Abstract
There are not many modern historians of England who are also poets, but amongst the select few who share the skills of both it is difficult to believe that any would feel inclined to write a narrative poem about the battle of Ivry in 1590, a battle some 35 miles from Paris in which Henry of Navarre defeated the forces of the Catholic League. Yet that is what no less an historian than Lord Macaulay did in the nineteenth century. His awareness of the history of the Huguenots was much greater than that of most of his modern British professional successors, and when he came to write his History of England from the Accession of James the Second he thought it worthwhile to include a good deal about the impact of refugees from Louis XIV’s France.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
J. Michelet, Louis XIV et la Révocation de l’Edit de Nantes (Paris, 1860) pp. 418–19. Translation by the present writer.
R. Gwynn, ‘The Number of Huguenot Immigrants in England in the Late Seventeenth Century’, Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 9 no. 4 (1983) pp. 384–95.
R. D. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage, (London, 1985) pp. 126–7.
Baron F. de Schickler, Les Eglises du Refuge en Angleterre, 3 vols, (Paris, 1892)
J. H. Hessels (ed.) Ecclesiae Londino-Batavae Archi-vum, 3 vols, (vol. III in two parts), (Cambridge, 1887–97).
For the present state of knowledge, see an article by A. Grant and R. Gwynn, ‘The Huguenots of Devon’, Transactions of the Devonshire Association for the Advancement of Science, 117 (1985) pp. 161–94.
See E. Welch (ed.) The Minute Book of the French Church at Southampton 1702–1939, Southampton Records Series, vol. 23, (Southampton, 1979).
W. Minet, Some Account of the Huguenot Family of Minet, (London, 1892) p. 24.
J. P. Kenyon, The Stuarts (London, 1958; and 1966) and Stuart England (London, 1978) does not think them worth mentioning at all. The most recent university textbook devoted to the period when the Huguenots came over in their greatest numbers finds no place for ‘Huguenot’ or ‘refugee’ in the index; and though they are in fact mentioned in the book, it is normally in the context of xenophobia (J. R. Jones, Country and Court: England 1658–1714, (London, 1978) for instance pp. 93, 306–7).
P. G. M. Dickson, The Financial Revolution in England (London, 1967)
A. C. Carter, Getting, Spending, and Investing in Early Modern Times (Assen, 1975).
Each ‘historical novel’ symbol represents the first edition in English or English translation of a work of historical fiction based on Huguenot themes, as recorded by C. F. A. Marmoy, ‘The Historical Novel and the Huguenots’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London (1978) vol. XXIII, pp. 69–78, or in notes kindly loaned by Mr Marmoy. The lack of entries for the 1930s may reflect only the lack of any suitable available guide (p. 76). Each ‘opera’ symbol represents a year in which Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots was performed at Covent Garden, as recorded in H. Rosenthal, Two Centuries of Opera at Covent Garden (London, 1958) appendix II. As far as books are concerned, the Huguenot Society of London Quarto Series publications have not been included: those by Moens (1885–6), Cross (1898) and Gwynn (1979) have significant historical commentaries as well as documents.
Also omitted are three works not directly on the Huguenot refugees in England, but which might have been expected to encourage interest in them: W. Cunningham, Alien Immigrants to England (London, 1897)
G. L. Lee, The Huguenot Settlements in Ireland (London, 1936)
W. C. Scoville, The Persecution of Huguenots and French Economic Development 1680–1720 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1960).
Books not previously mentioned in this paper which are shown on the chart are J. S. Burn, The History of the French, Walloon, Dutch and other Foreign Protestant Refugees settled in England (London, 1846)
S. W. Kershaw, Protestants from France, in their English Home (London, 1885)
B. Cottret, Terre d’Exil: l’Angleterre et ses réfugiés … 1550–1700 (Paris, 1985).
Lee, Huguenot Settlements in Ireland; Albert Carré, L’Influence des Huguenots Français en Irlande aux XVIIe et XVIIIe Siècles (Paris, 1937). However, even for Ireland modern general histories pay little attention to the Huguenots other than in connection with the battle of the Boyne.
Across the Atlantic, there is a similar void between C. W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America (New York, 1885)
J. Butler, The Huguenots in America (Harvard, 1984).
It has been authoritatively suggested that there were about 60000 Roman Catholics, although older estimates are much higher; J. Miller, Popery and Politics in England 1660–1688, (Cambridge, 1973) pp. 11–12.
For example, P. Joutard, ‘The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes: End or Renewal of French Protestantism’, in Menna Prestwich (ed.) International Calvinism 1541–1715 (Oxford, 1985) p. 354, claims that twenty-six new churches were founded in England as a result of Louis XIV’s persecution. Where was this figure obtained? In 1680 there were two French churches in the area of modern Greater London; by 1700 there were at least twenty-eight. That makes twenty-six new churches in London alone, and there were another fourteen in the country, so the total should be not less than forty. The difference is the more significant in that Joutard goes on to argue that the figure of twenty-six new churches, while not negligible, ‘is ten less than that of churches founded in Holland, which logically presupposes a markedly smaller number of refugees’.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1987 The Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gwynn, R.D. (1987). Patterns in the Study of Huguenot Refugees in Britain: Past, Present and Future. In: Scouloudi, I. (eds) Huguenots in Britain and their French Background, 1550–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08176-9_13
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08176-9_13
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-08178-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-08176-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)