# Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Historical Introduction - section VI

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Section VI.
THE ROYAL BOUNTY.
The Royal Bounty for the French Protestant Refugees consisted of moneys raised throughout the United Kingdom for distribution among the necessitous exiles. The Huguenots were always celebrated for their industry and self-reliance, and many of them for inventive genius or skill. And when they took refuge in this and in other lands, both masters and journeymen, in their various useful and beautiful manufactures, hastened to secure remunerative employment. Few of this class looked to us for more than some casual relief in small donations of money on their arrival; but there were refugees in different circumstances who required permanent aid. These were described as “persons of quality, and all such as through age or infirmity are unable to support themselves and their families.” The persons of quality were noblemen and landed proprietors who, having been born to good estates, had never learned any profession, and who by flight and forfeiture had lost their ail; also unsalaried pastors whose education and habits unfitted them for secular business, and genteel persons brought up to law and physic, and equally unable to find remunerative employment.
The “Bounty,” which in the needful substance came from the hearts and pockets of the people, was called “Royal” because the King’s Letter or " Brief" was required in order to sanction the appointment of a Collection in the Churches, and the Lord Chancellor as the keeper of the king’s conscience had to sign the Brief. A Collection was make in 1681, or rather in the opening months of 1682 (new style), as I have already recorded.
In his Sermon at the Funeral of Mr. James Houblon, 28th June 1682, Dr. Gilbert Burnet said, “Our Saviour hath allowed us when we are persecuted in one city to flee to another. One by leaving their country and friends, and all that they have, may hope to get safe, though almost naked, to another kingdom; yet even this small mercy is denied under the influence of that cruel religion [of the Church of Rome]. Here in England in Queen Mary’s time, the strangers were suffered to go away; yet care was taken to secure the ports, and not to suffer natives to fly beyond sea, when they were resolved to burn them at home. And now in France when methods are taken to make those of the Reformed Religion either to die of famine and in misery, or to force them to commit idolatry, it is made capital to fly, and those that endeavour it are to be condemned to the gallies. I cannot leave this matter without encouraging you to go on in your charities, and readiness to relieve those that are forced to come and take sanctuary among you.”
In the two or three following years a large sum must have been raised, as there appears to have been a balance of £17,950 after the distribution of the relief which was required and distributed before 1685.
Private Societies or committees for receiving and distributing money, and public meetings of the subscribers and friends of such Societies, have always been discouraged by despotic governments. The government of the Stewarts being essentially arbitrary, the bounty for the refugees fell to be distributed by a committee under the King in Council. National accounts of receipt and expenditure were never exhibited. Therefore the exact state of this benevolent fund could not then (and cannot now) be known.
It is to the collection, promised in 1685, that the following anecdote applies. The granting of the Brief gave the Dean of Canterbury (Tillotson) an opportunity of shewing his regard for the persecuted French Protestants by promoting the contribution in their favour. And the warmth of his zeal on that occasion was evident from an answer which he returned to Ur Bcveridge, one of the Prebendaries of his Cathedral, who from a coolness towards foreign Protestants, or an unnecessary scruple with respect to forms even in affairs of weight and substance, had objected to the reading of the Brief there, as contrary to the rubric. The Dean’s reply was short and significant, “Doctor, doctor, charity is above rubrics.” (Birch’s Life of Tillotson, p. 130.)
The celebrated collection, for which a Brief was promised in the autumn of1 685, was not actually ordered until the spring of 1686. The promise was made in the eagerness of British hospitality; the French and English kings, along with Chancellor ​Jeffries, concerted the delay. The irritation and anxiety of the public mind during this interval is evident from Evelyn’s Diary. Distrust of the government comes out in his first memorandum concerning the Revocation, dated 3 Nov. 16S5:—
“One thing was much taken notice of, that the Gazettes which were still constantly printed twice a-week, informing us what was done all over Europe, never spake of this wonderful proceeding in France; nor was any relation of it published by any, save what private letters and the persecuted fugitives brought. Whence this silence I list not to conjecture, but it appeared very extraordinary in a Protestant country, that we should know nothing of what Protestants suffered, whilst great collections were made for them in foreign places, more hospitable and Christian to appearance.” 4th December, “Persecution in France raging, the French insolently visit our vessels and take away the fugitive Protestants; some escape in barrels.” 20th December, “Dr Turner, brother to the Bishop of Ely and sometime tutor to my son, preached at Whitehall, on Mark viii. 38, concerning the submission of Christians to their persecutors, in which were some passages indiscreet enough, considering the time and the rage of the inhuman French tyrant against the poor Protestants.”
The diarist has better news to give on 14th March 1686:— “The Bishop of Bath and Wells (Dr. Ken) preached, on John vi. 17, a most excellent and pathetic discourse. After he had recommended the duty of fasting and other penitential duties, he exhorted to constancy in the Protestant religion, detestation of the unheard-of cruelties of the French, and stirring up to a liberal contribution.” On the 29th thereis this entry, “A Brief was read in all churches for relieving the French Protestants.” “Read” perhaps was an abridgment, either intentional or accidental, for “ordered to be read;” for on the 25th April Evelyn writes, “This day was read in our church the brief for a collection for the relief of the Protestant French, so cruelly, barbarously, and inhumanly oppressed, without anything being laid to their charge. It had been long expected, and at last with difficulty procured to be published, the interest of the French Ambassador obstructing it.” Though not by Evelyn, it has been said that Jeffries gave instructions that the clergy were to read the brief, without any comments or appeals to the people. One more extract from Evelyn is connected with the subject of this section; it is dated 5th May:— “This day was burned in the old Exchange by the common hangman a translation of a book written by the famous Monsieur Claude, relating only matters of fact concerning the horrid massacres and barbarous proceedings of the French King against his Protestant subjects, without any refutation of any facts therein; so mighty a power and ascendant here had the French Ambassador, who was doubtless in great indignation at the pious and truly generous charity of all the nation for the relief of those miserable sufferers who came over for shelter.”
On March 4, 1687 (n.s.), it was ordered by the King in council that the money which was collected for the distressed French Protestants be immediately paid into the Chamber of London. (Pointer’s Chronological History.) That the collection of 1686 was a large one, maybe inferred from the sum raised by St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster, in whose register there is this entry, “1686. To the Rt. Rev. Father in God, Thos., Lord Bishop of Rochester, being the moneys collected on the Brief for the French Protestants, as per receipt, £868, 12s. 1d.” The collection over the whole kingdom was £52,000. A second collection is mentioned by Evelyn:— “1688, April 15th. The persecution still raging in France, multitudes of Protestants and many very considerable and great persons flying hither produced a second general contribution, — the Papists (by God’s providence) as yet making small progress amongst us.” Bishop Ken addressed a circular letter, under the King’s letters patent, to his clergy, “to ask and receive alms and charitable contributions in behalf of French Protestant refugees,” beginning, “All glory to God. Thomas, unworthy Bishop of Bath and Wells, to the Minister of , wishes multiplication of mercy and peace and love, &c. God forbid that I, who am lifted up above my betters to the pastoral chair, should fail in fully answering the intentions of so royal and God-like a charity.”
A Brief, dated 31st January 1689, was issued by William and Mary. The sums credited to it, which were lodged in the city chamber, amounted to £65,715, 2s. 3d. A part of this sum was a contribution from Scotland, where the Convention-Parliament issued a Proclamation (dated April II, 1689) for a collection for the French and Irish Protestant Refugees. Sir Patrick Murray was made the Collector-General. As to the crowds of Irish, who had fled to the coasts of Scotland from Jacobite tyranny at home, relief was distributed to the applicants individually. But the only apparent method for relieving French Protestants was to remit part of the collection to the Commissioners in England. The Scotch clergy were required to read the ​proclamation from their pulpits; and obedience to this order was one of the tests of their loyalty. A pamphlet, entitled, “The Scots Episcopal Innocence” (published in 1694), gives the cases of numerous Jacobite clergy tried, and many of them deprived of their parochial livings, by the Privy Council. We find, among other reasons for deprivation, the following one, expressed in several slightly varied terms:— “For not observing the collection for the French and Irish Protestants,” (Case 38) — “For not observing the Proclamation for a voluntary contribution to the French and Irish Protestants,” (Case 139) — “For hindering the reading the Proclamation for a collection for the French and Irish Protestants,” (Case 5) — “For impeding the contribution for the French and Irish Protestants,” (Case 67). The French Protestants were named first, probably because the great sympathy felt for their sufferings would make the collection popular among the Presbyterians of Scotland. On account of the vicinity of Ireland and the actual presence of so many refugees from Ulster, the first practical claim was possessed by the Irish. And accordingly, one disloyal Prelatist (Case 175) denounced the intended recipients as “runnagadoes and rascals who came from Ireland, and pretended persecution, oppression, and force, when they had never lain under any.”
In England also there were Protestant refugees from Ireland who shared with the French in popular sympathy. Dr. Lower of London (whom I have mentioned in a previous section) left £500 to Irish Protestant Refugees after bequeathing £500 to the French. I have quoted largely from Dr. Hickes’ sermon of 1681. There was another sermon on behalf of that year’s collection which was printed, entitled “A Sermon against Persecution, preached March 26, 1682, being the fourth Sunday in Lent (on Gal. iv. 29, part of the epistle for that day), and the time when the Brief for the Persecuted Protestants in France was read in the Parish Church of Shapwicke. And now published to the consideration of violent and headstrong men, as well as to put a stop to false reports. By Sa. Bolde, Vicar of Shapwicke in Dorsetshire. London, printed for A. Churchill, at the Black Swan, near Amen Corner, 1682.” Mr. Bolde in the year 1689 preached a sermon in behalf of the Irish Protestants, with the title, “An Exhortation to Charity (and a word of comfort) to the Irish Protestants. Being a sermon preached at Steeple, in Dorsetshire, upon occasion of the Collection for relief of the Poor Protestants in this kingdom lately fled from Ireland. By Samuel Bolde, Rector there. London, printed for Awnsham Churchill, at the Black Swan, in Amen Corner, 1689.” As the preacher was evidently thinking of the French refugees, as much as of the Irish, I quote some of his sentences:—
Page 22. — “You who suffer for the Protestant Religion— whether in Ireland, France, or anywhere else — take heart, be not discouraged, be not dismayed, but labour to possess your souls with patience.”
Page 33. — “Let us take care that we be not at this time stingy, niggardly, and penurious, lest by our overmuch concern for a small particle we sacrifice all, and betray ourselves into their hands who will prophane the whole, pretending that every part is sacred. Our adversaries’ designs are evidently to deprive us of our religion and of all that we can properly call our own, and to reduce us under that vile — that ignominious — that unsupportable oppression under which tlie Protestants of France have long groaned.”
Page 29. — “As for those Protestants who are come out of Ireland, because they would not renounce the Protestant religion, nor concur with the open enemies of our faith and peace to enslave and ruin us, but have been forced to forsake their own country, by reason of the insolence and cruelty of their wild neighbours, and the violence of a worse and more barbarous Foreign Force, they ought certainly to be very much respected by us. It is our bounden and indispensable duty to contribute all we can to their ease and refreshment. And especially should we be bountiful unto, and encourage to our utmost, such amongst them who are come hither on purpose that they may be put into a capacity to help forward the deliverance of those distressed and besieged people they have left behind them, and who are willing to resist the most outrageous assaults of the common enemies of their religion and country with their last blood, and to prevent the Romish and French Party from making this land as very a field of blood as they have made, or would make, that country.”
Another item of £11,829 appears in the memorandum of refugees’ money paid into the chamber of the City of London, the date being from 10th May 1699 to 16th . February 1701. The collections appointed by the Brief of 1699 appear to have included the Waldenses along with the Huguenots, as we gather from Dr. Wake’s sermon, entitled “The Case of the exiled Vaudois and French Protestants stated, and ​their relief recommended to all good Christians, especially to those of the Reformed Religion, in a sermon preached at St. James, Westminster, April 5, 1699. By William Wake, D.D., Rector, &c.” At page 28, the preacher said,—
“It is but a little time since we were called upon to receive those of the Reformed Church of France into our bosoms. By doing this we have preserved so much of the Protestant Interest from sinking. And all that their persecutors have gained by their cruelties against them is but this, that they have forced them to change their country, but have not at all lessened either their zeal for religion or their ability to defend it. We are now invited to preserve the remains of the same church and of some of those of the vallies of Piemont with them.” To the same collection the diarist, Ralph Thoresby of Leeds, alludes:— “1699. The learned Mr. Boyse, being come from Dublin to this his native place, lodged at my house till his marriage with Mrs. Rachel Ibbetson. The sermon he preached relating to the sufferings of the French Protestants was very moving. . . . 1500 pasteurs were banished, their flocks scattered, and many thousand families forced into exile, for whose relief public collections are being made.”
The distribution of the Royal Bounty was assigned to two committees, one ecclesiastical (for the needy pasteurs) and the other lay (for the poor laity). The usual test for a French refugee’s admission, either as a casual recipient or as a regular pensioner, was simple membership in a French Protestant congregation. Occasionally despotic politicians and Laudean prelatists endeavoured to introduce the taking of the Sacrament in the Anglican mode as the “key” or “pick-lock” of the sacred money-chest.
In the folio volume on his Life and Times, entitled “Reliquiae Baxterianae,” Rev. Richard Baxter writes, under the date December 1684, “Many French ministers, sentenced to death and banishment, fly hither for refuge. And the church men relieve them not, because they are not for English diocesans and conformity. And others have many of their own distressed ministers and acquaintance to relieve, [so] that few are able. But the chief that now I can do is, to help such, and the silenced ministers here, and the poor, as the almoner of a few liberal friends who trust me with their charity.” And in the beginning of the reign of William and Mary, one or two quondam Huguenot pastors, who had become Anglican conformists, thought to please their new associates by re-producing this intolerant proposal. But they were silenced by the great theologian Howe’s appeal to one of the Commissioners (name not known):—
“Sir, — But that I am learning as much as I can to count nothing strange among the occurrences of the present time, I should be greatly surprised to find that divers French Protestant Ministers, fled hither for their consciences and religion, who have latitude enough to conform to the rites of the Church of England, do accuse others of their brethren (who are fled hither on the same account, but have not that latitude) as schismatics, only for practising according to the principles and usages of their own church which at home were common to them both, and as schismatics judge them unworthy of any relief here. Their common enemy never yet passed so severe a judgment on any of them that they should be famished. This is put into the hands of the appellants from this sentence unto your more equal judgment And it needs do no more than thus briefly to represent their case and me, Most Honoured Sir, your most obliged and most humble servant,
Walbrook, April 5th 1689.
John Howe.”
The funds were faithfully administered. To this one of the refugees, Maximilien Misson, bears witness in 1697. He writes:— “Of this multitude of poor exiles there are not at most above three thousand that receive alms, or (as we call it) are au Comité.” The sums of money that have been collected have always been deposited in the hands of four or five noblemen, who have referred the division and administration thereof to a chosen set of men picked out from among the refugees ​themselves. . . . Nothing can be more laudable than the chanty, equity, moderation, compassion, fidelity, and diligence with which these gentlemen acquit themselves of the employment which their goodness induced them to accept. It is impossible to express the sentiments of acknowledgment, esteem, and love which all the poor, and all the refugees in general, have in their hearts for these good and pious administrators.”
It was in the reign of Queen Anne that the Committee began to print lists or states. The first list was printed in 1703, dated 3d November, the committee being Messieurs Portal, Maguel, Gardie, Pinsun, Hayet, La Motte Blagny, J. Rottisset, De Narbonel. The title is “Liste des Protestans François refugiez qui étant dans le besoin ont part à l’assistance charitable de quinze mille livres sterlings qui leur sont accordées tous les ans dans ce puissant et heureux Royaume. Laquelle Liste est imprimée par ordre des seigneurs nommés par la Reine sur la distribution desdits quinze mille Livres Sterlings. A Londres, sur le fin de l’année 1703. *⁎* A Londres, chez Robert Roger dans les Black-Fryers, proche de l’lmprimerie Royale.” In 1708 Paul Vaillant was employed to print “Estats de la Distribution de la somme de douze mille livres sterlings. . . . receue par le Comité françois le 18 de Decembre 1706. . . ." The preface called this the second statement of accounts. The Committee had been enlarged, and now consisted of eighteen Englishmen and twenty-nine Frenchmen. Their statement divided the refugees into ten classes:— (1.) Gentlemen; (2.) Burgesses; (3 ) Extraordinary cases; (4.) Ecclesiastical proselytes; (5.) Refugees in the provinces; (6.) Patients in the Pest-House; (7.) Ophans; (8.) School-teachers; (9.) The common people; (10.) Medical men employed by the Committee. The gcntilhommes represented 145 families, of whom 205 persons were relieved.
It remains that we should enquire regarding the votes and proceedings of the House of Commons, relative to the Royal Bounty. The statements as to this fund, handed down to us as history, are questionable, at least as to the source from which the income was raised, and as to the right of parliament to withhold, either in whole or in part, the annual sum of £15,000, which appears to have been first voted in 1696. In the present year (1869) the fund survives (though at its last gasp), and therefore official papers must exist with which the printed histories might now be compared, and by which they might, wherever they are erroneous, be corrected.
The most simple method for the present writer will be to begin by quoting the cotemporary history, and to end by furnishing what (as he has been informed) is the right version of the case. To save trouble I have given all the references, belonging to the historical head, in one foot-note, and here acknowledge that (with slight exceptions) the language is that of the writers quoted, and not my own, as the enquiring reader may ascertain for his own satisfaction.
The distressed French exiles upon account of religion, having lost their best support by the death of Queen Mary, and having solicited the court to little purpose, did on the 9th April 1695, present a petition to the House of Commons, humbly praying that their deplorable condition might be taken into consideration. The Commons, out of a generous and Christian tenderness, presented an address to the king, that his majesty would be pleased to take the poor French refugees into his princely consideration, and vouchsafe them some relief. To this address his majesty answered, that he was desirous to have it complied with, and would direct the Lords of the Treasury to consider and report to him the fund wherein to place that charity. This parliament was dissolved on the 22d October, and a new one was elected.
On the 22d November the king made his speech from the throne to the new parliament, and in the midst of the portion addressed to the gentlemen of the House of Commons, he said that compassion obliged him to mention the miserable circumstances of the French Protestants who suffered for their religion, and recommended their case to his faithful Commons. This matter was considered by Committees of the whole House, during several sittings, beginning on the 12th March 1696. Their report embodied the declarations of King Charles II. (28th July 1681), and of King William and Queen Mary (25th April 1689), importing, that the French Protestants having been invited with great promises of assistance to come hither, it would be a great scandal to the government and to religion if they were not speedily relieved, and that it would be strange if this nation should suffer itself to be outdone by their neighbours in so excellent a work, seeing that what charity soever is ​bestowed upon them (besides the blessing that redounds from it) the nation is never the poorer, since it receives back by consumption as fast as it is given. With regard to the necessities of the actual petitioners, the Committee made enquiries as to their numbers, and as to their several qualities, ages, and callings, and reported that the numbers of old gentlemen and ministers, with their wives and children, also of widows and orphans, showed that there were 2460 persons worthy of the public charity of the nation. The House accordingly voted a grant of £15,000 per annum for the distressed French Protestants (£12,000 for the laity, and £3000 for the ministers), beginning on the 25th March 1696.
There is nothing in the subsequent statements of historical writers to contradict, or even to modify this account of the pedigree and birth of the annual £15,000. The remainder of their information concerns the payment of that annuity. And they complain that during the years 1696, 1697, and 1698 it was not paid in money; the Commissioners had to accept Exchequer bills, “remote tallies and malt tickets,” which being sold realised not £12,000, but only £5440, 10s. 2d. Then they lost a whole year’s income by the death of King William III., the warrant issued for that year having never been met by the government. During the best years of the reign of Queen Anne the money was regularly paid; but on the fall of Marlborough and Godolphin, with whom the vast majority of the refugees could not cease to sympathize, the enraged ministry of Harley and Bolingbroke stopped payment. This was in 1711, and Queen Anne lived until the 1st August 1714. The French Church of the Savoy, in London, at once sent a deputation to Hanover to congratulate King George, and to represent to the Baron de Hothmer and the Duke of Shrewsbury how “the late Queen’s ministry had most inhumanly deprived the French refugees for four years of the allowance [£15,000 per annum], which had been granted to them by Act of Parliament in the reign of King William, so that many of them had been reduced to a starving condition.” The deputation was very kindly received. On the new King’s establishment payments were resumed, and they continued at the same rate until the days of Sir Robert Walpole. Thus ends the historical head of my discourse.
The true state of the case (I am assured) contradicts what I have copied from historians as to the pedigree of the £15,000 of income, and shows it was not, in literal truth, a Parliamentary Grant at all. There was a Grant from the House of Commons of £1718, 4s. per annum, for the relief or better support of French pastors, to be distributed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and others. The grant is still paid without diminution (1869). It did not escape the criticisms of Mr. Joseph Hume in his place in Parliament. The Right Honourable George Robert Dawson, in reply to the veteran economist, very fully stated and proved the advantages of keeping open the French churches in question. They are used by French visitors and residents, both rich and poor, and prevent multitudes of the latter from being engulphed among the dangerous and unproductive classes of the population.
The Lay fund, according to my correspondent, was the interest of the sum of a quarter of a million, a capital fund, belonging to the French refugees themselves, having accumulated in the hands of their trustees. I have already spoken of the sums paid into the Chamber of the City of London. The total paid 2d May 1681 to 20th December 1695, amounted to £124.553, 4s. 2d. This sum was from collections in the churches, which, however, were not the only supply of means. Money was obtained (says Misson) “partly by Brief, partly by Act of Parliament, and partly by the mere goodness and liberality of the King [William] and of the late Queen [Mary] of happy and glorious memory,” and was “always deposited in the hands of four or five noblemen, who have referred the division and administration thereof to a chosen set of men, picked out from among the refugees themselves, these being more Likely to know the necessities and cases of their countrymen than Englishmen possibly could be. These gentlemen are called the French Committee, or, in respect of the great Commissioners, the Little Committee.” We may take this statement as applicable to the beginning of the year 1696. And allowing, in addition to the £125,000 of unexpended balances, an equal sum for Parliamentary Grants and various ​factions, we would have the £250,000 to account for, which has been named at the beginning of this paragraph.
For this sum left with the city as a loan, interest at the rate of 5 per cent, had been given (or offered?) by the Metropolitan Corporation. The Williamite wars, however, rendering money more than ordinarily needful for the national exchequer, the Government offered one per cent, more, and the money was transferred from the City Chamber to the Treasury, my correspondent says. A quarter of a million at 5 per cent, yields an income of £12,500, but at 6 per cent., £15,000. What was called a Parliamentary grant was, according to this representation, only the incurring of a plain obligation to pay stipulated interest upon a loan. Accordingly, a reduced payment would be a reduced rate of interest, and could not justly take effect without consultation with the lenders, or without an offer on the part of the borrower to refund the money. Sir Robert Walpole, according to his own statement, retrenched by a half the grant which had become too large for duly qualified recipients. But was not the transaction simply a reduction of the rate of interest to 3 per cent., without allowing the lenders the option of receiving back their own capital fund? The critical question, however, had been practically put and disposed of before the reign of George the Second, perhaps before the reign of George the First, or even of Queen Anne.
There can be no doubt that there was a sum of about £125,000 in the Chamber of the City of London, belonging to the Commissioners for relieving distressed French refugees. (I do not deny the additional sum, but it may be left out of the discussion at present.) That money has disappeared; its fate cannot be traced. It has been spent. When, and by whom was it spent? Was it spent in paying King William’s army? Was it spent during the glories of Marlborough’s campaigns? Was it spent by Lord Treasurer Harley? That political quack offered to eclipse the great Treasurer who had preceded him, and by means of State lotteries to govern us for nothing. Amidst his arithmetical experiments, ready money would be a clamant desideratum. Did he appropriate the poor refugees’ money? And was the best reason for withholding their income the fact that there was no capital? The Hanoverian dynasty was not responsible for the loss of the capital. It found the refugees without capital; whatever may have been their former funds, and whosoever had spent their last penny for them, and however much punishment the crime of peculation merits, they were penniless at the footstool of King George’s throne; and then, if not before, the annual sum of £15,000 became a public grant and liable to reduction. That it was on this footing in the reign of George I. is evident from the fact, that in 1718, when the incorporated Society for the relief of converts of any nation from the Church of Rome petitioned for funds, the king allocated to it £400 per annum “from the .£15,000 granted out of the Civil List for the relief of the poor French Protestants.”
All trace of the capital having disappeared, the grant was reduced to about £8500 under Sir Robert Walpole’s ministry. There is in the Lambeth Palace Library a MS. “Royal Warrant for the payment of the sum of £8591 to poor French Protestants. 11 Dec. 1727”" The prosperity of so many of the descendants of the refugees, and their amalgamation with the native population, as well as the occasionally successful applications of impostors for relief, contributed arguments for increasing economy and diminishing grants. During the great French Revolution many Roman Catholics fled for refuge from France to England, and, as our fellow-creatures, were hospitably treated. And though they were usually called “French emigrants” and not “refugees,” yet their presence in the country led some members of Parliament to suppose that the grant to poor French refugees (the epithet “Protestant” having been accidentally omitted) was a grant to Papists, a supposition which raised opposition. In the year 1812 a most serious reduction was made, and nothing but the Bourbon Persecution in the south of France saved it from utter extinction three or four years afterwards — the ferocity and ingratitude of the Bourbons reviving a Protestant feeling in England. In 1836 the mistaken allegation that the refugees were Papists was repeated in Parliament, but officially contradicted by the Right Honourable John Charles Herries.
The once magnificent grant is now reduced to the puny annuity of £120, and the Treasury announces that with the lives of the present recipients the vote will disappear (1869).
Considering what we owe to the refugees, and that the effect of the methods of manufacture introduced by them, and which for us were new creations, inaugurated those gradually advancing processes by which the descendants of the Huguenots ​have been left behind in poverty, we should rejoice to see their poverty relieved by some plan which would elevate the children of such ancestry above common paupers. In Spitalfields, for instance, we see a population of undoubted Huguenot origin, singular in their customs and in their sufferings. That district has been frequently the occasion of appeals for relief.
In 1793 Rev. Charles Edward De Coctlogon preached a sermon, entitled, “The Grace of Christ in Redemption, enforced as a Model of Sublime Charity.” This sermon was published in 1794 for the benefit of the Spitalfields Weavers — “to add to a collection now making, which is rendered necessary by the uncommon distresses of more than 20,000 objects — men, women, and children — pining in a state of extreme want, not arising from indiscretion, idleness, or profligacy, but from a defect in a particular branch of commerce.”
In 1816 a committee addressing the Lord Mayor represented that the number of unemployed weavers was computed at 30,000, and added this observation: “This district contains much of modest and retiring poverty that suffers comparatively without repining.” At a public meeting in the Mansion House, the mover of one of the resolutions said: “With regard to the soup society, its merits are not confined to the judiciousness of its distribution, but consist also in the real goodness of the soup, in support of which I may safely appeal to an honourable baronet, who is an admirable judge of such matters.” (A loud laugh.)
“Sir William Curtis, in seconding the motion, expressed his sense of the notice taken of himself, though the occasion was of that nature that he hardly knew how to smile at it.”
The Rev. Isaac Taylor, vicar of St. Matthias, Bethnal Green, London, writes: “The work of a parochial clergyman among the descendants of the Huguenots is a sad but most interesting duty. They have none of the servility, none of the brutality which is found among other classes of the London poor. . . . A physiognomist of small skill could, easily and almost infallibly, point out in any assembly of the inhabitants of Bethnal-Green those who could substantiate their claim to Huguenot blood. The jet black hair, the swarthy complexion, the dark, brilliant, and often passionate eye, the small hand, the lithe, well-bred figure, the indescribable charm of demeanour, graceful, courteous, and self-possessed, and often a slightly oratorical manner, and an instinctive taste in dress, all so different from the ordinary type of the London poor, are things which it is impossible to mistake, and are the more striking when their possessors are living in wretched garrets, and often in the extremest poverty. . . . Some of them still cherish a reasonable pride in their long pedigrees, and in the distinguished and noble surnames which they bear . . . a nation of martyrs, not forgetful that they were once among the most prosperous of London artisans.”
Such testimony shows how the Royal Bounty might gracefully relieve their wants, or improve their houses and streets, or transplant some of their families to better fields.
*⁎* Although this section has had to deal only with the bounty of the English to the French refugees, the reader will bear in mind that the refugees had nothing of the pauper spirit. They were known to support the poor of their own congregations, who were also remembered generously in their wills. In the vestry of the City of London French Church, there is exhibited on painted boards on the wall, a list of donations and legacies to the poor of the congregation which we admire, though amused by the curious simplicity of the French words, dons and legs. Mr. James Houblon of London left in 1682, in his legacy of exhortation to his children, a testimony as to the charitable funds of this church: “Be especially charitable to the French Church; I know not any charity better bestowed or more faithfully managed.”
* ↑ Burn’s MSS.
* ↑ The Privy Council appointed Deputy-Collectors in various counties to distribute money (as soon as collected and without the necessity of first paying it over to the Collector-General) among the Irish Protestants. The Deputy-Collector at Stranraer was Provost Torburne, who was to be assisted by Sir Charles Hay of Park and Mr. Miller, Minister of Stranraer. — Privy Council Register, Minutes of 7th June and 3d July 1689.
* ↑ Burn’s MSS.
* ↑ There is preserved in the Public Record Office [Treasury Papers, vol. 35) a Roll showing the sums distributed to the ministers from 1686 to 1695. It is written in French, and concludes as if intended as a Memorial to King William III. It states that the collection made, pursuant to the Royal Brief, in March 1686 amounted to £52,000, and in June each minister received £18, each wife, £5, each child, £3 per annum — the same rate in 1687. In 1688 ministers above fifty years of age received £7 each, and children below twelve years of age £1, 10s. each — the same ratio in 16S9. In 1690 and 1691 the most liberal allowances were given, to ministers, £16 per annum each, each wife, £6, each child, £1, 10s. In 1692 each pasteur and family received £15. In 1693 and 1694 and up to May 1695 the ministers received for themselves and their families £11 only. His Majesty before his departure for Flanders having had the bounty to give for poor refugees £100 per week, the portion given to each minister since May 1695 amounts to 8s. 8d. per month, to each wife, 3s. 1d., to each child, 1s. 6d. If the under-named might take the lil>erty of telling His Majesty what sum would be required lo relieve their misery, they believe that the sum of £2500 would suffice for their consolation.
* ↑ Calamy’s Life of Howe (Lond. 1724), page 145.
* ↑ Misson’s Observations of a Traveller — disposed alphabetically — published in 169S, translated into English in 1719; see under the headings, Committee and Refugees.
* ↑ [Beyer’s] History of King William III., vol. iii. (Lond. 1703), pp. 52, 109, and 165. The Preface to a second translation of Claude’s “Short Account of the Complaints and Cruel Persecutions of the Protestants in the kingdom of Fiance” (Lond. 1707), p. 30, &c. The British Chronologist (founded on Salmon’s Chronological Historian), vol. i.
* ↑ This statement which was made to me in 1869, and which was printed in my second edition, I here repeat, as containing both interesting items of fact and not uninteresting matter for discussion. Some additional facts are interspersed in this edition from other sources.
* ↑ That £3000 was once voted to the Pastors seems probable, as the Committee distributed among the laity £l2,000 in the year 1706. There is a MS. in Lambeth Palace Library, “List for the distribution of £1718, 4s. to poor French Protestants for year ending July 5, 1759”. (Brought to Abp Secker, January 29, 1759.)
* ↑ I am informed that the date of this Debate in the House of Commons is 20th May 1850.
* ↑ Observations [English edition], page 41.
* ↑ Stowe’s London.
* ↑ “The Huguenot Colony in Bethnal Green,” an article in Golden Hours for April 1869.