de Lausanne was strictly monitored and calls to parishes were carefully vetted; censorship of press
and pulpit was strict. Theology was Calvinist, but of a narrow, conservative cast, determinedly upheld. An influx of relatively liberallyminded French clergy, perhaps trained at the unorthodox and suspect
Acadmie de Saumur or accustomed to living in some sort with the
6
BL, Add. MS 9,741 (Blaythwayt Papers XXIII), f. 64 (Philibert dHerwart
from Bern, 3/13 Sept. 1693); S. Altorfer, To have or have not: state finance of the
Swiss Republic of Berne in the eighteenth century, (http://www.ehs.org.uk/ehs/
conference2003/assets/Altorfer.doc, accessed 18 Aug. 2009).
7
See e.g. Gente Ferocissima: Mercenariat et Socit en Suisse (XVeXIXe sicle.
Solddienst und Gesellschaft in der Schweiz (15.19. Jahrhundert, ed. N. Furrer,
L. Hubler, M. Stubenvoll and D. Tosato-Rigo (Lausanne and Zurich: Chronos,
1997). Instances of Swiss in Britain are returned by a search of Oxford DNB, online at
www.oxforddnb.com, employing a People search limited by born in Switzerland
between 1500 and 1700.
8
See e.g. V. Larminie, Exile and belonging: Philibert Herwarth, ambassador to
Switzerland and benefactor of the French hospital, HSP 28 (2006), 50923. The classic
work on Franco-Swiss relations in this period is E. Rott, Histoire de la Reprsentation
de la France auprs des Cantons Suisses, de leurs Allis et Confdrs, vols. IX and X
(Bern: Imprimerie A. Benteli, 1926, 1935).

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Catholic enemy, was unwelcome; few incomers were appointed to

ministerial positions.9 Historians like Jules Chavannes in the 1870s
and, in more measured terms, Henri Vuilleumier in the 1920s saw the
new arrivals as a breath of fresh air in a stultifying backwater, but the
reality of their impact seems very much more complex, with much evidence still to be uncovered and sifted.10
It is true that some aspects of the refuge in Vaud were described long
ago in both local and general studies.11 The statistics and the financial
impact of French exile have been studied recently, but relatively little
attention has been given to the personal experiences of the refugees
and in particular to their expressions of belief.12 This is understandable: for the period before about 1720 the archives are thin of personal
material on incomers and natives alike. Correspondence, diaries and
creative compositions are very rare; family collections emanate only
from a few native nobles. There are, however, several volumes of homologued wills for Lausanne, beginning in 1638 but evidently more
9
The classic work on this theme is H. Vuilleumier, Histoire de lEglise Rforme du
Pays de Vaud sous le rgime Bernois (4 vols., Lausanne: ditions La Concorde,
19271933). See also: A. Bonard, La Presse Vaudoise: Esquisse Historique (Lucerne:
Raber & Cie., 1925); J.-P. Perret, Les Imprimeries dYverdon au XVIIe et au XVIIIe
Sicles (BHV 7, Lausanne, 1945).
10
J. Chavannes, Les Rfugis Franais dans le Pays de Vaud et particulirement
Vevey (Lausanne: Georges Bridel, 1874), 910, 689; Vuilleumier, Histoire de lEglise
Rforme, esp. IV, 6, 173, 178. See also: G. Marion, Paroisses et Pasteurs de la Broye
au XVIIIe Sicle: La Classe de Payerne 16751798 (BHV, 101: Lausanne, 1990), esp.
p. 55; V. Larminie, La vie religieuse en Pays de Vaud et le contexte europen, in Flouck
et al., De lOurs la Cocarde, 26180; I. Fiaux, Collaborateurs ou pertabateurs?
Les pasteurs huguenots rfugis dans les paroisses des Classes de Lausanne et Morges
au temps du Refuge (16701715), Revue Historique Vaudoise [herafter RHV],
112 (2004), 2953.
11
E.g. J. Bonzon, La direction des pauvres refugis franais de Nyon, Bull. SHPF,
50 (1901); E. Mottaz, Yverdon et les refugis de la rvocation, RHV (1903), 2825,
31118, 38845, 37986, and (1904), 535, 11925; M. de Chambrier, Solidarit protestante: la direction des pauvres refugis Lausanne, Bull. SHPF 53 (1904), 5462;
J. Cart, Les protestants franais refugis dans le Pays de Vaud et la Bourse Franaise de
Rolle, RHV, 17182, 193205; A. Veyrasset, Etat des refugis au Pays de Vaud aprs la
rvocation, RHV (1926), 2125, 24852, 2814; H. Yersin, Les refugis pour la cause
de religion Rolle, RHV (1937), 23243.
12
E. Burgy, La Bourse Franaise de Rolle 17161986, Mmoire de licence, Facult
des Lettres, (Universit de Genve, 1987); F. Raymond, Les Refugis Huguenots
Lausanne de 1693 1698, Mmoire de licence (Facult des Lettres, Universit de
Lausanne, 1987); B. Baudraz, Refugis et proslytes Bex de 1695 1798, Bulletin
Gnalogique Vaudoise (1997), 22221; A. L. Rodondo, La Bourse Franaise de Vevey
(1687?1790), Mmoire de licence (Facult des Lettres, Universit de Lausanne, 1999);
A. Bachmann and T. Garlet, La Direction Franaise: Composition et Activits (1688
1699). Une Vie Commune Huguenote Lausanne?, unpubl. paper, Universit de
Lausanne, seminaire dhistoire moderne (6 April 2004).

exile, integration and european perspectives245

comprehensive from the 1670s, and more fragmentary testamentary

records for other towns; the habit of giving precise details of the social
status and origins of testators greatly assists the historian.13 A survey of
these will occupy the core of this paper, but first it may be helpful to say
something further about the structure of the refuge.
Switzerland was a country notorious among foreign ambassadors
for the tortuous and procrastinatory nature of its decision-making.14
None the less, on this occasion the Bernese at least laid plans for the
reception of immigrants in good time. An Exultaten Kammer or chambre des refugis emerged in Bern as early as 1683, and by 1686 it had
accrued powers over the whole refugee problem.15 In the Pays itself an
extensive network of hospitals of medieval origin offered bases for the
bourse des franais established by ordinances of Leurs Excellences in
each major town. These simultaneously exhorted Christian charity
towards co-religionists and took measures to avoid swamping by economic migrants.16 An infrastructure for supporting the indigent poor
came into existence fairly rapidly, but the conference of civil rights was
a different story. Towns, which had a pre-existing concern to limit their
bourgeoisies, introduced the inferior status of habitant, conferred on
supplicants who had means of living independently and who could
afford a fee no easy matter with few vacancies in the church and
entrenched privileges complicating initiatives to establish industries
new to the Pays. Other refugees remained mere residents, with no
rights at all. For a favoured few, there were pensions from Bern, or in
exceptional cases, largely confined to Lausanne and Vevey, a fast-track
to the bourgeoisie.17 One such was Philibert Herwarth, Baron von
Hningen, whose family had roots in Provence and Alsace. He had

The wills in this study at held at the Archives Cantonales Vaudoises (hereafter
ACV). Inventories for the city of Lausanne are at the Archives de la Ville de Lausanne
(hereafter AVL). I am most grateful to the staff of both repositiories for the assistance
I have received at regular visits since 1995. Wills from Lausanne are entered in a continuous series of well-preserved volumes starting in the early seventeenth century;
records for other towns are more fragmentary.
14
E.g. see: V. Larminie, The Jacobean diplomatic fraternity and the Protestant
cause: Sir Isaac Wake and the view from Savoy, EHR 121 (2006), 1301.
15
Ducommun and Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant, 63.
16
Ducommun and Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant, 68, 70, 7980.
17
Ducommun and Quadroni, Le Refuge Protestant, 146; M.-J. Ducommun, Aspects
du Refuge Huguenot Grandson, 16801701, Memoire de licence (Universit de
Neuchtel, 1985), 1921; A. Leroy, Passage, acceuil et tablissement des rfugis huguenots Moudon, Bull. SHPF 133 (1987), 22930.
13

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vivienne larminie

served as British ambassador to Geneva and to the Swiss cantons,

had married into the Bernese lite, and had been energetically
involvedin plans to transport refugees in Switzerland to new lives in
Germany and Ireland. When his diplomatic career ended in 1702, his
entry to the bourgeoisie of Vevey was almost instantaneous.18 Few
could command, or be thought to command, such a record and such
connections.
There was thus a hierarchy in the refuge, but there was also solidarity. The bourses des pauvres refugis were sometimes initiated by refugees, and they came to be dominated by them. This is illustrated by the
censuses taken in the 1690s.19 That compiled in Lausanne in 1698 was
overseen and signed by ten directeurs des Franois Refugiez. Their list
of householders, probably incomplete, enumerates 10 ministers and
five clergy widows, 11 gentlemen and gentlewomen, three officers in
the service of the allies against France, 15 bourgeois, three lawyers,
43 merchants, two physicians, four apothecaries, and two students, as
well as many artisans and people living off rentes. Of a total of 1,578
persons, about one sixth were in receipt of financial assistance, 10 were
hospitalized and 23 were pensioners of Bern.20 In a society which set
great store by carefully graded titles of honour, it doubtless helped that
several of the 1698 directeurs (among whom were four pastors and four
elders) were here and elsewhere identified as of noble birth both
laymen like Jaques Deportes and ministers like Jean de Parads. The
latter, whose age was given as 65 and who had arrived from Bas
Languedoc with his wife, was the recipient of a (modest) 72 cus pension from thecity, but an inventory taken in March 1702 after his death
revealed in his possession not only a bible and their marriage settlement but also a substantial cache of jewels gold, silver, pearls and
chrystal.21 The 1702 inventory and homologued will of Directeur
Seigneur Estienne Alberge, previously a merchant in Bziers, display
his substantial wealth, his extensive kinship and patronage network (in
France, Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands), and his complex

Larminie, Exile and belonging, esp. 517.

E. Piguet, Les Dnombrements Gnraux de Rfugis Huguenots au Pays de Vaud
et Berne (2 vols., Lausanne, 1934 and 1942) (also in Bull. SHPF 87 (1938), 187202,
295310, 494551, and 88 (1939), 166205, 33056).
20
Piguet, Les Dnombrements Gnraux, ii. 45119, in Bull. SHPF, 87: 295310,
494551.
21
Bull. SHPF, 87: 296, 536; AVL, D533, ff. 5859v.
18
19

exile, integration and european perspectives247

business dealings with fellow refugees as well as in Geneva and Lyon.

Aside from his two main heirs (his wife in Lausanne and a nephew in
France) and other beneficiaries, five nephews and a niece (all seemingly refugees) received sums totalling 9,000 livres, while nine refugee
ministers (three of them fellow directeurs of 1698) each gained 50
livres.22 The following year his widow, Susanne Arnaud, still deployed
sufficient wealth to name some forty individual or institutional legatees, including residents in hospitals, four ministers, their wives and
servants, female friends and numerous nephews and nieces.23
Meanwhile, in the somewhat smaller town of Vevey relief was channelled through even more exalted hands, being dominated by the connections of Henri Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway, William IIIs
general. Galways uncle Paul Tallemant, sieur de Lussac, arrived there
in 1685 aged 70. Within two years he was called in by the town as its
chief consultant and became treasurer of the bourse. Following his
death in 1696 there was a public funeral for un Seigneur de si grand
merite. Meanwhile Galway himself had won great respect by establishing a chambre des orphelins, initially confided to the management of a
female refugee, Demoiselle Morel, and later to the directors of the
bourse.24
Both natives and refugees contributed to relief, although the attitude
of the former could be cautious. In 1695 Andr de Praromand, citoyen
of Lausanne, left 20 cus blancs to the poor of his own parish and an
equal sum to genuine French refugees living in Lausanne qui seront
reconnus gens de bien et de probit et dune vie exemplaire et sans reproche. They were to be selected by his heir a ou il verra y avoir le plus
sujet de compassion le tout selon la prudence.25 Many testators were
even-handed, dispensing charity to the poor irrespective of their origin. A man like Pierre Vechire, who had fled the Pays de Gex (near
Geneva) and since established himself, as the homologued version of
his will proclaimed, as tres expert commissaire pour leurs Excellences
du Canton de Berne, could appreciate the need to equip as well as to
relieve the indigent. Having earmarked 1,000 florins specifically for

AVL, D533, ff. 6061v; ACV Bg 13bis2, ff. 38v.

ACV, Bg 13bis2, ff. 36v40v.
24
Chavannes, Les Rfugis Franais, 20714, 22333.
25
who are recognized as respectable people of integrity and exemplary lives, above
reproach; from those most in need of compassion, always according to prudence:
ACV, Bg. 13bis/1, ff. 180v183v.
22
23

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vivienne larminie

refugees, he left a further twenty thousand florins to the directeurs des

revenues de tous les pauvres de Lausanne to be employed not just to
feed and clothe them and instruct them in the fear of God, but also to
teach them reading, writing and trades, le tout selon quils en seront
trouvs capables pour pouvoir ensuite gagner honntement leur vie.26
But there was also a tendency to privilege compatriots. In 1713 refugee
Daniel Garcin (almost certainly the same man whose wife Elizabeth
and many other kin had benefited greatly from Alberge/Arnaud
bequests) made his own bequest to poor refugees conditional on the
directors of the chambre giving first preference to his relatives.27
Somewhat more disinterestedly, in 1697 Judith Derafalis set up a trust
to invest 6,000 livres for poor refugees in Geneva and Lausanne, but
decreed that, if Protestantism were to be re-established in her native
Montlimard, all funds were to be diverted there.28
Language and theology ensured that Huguenots (unlike the unorthodox dialect-speaking Piedmontese Waldensians) worshipped with
their hosts; the availability of accommodation dispersed them among
the local population. But for all that, there were respects in which the
immigrant community remained intact. On the whole, well after testators arrival in Lausanne Huguenot wills tended to be witnessed by fellow refugees for example, those of Margueritte Commard, a tailoress
from Dauphin (1710), and of Seigneur Isaac Laval, a silk manufacturer from Languedoc (1712), both recorded in the city in 1698.29
It seems natural enough that most beneficiaries of wills were fellow
refugees relatives, godchildren, former neighbours members of
those extended households depicted in the census, notable for attendant sisters and nieces, and shaped by who would or could escape from
France. However, a notable minority, especially of the wealthier sort,
revealed high-placed local friends. In 1715 Elizabeth Falgout, described
seventeen years earlier as living de son travail et de lintert dun peu
dargent quelle a apport de France, surprisingly left money and a selection of fashionable clothes and luxury items not only to relatives in
Holland and Lyon, and to a wide circle of refugees in Lausanne, but
also to at least five women from the citys leading families.30 Guillaume
ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 139146.
ACV, Bg. 13/3, f. 30v. All to the end that they may be rendered capable of later
making an honest living.
28
ACV, Bg. 13/bis2, ff. 1113v.
29
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 219v220v; Bg 13bis/3, ff. 6868v; Bull. SHPF 87:513.
30
ACV, Bg 13bis/3, ff. 71v73; Bull. SHPF, 87: 30910.
26
27

exile, integration and european perspectives249

Herouard dit Moselles named as an executor in 1691 Monsieur de

Chesaux, the citys bourgmaistre, its chief executive under the Bernese.31
As well as bequests to leading councillor Monsieur de Seignaulx and
his wife, and to leading minister Monsieur Bergier, Joseph Ysnard du
Terrier (a director of the Bourse Franaise as early as January 1688) left
de Chesaux a diamond, a clock, a bible and his books.32 Pierre Vechire,
the commissaire pour leurs Excellences de Berne, was unusual in naming among his many godchildren several of local origin.33
The comfortable, securely-rooted existence evidenced by such wills,
and reinforced by some inventories, contrasts sharply with the insecurity or uncertainty displayed by others. As it might be expected, death
caught some in transit. Michel du Mont appeared to be lodging temporarily in an inn when in 1688 he named his sister as his heir, not knowing whether she was in Switzerland or still in France.34 In February
1686 Marie le Cous, a widow from Vivaret, told one woman who
attended her deathbed that she had left all her money in France, and
another woman that she wanted to go and die near her nephew who
was a minister in Germany; loving him like a son after his great assistance to her in time of need, she wanted to give him all her goods.
Since her nuncupative will was registered in Lausanne it is evident that
her first desire, at least, remained unfulfilled.35
This was a true diaspora, in which many had relatives scattered
abroad, but while this situation might induce restlessness it was, as
indicated earlier, an experience shared to an extent by the refugees
hosts. Locals could match Daniel Lanusse or Susanne Arnaud in having, respectively, a brother who was an officer and a great-nephew who
was a surgeon in Dutch service.36 Rose de Boileau was probably not
alone in having 300 sterling au fond perdu en Angleterre.37 Many
might share the apprehensions of Silvie Deleuze from Viviers, indispose cause de sa grossesse, her brother in Brandenburg and her cousins
and godchildren variously scattered, or the tensions implied in her
provision that a legacy to Helix Franceson, the one cousin living with

ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 15v16v.

ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 90v96; Bachmann and Garlet, La Direction Franaise, 37.
33
ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 139146.
34
ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 122v123.
35
ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 1479.
36
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 22v, 36v.
37
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, f. 226v in funds lost in England.
31
32

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vivienne larminie

her, was conditional on Helix not marrying her widower, merchant

Jean Renouard.38
All the same, it was in the nature of the refuge that those caught up
in it had peculiarly attenuated ties. Jean Blanc (1712) mentioned a son
and namesake and Pierre Vechire (1695) a nephew (Jean Marc
Vechire) who were ministers of the Word of God in London.39 Jean
Marion (1709) noted, among his four sons and heirs, that lie
(uniquely) was in the English capital, without specifying his mtier, but
according him an extra 500 livres.40 That this was almost certainly lie
Marion, one of the infamous French prophets, the Camisards whose
ecstatic utterances were causing a furore among both French and
English inhabitants of London, raises questions about the kind of ideology reaching Lausanne and about the two-way traffic between
England and Lausanne or Vevey, which will be addressed briefly in the
final section of this essay.41
Refugees reactions to their international existence and to split families varied: some were resigned, some were in denial, some were optimistic. Some recognized the reality that they had forfeited the bulk of
their wealth back in France, in theory confiscated by royal command
and in practice subject to the good- or ill-will of relatives. When in
1696 Louyse Leveill, widow, updated a will begun in Paris nine years
earlier, she divided property between two main heirs: her nephew
receiving the portion in France, where he remained; a female cousin
receiving the residue in Switzerland after many small bequests of clothing, silver and household goods to other refugees and to Lausannois.42
On the other hand, ten years later Philippe Alcoine, who said he had
been keeping a careful account of his goods in France, made no geographical distinction when he handed his property to his wife to distribute among their children.43 In 1713 Estienne Cabestan, a merchant
from Montlimard, appeared convinced that his wife Anne Liottard
would be able to retrieve the 2,000 livres she had won in the Lyon lottery.44 While some fretted about the management of property and
Unwell because of her pregnancy: ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 105109v.
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, f. 267; 13bis/1, ff. 13946.
40
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, f. 219.
41
H. Schwarz, The French Prophets: the History of a Millenarian Group in EighteenthCentury England (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1980).
42
ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 158v160.
43
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 132132v.
44
ACV, Bg 13bis/3, f. 27v; Bull. SHPF, 87: 301.
38
39

exile, integration and european perspectives251

interests left behind, others looked forward to a return home and to an

equitable redistribution. Samson Dussauts aged father instructed him
in 1711 that, if he were able to return to Vivares and retrieve his property,he should pay his brothers and sisters an extra 300 livres each.45
Ifcircumstances remained as they were, Jean Lacroix (1703) seemed
happy to leave his goods in France to his nephews there, but if by
Godsgrace the religion were re-established, he wanted his widow to
return to Languedoc and enjoy their house, fully-furnished, for the
rest of her life.46
Some wealthier testators made specific provision for the reconstruction of the Protestant community in France. Esther Cotte from
Languedoc acknowledged the value of a new friendship made during
the refuge with Marie Bolo from Burgundy, but she also thought of the
Protestant poor in her native parish, should our holy Religion be reestablished there.47 Estienne Alberge gave 600 livres towards the
rebuilding of the Protestant temple at Moulines, Dauphin, while
Judith Derafalis gave 4,000 livres to the directors of the (resurrected)
church in Orange and 2,000 livres to the directors of its sister church in
Montlimard to be deployed in oeuvres pis.48 Others wished to support infant churches opened elsewhere: the newly-established church
in Wrttemberg received money from Jacques Pons and a donation
reserved for four communion cups from Daniel Chabrin.49
Many wills remained grounded in the present, fixed on the faithfulness to God embodied in the decision to abandon their native land for
the sake of religion. Frequently, inheritance was made conditional on
departure from France to join the refuge. Susanne Arnaud made relatives in France her chief heirs provided they would come to Lausanne
and Anthoinaz Bossiere promised half his estate to his niece if she
came and converted, while Daniel Lanusse sought to entice his sister to
Geneva, where Professor Calendrini of the Acadmie would hold the
principal of her fortune for a period during which she would prove the
validity of her conversion.50 In 1709 nobleman Charles Boileau de
Castelnau was prepared to leave his nephew in France the enjoyment

ACV, Bg 13bis/3, ff. 212.

ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 3131v.
47
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 135136v; Piguet, Dnombrement, II, 9, 90.
48
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 38v, 1113v.
49
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 1921, 356.
50
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 22v, 36v, 184.
45
46

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vivienne larminie

of his goods there, but pleaded with him en honneste homme to share
it with his elder brothers, qui ont tout habandonn pour pouvoir
en libert professer nostre religion.51 Although the aged Dauphinoise
Catherine Pestre left everything to her daughter who had accompanied
her to Vaud, and nothing to her children who had stayed behind and
changed their religion, others like her compatriot Isbeau Pelat threatened forfeit to children who thought of apostacy and return.52 Marie
Champel allowed her brother the use of her goods for his life, provided
il non pourra rien divertir de ce pays nor carried it into France until
religion [y] soit restablie et la parole de Dieu en toute puret presche par
ses fidelles ministres .53 Jean Lacroix left 300 livres to his nephew, presently in Savoy or Holland, but remained uneasy, asking his wife to take
the greatest possible care that Jean the younger lived well in the fear of
God; he exhorted his nephew sur tout de navoir iamais la pense de
retourner en France si ce nest quil pleust a Dieu de restablir la Religion
Rforme.54
As in wills anywhere, there is the problematic possibility that testators were coached by an attendant minister or interpreted by the
attendant notary. Unsurprisingly, while refugee wills are readily distinguishable insofar as details of the testators social status and place of
origin are always given, they often display the same formulae, language
and preoccupations as those of native Vaudois. Yet there are echoes of
individual voices. Of those who avowed that they wrote with their own
hand, there was a tendency to make a firm personal profession. Rose
de Boileau de Perrotat, a woman in her sixties who had come with two
daughters, leaving her merchant husband behind in Languedoc, proclaimed herself refugie dans le Pays de Suisse pour cause de religion.
Imploring Gods mercy, she supplicated pardon of her sins by the merit
of Christs death and la possession des biens esternels, quil reserve ses
fidelles dans son paradis.55 Marie de Froment, wife of a cavalry officer
51
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 1812: as a gentleman; who abandoned everything for the
liberty to profess our holy religion.
52
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 156v7, 2612; Piguet, Dnombrement, II, 117, 513.
53
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 221v2: diverted nothing from this pays; our religion is reestablished there, and the word of God in all its purity is preached by his faithful
ministers.
54
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 2930v: never to think of returning to France until it pleased
God to re-establish the Reformed religion.
55
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 226v7: a refugee in Switzerland for the sake of religion; the
possession of an eternal inheritance, reserved by God for his faithful in Paradise; Bull.
SHPF 87: 305.

exile, integration and european perspectives253

in Languedoc, commended her soul to God du plus profond de mon

coeur, praying that he would wash touts mes pechs dans le sang precieux que mon divin et adorable Sauveur et Redempteur a respandu sur
la croix. As the good Lord had commanded, she began by distributing
the wealth with which God had blessed her by sharing it with les membres de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ, duly giving 200 livres to poor
French refugees and 50 francs to the poor of the locality.56
If sentiments like these were common to all pious Reformed, others
were more characteristic of refugees. Perseverence was a frequent
theme. With the particular eloquence appropriate to his ministerial
function Franois Desfougieres de Bussy prayed that he and his two
sons would perseverer constamment en la profession de nostre sainte
Religion, et dy vivre et dy mourir en bons Chrestiens, malgre toutes les
oppositions de la chair, du monde, et du Diable, afin quensuitte il nous
eleve dans son paradis pour y jouir jamais du salut glorieux et participer esternellement cette joye inerrarable qui se trouve en la contemplation de sa face, qui est tout rayonnante de gloire.57 More simply,
Guillaume Herouard dit Moiselles commended his legatees to persevere constantly in the profession of the truth of the holy gospel.58
Several testators clearly felt a peculiar obligation toward God
owing to the circumstances, and the selectivity, of their preservation.
In a lengthy outpouring, Pierre Matte from Marseille recognised his
unworthiness. He knew himself for un misrable pcheur [qui a] mrit
par mes transgressions mille et mille fois les enfers; et quand je me regarde
dans le miroir de sa loi, il ny a pas de commandements dont je ne me
trouve coupable une infinit de fois dans mes penses, paroles ou actions.
He had not merited the grace he had received, which came from Gods
bounty and liberality. He thanked God for having preserved him and
his family from the persecution qui ont rgn et qui rgnent encore
dans notre malheureuse patrie, et de mavoir conduit heureusement dans
ces contres, o sa sainte et divine Parole est purement prche et ses

56
ACV, Bg 13bis/3, ff.367: from the very bottom of my heart; all my sins in the
precious blood which my divine and beloved Saviour and redeemer has poured out on
the cross.
57
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 206v208v: persevere constantly in the profession of our
religion, and live and die in it as good Christians, against all oppositions of the flesh,
the world and the devil, so that God might raise them to his Paradise to enjoy for ever
glorious salvation and participate eternally in that certain joy found in the contemplation of his face, which is radiating with glory.
58
ACV, Bg. 13 bis/2, ff. 15v16v.

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saints sacraments administrs. Continuing at length in the same vein,

he beseeched God to give him grace never to forget his benefits, but
when called from this earthly tabernacle to have time to make a good
death.59 Galways uncle, the aged Paul Tallemant de Lussac, acknowledged Gods grace in letting him be born as a Christian, and a Reformed
Christian at that, and then keeping him from the violent persecution
exercised in France, qui fait tomber tant de personnes dont la vie tait
plus rgle que la mienne. Gratitude that God had taken account of his
feebleness made it his duty to consecrate to the Almighty the few days
he had left in this world.60
As suggested, sources which allow more than fleeting glimpses into
the sentiments of refugees are relatively few. However, a handful of
wills are so expansive and so personalised that, taken together, they
present a picture of the experience and mentality of exiles unavailable
in other documents. Eighty-one year old Joseph Ysnard du Terrier
already encountered as a refugee well-integrated into Vaudois society,
had cousins in Geneva, a friend who was a student in Berlin, and a
cousin whose husband was King Louis secretary in Calence. In addition to 2,000 livres for the poor of Lausanne and 8,000 livres for poor
refugees in the Pays de Vaud for distribution forthwith, he left 12,000
livres to be invested in a perpetual fund for those same refugees. But if
by the grace of God they were able to return to France, the exercise of
the religion were secured there, and there were no longer refugees in
Vaud, he wished the revenue to be devoted to poor French strangers
and other sojourners. Duterrier regretted that, although God had
blessed him and delivered him from serious illness, his sins had continued to multiply. Seeking a sincere, constant and persevering repentance, he averred that it was in the death and passion of our Lord Jesus
Christ that he put his only hope, which was never confounded. On the
contrary, he was consoled and assured that his sins were washed in
Jesus blood. Comme cela nous <est> enseign dans la parole de verit
qui suivent et enseignment les Eglises Reformes de France et celles de ce
59
Chavannes, Les Refugis Franais, 21820, 238: a miserable sinner [who by transgressions] has merited hell thousands of times over, and when I look in the mirror of
his law there is no commandment of which I am not found guilty innumerable times
in thought, words or actions; which reigned, and reigns still, in our unfortunate country, and for having guided me so happily in these parts, where the holy and divine
Word is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments administered.
60
Chavannes, Les Refugis Franais, 21718: which brought down so many people
whose life was more observant than mine

exile, integration and european perspectives255

pays, en profession de laquelle verit iespere vivre et mourir par la grace

de nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ.61
Jaques Guybert, who, as the notary helpfully explained in the margin
of his homologued will of 1697, was the descendent of a family which
had supplied mayors for La Rochelle ten times between 1365 and 1519,
was formerly minister there. Born on 9 February 1626, according to his
own expansive account, he was thus now 71, though this did not prevent him from naming his wife (born in October 1618) as his heir. He
gave thanks for his education and upbringing in the Protestant
Reformed religion, but even more that he had been called to the ministry. God had sustained him through testing times to that goal, as he had
done later through two criminal trials, four spells in prison and three
examinations under torture. Providence had led him and his wife out
of the kingdom (of France) a little before the unhappy revocation of
the Edict of Nantes and into Switzerland, where they were received
very humanely. He could not tell why he had escaped the judgement
under which so many others groaned, or the tragic accidents which
had caused some to perish during their escape, or the transportation to
desert islands, or into America among savages, which had befallen
some who had stayed behind. Why was he singled out he who had
merited the judgements which God had executed in so terrible a manner on all the churches of France, and particularly those whom he had
had the honour to serve? Imploring Gods eternal compassion, he asked
that he would make him victorious over all his spiritual enemies.
None the less, it is plain that Guybert found it difficult to divorce
himself from earthly concerns. He had 15,590 livres and a few moveable
goods in Switzerland, but the bulk of his estate consisted in rents and
obligations which were in the hands of his wifes nephew and heir, who
had been in possession of them since 1688 thanks to a brevet du roi. His
own and his wifes journey to Lausanne with a servant and nine bundles
had been expensive. There seems a note of plaintiveness in the observation that his two widowed and childless sisters in France were enjoying
their relatives property: je ne croy pas quelle[s] en ayant besoin.62
Daniel Dabrenethe, Seigneur de la Baume, a 74 year-old minister
from the Nmes region, also appeared to struggle to do justice to those
61
ACV, Bg 13bis/2, ff. 90v96: Thus we are taught in the Word of Truth which is
taught and followed by the Reformed churches of France and those of this pays, in the
profession of which truth I hope to live and die by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
62
ACV, BG 13bis/1, ff. 160v162v: I do not believe they need it.

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vivienne larminie

left behind. He explained that his precipitate departure from France

had given him no opportunity to make an inventory of his printed
books, manuscripts, livres de memoire, contracts and obligations, and
that he had had to leave them in the hands of relatives. Despite a promise made before a notary on 29 October 1685, just after the revocation,
and reiterated on subsequent occasions, these agents, motivated by
prudence or some other cause, had acquitted themselves most imperfectly. Dabrenethe tried daily to rise above the inconveniences arising
from the lack of documents, but found this difficult, and he appealed
to his relatives good conscience. In the meantime he took pride in his
exile, pour la seule cause de ma religion et de mon ministere; by Gods
grace and his own will he was a refugee
en Suisse parmi nos freres selon lindication faitte mon choix expressement mentionne dans mon passeport expedie au nom de sa Majest le
dernier jour du mois doctobre de lannee mille six cents quatre vingt cinq.

He prayed for Gods churches, both those in the states qui ont ouvert
leur sein fraternels [et] donn azile nos pauvres freres exill et fugitifs
pour la seule cause de leur religion, and also those who have found
themselves scattered for his own dear flock and especially those of
our poor France. Above all, this determined loyalist asked that Gods
blessings would entail the
flechissant [et] convertissants en leur faveur le coeur de nostre grand
Monarque et de ses successeurs, afin quil nous face bien tost la grace dy
rapeller dy rassembler [et] dy retablir tous ses pauvres sujets qui ont toujours est si fidelle sa Majest.

Dabreneth gave a legacy to his Roman Catholic nephew, but his wife
having died at Morges (probably soon after their arrival in Vaud), his
main heir was to be the niece and adopted daughter who had attended
her, Demoiselle Anne de Sebastier de Leirys. Her many services to the
family had culminated in that which he himself had continuously
received depuis plus de sept ans quil y que nous sommes ensemble ne
cessant lun [et] lautre de benir la paternelle providence de nostre Dieu
qui nous ainsi uni ensemble dans ces pays estrangers pour sa grande
gloire, [et] pour nostre mutuelle consolation.63
-o-o-o63
ACV, Bg 13bis/1, ff. 165v167v: for the sole cause of my religion and my ministry; in Switzerland among brothers, according to my choice expressly mentioned in

exile, integration and european perspectives257

For the Huguenots in Vaud the experience of exile was complex.

The emotions they articulated mingled disappointment with friends
who had deserted the cause with anxiety about the feeble resolve of
some who had stayed put and not yet formally abjured; wonder at
providential preservation; gratitude for congenial sanctuary; misery
at material deprivation and separation from loved ones; hope against
hope for an eventual return to their homeland. Many refugees con
tinued to look outwards to networks of friends and kin scattered
over Europe, sometimes in agonising ignorance of their fate. But
many also looked inwards to fellow exiles locally for friendship, godparents and witness of their wills, just as they worked together for
charitable relief.
Yet this did not necessarily make them a community apart. Just as
the wealthier had friends in the highest echelons of Vaudois society, so
the rest also had native landlords, customers and suppliers; as has been
indicated, they sat in the same congregations. Furthermore, they
shared with their hosts common concerns, common experiences and
common memories, forged by a hostile environment, the residue of
earlier streams of refugees and the tradition of economic migration.
At the turn of the seventeenth century and in the decades which followed the inhabitants of Vaud and their neighbours had their own
heightened fears about plague, war and the potentially overwhelming
power of the French and Savoyard armies they knew were converging
on Geneva and could see marching on the other side of the lake and
the Rhne.64 In the summer of 1688 there was the perplexing disaster

the passport sent in the name of his Majesty the last day of October in the year 1685;
who gave their fraternal support and asylum to our poor brothers exiled and fugitives
for religion alone; [bending] and [converting] in their favour the heart of our great
monarch and his successors, so that soon he will give us grace to recall, re-assemble
and re-establish his poor subjects who have always been faithful to his Majesty and
have been dispersed and oppressed for the same conscience that teaches them their
loyalty to him; during the seven years that the paternal providence of God has united
us together in these foreign lands for his great glory and our mutual consolation.
64
Vividly exemplified in Jacques Flournoy, Journal 16751692, ed. O. Fatio, M.
Granjean and L. Martin van Berchem, Publications de lAssociation Suisse pour
lHistoire du Refuge Huguenot, 3 (1994); the editors talk of une vritable guerre de
nerfs (xxvii). The tension is apparent also from a French angle in Charles Franois
dIberville, rsident de France Genve: Correspondance 16881690, ed. L. Vial-Bergon,
Publications de lAssociation Suisse pour lHistoire du Refuge Huguenot, 7 (2003). In
the 1710s and 1720s insecurity from natural disaster pervades the livre de raison of
Nicolas Bergier: AVL, Bergier. For further discussion, see; Larminie, La vie religieuse,
esp. pp. 2724.

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vivienne larminie

of a fire reported to have destroyed half the town of Vevey.65 Twentyfive years earlier one of its witnesses, Augustin Scanavin, bourgeois
et justicier of Vevey, prefaced what became an ongoing record of
hisimmediate ancestors and his posterity with a family story which
could probably have been echoed by many a heroic account of
his grandfather Louis escape from the Inquisition, culminating in
hisarrival in Geneva, praising God for his miraculous deliverance.66
In Lausanne the Poliers, another product of the first refuge, were at
the apex of city society from the mid seventeenth century; in time
family members also scattered over Europe.67 Among travellers, for
every Guy Miege, who left Lausanne for England in 1661 and never
returned, there was probably a Csar-Franois de Saussure who came
back.68 Among ministers, for every Pierre No Paschoud, educated
from 1704 at the Acadmie de Lausanne and minister of several London
churches after 1718, there was doubtless a Pierre Isaac Violat, a native
of Orbe who was a pastor in Exeter before beginning ministry at
Grandson in 1703.69
Such movement ensured that Vaudois society could not remain hermetically sealed from outside influences. In the early seventeenth century it indeed had a claim to being the most unenlightened in western
Europe, having more executions for witchcraft than in all the rest of
French-speaking Switzerland, itself not renowned for its liberalism.70
But thereafter the repercussions of external political upheavals such
as the Thirty Years War and the British civil wars, and of burgeoning
international intellectual exchange might be felt. Jean Pierre Polier
de Bottens, bourgmestre of Lausanne, published several millenarian

65
ACV, Bt 25, f. 12 (Receuil of Augustin Scanavin); P Loys 4560, f. 40 (livre de
raison of John Rodolphe Loys).
66
ACV, Bt 25, ff. 35; Larminie, La vie religieuse, 266.
67
Receuils Gnalogiques Vaudois, 15573; P. Morren, La Vie Lausannoise au XVIIIe
Sicle daps Jean Henri Polier de Vernand, Lieutenant Baillival (Geneva: Labor et Fides,
1970); entries Polier in Oxford DNB, and in Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse, ed.
M. Jorio, at www. hls-dhs-dss.ch.
68
See their entries in Oxford DNB.
69
E. Giddey, LAngleterre dans la Vie Intellectuelle de la Suisse Romande au XVIIIe
Sicle (BHV, 51: Lausanne, 1974), 25.
70
E. W. Monter, Witchcraft in France and Switzerland: the Borderlands during the
Reformation (Ithaca 7 London: Cornell University Press, 1976), 1068; P. Kamber,
Croyances et peurs: la sorcellerie dans le pays de Vaud, De lOurs la Cocarde,
24760.

exile, integration and european perspectives259

works at Geneva in the 1650s; he was also a notable Hebraist.71

Perhapsas a result of the arrival at Vevey of several English regicides a
few years later, he possessed a copy of John Miltons anti-censorship
work Areopagitica.72 Although they had come seeking obscurity,
the very presence of those exiles (significantly, warmly welcomed
despite their radical baggage) entailed contacts with the outside
world correspondence, diplomacy (albeit officially through Bern),
the arrival of agents such as the man who assassinated John Lisle, on
his way to church through one of Lausannes most important squares.73
By the 1680s and 1690s a less subversive, but potentially wider external
influence had arrived in the form of pietism. This is apparent in wills
which glorified holy resignation and made much of being washed in
the blood of the Lamb.74 It is indicated also in the frequent appearance
in inventories of works such as La Communion Devote, Le bouclier de
la foy, Drelincourts Consolations contre les frayeurs de la mort and
Lewis Baylys Practice of Piety, the much-translated bestseller from
the pen of an Anglo-Welsh bishop and occasionally by glimpses
of potentially more controversial publications emanating from the
Jansenists of Port Royal.75
The persecution of Huguenots by Louis XIV made an impact on the
inhabitants of Vaud even before the Revocation, and its effects rapidly
escalated. This can be exemplified in the life of Jean Rodolphe Loys,
Seigneur de Middes, a Lausanne councillor whose long-running livres
de raison unusually survive. He noted on 30 October 1684 a solemn
fast pour prier le Siegneur qu[il voulez] detourner son ire de dessus
ses pouvres Eglises de France; Thursday fasts to mark the extremes
persecutions faits aux Reformez became a regular occurrence.76
71
See Dictionnaire Historique de la Suisse; Le Livre Lausanne: Cinq sicles ddition
et dimprimerie, ed. S. Corsini et al. (Lausanne, 1993), 37; E. Robert, Entre orthodoxie
et critique: les tudes hbraiques et le discours sur le judaisme au 17e sicle autour de
lAcadmie de Lausanne (15881739), mmoire de licence (Universit de Lausanne
1999).
72
Vuilleumier, Histoire, III, 59n.
73
E. Ludlow, A Voyce from the Watch Tower, ed. A. B. Worden, Camden Society, 4th
ser., 21 *1978), e.g. 307; The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed. C. H. Firth (2 vols.,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1894), appendix vi, Letters of the English exiles; Ludlow,
Edmund and Lisle, John, in Oxford DNB.
74
Vuilleumier, Histoire, III, 25367; ACV, Bg 13bis/1, passim.
75
ACV, Bis 113, Livre des Inventaires, Vevey 16831719; AVL, D513 Chambre des
Orphelins, 16701690, D533.
76
ACV, P Loys, 4558, f. 56; 4559.

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vivienne larminie

In November 1685 he recorded the execution of the under secretary of

the Confederations council at war, who had plotted to leak strategic
infomation to the French ambassador, while an annual subscription to
the Gazettes Franaises, renewed in January 1686, ensured he received
his own intelligence of unfolding events.77 As the flood of refugees
intensified, as well as regular almsgiving and taxpaying, he found himself keeping order as a magistrate, intervening (at the request of refugee pastors) in a sword fight between two refugees outside the council
chamber (1689) and hearing the case of another who had been
assaulted (1693).78 On 28 October 1693, like other local leaders, he
participated in the solemn funeral at Lausanne cathedral of the
allied general commanding Huguenot auxiliary forces, Charles de
Schomberg, 2nd duke of Schomberg, before the dukes heart was despatched to England.79 Eighteen months later he met the Huguenotborn British ambassador Philibert Herwarth, from whom he sought
news of his brother David, a soldier in the allied forces in Piedmont.80
The impression that by the 1690s the Pays, and particularly Lausanne,
had become a place of rendezvous for Huguenots and their friends,
and that, as a consequence, it had gained in importance and in communications, is strengthened by other sources. It was, for example, a
key staging post for the minister Claude Brousson, who divided his
time between sacrificial preaching in France and spells in safety in
England, the Netherlands and the Vaud.81 International networks
clearly fed the reading tastes of Jean Pierre Daples, whose registre of
1692 to 1718 lists a constant stream of of books, some of them acquired
through the extremely well-connected Jean Alphonse Turrettini of
Geneva, a friend of the celebrated friend of Switzerland Gilbert Burnet,
bishop of Salisbury. Publications of all kinds and all provenances
Lucan, Aristophanes, Boccacio, Bucer, Pascal, Robert Boyle, John
Reynolds to cite only a few from the 1690s appear to have been at
least sometimes exchanged with friends.82
There is no doubt that the authorities periodically stepped in to
quash what they considered the alarming advent of unwelcome new

ACV, P Loys, 4559, ff. 15v, 21.

ACV, P Loys, 4560, ff. 3, 11v, 12v, 14v, 15, 21, 76v; 4562, f. 12.
79
ACV, P Loys, 4562, ff. 4v, 5v; Schomberg, Frederick Herman de, in Oxford DNB.
80
ACV, P Loys, 4562, f. 29.
81
Utt & Strayer, Bellicose Dove, esp. chapters 3 and 7.
82
AVL, P118, esp. p. 277. For external contacts see also Giddey, LAngleterre, 28.
77
78

exile, integration and european perspectives261

ideas from outside the Pays. In 1680 an ordinance of Leurs Excellences

forbade the teaching of Cartesianism at the Acadmie de Lausanne.
In 1699 they imposed on its staff and on the clergy an oath to uphold
the Formula Consensus of 1675 which had prescribed the Helvetic
Confession on all cantons; the French text of the oath specifically
rejected the heresies of Arminianism, Pietism and Socinianism.
Following curricular reforms in 1708 which saw the introduction of
law and history, and a period of innovative teaching by the brilliant
jurist Jean Barbeyrac, son of a refugee, and the philosopher Jean Pierre
de Crousaz, the authorities attempted between 1715 and 1722 an even
stricter clamp-down.83 However, while there was evidently substance
behind their fears, it is difficult to disentangle the responsibility of refugees for unorthodox opinion from that of other foreigners, nativeborn travellers, or indeed natives who stayed at home but cultivated
wide contacts and interests. At any rate, in the longer term, efforts at
containment proved futile. Barbeyrac returned, and in the meantime
local grandees like Loys de Middes had continued to socialise with his
cultivated friends and to keep up international contacts which included
investing in the London lottery. While a key component of their weekly
meetings in the 1710s was undoubtedly gambling, it would be
unwise to conclude that conversation did not range as widely as ever.84
Whatever the Huguenots exact contribution to their country of refuge, in the thirty years between 1685 and 1715 it had continued markedly its evolution from relative backwater to cultivated destination for
international interchange.

83
H. Meylan, La Haute Ecole de Lausanne 15371937 (Universit de Lausanne,
1986), 4253; D. Christoff, P. Javet, A. J. Voelke, G. P. Widmer, La Philosophie dans la
Haute Ecole de Lausanne, 15421955 (Universit de Lausanne, 1987), 2736; O. Fatio,
LAffaire du Consensus helveticus, De lAcadmie lUniversit de Lausanne
15371987: 450 Ans dHistoire (Lausanne: Muse historique de lAncien Evch, 1987),
645.
84
ACV, P Loys, 4556, ff. 1117, 25, 32, 34, 3944, 80, 103 etc; Giddey, LAngleterre,
passim; La Vie Lausannoise. See also C. Lasserre, Le Sminaire de Lausanne (1726
1812): Instrument de la Restauration du Protestantisme Franais (BHV, 112, Lausanne,
1997).

CHAPTER TEN

Testaments of Faith: Wills of Huguenot Refugees

in England as a Window on their Past
Randolph Vigne
Henry Wagner (18401926), Huguenot researcher
In a field neglected by historians and sociologists the making of
wills Henry Wagner1 harvested a rich and bountiful crop. His interest
in the Huguenots was aroused when he discovered that his ancestor
Melchior Wagner, an immigrant from Silesia, had married in 1714
Mary Anne Teulon, daughter of a Huguenot refugee from Valleraugues
in the Languedoc. He concentrated his researches on the Huguenots of
the diaspora brought about by the persecution of the Protestants in
France, its high point being the revocation of the Edict of Nantes
in 1685. Ample inherited money enabled him to spend the long hours
in church vestries, public record offices, muniment rooms, amidst
family papers to which he was given access, and in widespread correspondence. He began work in the years of the revival of interest in the
settlement of some 50,000 French Protestant refugees in late Stuart and
early Hanoverian Britain, and assembled a massive body of research
files on bourgeois and noble Huguenot families in Britain and Ireland.
These he bequeathed to the Hospital for Poor French Protestants and
their Descendants in Great Britain, which had been founded in London
in 1718, of which he had been elected a Director in 1865. The directors
of the French Hospital, known from its earliest days as La Providence,
had become the driving force in preserving the Huguenot tradition
and had founded in 1885, the Huguenot Society of London (later of
Great Britain and Ireland). Wagner published pedigrees of many
Huguenot families in the genealogical journals of the day and articles
about them in the Proceedings of the Huguenot Society.2

See A. Wagner and A. Dale, The Wagners of Brighton (London: Phillimore, 1983).
See HSP 8: 88 for the appropriate journals.

1
2

264

randolph vigne
The Wagner will abstracts

With his bequest to the French Hospital were many books, and in the
mass of unpublished materials the largest component was some 5000
abstracts of wills of Huguenot testators proved in the Prerogative Court
of Canterbury between 1617 and 1849, the great majority of them
between 1680 and 1780. For eighty years after his death the abstracts
remained in manuscript, used by readers in the Huguenot Library in
University College, London to which the combined libraries of the
French Hospital and the Huguenot Society were moved in 1960.
In 2007 the Huguenot Society published Huguenot Wills and Admin
istrations in England and Ireland, 16171849 as Vol. 60 in its Quarto
Series, transcribed and edited by Dorothy North, and in 2008 as Part 2
the Complete Index of Names, listing some 25,000 testators, executors,
beneficiaries and others named in the wills.
Wagners five notebooks, in 16mo format, covered with minute
script and using his own abbreviation system, had become available for
all and await analysis by historians, not only of the Huguenot diaspora
but of social usages in the long eighteenth century. This chapter will
seek to give some impressions of the attitudes of refugees at the end of
their lives to the religious and social motivations that drove them into
exile, and of the apportionment of their estates among relatives, friends
and charitable institutions.
The abstracts were made mainly to satisfy Wagners genealogical
needs and the small random selection examined here some 150
often omit references to religion and exile, and names of beneficiaries
who in extreme cases run into the hundreds in a single will. They nevertheless offer a glimpse of the Huguenot refugees state of mind as
they recall their experiences, express their religious beliefs, and consider their attitude to their co-religionists in exile or still in France.
These are the wills of men and women whose adult lives had been
shaped by their confessional migration and memories of that migration are observable in many of them.
A popular study of English wills3 quoted some half a dozen by
Huguenot testators, a large proportion measured against the authors

3
E. Vine Hall, The Romance of Wills and Testaments (London: Fisher Unwin, 1912).
See A. Camp, Wills and their Whereabouts (London: Society of Genealogists, 1963) for
an account of the episcopal courts testamentary procedures.

testaments of faith 265

selection of a few score from their English hosts hundreds of thousands. He states Of particular interest are the wills written in French
[of those] who escaped from France and formed a colony in Canterbury.
It is noted how these wills with a pathos all their own follow the
common custom of such prefaces4 (personal religious preambles
like those of the Revds Peter Allix and Peter de Tascher quoted below
from the original wills though not in the abstracts). They have other
aspects in common with English wills which have, like the prefaces,
almost entirely disappeared from modern wills.5 In Wagners Huguenot
wills one is struck by several components that may also have been
common to English wills of the time.
Did the sometimes astonishing number of beneficiaries in the
Huguenot wills reflect the size and close relationships within the
refugee community? Wagner notes in his abstract of the will of the
Revd Peter de Tascher (1731),6 examined below, eight beneficiaries
executors, relatives, fellow ministers and legacies to chapels, 30 to La
Providence. The will itself names 29 beneficiaries, 23 of them recipients of mourning rings, from 60 to 1 in value (one of five moidores),
of money, old china, clerical gowns, and household goods (to a servant). The number called for no comment from Wagner: others he
omits as innumerable or too many to note.
Huguenot and English wills (1) Burial places
Familiar in English wills are the very frequent instructions regarding
burial places. Typical among the Huguenots is the requirement To be
buried in the vault where my wifes family lie in the Church of St
Edward the King in Lombard Street (Peter Bonovrier, 1749). William
Devaynes of Dover Street (1810) gave minute directions as to spot but
if die more than 120 miles from London in any clean and airy churchyard. Devaynes left large sums, which included a trust for my mulatto
daughter Elizabeth, known as Beby, Smith, and legacies for other children, godchildren, nephews and nieces, and all the clerks and partners

Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 193.

Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 194.
6
The year in brackets is the date of probate, throughout. Page references for testators in Huguenot Wills and Administrations are omitted as these appear in the book in
alphabetical order.
4
5

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randolph vigne

in Dawes, Noble, bankers (known in his time as Devaynes, Dawes,

Noble, an offshoot of Childs Bank, founded in the seventeenth century
and still operating, though Devaynes, its popular name, closed with
Devayness death).7 Wagner gave up in despair: The will occupied 29
sheets attempted to read but a small fraction of it, maybe one-eighth!
The grandson of a refugee, Devayness directions were probably as
much in line with English as French will-making conventions.
Shared with the English also were requirements for simplicity, even
austerity, in the funeral rite, but the Huguenots went as far as to stipulate that their graves must be unmarked. Even as great a nobleman and
statesman as Henri de Massue de Ruvigny, Earl of Galway, was buried
without a tombstone in Micheldever churchyard in 1720, near the
home of his cousin and close friend Lady Rachel Russell.8 Joseph
Barbaroux of Hackney (1774) instructed his executor to inter my body
to some obscure corner of the earth in the most private manner
without any intelligent mark I ever existed. Mary Hamon, born
Bernard, among many Huguenot testators in the Netherlands whose
wills were deposited with the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, wished
they would bury me plain, as they do the Refugees. Ministers often
demanded austere burial. The Revd Stephen Fouace of Chelsea was
more graphic in his request to be buried near his two dear daughters
with as little expense as becometh the conveying out of sight of the
dismall object of a dead carcass.
English testators sometimes stipulated similarly. Vine Hall quotes
the elaborate instructions in 1683 of Sir John Monson, Bart., for his
body to be brought, with minimum attendance, from Broxbourne in
Hertfordshire to his seat, Burton Hall, near Lincoln, before burial in
the family mausoleum at South Carlton, his death to be seen as a happy
event for his soul and not a cause for mourning.9
Proximity to family members was the most frequently required burial place. In the case of Susan Robethon of Broad Street, Westminster,
spinster (1770), forty years in the service of Princess Amelia, these
were her sister Elizabeth and uncle, for whom she had long kept house
and whom we know to have been James Robethon, cousin of a major
figure of the grand refuge, the Right Honourable Jean Robethon, Privy
7
F.G. Price, Handbook of London Bankers, wiih Some Account of their Predecessors
(London: Simpkin Marshall, 1876).
8
See HSP 28 (2004), 29930.
9
Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 202. 211.

testaments of faith 267

Councillor and third Governor of the French Hospital.10 Elizabeth and

Susan had been Jamess executors (1740). More dramatic, however, was
Susans requirement that due care [be] taken of me not to be buried
alive, as was the case with one of my relations. Her fear was shared by
a surprising number. Isaac Bouquet, apothecary of the Minories, St
Botolph, Aldgate (1803) stipulated visible putrefaction before screwed
down, Mary de La Garde, spinster of Clifton, Somerset (1800), who left
numberless bequests of 5 wished to hasten that putrefaction with her
instruction that quicklime may be put in my hands and half-a-peck
spread in the coffin.
The Spitalfelds carpenter and undertaker Francis Jolit is mentioned
in several wills when the testator wished for his burial services. Had
the Jolits, father and son, a better record on live burials than others in
their trade? Perhaps Francis Srs own will (1791) gives the answer in its
stipulation that funeral not to exceed 15. The Jolits buried the
deceased inmates of the French Hospital, of which Francis Jr was
elected a Director in 1815. He donated some fine silver to the Hospital11
where his portrait by Opie of a benevolent old gentleman hangs today.
(2) Charitable bequests
The French Hospital became the most frequently named charity to
receive benefactions. In 1719, a year after its foundation, Sir James
Misson, Commissioner of the Glass and Paper Duties, younger brother
of the better known Maximilien, author, translator and traveller,
bequeathed 200 to the Governors of the hospital erected in the fields
going to Islington for maintenance of poor French people. Bequests to
charities were, of course, common in English testators wills but those
in Huguenot wills were characteristic of the cohesiveness of the refugee community and its sense of duty to the poor, aged and infirm
among them who had not prospered as the testators had done.
A random sample of 50 abstracts in which Wagner mentions charitable bequests to institutions contains 87 such. Of these no fewer than
10
R. Vigne, Some Directors of the French Hospital: the Early Years, HSP 29 (2009),
18007; D. C. A. Agnew, Protestant Exiles from France chiefly in the Reign of Louis XIV,
2 vols. (Edinburgh: privately printed, 1886; repr., Ticehurst, Piccadilly Rare Books,
2003), II, 206.
11
T. Murdoch and R. Vigne, The French Hospital in England: Its Huguenot History
and Collections (Cambridge: Adamson, 2009), 489.

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67 (80 per cent) Huguenot bodies, thirty of them (30 per cent of the
total) were to the French Hospital and 27 to Huguenot churches
and chapels, all of them in London. They were Threadneedle Street
(11), the Savoy (5), La Patente (3), the Artillery, Spitalfields (2) and one
each to Browns Lane, the Chapel Royal St Jamess, John Street, Le
Carr, Leicester Fields and Les Grecs. The remaining specifically
Huguenot charities were the Spitalfields feeding scheme, La Soupe (5),
the Westminster Charity School (for Huguenots) (4) and the Saintonge
[Friendly] Society (1).
The seventeen non-Huguenot charitable bequests were to the local
poor North Chapel parishes (Lincolnshire), Chiswick, the City of
London, New Sarum, or, very generally, in the five abstracts similar to
that of Claudius Amyand, principal and sergeant surgeon to H.M.,
who in 1740 left it to his two sons as executors to distribute 300
among indigent people who may be ashamed to beg and to apprenti
cing. There were also two benefactors of hospitals: Sir Edward Des
Bouveriess12 (1694) 100 to both St Bartholomews for the sick and
Christs Hospital school. A donation of 100 to the London Hospital
benefited the fourth of the great London infirmaries to follow the
French Hospitals foundation in 1718.
The only non-Huguenot church bequests were the widow Judith
Delamares (1798) to Christ Church Spitalfields for maintenance of her
fathers vault in the churchyard.13 Her husband Abraham Delamare
was buried there too and his will (1762, outside our sample) tells us
that he was a member of a voluntary society, the SPCK, which first met
in 1696 and has weekly meetings in house at Bartletts Buildings.
Huguenot support for the SPCK and the SPG is evident from the frequency of bequests five in this sample, perhaps because of these bodies aid to Protestant minorities in Europe in these years. The largest
such legacy was Sir John Chardins, the court jeweller and traveller,
(1712) of 1000 for the propagation of Gospel in foreign parts (i.e. the
SPG).14

12
Uncle of William de Bouverie, 1st Earl of Radnor, Governor of the French
Hospital, 1770.
13
See M. Cox and T. Molleson, The Spitalfields Project, 2 vols (London: CBA, 1993)
for an account of the clearing of Huguenot remans from the crypt of Christ Church.
14
Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 266. See also S. Nishikawa, The SPCK in Defence of
Protestant Minorities in Early Eighteenth-century Europe, Journal of Ecclesiastical
History 56 (2005), 73048.

testaments of faith 269

The second bequest to a religious body was that of Martha Agace

(1786) to what Wagner describes as a quasi-clerical charity the
Independent Persuasion. Not, perhaps a charitable body as such but
the non-conformists who became the Congregational Church, now
the United Reformed Church.
There remains the category of bequests to bodies abroad. Like those
to the SPCK and SPG, these reflect clearly the Huguenots memory of
past associations, with legacies to the Rochelle refugees (1771),
Aleppo charities (1739), the French church in Stettin (1728) and to
relieve the sufferings or bring about the release of slaves in Barbary
(Sir Edward Des Bouveries, 1694) and the Cevenol James Campredons
10 for French confessors who are sufferers in the galleys (1718).
(3) One shilling bequests
On a lighter note, the Huguenot testators employed the same device as
the English for frustrating claimants by cutting off with a shilling.
Reasons for this derisory shilling (sometimes even less) are seldom
given, though the widow Grace de Gennes of St Giles left one shilling
to Mr Walford who married my daughter Grace Burrell without my
consent. Probate was in 1694, though dictionaries date cut off with a
shilling as an eighteenth-century usage. A little earlier (1692) the
estate of John Baudouin, heer refugied, was to go to his brother and
sister, after some local legacies, if they come out of France, one of a
category to be examined later. If not, the executors were to reduce my
true heirs in France to 5d. Anne Pictet, widow, of Hoxton (1785)
treated with similar contumely her two brothers in France one
shilling each, and on demand, i.e. by travelling to England for it. Jean
de La Fert of Bethnal Green, weaver (1786), fobbed off claimants: any
relations who make a claim to have 1/-.
(4) Charitable bequests in detail
The legacies briefly noted above are in no way a scientifically controlled
sample. Frequently Wagner adds and many charities or the like. The
detail of such charitable giving towards their fellow refugees is clearly
shown in the Revd Peter de Taschers will15 (Wagner notes only the 30
PRO, PROB 11/647.

15

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to the French Hospital in his abstract). The full text dealing with church
beneficiaries reads thus:
I give unto the Governours Ministers and Officers of the French conformist church or chappel in Castle Street in St Martins in the Fields the
County of Middlesex for the time being Twenty pounds to be by them
distributed to and amongst such persons or familys of their Congregation
as are most in want. Item. I give unto the Ministers and Officers of the
French Comformist Chappel in Berwick Street in St James Westminster
for the time being Twenty pounds to be by them distributed to and
among such Objects of their Congregation as are most in want., Item.
I give to the Governours and Directors of the French Hospital commonly
called the House of Providence the sum of Thirty pounds to be by them
distributed for the use and benefit of the poor relieved and maintained
thereby. Item. I give unto the Ministers and Officers of the French Church
of St Martin Orgards Thirty pounds for the use and benefitt of such persons of familys of their Congregation as are most in want. Item. I give
unto the Reverend Dr Herret Minister of Greenwich aforesaid a Ring of
twenty shillings value and unto the poor of the said parish of Greenwich
six pounds the same to be distributed by him to such housekeepers as he
knows to be most in want. Item. I give unto the Reverend Mr Rivalie
Minister of the French Church at Greenwich aforesaid a Ring of Twelve
pounds value and to the poor of his Congregation there three pounds the
same to be distributed by him to those of his Congregation most in want.

(5) Prefaces to the wills

Vine Hall noted the pathos in the prefaces to Huguenot wills which is
usually lacking in their English counterparts who had not gone through
persecution, flight and settlement in a foreign land, unforgotten after a
lifetimes exile. A preface of particular interest for its biographical content rather than its piety is that of the Revd Peter Allix (1717), which
typifies the loyalty of so many refugees to their new homeland and its
monarch, albeit perhaps in an extreme form in recognition of Royal
favour. He deals with loss of his property in France and its possession
by family members with comparative mildness. His preface reads, in
the words of Agnews translator:16
I recommend my soul to God, the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and
I order my body to be buried privately and without expense. I was

16
Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 233. The original in the National Archives, Kew, has
the catalogue reference PROB 11/ 536.

testaments of faith 271

minister of the church of Paris, when, by the persecution made in France
to those of the reformed religion, all the ministers were drove out of the
kingdom by an Edict. I came for refuge into England with my wife and
three children where I found a happy asylum The Oxford and
Cambridge universities did of their own accord confer on me the degree
of Doctor of Divinity. I exercised the ministerial functions two years or
thereabouts in London among the French refugees, until I was named
Treasurer and Prebendary of Salisbury by the bishop of the diocese.
Ihave endeavoured to edify the faithful by my ministry, my works and
my example. I have always wished the welfare of this nation, and of
the Church of England, and I have sought for the opportunities of contributing thereto. I have made fervent wishes for the Act of Succession of
these kingdoms of England and Ireland in the House of Hanover, I have
taken part in the public joy upon the accession of King George to the
crown, and to my death I will put forth my fervent prayers to God that he
will please to give him a long and happy reign, and to continue the same,
till time is no more, in his illustrious house. I die full of gratitude for the
kindness of that good king, which he has showed lately towards my family, in granting it a pension for its subsistence, upon the entreaty of my
Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, and my Lord Bishop of Norwich.
I have left the majority of my estate in France, whereof my relatives
have taken possession by virtue of the Edicts; and I have brought little
into England.

Allix, who had attempted, unsuccessfully, to found a new conformist

French Protestant church in London, wrote many pamphlets and
books on religious questions. He explains that the revenue from his
Salisbury appointments was enough for him to live on, educate his
children and pay the expenses of an amanuensis for my work on The
Councils [The History and Councills of the Gallican Church] which
was unfinished at his death and never published.
Agnew quotes John Campbell in Biographica Britannica (174766)
to display Allix in glowing colours: equally assiduous in the right discharge of all the offices of public and private life, and in every way as
for his virtues and social qualities, as valuable for his uprightness and
integrity and famous for his varied and profound learning.17 The entry
in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography is sadly different and
makes much of his failure to produce The Councils. His will perhaps
favours the latter case.18

Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 333.

V. Larminie, in Oxford DNB.

17
18

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Like Jaques Fontaine in the memoir written for his children,19 Allix
set great store by keeping his family together, so easily dispersed in the
Huguenot grand refuge. He exhorted my wife and children to live in
the fear of God and to keep up the good union and understanding
wherein they have lived now, which is the sure and only way to bring
down the blessing of heaven.
It is intriguing that Wagner, in his very brief Peter Allix profile,
notes: from French, is given by Agnew interesting preamble, which
should be copied in full, suggesting his intention of using the abstracts
in a narrative of some kind
Gratitude for sanctuary
Many expressed their gratitude for the sanctuary they had been given
in other Protestant countries, in wills proved in England. Magdalen
Amyot, of St James Westminster (1743), widow of the physician Peter
Amyot MD and mother-in-law of Sir Theodore Colladon, physician to
the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, gave thanks to God for causing me to be
received into this country of liberty, in the same phrasing as was used
by Joseph Pandin, Sieur des Jariges (1721), which expressed gratitude
for the favour he hath granted me to come into this country of liberty,
which in his case was Brandenburg. Charlotte Damaris de St George
de Marsay was even more grateful to the Seven Provinces in 1772:
I tenderly love this republic as a second native country. Margaret
Perachon (the widow Huguetan), The Hague (1711) thanked God that
he has given me grace to make profession in the land of the Christian
and truly reformed religion in my advanced age.
England was seen by the Revd Balthazar Regis DD, Rector of
Adisham in Kent and a Canon of Windsor, as our dear country, the
Bulwark of our Holy Religion against Popery. Regis, like Allix, had
served the Church of England in high places and had his reward for it.
He had lost an estate in Dauphin, which he hoped to recover, with its
revenue since 1716 in case there should be a reformation in France, as
I am inclined to believe there will be high hopes indeed in 1757, six

19
The Memoirs of the Revd Jaques Fontaine, ed. D. Ressinger (London: Huguenot
Society, 1992).

testaments of faith 273

years before the Calas case revealed the intolerance that Voltaire was
inspired to do battle against.20
Peter de Ladeveze, whose will was drawn in Dublin and granted
probate in London in 1715, described himself as run astray like the
horse which has got loose until God had conducted me by the hand
into this country of refuge. Was he a fugitive on the run or had he
abjured and been a nouveau converti? a rarely confessed source of
shame, admitted by a widow of the petite noblesse Anne Muysson, of
The Hague, who had the unhappiness of the time of the persecution in
France to sign that I did myself reunite to the Roman church (1715).
Frances culpability
The Revd Peter de Tascher combined hard words for France with praise
for England. The preface to his full will contrasts with that of Revd
Peter Allix in the intensity of his gratitude to God, and penitence for
his sins, and continues with celebration of his escape from France my
unnaturall country:
I hope for everlasting Life in that Blessed Kingdom of His where there is
no Sin or Sorrow but praising of God Eternally I return my most humble
thanks to him for that I was by his Grace born and bred in the Protestant
Religion wonderfully delivered out of France my unnaturall country and
honoured here with the Ministry of his Gospell in the Church of England.

With more pathos than either of these is the preface to the will of John
Lacombe (1702, quoted by Vine Hall)21 of St Hipolite and Paris, a
recent refugee in Canterbury advanced in years, being in my seventyfifth year, very infirm of body but of sound mind and understanding,
by the grace of God:
After having received so many graces and favours from the mercy of God
in all the course of my life and, and chiefly in this time of affliction and
20
PRO, PROB 11/556; R. Vigne, The Killing of Jean Calas: Voltaires First Huguenot
Cause, HSP 23.5 (1981), pp. 28094.
21
Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 11718. PRO, PROB 11/ 469.
Grateful thanks to Mr Daniel Korachi-Alaoui, Kent Library and Archives, Canterbury,
for tracing two of the Huguenot wills quoted by Vine Hall in the Kent County
Archives www.kentarchaeology.ac/ekwills_a/. That of Rigoullott (below) is in neither
the Canterbury Cathedral nor the Kent County Archives. The PCC wills at the PRO
have also been checked unsuccessfully.

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grief for His Church in which so many persons do sigh after the liberty
of serving Him purely according to the motives of their conscience,
I render him my most humble actions of grace for conducting me
through His providence in this city. I am come into it with five children, which it hath pleased God to leave me of a greater number which
He had given me. I have still in France Elizabeth Beauchamp my wife,
their mother. I hope that God shall grant me grace to see her in this
country to end together the few days that remain to us: to live and die in
it in peace and tranquillity, that is the prayer that I make daily to God.

None of these, Allix, De Tascher nor Lacombe, condemns their unnaturall country and its religion as bitterly as does the will of Isaac
22
and therefore, like
Rigoullott (1720) deposited in Canterbury
Lacombes, unabstracted by Wagner. It is quoted by Vine Hall:
Because death is certain and the hour thereof uncertain, after having recommended my body and soul to God by Jesus Christ our Lord through
His Holy Spirit, and being come out of France by reason of the persecution against our holy Christian Religion forcing us to worship the Bread
and Wine as being the blood and bone of our Lord Jesus Christ, making
us believe in the invocation of Saints, the imaginary fire of Purgatory,
and other falsehoods inspired by the spirit of the Devil, to worship the
true God in spirit and in truth as He has commanded us in His holy
word in the Old and New Testament, I Isaac Rigoulott give

A briefer recollection of the clash of religions is in the will of the refugee Stephen Godin, a successful merchant of St Peter le Poer in the City
of London (1729), where Godin requires my body to be modestly
interred as becomes as one of the dispersed Protestants of France
where God in his providence fetched me out of a consuming fire of
Idolatry and persecution.
Glory in Protestantism
For many there was an element almost of joy in their praise of the
Protestantism for which they were ready to sacrifice all but life itself,
after enduring persecution. Jacob Chabaud of Long Acre (1712)
affirmed that I intend to die in the beliefs of the Holy Religion which
is professed by the Protestants and Reformed Church in which I have
ever lived and on account of which I refugied myself in the Province of

Vine Hall, Romance of Wills and Testaments, 119.

22

testaments of faith 275

Holland in 1686 and since some years in the City of London where
I now live in Long Acre. The Revd Paul de Claris, Sieur de Florian,
Rector of Stradishall, Suffolk, and of St James Westminster (1737) gave
thanks that he had been born in the Christian, Protestant, Reformed
church the ark of God, door to Heaven. A soldiers simpler point of
view was expressed by a refugee from Grenoble in the Dauphin
Charles St Maurice, captain in the service of His Britannic Majesty, of
St Annes Westminster (1746) who quitted my country France on
account of the persecution for my reformed religion, the only motive
which made me abandon my estate and my country. Two years earlier
he had served on the committee that recruited 1600 volunteers from
among the refugees of Wesminster and Spitalfields for military service
against the threatened Jacobite rising.23
Transferring funds
Some wills exemplify the concern for family division brought about by
flight from persecution and the financial implications. Anne Allenet,
widow of Michael Boucher, La Rochelle merchant (1716), gives an historical account of her financial affairs and the effect on them of the
persecution and partial exile of her family and property, which bears
fuller examination24 than Wagners abstract makes possible:
I declare that the Estate which I bequeath by my Will and all that I have
heretofore given to my children proceeds for the most part from that
which hath been bequeathed to me in France by the late Mr Repusard de
La Ramigere out of which Estate given to me and of that as well as personal left by my late husband deceased at Allever in 1681 and of that of
my Father in Law Paul Boucher deceased at La Rochelle in 1683 proceeding from our commonalty of Estates I have from time to time whilst
I remained in the Kingdom of France sent and remitted for my said three
children Paul Lewis and Anne Boucher who were then out of the
Kingdom of France diverse summs of money which they have received
to wit the said Paul the summ of seventeen thousand and odd Livers
andLewis as much or thereabouts of such money and Anne twelve hundred pounds sterling which she has brought as a Marriage Portion to the
said Du Charnau25 and whereas on account of the coming away out of
France in the year 1702 and before that of my said sons Paul Michael
Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 299.
PRO, PROB 11/552.
25
Correctly Du Prat de Charreau, as in Jean, Director of the French Hospital, 1726.
23
24

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Lewis and James Boucher I have been prosecuted at Law of La Rochelle
as well by the Kings Commissary appointed Sequestrator of the Estate of
my said child as on behalf of Mr De Villeson the next of kin and heir of
my said children of the Fathers side to give an account of their Estate and
put the said Mr De Villeson in possession thereof in pursuance of the
King of Frances Edicts which give the property of the Estates of those
who are absent from the Kingdom to their nearest Relations or Heirs I do
declare that I was compelled fearing the Convent to treat with the said
De Villeson by an Act under my own hand the property and rents left
by the said Anne my daughter left and abandoned to Mr De Villeson
and whereas I left the said Kingdom of France in the year 1713 and that
I have been able to get and bring away only near the Estate whereof Idispose by my Will the summs of money been received by them do
belong to them

Transferring money was a central issue also to the wealthy Parisian

timber merchant Paul Girardot of St Stephen Coleman Street (1712)26
I came out of France to get refuge in this city on account of the persecution in the month of August 1699, my three daughters remaining.
His sister Mary Girardot, unmarried, died in Paris since I refugied.
Wagner notes: Large sums divided among his two sons and five
daughters. A lieutenant-colonel in the Dutch army, James de Dompierre
de Jonquieres (1729), through his wife and estate in France, had the
means to retire from the great persecution with wife and six children.
Others, probably the great majority, were less successful in getting
their funds out of France. One son of the widow of Elizabeth Le Lens,
ne Congnard, (1723) was major of a regiment of horse in the Dutch
army and her executor, but another, Stephen Le Lens de Volligny,
enjoyed goods in France since his fathers death and must do justice.
Inheritance and family division
Money is, of course, the theme common to all wills, and Huguenot
testators were deeply concerned with the inheritance of families
divided as a result of persecution and the grand refuge. The salient feature of Huguenot wills, marking them out from their English counterparts, was the effect on inheritance of the linked questions of loyalty
toProtestant kin and of alienation from France. Thirty wills, chosen

M. Bray, The Girardot Family (Upton-upon-Severn: Square One, 1996, 1998).

26

testaments of faith 277

at random from this group, reveal a range of attitudes to these

questions.
The mildest were those who, despite the bitterness of their division,
made no demands of their relations who had stayed in France. Huldrich
Bataillard of St Mary Bothaw (1750) simply prayed May God enlighten
my sister Catherine Uchard, ne Bataillard. Could she be the Catherine
Uchard who was executrix to her husband, the nobleman, traveller and
sufferer for his religion, Franois Leguat, in 1735? The Revd Philip
Bouquet, fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge (1748), left, of what
God hath pleased to bestow on me in the face of my enemys, 100 to
his brother Gabriel Bouquet of St Fulgent, Poitou, left behind and educated in bosome of that Popish church, 300 to his cousin John Theoph.
Desaguliers plus other bequests, and the residue to the grievous sufferers whom I call my spiritual brethren, my relations by the better
part, perhaps referring also to those who had failed to make the escape
from post-Revocation France. Most forgiving of this small category
was Charles du Bourgay of St Martin in the Fields (1732) whose will
forgives his sisters for detaining in France the property due to him.
Was it an easing of Catholic-Protestant relations in France, the rise
of toleration promoted by Voltaire, and the approach of Louis XVIs
Edict of Toleration in 1788 that accounted for Wagners surprising find
that, in 1780, the heirs of Peter Guirand, merchant of Austin Friars
(and in 1767 a Director of the French Hospital) were all his relations
living in France mainly in and near Montagnac (Hrault). Memory
of persecution seems to have faded with Guirand, while family bonds
had not.
Nine of the thirty required of their beneficiaries that they leave
France and proclaim their acceptance of Protestantism but laid down
no further conditions for their inheritance. These were John Baudouin,
see above, who threatened reduction to a contumelious 5d per day to
legatees who stayed on in France; Peter de Ladeveze (1715); the widow
Mary Lesterlen (a brother in Caux, Normandy was left a rose of diamonds and, if he come out of France, 1000 to him and each of his
children); and the mariner William Ballavie (1729) who offered his
uncle in France reversion unless he comes and enjoys the same in the
Kingdom of England and not otherwise; Martha Nicolas (1733) whose
brothers must retire from France if they are to receive her and her
sister Magdalens money accruing from our common labour and
profit; Martha Magdalen Le Rouille of Berwick Street (1762) (her
nephew Jean, of Alenon, to come to England or forfeit his inheritance

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to her cousin and executor, Claud Champion de Crespigny); and James

Baudoin, who, with many charitable bequests including 500 to the
French Hospital, of which he was the first Deputy-Governor in 1718,
left 200 to my brother if he will come out of France . with freedom
of body and mind.
Return to Protestantism was demanded of only two of the sample
(taken for granted, perhaps, by the others); John Bouquet of Paddington
(1719) allowed the interest on 350 to his sister Elisabeth Saint and her
children on condition that she and they profess the Protestant religion.
John Poumies (1719) was as firm: his niece, in Orthez, would receive
her inheritance if she come and reside in England and make profession of the Protestant religion.
Susanna du Moulin, widow of James Basnage, Sieur de Franquenay,
Rouen pastor of a distinguished Normandy family who contributed
much to French Protestantism, was more downright in her will drawn
in Haarlem (1726). Her four De La Sarrat grandchildren would inherit
under the condition that they will never be so vile as to leave the holy
Protestant Religion in which they have been born and baptised.
Suspicious of the younger generation, she went on: if the eldest return
into France and there settle himself before the compleat execution of
this her testament, whatsoever protestations he may make that he may
not have apostatized in his heart, she disinherits him entirely.
A further six risked disinheritance if they failed the tests imposed.
Charles Le Bas of St Martin in the Fields (1732), with estates in
Northamptonshire, required of an heir by default, unnamed, that he
shall then be a Protestant. He excluded my relations in France who
have changed their religion and keep me out of my estate there. Francis
Dubois (1732) ruled out relations in France as having no right or pretence to inherit. Lewis Levesque de Fouronce left her two Dassas
granddaughters an annuity and good jewels. She made clear the feelings towards the country where she had endured persecution; her
brother in France, Louis Claude Dassas, was to receive one shilling and
the girls were enjoined never to go into France to inherit the estate.
Daniel Dupuy of Lambeth (1761) hit back at my unnaturall wife Anne
[who] hath absented herself from me and become a Papist abroad. She
too was to receive one shilling. The court official and later British resident at the The Hague, Solomon Dayrolles of Henley Park, near
Guildford in Surrey (1786) added to his immensely long will four
codicils, one of which cut off the 6000 each his two unmarried daughters, Emily and Mary, were to receive if they marry Roman Catholics

testaments of faith 279

or reside out of Great Britain. Neither failed at the first condition but it
is not known if Marys marriage to the ADC to the Duke of Wrttemberg
a few months after her fathers death caused her to fail at the second.
The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography makes no mention of his
Huguenot background, but four more Dayrolles wills abstracted by
Wagner establish it beyond doubt.
Susanna Basnages suspicions of her nephews assertion that he may
not have apostatized in order to inherit is echoed in a milder form in
twelve of the wills in this sample focusing on conditional inheritance.
The longest probation period for heirs returning to Protestantism and
England was required by the Revd John Dubourdieu, pastor at the
Savoy Church in London, whose chief heirs were two sons, Peter
(Rector of Kirby over Carr, Yorkshire) and Armand and his eldest
daughter. Her sister Anne, still at Montpellier, would have her share if
she comes to England [but would not have] the power of disposal till
she have lived here for ten years a Protestant. A third daughter,
Elisabeth, married, had the same condition imposed on her, with her
children to inherit in her default on their compliance.
The widow Elizabeth La Pradelle (ne La Primaudaye) (1743) willed
400 to her husbands nephew, already out of France, on condition that
he stay out for five years. This probation was cut down to four years
for the period of time by which Mary Barbat (ne De Duroy) (1695)
required the departure from France of her niece Antoinette, daughter
of John James du Roy, Sieur de Reminier. Antoinettes brother,
Lieutenant David du Roy was serving in Ireland. For Mary Caillaud
(ne Bontin) (1787), nearly a hundred years later, and with the Edict of
Toleration only a year away, instructed a niece and nephew, Mary and
John Mongeon: I intend that John and Mary shall be at London before
three years are out if they are to have a share.
Peter Gallot, a Spitalfields silk-weaving master (1778), among many
bequests to family and charities, made assurance double sure by offering 100 to the first of my nephews and nieces who shall come from
France within a year of my death and remain two years in this country
without returning to France, to be paid at the end of the two years. Guy
Viouses estate (1753) went to his wife Mary Magdalen and thereafter
to be shared by his nephews and nieces if they come out of France
twelve months after my wifes decease, adding prudently or if Great
Britain and France be at war, twelve months after conclusion of peace.
Mary Magdalen died in 1769. Her heirs, Mary and Anne Fountain
(formerly de La Fontaine), spinster nieces, the only persons entitled to

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a distribution had clearly met the terms of their uncles will and come
to England well before their aunts death. The will of Mary Magdalen
Viouses sister Anne de La Fontaine dated 1766 names Mary and
Anne de La Fontaine, of St Benet Sherehog, who signed an affidavit
before probate in 1770. Guy Viouse, the son of Guy de Viouse, Baron
de La Court, Governor of the French Hospital in 1722, had himself
been elected a Director in 1732. Like other Huguenots of the noblesse
and petit noblesse in England, he had dropped the de and the barony.
Amongst the heirs of John Lichigaray (1743) were a nephew Jean on
condition he come to England within a year. There was more: he was
also to make profession of the Protestant Religion. Conditions were
more relaxed for Martha Viard, sister of the spinster Anne Viard of
Christ Church, Spitalfelds (1762), for whom there was 300 in trust
only if she come out of France in a limited period. Four more such
wills that named beneficiaries who must come out of France were
those of Lewis Duterme de La Cour (1742), James de Foyssac (1751), a
friend of Captain St Maurice and committee member recruiting
London Huguenots to serve against the Jacobites,27 the widow Mary La
Combe de Cluzel (1743), her brother De Loches would inherit on condition he come to England and profess our bold Reformed Religion.
Once again showing that suspicion of nouveaux convertis Peter de
Vesis de Combrune of St Annes Westminster, widower (1731) left his
estate to his six surviving children, including William, gone into
France to make himself a Papist, to inherit only if he publicly abjure in
Les Grecs, the outstation chapel in Soho of the conformist French
Protestant Church of the Savoy.
Hope for the Restoration of Protestantism in France
By no means all of the refugee testators saw their future and that of
their families to be forever in England. Like the Revd Peter Allix,
Gaspard de Masclary in The Hague in 1710 expressed the happiness of
finding means to save the only four children we then had living,
remembered my sister the nunn, and his brother in France who had
benefited by the division of the family estates in France. He laid down
if restoration in France no lawsuit against my brother. In 1725

Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 299.

27

testaments of faith 281

Lieutenant Colonel Peter de Lisle de Verdun, in the States Generals

army, stationed at Utrecht, bequeathed half his estate to his eldest son
and half divided among his other children if French estates recovered.
This was a joint will with his wife Mary Anne Muysson, whose mother
Anne Muysson (ne Rambouillet) had, ten years earlier, so repined her
abjuration at the time of the persecution in France.
In the same period Perside de LEscure, of St James Westminster
(1718), widow of James Badiffe, Sieur de Romanes, bequeathed the
familys estates to their son, who was to be given the papers which
concern the estate in France and titles of nobility by her executors, her
nieces Susanna and Jane Badiffe. The son and heirs first duty was made
clear. He was to build a Protestant chapel in island of Alvert, as near as
possible to Mere de Vaux. The Badiffes had come into these estates on
the Saintonge coast by marriage in 1679 and occupied the manor house
Maine de Vaulx (a name, like the island of Arvert, mistranscribed by
the scrivener at the Prerogative Court of Canterbury, or by Henry
Wagner). The estate experienced many vicissitudes, particularly
during the Revolution and today the Maine de Vaulx the present
building dating from the latter period houses, pleasingly, a charitable
institution for aged Protestant men and women.28
The refugee David Bosanquet, four of whose five sons carried on his
mercantile and banking activity and expanded the familys wealth (the
fifth became a doctor) shared with three daughters an inheritance of
some 50,000, left a small bequest of 200 to the Elders and Deacons
of the French Church in Threadneedle Street who were charged to pay
100 towards the building of a church at Lunell in Languedoc if it
should please God to re-establish the exercise of the Protestant religion
there before the year 1800. A shrewd man of affairs, Bosanquet must
have calculated that his 100 would at 68 years compound interest pay
for a worthy temple at Lunel (Hrault) in the Languedoc, whence David
and his brother John had escaped to Geneva in 1685, reaching London
the following year.29 Bosanquet took a longer view than others of the
return of Protestantism to France, which came about with Louis XVIs
Edict of Toleration, on the eve of the Revolution. The temple where
the Bosanquet family had worshipped had been demolished during

See www.maine-etaules.fr/tourisme/images/darcy-brun.
Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 292. See also G. L. Lee, The Story of the Bosanquets
(Canterbury: Phillimore, 1966).
28
29

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the persecution. It stands today but history does not record if Davids
bequest was used to achieve its purpose.
The silent majority of Huguenot wills
This brief study has sought to glean from Wagners abstracts and a few
full wills evidence that sheds some light on Englands Huguenot testators charitable bequests, burial customs, attitudes to Protestantism in
France and to England and other countries of sanctuary. Perhaps the
clearest outline is of the effect of the division of families and the use of
inheritance to re-unite family members, to punish those still in France
and reward those willing to escape to England.
It should not be thought, however, that the abstracts in the samples
explored are representative of the wills en masse. In page after page of
Mrs Norths alphabetical transcription there might be found evidence
relating only to straightforward inheritance and small bequests, of
charities and burial. On pages 20203, as but one small example, wills
of seven members of the Guinand family do not stray beyond these
confines. These Guinands are Henry John (1756), his wife Elzabeth
(ne Hamelot), his brother Joseph (1764), two of Henry John and
Elizabeths unmarried daughters (Elizabeth, 1792, a regular old maids
will writes a somewhat acerbic Wagner), son Henry (1785, from
whom, with his wife Elizabeth Yvonnet, the Princes William and
Henry are descended, via their mother the late Diana, Princess of
Waless Roche ancestry), grand-daughter (Catherine, 1805) and grandson (John Henry, Bengal, 1793, aged 31).
Henry John Guinand, a substantial figure who had worked hard for
Huguenot charities, left money to bodies in Geneva and Neuchtel, his
birthplace, and England, including the French Hospital (of which
Ihave the honour to be sub-governor). His will30 began with a striking
preface which vividly displays his paternal feelings but has no trace of
Huguenot content:
I pray this God of mercy to shower his most precious blessings as a mark
of our dear children and to sanctify them by His spirit in order that they
may be found without reproach at the coming of our Saviour who will
change our vile bodies and here in this last and first day I may say with
confidence, Lord, I am here with the children thou hast given me.
Seen by courtesy of Ian Caldwell, Esq.

30

testaments of faith 283

Henry Johns Elizabeth was the daughter of David Hamelot, also of

Neuchtel31. They were married in St Giless Church, Ashtead, Surrey
in 1720, by the Revd Peter Hamelot, rector of the parish, whose table
tomb in the churchyard32 revives memory of the familys sufferings
unrecorded in the wills of their relations by marriage.
Here lies the body of Jane, wife to Hierome Hamelot, Doctr. of Physick,
who died the 10th of January 1731 in the 91st year of her age. Here also
lies the body of Catherine, wife to Peter Hamelot, Rector of Ashtead,
who died the 7th of February 1728 in the 68th year of her age. Here also
lies the body of Peter Hamelot M.A. When the Popish fury destroyed the
Protestants in France he left his patrimony and came to England. He was
chosen Rector of this Church the 25th of March 1699. He died the 14th
day of April 1742 aged 81 years.

Conclusion
The Wagner will abstracts give us brief glimpses into the minds of
those thousands of Huguenot testators, the great majority of whose
wills deal only with the distribution of their assets to their heirs and
ofmourning rings and small sums of money to a wider circle. As the
Hamelot gravestone suggests, memories of early sufferings for
their holy religion were surely in most cases as live at the end of their
days as they were to the Hamelots, looking back on leaving their
patrimony,
They are a mere soupon of the gargantuan feast awaiting researchers into the vast collection of Huguenot wills in Episcopal and County
Record Offices, the greatest proportion of them, those of the Prerogative
Court of Canterbury, held at the Public Record Office, the National
Archives, in Kew.33 The PCC wills are accessible online at a modest fee,
an unthinkable facility to Wagners generation. The prospect is almost
limitless and awaits the assiduity and motivation of the Wagners of
today. Here could be a major contribution to our understanding of
English Huguenots experience of their past, their memory of it and
the effect of both on their lives and the lives of those who came after.

Ibid. See also J. Stansfield, Ashteads Refugee Priest at http://sgsgashtead.com/

mobile/default.
32
Agnew, Protestant Exiles, II, 267, describes this Hamelot family as illustrious
Rochellois.
33
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
31

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Memory of the Huguenots in North America:

Protestant History and Polemic
Paul McGraw
Persecution cannot last for ever. Like all things human it wears itself
out.1 The words Hannah Farnham Lee used to conclude her twovolume history, The Huguenots of France and America, epitomised not
only the condition of French Protestants by the early nineteenth century, but also the process by which Americans viewed their plight.
Nearly half a century later, Charles W. Baird produced the first definitive work on their entrance into, and impact on, American society.
When nineteenth-century historians of American religion focused
their attention on Huguenots, it was not a new field of historical study
but merely a new tack on the importance of this underrepresented but
arguably over-emphasised group of religious refugees. Huguenot numbers do not seem to justify the focus showered on them in over the
three centuries since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. There are
few time periods since the establishment of English Colonies in North
America in which some voice has not found the ephemeral image of
the Huguenots a useful figure with which to foment agendas ranging
from anti-Catholic animosity to the promotion of millenarian apocalypticism. American historians, preachers and politicians from the
early seventeenth century to the present have found the study of
Huguenots an important element in their polemics.
Huguenot history and European presence in the Americas parallel
one another in numerous ways. The short-lived settlement of Fort
Caroline, near present-day Jacksonville, Florida, established in 1562 as
a refuge for Huguenots, was destroyed by the Spanish in 1565. Fort
Caroline exemplifies the unique, if precarious, nature of Huguenot settlement in North America. As early as the mid-seventeenth century,the story of Huguenot persecution in France and the exile which
1
Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee, The Huguenots in France and America, 2nd edn,
2 vols. (Cambridge: n.p.,1843), II, 268.

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eventually contributed to their presence in America caused prominent

American Protestants to celebrate their story as both an example of
Catholic evils as well as a reminder that not even the Atlantic Ocean
should make American Protestants complacent about the dangers
Catholicism posed. From the earliest Huguenot immigrants to
America, the story of their persecution fit them within the American
landscape. New Englands Puritans saw in their story one similar to
their own: a small group of believers whose adherence to a set of
Reformed principles led to persistent persecution for their beliefs. The
polemical use of Huguenots, particularly by New England clergy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, helped to make an argument against Catholicism, but often seemed less concerned about the
actual experience of those French refugees. Despite their place in
Colonial American polemics, by the mid-seventeenth century, in most
parts of the Colonies, Huguenot assimilation into American culture
both economically and religiously was complete. Their presence in the
literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, after nearly complete adaptation into American culture makes their presence in that
literature nearly as important as their physical presence.
Most recent historiography of America Huguenots focused on the
rapid nature of their assimilation into, and largely disappearance from,
the religious landscape of Colonial America. Within this short period
of time, Huguenots found numerous alternatives to the ethnic segregation of the French Churches established by the earliest immigrants.
While Huguenot communities are largely grouped into three geographically diverse regions in New England, New York and South
Carolina, almost all experienced the same alternatives in their quest
for religious expression. By the 1710s, many of the most economically
successful Huguenots gravitated to the Anglican Church. Many found
alternatives within various Reformed denominations fulfilled the
yearnings of their religious quest. The fact that Huguenots in all three
geographical strongholds essentially disappeared by the middle of the
seventeenth century is not surprising considering the rather small
number of refugees who decided to journey across the Atlantic.2

2
Jon Butler, The Huguenots in America: A Refugee People in New World Society,
Harvard Historical Monographs, V. 72 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
1983).

the memory of the huguenots in north america287

Considering their relatively small impact on the demographic

landscape of Colonial America, Huguenots consistent appearance in
both the political and religious rhetoric of American society well into
the nineteenth century must be attributed to something other than
their physical presence. From the time of the Puritan establishment in
Massachusetts Bay Colony through their historical treatment by
Charles Baird in the late nineteenth century,3 the major emphasis of
American thinkers and historians was on Huguenots as an important
part of the polemical and political debate between Protestants and
Catholics. Until Bairds work, little study focused on Huguenots as displaced refugees who arrived in America seeking a new home where
they could practice their faith freely.
The earliest emphasis on Huguenots comes almost exclusively from
New England preachers. First among these was one of American
Puritanisms greatest theologians, John Cotton. Cotton, as many other
American Protestants after him, focused on Huguenots as part of his
broader argument against Catholicism. Yet, Cottons argument as to
the importance of Huguenots went even deeper. He, along with other
Puritan millennialists, argued that Protestant persecution in France
merely proved their contention that the current religious foundation of
the world was rapidly drawing to a close. The Fifth-Monarchy movement in American Puritanism did not contain nearly the number or
cast of colorful figures found in England.4 More than four decades
prior to the Revocation, John Cottons brief mention of Huguenots in
his 1641 sermon embracing the message and meaning of the coming
Fifth Monarchy, showed that while separated from the English hub of
apocalyptic fervour, there were those in America whose eschatological
intensity mirrored those in England. The fact that Cotton gave voice to
Fifth Monarchy ideology in the remote American Colonies and
preached about the imminent coming of Jesus with such power and
fervour gave the movement an influential voice that it could find in
few others.5 Cottons sermon The Churches Resurrection, deftly fit
3
Charles W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, 2 vols. (New
York: Dodd, Mead, 1885; repr., Baltimore: Regional Publishing Company, 1966).
4
J. F. Maclear, New England and the Fifth Monarchy: The Quest for the Millennium
in Early American Puritanism, WMQ, 3rd series, 32 (April 1975), 225; cf. B. S. Capp,
The Fifth Monarchy Men: A Study in Seventeenth-century English Millenarianism
(London: Faber, 1972).
5
John Cotton, The Churches Resurrection, or the Opening of the Fifth and Sixth
Verses of the 20th Chapter of Revelation (London: 1642; Wing C6419).

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Huguenot persecution into an array of examples in which worldwide

Protestantism would soon throw off the yoke of Catholic oppression.
Cotton argued that anyone willing to look at places as far afield as
Scotland and New England would find numerous examples of how an
awakened Protestantism stood ready to commence a new reformation.
Cotton believed that all Protestants who suffered persecution were
forerunners of freedom. He specifically noted Huguenots when he
said, those that were branded before for Huguenots, and Lollards, and
Hereticks, [sic] they shall be thought the only men to be fit to have
Crownes [sic] upon their heads.6 Cotton embraced persecution as
merely a necessary step in the establishment of Gods Kingdom. Fifth
Monarchy emphasis on the soon coming Kingdom of God which
would commence the long-hoped for millennium led him to embrace
any group he thought exemplified such oppression and Huguenots
were a perfect example.
Cotton and other Puritan millennialists were not afraid of setting at
least a range of dates they believed were possible starting points for the
Fifth Monarchy. Cottons fervency left one historian to comment, in
reputation Cotton stood foremost among transatlantic Puritans as
prophet of the coming glory, and as the 1640s advanced, news from
England must have vindicated his teaching and deepened an assured
and militant adventist [sic] mood.7 John Cotton died in 1652 fully
believing that the establishment of the Fifth Monarchy was at hand.
While the ardent expectation of men such as Cotton did not come to
fruition, his influence on American theologians would not be lost over
the next century. Even before the revocation in 1685, John Cottons
grandson, Cotton Mather, took up the cause. In the early 1680s, Mather
spoke about Louis XIVs growing pressure on Huguenots. His focus on
Louis XIV ranged from impassioned pleas for New Englands Puritans
to pray for Huguenots protection, to outright mockery of Louis XIV as
Louis le Loup, ravaging the Protestant flocks of France.8 In some of his
earliest diary entries, Mather noted the concern New Englanders had
for the Huguenots. About this Time there was a proposal made among
many devout people, in this Countrey, to retire, each one, every
Monday, between eleven and twelve a clock, for secret prayer before
Ibid., 56.
Maclear, New England and the Fifth Monarchy, 236.
8
Howard C. Rice, Cotton Mather Speaks to France: American Propaganda in the
Age of Louis XIV, The New England Quarterly 16 (June 1943), 201.
6
7

the memory of the huguenots in north america289

the Lord, purely on the behalf of the church abroad weltring under the
grievous persecution.9 The next year, Increase Mather, Cottons father,
preached a sermon directly focused on how Frances continued pressure on Huguenots to recant Protestantism and their Reformed heritage. In A Sermon wherein is shewed that the Church of God is
sometimes a Subject of Great Persecution: Preached on a Publick Fast
at Boston in New-England: Occasioned by the Tidings of a Great
Persecution Raised against the Protestants in France,10 Increase Mather
showed the awareness of New England clergy concerning the condition of Huguenots prior to the Revocation.
While some attention focused by Puritan ministers on the plight of
the Huguenots was an extension of the eschatology, much also stemmed
from New Englanders observation of their own world. Puritan ministers equated the suffering of Protestants in France with their own fears
of what might happen in America. The fact that New France lay geographically just north of New England worried many Puritans that
they too may be subject to the incursions of and persecution by France.
They feared their proximity to New France would prove easily accessible to an emboldened France and they worried that they too might be
forced to recant their Protestantism or flee their homes.
Throughout much of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, New Englanders pushed the frontier further into established
Native American territory. In response, Native Americans fought back
against new settlements by attacking, killing or capturing English settlers. The much-publicised attack on Deerfield in 1704 by a band of
Kahnawake Indians, who were supported by a Jesuit settlement near
Montreal, gave further reason for New Englanders to fear. The focus of
the Deerfield attack was the Puritan minister John Williams. The
French commissioned Kahnawake Indians to capture Williams who
they hoped to trade for Captain Baptiste, a French privateer who the
English had captured and the French government in Canada desperately wanted returned. The result of the raid included the capture of
John Williams wife Eunice, a cousin of Cotton Mather, and either the

Cotton Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, 2 vols. (New York: F. Ungar, 1957), I, 41.
Increase Mather and American Imprint Collection (Library of Congress), A
Sermon Wherein Is Shewed That the Church of God Is Sometimes a Subject of Great
Persecution: Preached on a Publick Fast at Boston in New England, Occasioned by the
Tidings of a Great Persecution Raised against the Protestants in France (Boston: 1682).
9
10

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capture or killing of almost his complete family. Even after the ransom
of the surviving members of the Williams family, one daughter, Eunice,
remained with her captors. Despite repeated attempts to achieve her
redemption, Eunice not only chose to remain with the Kahnawake,
but she married a Mohawk Indian and embraced the Catholic faith.11
In 1706, Mather contributed to the growing genre of captive narratives
with a collection entitled Good Fetchd Out of Evil.12 Following his ransom, John Williams and his son Stephen collaborated to write one of
the most popular captive narratives of the early eighteenth century
entitled The Redeemed Captive Returning to Zion. In his account of
Jesuit captivity, John Williams told how his captors attempted to convert he and other captives to the Catholic faith. He told of how the
Jesuit priest inquired which of the captives were baptised and explained
he had instructed the Indians sent to Deerfield to baptize all children
before they killed them; such was my desire of your eternal salvation,
though you were our enemies. Williams did not see these as acts
of compassion, rather the he said, All means were used to seduce
poorsouls.13
Following the Seven Years War and the absorption of Canada into
the British Empire, New Englanders continued to see Quebec as a danger. As late as 1774, New Englanders worried that Britains acquiescence to Catholicism in Canada in the Quebec Act, which guaranteed
the free practice of Catholicism in Quebec, might eventually open the
door to New England being forced to embrace the Catholic Faith.
Mathers attention to the early Huguenots was not merely a fear of
Catholics being forced onto New England via French governmental
power. In a January 1686/87 entry into his diary, Mather expressed
worry about a possible scandal with the new members of the New
England community. Mather showed concern that despite the mutual
Reformed faith of the Huguenots and New England Puritans, his

John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America, 1st
Vintage Books ed. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
12
Cotton Mather, Good Fetchd out of Evil, The Garland Library of Narratives of
North American Indian Captivities, 4 (New York: Garland, 1977).
13
John Williams and Stephen W. Williams, The Redeemed Captive Returning to
Zion: Or, a Faithful History of Remarkable Occurences in the Captivity and Deliverance
of Mr. John Williams, Minister of the Gospel in Deerfield, Who in the Desolation Which
Befel That Plantation by an Incursion of the French and Indians, Was by Them Carried
Away, with His Family and His Neighborhood, into Canada (Northampton [MA]:
Hopkins, Bridgman, and Co., 1853), 44.
11

the memory of the huguenots in north america291

Puritan community might stray toward the continental rather than an

English perspective on issues of person conduct. He encouraged New
Englanders to follow his example saying, as I would show all kindness
that I can, unto the French Refugees arrived in this Countrey, so
Iwould earnestly recommend it unto their Ministers to awaken that
people unto a greater observation of the Lords Day; by neglect whereof
they had given too much of scandal.14 Mathers focus on Huguenot
refugees came from two perspectives. First, the Huguenots were an
example of commitment to Protestantism in the face of Catholic opposition. The second was to use the Huguenots as a moral lesson of what
may occur if Puritans were not diligent in their piety.
Two years later, Mather embraced the first of these perspectives after
hearing a sermon entitled The Charitable Samaritan presented by
Ezechiel Carr, the French pastor in Boston. Mather was so impressed
by Carrs sermon that he encouraged its publication and agreed to
write an introduction. In that introduction, Mather referred to the persecution of the Huguenots saying, Never were wild Beasts pursued
with such eagerness and watchfulness, as these poor lambs were by
their wolfish persecutors. He explained the presence of the Huguenots
in New England saying, many thousands of Protestants found a merciful providence assisting their escape; and some of them have arrived
into New England, where before they came, there were fastings and
prayers employd for them, and since they came, they have met with
some further kindness, from such as know how to sympathize with
their Brethren.15 In an introduction to another of Carrs sermons,
Mather recounted Jesuit opposition to the mission work of English
Fifth Monarchist John Eliot with Native Americans. Mather accused
the Jesuits of propagating paganism disguised as popery.16
Mathers concern for the piety of the New Englands Huguenot
immigrants hinted at his greater concern for Protestantism as a whole.
As Jon Butler has pointed out, the actual numbers of Huguenots in
North America were small relative to their place in New England
polemics.17 The Huguenot story provided fertile ground for Mather to
focus his argument concerning the future advances of the worldwide

Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 134.

Ezechiel Carr et al., The Charitable Samaritan (Boston: 1689; Wing C638), 14.
16
Quoted in Rice, Cotton Mather Speaks to France, 206.
17
Butler, Huguenots in America.
14
15

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Protestant Reformation. News from Post-Revocation France made it

easier for Mather to focus his argument against Catholicism. Mather
saw varied aspects of French culture which he believed strengthened
his argument against the Huguenot oppressors. To Mather, Huguenot
persecution served as merely another example of the grand scheme
which progressed toward the ultimate goal of the reformation of
human society. Cotton Mather published over 475 books, pamphlets
and sermons during his life. One of the most important was his history
of New England, Magnalia Christi Americana.18 Mathers perspective
on the impact of the Huguenots into the broader battle of Protestantism
mirrors his work in Magnalia Christi Americana and his emphasis on
the importance of events in New England. Despite New Englands
position on the periphery of the civilized world, Mather believed it
could still play a pivotal part in Gods ultimate reformation. Mather
believed that America was further advanced along the road of reformation and on numerous occasions in his diary, Mather spoke of his
hope that Britain might also be nearing a mighty revolution.19
Mathers belief in the coming revolution reflected the influence of
his grandfather John Cottons apocalyptic interpretations regarding
France. In the seventeenth century, many Protestant polemics equated
the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 to the battle between Protestants
and Catholics, particularly in France. Following the Revocation, a
number of writers interpreted the two witnesses as French Protestantism
and Louis XIV. Protestantism was Gods pure church and Louis XIV
the beast that sought to overwhelm them. Regardless of how desperate
the situation may have seemed to the untrained eye, Mather believed
he saw a glimmer of hope in England with the ascension of King
JamesII. Although James II was Catholic, he appeared to make accommodations to dissenting Protestants. The openness to such a liberty
for the dissenters, as may, for ought I know, begin the Resurrection of
our Lords Witnesses.20 To Mather, the step away from oppressive
Catholicism in England may portend an opening in France as well.
In the decade following the Revocation, as Huguenot refugees who
settled in New England began to assimilate into Colonial American
society, Mather continued to worry about the condition of the French
18
Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford, CN: Roberts & Burr,
1820).
19
Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 205.
20
Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 113.

the memory of the huguenots in north america293

Protestants. Though Mather did not appear expressly interested in

Huguenot doctrine, he did worry that so many found comfort in
Anglican churches. One example which continued to garner Mathers
focus was the impressment of French Protestants into the galleys of
French ships. Mather specifically took up the case of Elie Neau, a
French Protestant who immigrated to Boston in the early 1680s. Neau
became a merchant in America and happened to be aboard one of his
ships when it was captured by French privateers. Although Neau was a
British citizen, he was impressed into the galley of a French ship.
Eventually Neau was imprisoned in Marseilles. Mather used Neaus
case as an example of Catholic oppression of Protestants. Mather
hoped that continued focus on the condition of French Protestants
would serve as a reminder for French Protestant community in
America to be more vigilant in their commitment to the Protestant
cause. While imprisoned in Marseilles, Neau wrote of his travails in a
letter21 which when it came into Mathers hands fit perfectly into his
plan. In his diary of October 21, 1697, Mather wrote the he wanted the
people of New England to understand the great sacrifice, to whom all
the glory of our great salvation will bee due. He said that he askd of the
Lord, that Hee would allow, and assist mee to publish unto my people,
my late meditations of the great sacrifice. Mather described how he
finally decided to share the letter in one of his sermons and then to
publish it under the title, Present from a Far Country to the People of
New England. Mather believed that the letter would bee a very charming way to do good, through all this countrey, and to diffuse the Spirit
of Christianitie wonderfully. While Neaus story might have a chastising effect on New Englanders as a whole, Mather openly admitted that
he hoped the publishing of it in New England in French and addressed
unto the French Church in this Town, advising them as prudently as
Iwas able, to reform things, that are amiss among them.22
For Mather, the injustices suffered by Protestants such a Neau fit
into the broader, transatlantic battle between France and England.
Mather wrote in his diary of April 24, 1701 that there is reason to suspect, that the French oppressor, who wants nothing but New England,
for to render him the Master of all America, and has been under

21
Elias Neau, An Account of the Sufferings of the French Protestants, Slaves on Board
the French Kings Galleys (London: 1699; Wing N363).
22
Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 23839.

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Provocation enough to fall foul upon us. To Mather, this possible attack
made sense based on the astonishing accounts, of the sufferings undergone by the Protestants in the French Kings Galleyes. Mather committed to spread the news as broadly as possible because it would be many
wayes a service unto the Christians in this Countrey, to be informed
thereof . To make this possible, Mather printed the account under the
title of, A Letter, Concerning the Sufferings of our Protestant Brethren.23
Two years later Mather happily announced Neaus release from
prison. Neau eventually returned to his adopted home in America. It
was more than a decade later that Mather included in his diary a solemn note at the Apostasy of that famous French Confessor, Mr. Elias
Neau. Upon his return to America, Neau, like many Huguenots in the
early eighteenth century, affiliated with the Anglican church and began
to work for the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in
Foreign Parts in New York. Mather lamented that this is to me one of
the most grievous and shocking things that I have mett withal. Mather
found Neaus story of imprisonment more beneficial to his narrative
about the Protestant March to the Reformation of the church, but that
sotry had much greater impact when Neau was imprisoned by French
Catholics than when a free Neau chose a Protestant tradition other
than his own. Mather made Neau a matter of prayer in an attempt to
do something towards his recovery.24
In 1715, after hearing of the death of Louis XIV, Mather published
the text of a sermon entitled, Shaking Dispensations an Essay Upon the
Mighty Shakes, Which the Hand of Heaven, Hath Given, and is Giving,
to the World; With Some Useful Remarks on the Death of the French
King, Who Left Off to Make the World a Wilderness, and to Destroy the
Cities Thereof; on the Twenty-First of August 1715; in a Sermon on that
Great Occasion, at Boston, New-England. Once again Mather saw an
event on the world stage as the harbinger of his hoped for Reformation.
As Mather reached the end of his life, he published one of his
mostpointed works on the place of Huguenots. In 1725, Mather published an anonymous pamphlet, written entirely in French entitled,
Une grande voix du ciel a la France.25 Mather wrote this pamphlet
Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, I, 398.
Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, II, 89.
25
Cotton Mather, Une grande voix du ciel a La France. [Two Lines in French from
Ecclesiastes] ([Boston?: Printed by B. Green?], 1725), available at http://opac.newsbank.com/select/evans/2554.
23
24

the memory of the huguenots in north america295

specifically for Protestants in France. Published just three years before

his death, the situation of distinctly French churches in America was
grim. By 1725, many American Huguenots moved from distinctly
French churches to membership in a variety of Protestant denominations. The majority of Huguenots found their way to Anglican Churches
which led Mather to worry not only about American Huguenots, but
the state of French Protestantism as a whole. His eighteen-page pamphlet sought to sett [sic] before the French Nation, the horrible wickedness of the cruel and matchless persecution which their fore-bearers
had experienced. Mather sought to instruct them in the only terms,
which the friends of a reformation must unite.26 Ever the siren of
reform, Mather sought to encourage French Protestants not forget the
importance of their mission and its place in the whole of Christianity.
By the time Mather published Une Grande Voix du Ciel, he appeared
to believe that the days of France as a centre of persecution were about
to end. Mather makes clear both the reality of Frances past and his
hopes for its future. Mather spoke hopefully because I have a strong
apprehension, that France is very near a mighty and wondrous revolution. Mather then proposed his own mission to bring about that revolution, when he said it is not easy to do a greater service for the
Kindome [sic] of God, than to sett before the French Nation, the horrible wickedness of that cruel and matchless persecution with which
they have exposed themselves to the tremendous vengeance of God.
Mather believed that those who are friends of a reformation must
unite and present to the French people pure and undefiled religion.
He then laid responsibility for Frances brutal past squarely at the feet
of the Catholic Church. Mather contrasted the pure religion of
Protestantism to the corrupt religion with which the Man of Sin intoxicates them.27 Mather also exhorted New Englanders to pray for
Protestants in Europe because doing so was the mark and work of all
sincere Christians, that are not actually under the Romish Oppressions.28
Cotton Mather was not alone in his fascination with the battle
between Protestantism and Catholicism. Until the Treaty of Utrecht in
1713 ended the War of Spanish Succession, the American Colonies
Mather, Diary of Cotton Mather, II, 776.
Ibid.
28
Thomas S. Kidd, Let Hell and Rome Do Their Worst: World News, AntiCatholicism and International Protestantism in Early Eighteenth-Century Boston,
The New England Quarterly 76 (June 2003), 28687.
26
27

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burgeoning newspaper industry also saw the war as ostensibly a battle

between Protestants and Catholics. John Campbells newspaper The
News-Letter brought attention to the situation of Protestant countries,
especially those Huguenots still in France.
The Huguenot reaction to the Revocation, sometimes referred to by
contemporaries as the War of the Camisards,29 gained the attention of
Campbell in 1704. In a series of attacks, Campbell focused on Huguenot
resistance provided for American Protestants. As was typical for the
eighteenth-century newspapers, Campbell used powerfully subjective
words and phrases to describe the actions of Louis XIVs suppression
of the Huguenots. Campbell described the attack on Huguenots as
cowardly and called the actions of Louis XIV and France as a whole
our enemies who use Devilish Devices. The Mathers were not alone
in using the travails of the Huguenots as an object lesson for daily conduct. John Danforth, a New England pastor, encouraged his audience
to beware of what might befall them if the Catholic menace came to
American shores. He asked, do we escape the woful day, because of
our Godliness and Righteousness, that is greater than theirs [the
Huguenots]? No verily.30
The French and Indian War refocused attacks by New England ministers, but they were not alone in their criticism of France. Samuel
Davies in a sermon preached on the eve of the French and Indian War
in 1756 at Hanover, Virginia, tied French involvement in North
America to millennial elements concerning Catholicism. Davies
labelled France that plague of Europe, that has of late stretched her
murderous arm across the wide ocean to disturb us in these regions of
peace. He then reminded his hearers that France was also responsible
for those who were still plundered, chained to gallies and broken
alive upon the torturing wheel. He concluded, thus the harmless subjects of the Prince of Peace have ever been slaughtered from age to age
and yet they are represented as triumphant conquerors.31 While not
specifically tied apocalyptically to the coming Reformation as Mathers
had half-a-century earlier, Davies made it clear that wherever France
was involved, Protestants had reason to worry.

Butler, Huguenots in America, 20.

Kidd, World News, Anti-Catholicism and International Protestantism, 27577.
31
Ellis Sandoz, Political Sermons of the American Founding Era, 17301805
(Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1991), 198.
29
30

the memory of the huguenots in north america297

By the time of the American Revolution, the apocalyptic fascination

with the Huguenots as exemplars of the coming millennium subsided.
The cooperation between France and the American Colonies during
the war made it more difficult for Americans to opposed France politically, but did not diminish the aversion many Americans had for
Catholicism. One example of this refusal to abandon the anti-Catholic
aspect of the French-American relationship was the continued popularity of a late seventeenth-century novel The French Convert.32 One
major dilemma for Americans, when it came to perceptions of France,
stemmed from an unspoken acceptance by most Americans that
Catholicism was incompatible with democracy. This deep-seated animosity toward the Catholicism of France made American acceptance
of The French Convert much easier. The novel combined several elements which played into the readers religious prejudices including that
of Catholics and Huguenots. The novel had all the elements necessary
for a romantic novel, but with a twist, the faithful Huguenot. The first
known American edition was printed in 1725 by Boston publisher
John Phillips who was familiar with such polemical works due to his
frequent printing of Cotton Mathers works. Most copies of The French
Convert came attached to a copy of A Brief Account of the Present
Persecution of the French Protestants.33
For an American Protestant, the major characters fit their prejudices
easily. The heroin Deidamia was a Catholic woman often left alone by
a husband who was in the military. The hero of the story was a
Huguenot gardener named Bernard. Bernard was presented as pure
and undefiled, just as Cotton Mather had described Huguenots. Rather
than taking advantage of Deidamias vulnerability of being home
alone,Bernard attempted to convert Deidamia to his Protestant faith.
Finally, the villain was a Franciscan priest who rather than trying
to rebuff thedoctrinal arguments made by Bernard, filled the role of
the lustful, lecherous priest who would rather take advantage of
Deidamias loneliness to satiate his own carnal desires. This novel fit
many American prejudices about French religion in a single story.

32
A. DAuborn, The French Convert Being a True Relation of the Happy Conversion
of a Noble French Lady, from the Errors and Superstitions of Popery, to the Reformed
Religion, by Means of a Protestant Gardener Her Servant. To Which Is Added, a Brief
Account of the Present Severe Persecution of the French Protestants (London: 1725).
33
Thomas S. Kidd, Recovering the French Convert: Views of the French and the
Uses of Anti-Catholicism in Early America, Book History 7 (2004), 105.

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paul mcgraw

Deidamia is religiously naive because of her attachment to Catholicism.

Bernard, being a persecuted Huguenot, epitomises the purity that persecution brings and wants nothing more than to share with Deidamia
the truth for which he and his fore-bearers were willing to die. Historian
Thomas Kidd points out that the attachment of the Brief Account
would attribute the Huguenots trouble to the restless Malice of the
great Enemy of Mankind against the Church of God. It would also
refer to the persecution of Huguenots by the blood thirsty papists,
who would throw the innocent Protestants into nasty Dungeons and
Holes, full of Mire and Dirt, and despite their terrible circumstances,
these courageous Protestants glorifyd GOD in their sufferings, making them a heroic example to the world Protestant movement.34
In the early days of the American Revolution, Samuel Sherwood
preached a sermon entitled The Churchs Flight into the Wilderness
on January 17, 1776, to an audience that included John Hancock.
Sherwoods sermon tied France and other popish countries to the
massacre and destruction of so many thousands of Protestants. He
then made a leap to Great Britain who he said, appears so favourable
to popery and the Roman Catholic interest, aiming at the extension
and establishment of it.35 In a statement which showed how politics
can influence even the most ardent critic of France, Sherwood predicted France has been satiated with the blood of Protestants, and tis
to be hoped, will never thirst after it any more. She has already shewn
some tendency toward a reformation; and therefore may be judged
very likely to effect such a revolution.36 While not specifically mentioning Huguenots, Sherwood showed that American preachers had not
forgotten their persecution, but due to the juxtaposition of Americas
enemies and Catholicism. He was willing to hope that Mathers
Reformation was near but he also worried that Britain was now in the
grip of the papacy.
Despite the political affiliation of America to France following the
American Revolution, the anti-Catholicism of American preachers led
to a somewhat surprising coalition. Throughout the early years of the
French Revolution, American ministers gave the French Revolution
their support. Richard Price, in a sermon entitled A Discourse on

Kidd, Recovering the French Convert, 101.

Sandoz, Political Sermons, 502.
36
Sandoz, Political Sermons, 515.
34
35

the memory of the huguenots in north america299

the Love of our Country given on November 4, 1789 showed great

hope for the French Revolution when he said, Behold. The light
you have struck out, after setting America free reflected to France,
andthere kindled into a blaze that lay despotism in ashes, and warms
and illuminates Europe.37 Price believed that the freedom realised
bythe American Revolution could well transform France into a similar
bastion.
Few openly championed the killing of clergy, but what they did
applaud was what they saw as the reflection of the American Revolution
in France. Early in the French Revolution the anti-clerical aspects of
the revolution led many American preachers to strongly favour the
Revolution. Israel Evans in an Election Day sermon preached in June
1791 went so far as to say, The Freedom of America and France, shall
make this age memorable from this time forth.38 What American pastors anticipated was that given an equal chance, Protestantism would
always win out over Catholicism. Jedidiah Morse in a 1794 Thanksgiving
sermon plainly stated, When peace and a free government shall be
established, and the people have liberty and leisure to examine for
themselves, we anticipate, by means of the effusions of the Holy Spirit,
a glorious revival and prevalence of pure, unadulterated Christianity.39
A turning point for American preachers concerning the French
Revolution seemed to come in 1794. A sermon published by Noah
Webster in that year, entitled The Revolution in France: Considered in
Respect to its Progress and Effects showed that the atrocities of the
French Revolution would no longer be ignored by Americas preachers.
As stories of the great atrocities in France became clear, Webster called
for Americans to take a different perspective on France.
Webster admitted that when he first heard of the French Revolution
his heart exulted with joy similar to that when America gained its
independence. Despite that initial exuberance, his joy has been allayed
by the sanguinary proceedings of the Jocobins, their athestical attacks
on Christianity, and their despicable attention to trifles.40 Webster
argued that the reason for the excesses of the French Revolution were
simple. Because of Frances Catholic history, it was filled with a system
Sandoz, Political Sermons, 1027.
Sandoz, Political Sermons, 1076.
39
Quoted in Gary B. Nash, The American Clergy and the French Revolution,
WMQ, 3rd series, 22 (July 1965), 393.
40
Sandoz, Political Sermons, 1239.
37
38

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paul mcgraw

of errors and superstition which had enslaved their opinions. Some of

these opinions existed because France saw religion clothed with a garb
of fantastical human artifices and thus rejected her as a creature of
human invention.41
Fascination with Huguenots as an exemplar of premillennial persecution found a resurgence in the late nineteenth century. One group in
particular who focused on the Huguenot experience and combined it
with an eschatological belief that the Huguenot experience presupposed their own was the Seventh-day Adventists. Within just two years
of experiencing the Great Disappointment, when Jesus did not return
as they predicted in 1844, one remnants of the Millerite Movement,
began to focus on the role of the Seventh-day Sabbath in their millennial interpretation.
The 1840s were rife with anti-Catholic polemics and Joseph Bates,
one of the founders of what would become Seventh-day Adventism,
wove together an eschatology which argued that the Catholic substitution of Sunday worship in lieu of the Seventh-day Sabbath, would play
a major role in earths final events. The major difference between
Cottons postmillennialism and Millers premillennialism was that
Catholicism would bring other Protestants into its conspiracy against
Sabbath-keeping premillennialists. As Seventh-day Adventist theology
matured, another founder, Ellen G. White, used the proven American
Protestant argument of persecution to argue against Catholicism.
What separated White from John Cotton was their eschatology.
Cotton embraced a Post-Millennial theology which held that mankind
was capable for growth that would eventually lead to a Millennium of
peace and prosperity followed by the Advent of Christ. Ellen Whites
perspective was very different. White was a premillennialist whose
theology combined the belief that Jesus return was imminent and that
the Catholic Church itself would play a role in the final persecution.
In 1888 Ellen G. White published the first edition of what many consider her seminal work, The Great Controversy Between Christ and
Satan: The Conflict of the Ages in the Christian Dispensation.42 The fact
that her work contained a strong characterization of Huguenots was

Sandoz, Political Sermons, 1251.

Ellen Gould Harmon White, The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan
During the Christian Dispensation, 11th edn (Oakland, CA, New York, etc.: Pacific
Press, 1888).
41
42

the memory of the huguenots in north america301

not surprising. In the years previous to its initial publication, two very
important works which had substantial comments about Huguenot
oppression were published: James A. Wylies History of Protestantism
and Charles W. Bairds History of the Huguenot Emigration to America.43
Wylies classic History of Protestantism, first published in the late
1870s, spent a great deal of time on the French Reformation and the
persecution of Huguenots in particular. Historical research has shown
White relied heavily on Wylies work to the point that some have
claimed outright plagiarism.44 Wylie focused on the Huguenots and
their status as the object of Catholic persecution almost to the point of
obsession. Such a focus should not be surprising when taken in the
context of other of Wylies works which included The History of the
Waldenses, The Rise, Progress, and Insidious Workings of Jesuitism, and
The Papacy: Its History, Dogmas, Genius, and Prospects. As the titles
suggest, although a Scotsman and not a New England polemic, Wylies
perspective on Catholicism could be easily aligned with that of
American Protestants from John Cotton through any number of
Federalist preachers. Because a major premise of The Great Controversy
is built on the foundation of Catholic persecution of Protestants,
Wylies focus on Huguenots as the centre of papal persecution fit neatly
into Ellen Whites work.
In a chapter entitled The Bible and the French Revolution, White
also drew on Wylie, among others.45 She drew the same comparison of
the Two Witnesses of Revelation to the French Revolution as John
Cotton had two centuries earlier. The juxtaposition of the pure and
persecuted Huguenots to that of the menacing Catholics propped up
by the power of the state was very clear in Great Controversy. White
combined traditional apocalyptic perspective with the American ideals of freedom and separation of church and state. In the story of
theHuguenots, White saw both. She described Huguenots as battling
for those rights which the human heart holds most sacred. She then

43
J. A. Wylie, The History of Protestantism 3 vols. (London, Paris, New York: Cassell,
[187477]); Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America.
44
Cf. William S. Peterson, A Textual and Historical Study of Ellen G. Whites
Account of the French Revolution, Spectrum 2:4 (Autumn 1970), 6365; Eric
Anderson, Ellen White and Reformation Historians, Spectrum 9:3 (July 1978), 2326,
esp. 2425; Jan Voerman, Ellen White and the French Revolution, Andrews University
Seminary Studies 45 (Autumn 2007), 24759.
45
Cf. Peterson, Textual and Historical Study, 6063, 6566; Voerman, Ellen White
and the French Revolution.

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paul mcgraw

interjected Adventism into the Huguenots role of the persecuted.

Adventists believed that one day it would face a similar persecution.
White said the Huguenots had poured out their blood on many a
hard-fought field. Just as Adventism believed that Catholicism would
one day persecute those who hold to the seventh-day Sabbath, she said
of the Huguenots: The Protestants were counted as outlaws, a price
was set upon their heads, and they were hunted down like wild beasts.46
To White, the Huguenots had experienced in the past what she believed
Gods people would one day again experience at the hands of Catholics.
John Cotton could easily have penned the words found in the 1888
edition of The Great Controversy described the Saint Bartholomews
Day Massacre. In very blunt language regarding the Catholic Churchs
involvement in the massacre, White stated that Satan, in the person of
the Roman zealots, led the van. As Christ was the invisible leader of his
people from Egyptian bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his
subjects in this horrible work of multiplying martyrs. White continued, describing the reaction of the papacy to news of the massacre, and
stating: the pope, Gregory XIII, received the news of the fate of the
Huguenots with unbounded joy. The wish of his heart had been gratified, and Charles IX, was now his favourite son. Rome rang with
rejoicings.47
The 1890s were the highpoint of prosecution of Adventists for breaking Sunday Laws; over one hundred Adventists spent time in jail for
working on Sunday. With that as a backdrop, it is possible to see why
White found an affinity between Adventists and Huguenots. In a show
of how the rhetoric for even the most adamant advocates of the role of
Rome in the persecution of Huguenots changed around the turn of the
century, the 1911 version of The Great Controversy saw the previous
passage amended to say, As Christ was the invisible leader of His people from Egyptian bondage, so was Satan the unseen leader of his subjects in this horrible work of multiplying martyrs. Where the 1888
edition specifically named pope Gregory XIII, the 1911 edition simply
said, When the news of the massacre reached Rome, the exultation
among the clergy knew no bounds.48
Ellen Gould Harmon White, The Great Controversy between Christ and Satan:
The Conflict of the Ages in the Christian Dispensation (Mountain View, CA: Pacific
Press Publishing Association, 1911), 271.
47
White, Great Controversy, ed. cit., 27273.
48
White, Great Controversy, ed. cit., 272.
46

the memory of the huguenots in north america303

Throughout the chapter, similar to Noah Webster in 1794, White

blamed the horrors of the French Revolution on the previous persecutions of the Huguenots saying, With the flight of the Huguenots a general decline settled upon France. Flourishing manufacturing cities fell
into decay; fertile districts returned to their native wildness; intellectual dullness and moral declension succeeded a period of unwonted
progress. Paris became one vast almshouse. White inferred that the
French struggled because of largess on the part of the church and said,
Jesuits alone flourished in the decaying nation, and ruled with dreadful tyranny over churches and schools, the prisons and the galleys.49
Similar to the arguments made by New England Federalist preachers
following 1794, White appeared to believe that the French Revolution
was in part retribution for the persecution of Huguenots. The galleys
and the prisons, once crowded with Huguenots, were now filled with
their persecutors. Chained to the bench and toiling at the oar, the
Roman Catholic clergy experienced all those woes which their church
had so freely inflicted on the gentle heretics.50
These comments were part of the normal fare throughout most of
the nineteenth century. Despite that, the first attempt at a scholarly
approach to the study of the Huguenot immigration to America came
with the research of Baird and the publication of his Huguenot
Emigration to America in 1885. Bairds work, which focuses solely on
Huguenot immigration to New England, was to be the first in a series
that would also cover the other Huguenot strongholds of New York
and South Carolina. The importance of Bairds work is that it
approached Huguenots not as an icon of oppression, but from the historical perspective of all immigrant groups.
As evidenced by the changes in Ellen Whites Great Controversy,
where changes are made between the 1888 edition of the Great controversy and the 1911 edition when it came to the rhetoric used to describe
Catholicism, the study of Huguenots began to reflect the immigrants
themselves and rather not merely how they contributed to the
American Character. What Bairds work began was a systematic
account of the places where Huguenots settled and how they grew or
disintegrated. Yet, from the time of Baird, little serious scholarship on
Huguenots took place until the growth of Immigrant studies in the

White, Great Controversy, ed. cit., 279.

White, Great Controversy, ed. cit., 283.

49
50

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paul mcgraw

1930s1960s. Even in these studies much of the concentration was

merely on Huguenots as a part of the whole story of French immigration to the new world.
In the 1980s, Jon Butler published The Huguenots in America, a
study of Huguenots in each of the three major strongholds. Rather
than focusing on the persecution Huguenots suffered at the hands of
French Catholics, Butlers work looks at how, by the middle of the
eighteenth century, Huguenots comprised virtually no appreciable
influence on the American religious map. For most of the first four
centuries of European history in America, Huguenots participated in
the peopling of the New World. Yet, as Butler points out, in a very short
period of time they were largely assimilated into majority society in
America.51
Despite this relatively rapid absorption into American Protestantism,
Huguenots maintained a place in the rhetoric and polemics of America
which far outweighed their physical presence. They were seen as a tangible example of the possibilities of a world where Catholicism ran
unchecked. Current scholarship focuses mainly on local and community studies of Huguenots. This work argues that, contrary to Butlers
thesis of assimilation, there were pockets, mainly in rural areas, where
Huguenot religion and culture persisted and thrived.
While much of the current historiography focuses on arguments
about how long it took for Huguenots to be absorbed by American
culture, what remains clear is that the place where Huguenots remained
in the American consciousness throughout most of its history, before
the twentieth century, was essentially in the minds of American
Protestants, for whom the Huguenots were and remained an object
lesson about the dangers of Catholicism. Yet, starting from Bairds
work, a new century brought a new perspective with the change to
Huguenot history being more about the immigrant experience and
less a story of a persecuted people. One could argue that, by the end of
the twentieth century, to rephrase the words of Hannah Lee that
Persecution cannot last for ever, had finally come true in American
polemics for both Huguenots and Catholics.

Butler, Huguenots in America.

51

INDEX
Abercromby, David 108
Academie de Lausanne 243, 258, 261
Academie de Saumur 128, 243
Agace, Martha 269
Alberge, Estienne 246, 248, 251
Albigensians201
Alcoine Phillipe 250
Als, Peace of (1629) 205
Allenet, Anne 275
Allix, Pierre 98, 115, 14647, 265,
27074, 280
Amyot, Magdalen 272
Anjou, [Francois] duc d (d. 1585) 167
Anjou, Henri duc d (later Henri III; d.
1589)58
Anjou, Philip duc d 232
Antichrist 64, 99, 21113
Antnio, Dom (pretender to Portuguese
throne)164
Areopagitica259
Arminianism 86, 261
Arnaud, Susanne 24749, 251
Asselin, Jacob 147
Aurignac, sieur d 181
Azores, The 167
Baird, Charles W. 285, 287, 301,
303304
Barbaroux, Joseph 266
Barbat, Mary 279
Barbeyrac, Jean 261
Barclay, Robert 7576, 8990
Basnage, Susanna 27879
Bataillard, Huldrich 277
Bath and Wells, Bishop of 113
Baudoin, James 278
Baudouin, John 269, 277
Bayeux, Election of 156
Bayle, Pierre 24, 236
Bayly, Lewis 259
Beauce15657
Benech, Pierre 131
BergenopZoom166
Bern 200, 24243, 24547, 249, 259
Bernard of SaxeWeimar 181
Bernstorff, Andreas Gottlieb von 231
Bertrand, Paul 12832, 140, 142

Bthune, Lonidas de, seigneur de

Congy17172
___, death of (1603) 172
Bthune, Syrius de, seigneur de
Congy172
Beuleke, Wilhelm 225
Blanc, Jean 250
Bochart, Samuel 132
Boileau de Castelnau, Charles 251
Boileau, Rose de 249, 252
Bolo, Marie 251
Bommel, island of 170
Bonde, Charles de la, sieur
dIberville189
Bosanquet, David 281
Bosher, John 198
Bossiere, Anthoinaz 251
Bossuet, Bishop 210
Bouillon: see La Marck, de;
and La Tour, de
Bouquet, Isaac 267
Bouquet, John 278
Bouquet, Philip 277
Bourbon [dynasty], Bourbon
monarchs 8, 2324, 27, 45, 1
56, 160, 165, 175
Bourgay, Charles du 277
Boyer, Abel 106, 115, 195, 197, 199203,
23537
Boyne, Battle of (1690) 191, 197
Brandenburg, BrandenburgPrussia 2,
26, 154n4, 18788, 19293, 221,
249, 272
Breda166
Brewer, John 103104
Brousson, Claude ix, xxiii, xxx, 2425,
39, 148, 193, 208, 260
Brulon, Daniel
Burke, Edmund 50
Burnet, Gilbert, Bishop 7678, 112,
18283, 201, 236, 260
Burrell, Grace 269
Butler, Jon 291, 304
Cabestan, Estienne 250
Caillaud, Mary 279
Calenburg 22223, 227, 229, 231

306 index
Calvinism 1, 10n14, 1921, 2830, 39,
5960, 86, 113, 121, 129, 131, 133,
148, 150, 15557, 159, 178, 186, 188,
221, 237, 243
Calvinists 1, 1920, 23, 2628, 32, 35,
58, 61, 108, 112, 164, 167, 173, 176,
180, 18891, 204207, 221, 231
Calvinists, French 34, 8, 21, 24, 45,
66, 103, 129, 153, 15557, 168, 174,
179, 182, 18586, 192, 205, 241
Camisards 10n14, 67, 201202,
23435, 23738, 250, 296
Campbell, John 271, 296
Campredon, James 269
Cardonnel, Adam de 149
Care, Henry 86, 9091, 93
Carlo, Paula Wheeler 15051
Carlos II: see Charles II, King of Spain
Carre, Ezechiel 291
Carris, Abraham 130
Castaign, John 116
Catholic Church 148, 210, 22021, 295,
300, 302
Catinat, Nicolas 191
Cavalier, Jean 234
Celle 22226, 229, 231, 238
Cevennes 201, 233, 242
Cevennois201
Chabaud, Jacob 274
Chabrin, Daniel 251
Champel, Marie 252
Charas, Moses 124
Chardin, John 268
Charles II, King of Spain 207, 232
Charles II, King of England and
Scotland 69, 7172, 75, 82, 86, 88,
12122, 135, 141, 144, 181, 22021
Charles IX, King of France 46, 52, 54,
58, 156, 16162, 302
Charnac, Hercule, baron de 179
Chtillon: see Coligny, Henri de,
Coligny, Gaspard II de, and Coligny,
Gaspard III de
Chavannes, Jules 244
Chesterfield, Earl of 123
Child, Josiah 116
Christian Ludwig, Duke of Calenburg
and Celle 22223
Cize, Emmanuel de 115
Claris, Paul de 275
Clarkson, David 82
Claydon, Tony 111, 214, 239
ClevesJlich, Duke of 180
Colbert, [JeanBaptiste] 182, 208
Coleman, Edward 82

ColignyChtillon: see Coligny, Gaspard

III de
Coligny, Franois de, seigneur
dAndelot16061
Coligny, Gaspard II de (d. 1572),
seigneur de Chtillon 35, 5355, 157,
16061, 164, 166, 174
Coligny, Gaspard III de, seigneur and
duc de Chtillon, marchal de
France 172, 17680
Coligny, Gaspard IV de, seigneur and
duc de Chtillon 177, 17980
Coligny, Henri de, seigneur de
Chtillon17172
___, death of (1601) 171
Coligny, Maurice de 180
Colley, Linda 103, 119
collective memory: see memory,
collective
Colonies, American; English colonies in
America 2, 28, 107, 114, 11718,
28587, 295, 297
Commard, Margueritte 248
Compton, Henry, Bishop of
London 107, 12830, 132, 13536,
138, 146
Cond, Henri I de Bourbon, Prince
de165
Cond, Henri II de Bourbon, Prince
de175
Cond, Louis I de Bourbon, Prince
de 15658, 160, 165
___, death of (1569) 165
Cotte, Esther 251
Cotton, John 28788, 292, 300302
Cottret, Bernard 22, 30, 114, 129
Cougot, Antoine 149
Couraud, Jean 13435
Cous, Marie le 249
Coutras, Battle of (1587) 191
Crqui, Charles de Blanchfort de,
marchal de France 176, 178
Cresset, James 22829, 231
Crousaz, Jean Pierre de 261
Crouzet, Denis 47, 50
Culpeper, Thomas 125
dOlbreuse, Eleonore 22429, 231, 238
dHallot: see Hallot
dHauterive: see Hauterive
Dabrenethee, Daniel 22526
Danforth, John 296
Daples, Jean Pierre 260
Dassas, Louis Claude 278
Dauphin 189, 241, 248, 251, 272, 275

 index307
Dauphine, Durand 117
Davenant, Charles 104105, 114, 116
Davies, Samuel 296
Dayrolles, Solomon 27879
De Thou, Jacques August 76
Declaration of Indulgence, First
(1672)69
___Second (1687) 70, 14142
Defoe, Daniel 105107, 109, 11618,
202
Delamare, Judith 268
Deleuze, Silvie 249
Deportes, Jacques 246
Derafalis, Judith 248, 251
Des Bouveries, Edward 26869
Desfougieres de Bussy, Franois 253
Devaynes, William 26566
Diepholz224
dragonnade, dragonnades 29, 67, 70,
81n46, 82, 85, 93, 12123, 130, 132,
13940, 142, 182, 193, 233
Dubois, Francis 278
Dubourdieu, John 279
Dumond de Bostaquet, Isaac 111
Dupuy, Daniel 278
Duras, Louis, Earl of Feversham 18182
Drer, Albrecht 46
Dussaut, Samson 251
Dutch republic, The 6, 7, 26, 29, 38, 67,
154, 170, 174, 176, 180, 18284, 186
88, 19294, 197, 199200, 206,
211n84, 228, 236
Duterrier, Joseph Ysnard 254
Elector Palatine, The 18081, 188,
22123, 237
Eliot, John 291
Elizabeth I, Queen of England 5758,
6364, 160, 168, 203, 235
Elizabeth, Electress Palatine 223
Eltz, Phillip Adam von 229
pinoy, Prince of 164
Ernst August, Elector of Hanover
22325, 22728, 231
Estrades, Louis d 179
Eudes de Mezeray, Franois 76
Evans, Israel 299
Evelyn, John 113
Everard, Edmund 83
Exclusion Crisis 69, 122
Falgout, Elizabeth 248
Feversham: see Duras, Louis
Fielding, Henry 104
Fifth Monarchy movement 28788, 291

Finch, Heneage, Earl of Winchelsea 129

Fleury de Culan, PhilippeHenri de,
sieur de Buat 179
Florida285
Fontaine, Jacques 107, 113, 272
Fontainebleau, Edict of (1685) 1, 28, 67,
181, 221
Fort Caroline 285
Fort, Captain Jacques du 171
Fouace, Stephen 266
Fouronce, Lewis Levesque de 278
Foxes Acts and Monuments73
Foyssac, James de 280
Franceson, Helix 24950
FrancoDutch War (16728) 183
Franois II, King of France 156
Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange 173,
176, 178
Frederick V, Elector Palatine 223
French and Indian War [see also: Seven
Years War] 296
French Hospital 26364, 26768, 270,
27778, 280, 282
French Reformed Church, Churches 1,
8, 19, 2022, 28, 30, 61, 121, 143, 169,
175, 180, 27475
French Wars of Religion
(15621629) 34, 40, 71, 76, 78,
15355, 168, 176, 190, 203, 205
___, first war (or first civil war) 4445,
47, 58, 15960, 164
___, second war (or second civil
war) 4445, 47, 15859, 160
___, third war (or third civil
war) 4445, 47, 53, 57, 15961,
165, 167
___, fourth war (or fourth civil
war) 161, 163
___, fifth war (or fifth civil war) 160,
16364
___, sixth war (or sixth civil war) 165
Frijhoff, Willem 211
Froment, Marie de 252
Gallot, Peter 279
Garcin, Daniel 248
Geneva 2, 20, 18889, 192, 233,
241, 24648, 251, 254, 25760,
28182
Genlis: see Hangest, Jean de
Gennes, Grace de 269
gens darmes, gendarmerie: see
Ordonnance, compagnies d
Gex, Pays de 247
Georg, Duke of Calenburg 222, 226

308 index
Georg Ludwig, Duke of Celle 223,
22537, 229, 231
Georg Wilhelm, Duke of Celle 22226,
22829, 231
Giradot, Paul 271
Gastines, Richard and Phillipe 5354
Glorious Revolution (1688) 72, 94, 100,
103, 120, 18283, 194, 199, 229,
23536
Glozier, Matthew 186, 198, 237
Godin, Stephen 274
Goulart, Simon 64
Gourjault, Charles, Marquis de
Venours123
Grand Alliance 27, 19596, 199200,
205, 211, 214, 226, 235
Graverol, Jean 147
Great Britain 78, 15n34, 26, 2931, 34,
3637, 67, 109, 112, 116, 118, 121,
141, 154, 187, 189, 192, 19899, 226,
22931, 23638, 240, 263, 279, 290,
292, 298
Great Controversy, The300303
Great Fire [of London], The 72
Gregory XIII, Pope 57, 302
Grostete, Claude, de la Mothe of
Lizy147
Grotius, Hugo 202, 235
Gruchy, Elias de 149
guerres de religion: see French Wars of
Religion
Guinand, Henry John 282
Guirand, Peter 277
Guise, Duke of 35, 47, 53, 55, 57, 156,
168
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden 38,
181
Guybert, Jacques 255
Gwynn, Robin 6, 19, 21, 82n48, 94n96,
115, 186n102, 198, 237
Haarlem 124, 163, 278
Habermas, Jrgen 217
HabsburgValois Wars (152159) 156
Hallot, Guillaume d, seigneur de
Dommarville et Guichery 17172
Hamelot, David 283
Hamelot, Peter 283
Hamon, Mary 266
Hancock. John 298
Hangest, Jean de, seigneur de
Genlis 16062, 164
Hanover 7, 26, 197, 219, 222, 224,
22627, 236, 238

Hansen, Lene 195

Hauterive family 180
Hauterive: see Laubespine, de, Franois,
sieur dHauterive
Hebert, Matthieu 130
Hebraism206
Heidelberg 223, 237
Helvetic Confession, The 261
Henri III, King of France 63
Henri IV, King of France and of
Navare 1, 18, 22, 34, 36, 4446, 63,
66, 165, 168, 170, 173, 191, 201, 207
Herwarth, Philibert, Baron von
Huningen 245, 260
Holy Roman Empire, The 168,
22022, 227
Huguenot identity, transnational 184,
185, 213; see also transnational
content, dimension, or perspective,
Huguenots in
Huguenot regiments (in Dutch
army) 16567, 17074, 17681,
183, 197
Huguenot Society of London 31,
26364
Huguenot soldiering 15457, 159, 169,
175, 188, 190, 219
Huguenot Wills and
Administrations 22, 31, 24445,
24849, 25152, 254, 257, 259,
26367, 270, 272, 27576, 27980,
28283
Hyde, Edward, Earl of
Clarendon 74n16, 132
Hylton, Raymond 148, 150
Ingelmunster, Battle of (1580) 166
Innocents, Cemetery of the Holy 53, 55
James II, King of England and
Scotland 6973, 75, 80, 86, 90,
93101, 108, 113, 141, 14344,
14647, 154, 18182, 184, 191,
194, 203204, 292
Jarnac, Battle of (1569) 57
Jenkins, Leoline 128
Johann Friedrick, Duke of
Calenburg22324
John Paul II, Pope 65
Jolit, Francis 267
Jonquieres, James de Dompierre de 276
Jouanna, Arlette 50
Jurieu, Pierre 24, 109, 187n103, 195,
197, 203204, 207214

 index309
Kahnawake Indians 28990
Karl Phillip, Elector 237
Kidd, Thomas 298
Kingdon, R. M. 66
Knetsch, F. 203
Knight, John 110
Knigsmarck, Count Phillip Christoph
von227
LEscure, Perside de 281
LEstrange, Roger 86n66, 9093
LHermitage, Rene Sauniere de 196
Ladeveze, Peter de 273, 277
La Fert, Jean de 269
La Fontaine, Anne de 27980
La Force, duc de, marchal de
France17578
La Garde, Antoine de 164, 16667
___, death of (1583) 166
La Garde, Mary de 267
La Marck, GuillaumeRobert de, duc de
Bouillon and Prince of Sedan 168
La Mothe, Claude Groteste de 147, 231
La Motte, Louise Marie de 224, 228
La Noue, Franois de 16162, 16567
La Noue, Odet de, sieur de Tligny 167,
169n44, 170, 174
La Pradelle, Elizabeth 279
La reine Margot 34n90, 36, 40, 65
La Rochelle 17, 160, 167, 17576, 255,
275
La Tour, Henri de, duc de Bouillon and
Prince of Sedan 159, 168
La Tour, Henri de, vicomte de Turenne
and marchal de France 173, 17677,
179, 181, 183
La Tour, FrdricMaurice de,
duc de Bouillon and Prince of
Sedan173
La Valette, Henri de Nogaret de, comte
de Candalle 179
Lacombe, John 27374
Lacroix, Jean 25152
Lamberty, Guillaume de 195, 197,
199201
Langlade, Franois 233
Lannoy, Louis de, seigneur de
Morvilliers160
Lanusse, Daniel 249, 251
Laporte, Roland 234
Laubespine, Franois de, sieur
dHauterive and marquis de
Chteauneuf 172, 17980
Lausanne 242, 24451, 25455, 25860

Laud, William, Archbishop

[of Canterbury] 122, 13435
Laval, Seigneur Isaac 248
Le Bas, Charles 278
Le Lens, Elizabeth 276
Le Vassor, Michel 195, 197, 200201,
203205, 207208, 212
Lee, Hannah Farnham 285, 304
Leopold of Austria, Holy Roman
Emperor207
Lesours, Anne des 231
Leti, Gregorio 226
Leveill, Louyse 250
Licensing Act (1662) 237
Lichere, Nicolas 132
Lichigaray, John 280
Liottard, Anne 250
Lisle de Verdun, Peter de 281
Lloyd, William 7376
Locke, John 100, 109, 118, 239
Lollards288
Lombard, Jean, of Angers 147
Louis (or Lodewijk) of Nassau 16062,
166
Louis XIII, King of France and
Navarre 22, 66, 17475, 197, 207
Louis XIV, King of France and
Navarre xxi, 1, 2225, 27, 39, 6667,
6970, 7273, 75, 81n46, 8283, 91,
9396, 98101, 103, 106, 11215,
122, 142, 15455, 18284, 189, 194,
198200, 203, 205, 207, 209, 211,
21314, 217, 22021, 224, 226,
229, 23234, 23738, 241, 243,
254, 259, 288, 292, 294, 296
Loys, Jean Rodolphe 259
Maitland, William 110
Margot, Princess: see Valois,
Marguerite de
Marion, lie 250
Marion, Jean 250
Maritime Powers, The 154, 201
Marlborough, Duke of 149, 203, 235
Marshall, John 108
Marsiglia, Battle of (1693) 191
Masclary, Gaspard de 280
Massachusetts Bay Colony 287
Mather, Cotton 28898
Mather, Increase 289
Matte, Pierre 253
Maurice of Nassau 170, 173
Mayenne156
Mayer, Andrew 138

310 index
Mazel, Abraham 233
Medici, Catherine de 52, 54
Memory vii, 1, 37, 9, 1118, 22, 25,
2930, 3233, 4142, 4344, 61, 71,
74, 7678, 80, 8586, 98, 100101,
12122, 127, 135, 14041, 143,
14748, 15051, 155, 162, 166,
19192, 215, 239, 269, 277, 283, 285
___, collective 46, 1116, 18, 22,
3033, 35, 3738, 40, 42, 64, 182,
19192, 23940
mercenaries, English 170, 185
mercenaries, French, Huguenot 155,
15960, 16870, 172, 185
mercenaries, German 63, 160, 162, 168,
170, 185
mercenaries, Irish 185
mercenaries, Italian 185
mercenaries, Scottish 38, 170, 185
Middes, Loys de 259, 261
Miege, Guy 258
Miller, John 77n32, 94, 98n115
Millerite Movement 300
Milton, John 259
Miremont234
Misson, James 267
Moncontour, Battle of (1569) 57
Monmouth, Duke of 96n101,
141, 181
Mons 16162, 166
Monson, John 266
Mont, Michel du 249
Montgommery, Jacques de Lorges,
comte de 157, 159n16, 163, 16667
Montpellier, Treaty of (1622) 175
Morel, Demoiselle 247
Morley, George, Bishop of
Winchester 13237, 139, 145, 149
Morse, Jedidiah 299
Moselles, Guillaume Herouard 249
Mossom, Charles 13031
Moulin, Pierre du 197
Moulin, Susanna du 278
Mulheim, Battle of (1605) 172
Muysson, Anne 273, 281
Nantes, Edict of (1598) 12, 2223,
2728, 31, 60, 6667, 70, 82, 86,
9395, 101, 103, 129, 141, 16970,
175, 18183, 186, 19394, 213, 217,
219, 241, 255, 263, 285
Nassau: see Louis of Nassau, Maurice of
Nassau
Navarre, King of: see Henri IV

Neau, Elie 29394

Netherlands, The 2, 67, 15n34, 26, 32,
61, 76, 124, 141, 15455, 16067,
16970, 173, 17778, 184, 18789,
242, 246, 260, 266
New England 28694, 296, 301, 303
New York 2, 65, 150, 286, 294, 303
Nine Years War (168897) 27, 154, 183,
189, 194, 203, 226, 242
nobility, Huguenot 46, 54, 15556, 164,
173, 178, 182, 186
Naturalization Act (1709) 106, 10910,
116
Normandy 59, 15657, 160, 27778
Noth, Martin 206
Noyelles, JacquesLouis, comte de 183
Oates, Titus 76, 7980, 83n52
Orange, Prince of: see Frederick Henry,
Maurice of Nassau, William I,
William III
Ordonnance, compagnies d15859,
161, 191
Ostend171
Palmer, Roger, Earl of Castlemaine 72
Pandin, Joseph 272
Papacy, The 73n10, 113, 188, 21112,
298, 301302
Papillon, Thomas 115
Parads, Jean de 246
Paschoud, Piere No 258
Pays du Vaud 2, 6, 26, 221, 24144, 252,
254, 25657, 25960
Peace of Rastatt 226
Pelat, Isbeau 252
Penn, William 86, 8990, 93
Perachon, Margaret 272
Pernambuco180
PerponcherMaisonneuve family 180
Perponcher, Isaac de, sieur de
Maisonneuve179
Pestre, Dauphinoise Catherine 252
Petty, William 117
Philip II, King of Spain 167, 200
Phillips, John 297
Pictet, Anne 269
Piedmont 212, 234, 242, 260
Pietism 259, 261
Pincus, Steve 70n2, 95, 111
Pius V, Pope 57
Plessis, Louis du, sieur de Douchant 179
Polier Bottens, Jean Pierre de 258
Pons, Jacques 251

 index311
Porcien, Prince de 164
Portland, Earl of 19697, 199200, 231
Poulveret, Daniel 12425
Poumies, John 278
Poyet, seigneur (or sieur) de 161, 163
Praromand, Andre de 247
Price, Richard 29899
processions, Corpus Christi 44, 49
prophets, French 10, 233, 250
Protestant interest 109, 189
Protestants, French 2, 7, 15n34, 1727,
4347, 6163, 6974, 7779, 8189,
9193, 95, 99101, 107, 11213, 116,
124, 13233, 137, 143, 16061, 164,
176, 18082, 18788, 190, 201, 209
10, 215, 218, 241, 263, 274, 283, 285,
289, 29395, 297
Prussia225
Psalms, Psalm-singing 19091
Quercy156
RechineVoisin, Charles de, sieur de
Loges179
Recife180
Recussants73
Reformation of Manners movement 119
refugees 34, 6, 8, 18, 26, 28, 30, 70, 73,
82n48, 85, 8788, 90, 105107, 110,
11217, 12124, 12932, 13537,
14048, 15051, 183, 18689, 192,
219, 221, 225, 234, 24250, 25354,
257, 26061, 26364, 26971, 275,
28587, 29192
Refuge, The; Le refuge 24, 8, 1819,
2123, 2526, 29, 31, 42, 127, 14042,
150, 162, 242, 24446, 25051, 258,
261, 266, 272, 276
Regis, Balthazar 272
Renouard, Jean 250
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes
(1685) 2, 6, 23, 2526, 29, 31, 7071,
82, 93, 95, 98, 101, 103, 12829, 137,
142, 146, 183, 18587, 19394, 210,
213, 217, 219, 221, 225, 231, 236,
238, 239, 241, 25556, 259, 263, 285,
28789, 292, 296
Revolt, Camisard 67, 201, 23435,
23738, 250, 296
Rheinfalden, Battle of (1638) 181
Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis,
Cardinal de 66, 17578
Rigoullott, Isaac 274
Robethon, James 266

Robethon, Jean 196, 230, 266

Robethon, Susan 266
Rochefoucault, duc de La 167
Rocques, Jacques de, baron de
Montesquieu171
Rohan, Benjamin de, seigneur de
Soubise17375
Rohan, Henri de, duc de 17377,
18081
___, death of (1638) 181
Rondeau, Jacques 12428, 145
Rothstein, Nancy 111
Rupert, Prince (of the Rhine) 181, 188
Russell, Lady Rachel 147, 266
Ruvigny, Henri Massue de, Marquis 142,
148, 247, 266
Saint-vremond, Charles de 196
SaintSimon, Jean Antoine de, baron de
Courtomer 172, 17980
St Bartholomews Day Massacre, St
Bartholomews Massacre 1, 6, 17,
24, 26, 3538, 40, 4345, 51, 5368,
70, 75, 7779, 87, 97100, 16263,
298, 302
St Geertruidenberg 163, 172
St Gnevive 49
St George de Marsay, Charlotte de 272
St Germain, treaty of (1570) 53
St Maurice, Dauphine Charles 275, 280
St Quentin 46
Saintonge 156, 281
Sancroft, Archbishop William 12326,
129, 132, 136, 138, 14647
Sau, Jean de 171
Saussure, Cesar-Francois de 258
Savary, Michel 130
Savoy 154n4, 189, 252
Svaoy Church 124, 126, 13638,
14447, 149, 268, 27980
Savoy, Duke of 191, 243
Scanavin, Augustin 258
Schomberg, Charles de 260
Schomberg, Duke of 190
Schtz, Ludwig Justus Sinold von 231
Schwoerer, Lois 90
Sebastier de Leirys, Anne de 256
Secker, Archbishop Thomas 107
Second Villmergen War (1712) 200
Serene Republic: see Venice
Seven Years War (175663) 290
Seventh-day Adventists xxiv, xxix, 300
Sheldon, Gilbert, Bishop of London,
Archbishop of Canterbury 132

312 index
Sherwood, Samuel 298
Socinianism 108, 261
soldiers, Dutch 16063, 165, 170,
176, 178
soldiers, English 160, 163, 170, 172, 176,
184, 187
soldiers, French (Catholic) 161, 163,
165, 167, 169, 173, 17678, 185, 234
soldiers, French (Protestant, Reformed),
or Huguenot 29, 34, 3839, 62, 67,
96, 104, 15455, 15767, 16971, 173,
17577, 17981, 18491, 194, 226
soldiers, Scottish 163, 170, 184, 187
soldiers, Spanish 16264
soldiers, Swedish 169
Sophia, Electress of Hanover 22324,
227, 23031
Sophia Dorothea, Duchess of Celle
22428, 238
Soubise: see Rohan
South Carolina 2, 150, 286, 303
Spain 57, 63, 157, 162, 16465, 167, 169,
17274, 207, 233
Spnola, Ambrogio 174
Spinoza, Baruch 239
staatse leger 170, 174, 17980, 184
StatesGeneral [of the
Netherlands] 16667, 170, 17273,
17980, 183, 196, 281
Stillingfleet109
Strayer, Brian 193
Strozzi, Philippe 167
Stuart, Elizabeth: see Elizabeth, Electress
Palatine
Sun King: see Louis XIV
Swift, Jonathan 106
Swiss Confederation,
Switzerland 241n1, 24243, 260
Tallemant, Paul 247, 254
Tascher, Peter de 265, 269, 27374
Tligny: see La Noue, Odet de
Terrier, Joseph Ysnard du 249, 254
Test Act, The (1673) 69, 98n112
Teulon, Mary Anne 263
The Observator90
The Weekly Pacquet of Advice from
Rome90
Thirty Years War (161848) 179, 185,
223, 258
Thoyras, Paul Rapin 115, 197
Threadneedle Street church 115, 121,
123, 128, 130, 138, 14145, 14748,
268, 281

Toland109
Toleration, Act of (1689) 103, 108, 114
Tonge, Israel 76
Tonnet, Nicolas 137
transnationalism vii, 1, 3, 710
transnational communities 19394, 206,
20910, 21415
transnational context or perspective,
Huguenots in 4042, 155, 218
troops: see soldiers
Turenne: see La Tour, Henri de, vicomte
de Turenne
Turrettini, Jean Alphonse 260
Twelve Years Truce (160921) 172, 174
Two Witnesses, The 187n103, 213, 292,
301
United Provinces, The 2, 6, 155, 16465,
170, 172, 174, 17980, 184, 18687,
197, 201, 221, 224, 231, 236
Universal Monarchy 103, 11214, 199,
202, 205, 213
Utt, Walter viiviii, xvxix, xxixxv,
xxviii, 24, 33, 39
Valenciennes161
Valois [dynasty] 45, 63, 160
Valois, Marguerite de 36
Valtelline, The 177
Van Ruymbeke, Bertrand 2n2, 18, 29,
118, 150
Vassy47
Vaud, Pays de 2, 6, 26, 221, 24144, 252,
254, 25657, 25960
Vaudois 39, 189, 191n115, 192, 201,
242, 248, 252, 254, 25758, 301
Vechire, Pierre 247, 24950
Venice, Republic of 181
Vervins, Treaty of (1598) 169
Vesis de Combrune, Peter de 280
Vevey 242, 24547, 250, 25859
Viard, Martha 280
Viouse, Guy 27980
Viouse, Mary Magdalen 27980
Vigor, Simon 47
Villars, Marshall 234
Vindicae contra tyrannos61
Violat, Pierre Issac 258
Vuilleumier, Henri 224
Wagner, Henry 31, 26367, 269, 272,
27477, 279, 28183
Wagner, Melchior 263
Waldenses, Waldensians: see Vaudois

 index313
Walsingham, Francis 62n50, 63,
167n39
War of the League of Augsburg: see Nine
Years War
War of the Spanish Succession
(170213) 27, 154, 164, 189, 194,
200201, 226, 232, 295
Webster, Noah 299, 303
White, Ellen G. 31, 300303
William I, Prince of Orange 39, 63, 154,
16065, 167, 170, 174
William III, Prince of Orange and
King of England 103104, 108,

112, 114, 116, 119, 154, 18186,

18890, 19496, 199200, 206,
213n94, 224, 226, 22829, 23132,
236, 247
Williams, John 28990
Worcester, Bishop of 113
Wilson, James 126
Wrttemberg 2, 251, 279
Wylie, James A. 301
Zeeland 2, 16264
Zrich 200, 242
Zwingli, Huldrich 243