HUGUENOT THOUGHT IN ENGLAND
FIRST PART
From a literary point of view the intercourse between England and France in
the period that immediately preceded and followed the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes (1685) has been exhaustively studied by M. Texte[140] and
M. Jusserand,[141] both coming after M. Sayous.[142] We propose, while
tracing the progress of political speculation among the Huguenots, to
discover to what extent they influenced English thought. The field of
research is extensive: a mass of information on the subject lies scattered
in books, some of which are scarce, and the numerous manuscript sources
have been hitherto imperfectly explored. We cannot hope to do more than
draw a general outline of a profoundly interesting subject.
From the dawn of the Reformation, different reasons impelled the Huguenots
to look towards England. Besides the natural link formed by community of
thought in a matter that then pervaded life, _i.e._ religious belief,
political necessities led the Huguenots to seek the friendship of England.
Having the same household gods, the Huguenots and the English loved the
same mystical Fatherland, which dangers, ambitions, and interests shared in
common invested with stern reality. As the Huguenots increased, they grew
from a sect to a faction which, seeking alliances abroad, sent envoys to
the foreign Courts. According also to the vicissitudes of their fortunes,
streams of Huguenot refugees would flow from time to time towards the
neighbouring countries likely to welcome them. Thus from the first were the
Huguenots represented in England, not only by their noblemen, but by their
democracy.
A whole book might be written on the influence of Calvin in England, both
within and without the Church. To a student of comparative literature, if
the word be understood in the larger sense of intercommunication of thought
among nations, the part played by Calvin in the early framing of the
institutions of the English Reformation is a matter not too unimportant to
be overlooked.[143]
The first mention of Huguenot refugees in England occurs under the reign of
Henry VIII., when in 1535-36 forty-five naturalizations were granted. When,
responding to an appeal from Archbishop Cranmer, Bucer and his disciple
Buchlein repaired to England, in 1549, they met in the Archbishop's Palace
Peter Martyr and "diverse pious Frenchmen."[144] M. de Schickler and M.
Jusserand have rescued from long oblivion Claude de Saint-Lien, who,
quaintly anglicising his name into Holy-Band, began earning his bread by
teaching his mother tongue.
But it was only after Saint Bartholomew's Day that the Huguenot colonies in
England grew to such numbers as to form congregations. Several illustrious
Huguenots then found a last home in England. Admiral Coligny's brother,
Cardinal Odet de Chatillon, lies buried in Canterbury Cathedral. In 1591 Du
Plessis-Mornay was in London with Montgomery and the Vidame de Chartres,
negotiating an alliance with Elizabeth, and, with characteristic lack of
diplomacy, availing himself of his stay in England to intercede with the
Queen's counsellors in favour of the Puritans.[145] Though befriended by
Archbishop Parker and Sir Robert Cecil, "the gentle and profitable
strangers," as Strype calls the Huguenots,[146] were not generally welcome.
Popular prejudice was so strong against the newcomers that a Bill was
introduced in Parliament in 1593, prohibiting them from selling foreign
goods by retail.[147] The settlers, averaging during the sixteenth century
about 10,000, were chiefly skilled artisans, weavers, printers, binders, or
ministers, physicians, and teachers. By some curious unexplained accident,
Shakespeare lodged from 1598 to 1604 in the house of a Huguenot wig-maker,
Christophe Mongoye by name.[148]
With James I. the political preoccupations fell into the background; the
King sought the company of the most famous Continental scholars. In 1611 he
invited to his Court Isaac Casaubon, and three years later, at the instance
of his Huguenot physician, Sir Theodore Mayerne, Pierre Du Moulin, the
minister at Charenton. In the train of the scholars came over the men of
letters, among them Jean de Schelandre, the future author of the epic _La
Stuartide_, inscribed to James I.
In 1642, on the eve of the Civil War, there died in London the notorious
Benjamin de Rohan, Lord of Soubise, who had survived in exile an age that
belonged to the past. With the fall of La Rochelle, the political power of
the Huguenots was struck down, and there remained no further check on the
path of absolute monarchy. Protestant historians are wont to lament the
lukewarm faith that marked the period extending from 1629 to the
Revolution. Indeed, the outward manifestations of Huguenot zeal had then
ceased to be characteristic of the Church militant. The Bearnese or
Languedocian gentleman no longer left his castle for the wars, bearing as
a twofold symbol of his sect and party the Bible in the one hand and the
sword in the other; and the time was yet to come when in the wild Cevennes
mountains, in the "Desert," as they said in their highly-coloured language,
arose the heroic witnesses of the persecuted Church. The accidental causes
that had temporarily given the Huguenots an undue influence in the State
ceasing to operate, they appeared from a formidable party suddenly to
shrink into insignificance. But their intellectual development meanwhile
must not be overlooked. Alone in France, with those that a popular
dogmatism, no doubt justified in some cases, contemptibly nicknamed
libertines, they were prepared by a suitable mental training to act as a
check on the natural bias of the majority regarding its own infallibility.
And over the libertines they had the advantage both of general austereness
of life and of a certain readiness to suffer for their convictions.
No doubt the discipline exercised by the Calvinistic organisation
discouraged individual eccentricity. The struggle for emancipation over,
the leaders who had upheld against the Church of Rome their right of
judging in spiritual matters concluded that no further encroachments of
individualism on authority were permissible. The Confession of Faith lay
heavy upon the Churches; the Synod of Dort, whose decisions had become laws
for the French Synods, was singularly like a Reformed Council of Trent.
Still, there remained in the early seventeenth century a wide difference
between the mental attitude of a Huguenot and a contemporary Scotch
Presbyterian. A minority in France, the Huguenot leaders could not cut off
their flocks from the outer world; they mixed with the Catholics, who
outnumbered them; they shared in the development of thought in their
country; they were not all scholars and divines: some made bold to be men
of letters, poets, even libertines.[149] In the literary coteries of the
capital, in the incipient French Academy, over which the Protestant Conrart
presided, abbes and pastors were reconciled in common admiration for an
elegant alexandrine or a correct period.
In his own country, Calvin's system was imperfectly carried out. "The
pastors," wrote Richard Simon, the Catholic Hebrew scholar, "subscribe
their names to the Confession of Faith only by policy, persuaded as they
are that Calvin and the other Reformers did not perceive everything, and
effected but an imperfect Reformation."[150] "It cannot be denied," said Du
Moulin the elder of a very influential contemporary divine, "that a third
of Cameron's works are devoted to a confutation of Calvin, Beza, and our
other famous Reformers."[151] Due allowance being made for the prejudice of
a Roman Catholic or of an alarmed Orthodox, these statements are borne out
by facts. For instance, the Huguenots had none of the Scotch
Presbyterian's superstition for the Calvinistic system of Church
government. "I think," said Samuel Bochart, the author of the _Geographia
Sacra_, "that those who maintain the divine right either of Episcopacy or
of Presbytery are equally in the wrong, and that the heat of the dispute
makes them overstate their position; if we are asked which is the better
and the fitter for the Church of these two forms of government, it is as
though we were asked if it is better for a State to be ruled by monarchs,
the nobility, or the people, which is not a question to be decided on the
spur of the moment, for that there are nations to which Monarchy is more
suitable, to others Aristocracy, and to others Democracy, and that the same
laws and customs are not followed everywhere."[152] When Bishop Henchman,
in 1680, asked the ministers at Charenton their opinion on the respective
merits of Episcopacy and Presbytery, Claude and De l'Angle answered that
the question of Church government was one of expediency.[153]
The same detachment appeared in a more important matter. The Reformation,
certainly against the wish of its promoters, opened the flood-gates of free
inquiry. From the Church of Rome the Reformers appealed to Scripture, but
underlying that appeal was a right given to reason to decide what
construction should be put upon the divine message. The inconvenience of
the process was not felt at first. In an age of faith, reason is docile and
asks no questions. On the points upon which the Reformers had made no
innovation, reason accepted the traditional teaching; on the others, it had
free play without arousing the suspicions of Synods. But soon the teaching
of the Reformers came to be questioned. Once the horse held the bit in his
mouth, he could not be restrained in his headlong progress. So it came to
pass that in France, as in England and Holland, through the same cause,
latitudinarians followed in natural sequence the Reformers. A Royal Edict
of 1623 forbidding the students to the ministry to leave France, while
severing the tie that bound the Huguenots to Geneva, hurried on the
revolutionary movement. The students flocked to the Academies of Sedan and
Saumur, and soon two schools of divinity flourished opposed to each other,
that of Sedan upholding orthodoxy, while that of Saumur became the nucleus
of French latitudinarianism. Neither Cameron nor his disciple Amyraut, the
two luminaries of the latter school, were Arminians--their philosophy was
an offshoot of Cartesianism; like the English latitudinarians, they drew a
distinction between fundamentals and accidentals, and dreamed the generous
dream--a dream at most--of a Church so comprehensive as to include all the
Christians accepting the Apostles' Creed.
A little book published anonymously at Saumur in 1670, under the title of
_La Reunion du Christianisme ou la maniere de rejoindre tous les Chrestiens
sous une seule Confession de Foy_, sets forth in a bold ingenuous form the
aspirations of this school. "Some time ago a method of reasoning and of
making sure progress towards truth was proposed in philosophy.[154] To that
effect it is asserted that we must rid ourselves of all preconceived
notions and of all preoccupations of mind. We must receive at first only
the most simple ideas and such propositions as no one can dispute who hath
the slightest use of reason. Might we not imitate the process in religion?
Might we not set aside for a time all the opinions that we upheld with so
much ardour, to examine them afterwards with an open unimpassioned mind,
adhering always to our common principle, which is Holy Scripture?"[155]
D'Huisseau, the author of the book, answered with a young man's confidence
the most obvious objection. On a few simple dogmas all Christians would be
agreed; there would be no difference between a "Doctor of the Church" and a
poor man, since primitive Christianity is understood of all men. Then, with
Gallic faith in the efficacy of State intervention, he added: "Above all, I
think that those who can strike the hardest blows on that occasion, are the
Princes and those who rule the States and manage the public affairs. They
can add the weight of their authority to that of the reasons alleged in
that undertaking; and their power will be most efficacious in giving value
to the exhortations of others."[156]
In spite of this appeal to secular aid, the school of Saumur furthered
toleration. By the distinction they drew between fundamentals and
accidentals, they tended to deprive the Churches of some pretexts for
persecuting. No doubt they examined the question from the ecclesiastical
and not the political point of view, but their freedom from the prejudices
of their gown was a signal service to progress.
Another instance of detachment, all the more noticeable because of its
consequences in England, was Daille's attitude towards the Fathers.
Published in 1632, his _Traite de l'emploi des Saints-Peres pour le
jugement des differends qui sont aujourd'hui en la religion_ was translated
into English in 1651. It is no exaggeration to state that to this book was
due the scant reverence shown in the seventeenth century by Protestant
theology for the authority of the Fathers. The Bible, as the Saumur school
desired, became the rule of faith, until in the early eighteenth century
its authority came to be questioned in its turn.
The development of theological thought followed therefore in France about
the same lines as in England. When considered from a merely intellectual
point of view, the speculative activity of the Huguenots, in the period
intervening between the fall of La Rochelle and the Revocation, gives the
impression of an orchard in April, in which the trees covered with blossoms
promise abundance of fruit. The impending frost blasted those hopes. What
fruit ripened was not gathered in France.
The relation between a critical attitude in theology and in politics has
often been noticed. A common charge brought against the early Reformers was
that of sedition. Though the charge was unfounded in most cases, popular
instinct sharpened by enmity was right in the main. Even Protestant writers
admitted the temptation of men who had rebelled against the Church to rebel
against the State. Some profound observations they made on the tendency of
the human mind to extend the scope of a method of reasoning, and to evolve
out of a philosophical theory a programme of political reform long before
the students of political science of our own time made a similar
observation. "All the subtleties," said D'Huisseau, "that are called forth
in religion generally make the minds of the people inquiring, proud,
punctilious, obstinate, and consequently more difficult to curb into reason
and obedience. Every private man pretends to have a right to investigate
those controverted matters, and, bringing his judgment to bear upon them,
defends his opinion with the utmost heat. Afterwards they wish to carry
into the discussion of State affairs the same freedom as they use in
matters of religion. They believe that since they are allowed to exercise
control over the opinions of their leaders in the Church, where the
service of God is concerned, they are free to examine the conduct of those
that are set over them for political government."[157] With still keener
insight did Bayle, twenty years later, perceive the political import of
certain tenets of the Reformation. The emphasis laid upon the divine
command to "search the Scriptures," marked the beginning of a new era for
humanity. Bidden as a most sacred duty to judge for themselves, men could
not be withheld from wandering into the forbidden field of secular
politics.
As the infallibility of the priest, so the infallibility of the ruler came
to be questioned. But if the principle of free inquiry, or, as Bayle terms
it, "l'examen particulier dans les matieres de foi,"[158] would lead
necessarily to civil liberty, another tenet led to equality. "When there
was a pressing need, any one had a natural vocation for pastoral
functions."[159] Universal priesthood drew no distinction between a caste
of priests and the people, between the princes or magistrates and the
rabble. In cases of necessity, leaders, political as well as religious,
might spring from the ranks, as the prophets of Israel did, holding their
commissions directly from Heaven.
But the seditious Huguenot negotiating against the King of France with
Englishmen and Hollanders, and marching against the capital at the head of
an army of mercenary Germans, had now disappeared as a type. The mangled
remains of the great admiral, martyred for the cause of political and
religious liberty, lay in the chapel of Chatillon Castle. The Condes had
gone back to Roman Catholicism. With the advent of Henri de Navarre,
sedition became loyalism. Though brought up upon the works of Hotman,
Languet, and Du Plessis-Mornay, the Huguenot found little difficulty in
bowing, with the rest of his countrymen, before the throne of absolutism.
The Synod of Tonneins condemning as early as 1614 the doctrine of Suarez,
"exhorts the faithful to combat it, in order to maintain, together with the
right of God, that of the sovereign power which He has established."[160]
The Synod of Vitre (1617) addresses Louis XIII. in these words: "We
acknowledge after God no other sovereign but Your Majesty. Our belief is
that between God and the Kings, there is no middle power. To cast doubt
upon that truth is among us a heresy, and to dispute it a capital
crime."[161]
The Civil War in England made it imperative for the Huguenots to frame a
theory of government. Readily confounded by popular malice with English
Presbyterians and Independents, they were bound to be on the alert. In
1644, complaints from the Maritime Provinces of attempts on the part of
"Englishmen belonging to the sect of Independents" to spread their
doctrines among the people, gave the Synod of Charenton an opportunity of
condemning them as "a sect pernicious to the Church" and "very dangerous
enemies to the State."[162]
The relations between the Huguenots and the Puritans thus so unexpectedly
revealed are still uncertainly known. As early as 1574, La Rochelle had
been in close touch with the extreme Elizabethan Puritans, Walter Travers
causing one of his works of controversy to be printed there.[163] In 1590
two of the Martin Marprelate tracts were issued from the presses of La
Rochelle,[164] and Waldegrave, one of the factious printers, took refuge
there. During the Civil War there seem to have been active negotiations
going on between some of the Parliamentary leaders and the Bordeaux
malcontents. These found the doctrines of the Levellers more to their taste
than the more moderate schemes of Cromwell, Ireton, and the "grandees."
They even sketched out for France, or at least Guyenne, a Republican
Constitution. For those who have been taught to explain the French
Revolution by racial theories, nothing is more disconcerting than to learn
how the ancestors of the Revolutionists caught some of their most advanced
ideas from their English co-religionists. They clamoured for a
representative assembly, liberty of conscience, trials by jury, the
abolition of privileges. "The peasant," they wrote, "is as free as a
prince, coming into this world without either wooden shoes or saddle, even
as the king's son without a crown on his head. So every one is by birth
equally free and has the power to choose his own government."[165] If it is
astounding enough to hear almost a century and a half before the fall of
the Bastille the cry of liberty and equality, it is startling to think that
the English had raised it.
The tragedy enacted at Whitehall on 30th January 1648-49, stirred up in
Europe a horror equal only to that caused nearly a century and a half later
by the execution of Louis XVI. of France. "We gave ourselves up," wrote
Bochart, "to tears and afflictions, and solemnised the obsequies of your
King by universal mourning."[166] One of the most distinguished laymen in
the Rouen congregation, Porree the physician, declared that "all true
Protestants abhorred that execrable parricide."[167]
The Doctors of the Church delivered their opinion in emphatic terms. In
1650 two works appeared exalting the royal prerogative.[168] Amyraut, the
latitudinarian professor of Saumur, was the author of one of them;[169]
Bochart that of the other.[170] Their argument is mainly Biblical. The
kings being God's vice-regents, are accountable only to Him. To sit in
judgment upon them, to inflict them bodily injury, is heinous sacrilege.
"Kings are absolute and depend only on God; it is never allowed to attempt
their lives on any pretence whatsoever."[171] Yet Amyraut recorded a
remarkable reservation in which the regicides could have found their
justification: "Except there be an express command, proceeding from God
directly, such as those given to Ehud and Jehu, nothing may be attempted
against the kings without committing an offence more hateful to God than
the most execrable parricide."[172] Dr. Gauden's _Eikon Basilike_ had a
great success in France, two translations penned by Huguenots appearing,
that of Denys Cailloue[173] in 1649, that of Porree[174] a year later.
Lastly, all students of English literature remember that Claude de Saumaise
wrote the _Defensio regia pro Carolo Primo_, and Pierre Du Moulin the
_Clamor sanguinis regiae ad coelum contra parricidas Anglicanos_ (1652).
The Huguenots showed zeal not only in condemning the King's execution and
in vindicating his memory from the charges of the Commonwealthsmen, but in
furthering the Restoration of his son, Charles II., by proclaiming his
title to the Crown of England.[175]
The Restoration coincided with the majority of Louis XIV. The Synod of
Loudun, whose moderator was Daille, then an old man, proclaimed the duty
of passive obedience: "Kings depend immediately on God; there is no
intermediate authority between theirs and that of the Almighty."[176]
"Kings in this world are in the place of God, and are His true living
portrait on earth, and the footstool of their throne exalts them above
mankind, only to bring them nearer Heaven. Such are the fundamental
principles of our creed."[177]
Significant it is to see the divine of world-wide repute, whose youth was
spent with Du Plessis-Mornay, the co-author, most probably, of the
_Vindiciae contra Tyrannos_,[178] solemnly recalling the duty of subjects to
princes on the threshold of an era of absolutism in Europe, supposed by
every one except some Fifth-Monarchy men to be of long duration.
Yet the Huguenots, with all their submissiveness, were not thought sincere.
Public opinion had not forgotten the lessons of the sixteenth century. "To
be candid," wrote Richard Simon to Fremont d'Ablancourt, "most of your
ministers were not born for a monarchy such as that of France. They take
liberties permissible only in a Republic, or in a State where the King is
not absolute."[179]
The factious individualism latent in every Huguenot only awaited
favourable circumstances to come to light. The concessions of a vanquished
party to their victors explain how political thought depended on
theological thought. But among the refugees in England, the
passive-obedience doctrine imbibed in the mother-country did not endure.
Pierre Du Moulin, who, at the invitation of James I., had twice visited
England, in 1615 and in 1623, left two sons, Peter and Lewis, who both
settled in England. The elder, who accepted the living of Saint John's,
Chester, and became at the Restoration chaplain to Charles II. and
Prebendary of Canterbury, is the author of _Clamor sanguinis_, wrongly
attributed by Milton to another French pastor, of Scottish descent,
Alexander Morus. A staunch Royalist, he published in 1640 a _Letter of a
French Protestant to a Scotsman of the Covenant_, and also in 1650 a
_Defense de la Religion reformee et de la monarchie et Eglise Anglicane_,
and after the Restoration _A Vindication of the Protestant Religion in the
Point of Obedience to Sovereigns_ (1663). The younger brother, Lewis, threw
in his lot with the Commonwealthsmen, was appointed Camden Professor of
Ancient History at Oxford (September 1648), and deprived on the accession
of Charles II. He remained, in spite of the idle story of his recanting on
his death-bed in presence of Burnet, a sturdy Independent, publishing the
very year of his death an apology for Independency.[180] A more striking
instance of the discord which rent England during the Civil War could
hardly be found. Party spirit ran high among the refugees, Jean de la
Marche, the pastor of the French congregation in Threadneedle Street, being
violently opposed by his flock for becoming an Independent,[181] while
Herault, the minister of Alencon, having during a stay in London vented his
Royalist opinions, was compelled to seek safety in flight.[182] Another
minister, Jean d'Espagne, sided with the Protector, who granted him
permission to preach in Somerset House, and graciously accepted the
dedication of a book.[183] At an earlier date, three French divines had sat
in the Westminster Assembly.[184] About the same time, some active,
intelligent Huguenot was busy publishing in London for Continental readers
a French newspaper.[185]
The refugees thus took part in the internal dissensions of their adopted
country. As a rule, to be favourable to the Stuarts they need be dependents
on the Court or the Church; if merchants, they would usually side with the
opposition, thus revealing the revolutionist ever lurking in the Calvinist.
When Shaftesbury, at the time of the agitation on the Exclusion Bill,
thought of making London a Whig stronghold, in view of a possible _coup
d'etat_, his main coadjutors seem to have been the elected sheriffs for
Middlesex, Papillon and Dubois, two refugees. The battle fought and lost,
Papillon fled to Amsterdam; but not before the thought crossed his mind of
returning to the beloved mother-country: "I should not," he wrote from
Holland, "have taken refuge here if I could go to France and worship there
freely."[186]
Such a letter helps us to realise the loss suffered by France from the
exile of men like Papillon. Their talents were not uncommon; in their own
country, unmolested, they would have led useful, obscure lives, open-minded
enough withal to welcome the inevitable change sooner or later to take
place in European politics.
In spite of the efforts of the French King[187] and the disfavour shown the
Huguenots by the exiled Anglicans,[188] the intercourse between England and
the Huguenots continued after the Restoration. The French churches in
England formed a natural link which survived the Act of Uniformity. The
Huguenots, as well as Louis XIV., had their ambassadors in London, and, in
some cases, these unofficial envoys were better informed than Colbert de
Croissy or Barillon, for they could speak and write English and showed
little reluctance to become Churchmen. Some obtained high preferment. This
explains how Jurieu, called to England on leaving college by the Du
Moulins, was ordained in the Church.[189]
In the precincts of the Court gathered some men of letters, refugees and
scholars, Catholics and Protestants, the best known of whom is
Saint-Evremond. Vossius, his "ami de lettres,"[190] was then Canon of
Windsor, and to the latter's uncle Du Jon (Junius), librarian to the Earl
of Arundel, who though born at Heidelberg was of Huguenot descent, England
owes some of the earliest studies in Anglo-Saxon. These literati gathered
round the Duchess of Mazarin, the Cardinal's niece, at her little court at
Windsor, when Vossius, a pedant like most scholars in his age, would
discourse on Chinese civilisation and the population of ancient Rome,[191]
Saint-Evremond read a paper of verses, the Duchess speak of her
interminable lawsuit with the bigoted, doting old Duke, her husband; and
the company would be merry upon her recounting how he directed his
grandchild's nurse to make the infant fast, in literal accordance with the
Church commandments, on Fridays and Saturdays.[192] The librarian to
Archbishop Sancroft, Colomies, may have been admitted to the circle. On his
arrival in England, he had found Vossius a useful friend, and through the
latter's exertions was ordained in the Church of England, became a thorough
Episcopalian, and was, like his patron, strongly suspected of Socinianism.
Their friendship for Dr. Morales, a Jew of Amsterdam and one of this
literary circle, only confirmed the suspicion. But in Madame de Mazarin's
salon theological disputes were infrequent. For France, anti-Protestantism
then was not an "article of exportation." Far from being fanatical, the
temper of these literati savours somewhat of a much later indifferentism.
Perhaps the courtly scepticism of the Restoration proved contagious. For
Saint-Evremond a system of ethics did very well in place of a Confession of
Faith. "The Faith is obscure, the Law clearly expressed. What we are bound
to believe is above our understanding, what we have to do is within every
one's reach."[193]
Most of his friends were Protestants, and he never felt bitterness against
them: "I never experienced that indiscreet zeal that makes us hate people,
because they do not share our opinions. That false zeal takes its rise in
conceit, and we are secretly inclined to mistake for charity towards our
neighbour what is only an excessive fondness for our private
opinions."[194]
This paragraph strikes the keynote of the temper that reigned in the French
circle at Windsor. On foreign land, out of the reach of Gallican maxims of
policy and priestly intrigue, the two Frances, Catholic and Huguenot, not
without an admixture of "libertinage," met, a picture of what might have
been, had the dream of Michel de l'Hopital and De Thou, maybe of Henri IV.,
been realised.
The most notable Huguenot in this circle was Louis XIV.'s ex-secretary,
Henri Justel, a "great and knowing virtuoso,"[195] as Evelyn calls him,
whom Charles II. appointed King's librarian in 1681. He seems to have been
a very grave, courteous, and modest scholar. Having no literary
ambition,[196] he went through life exciting no envy, free from envy
himself. His religious convictions were sincere, and he made sacrifices to
ensure them. Martyrdom, Renan said, is not so difficult after all. With
nerves strung to a high pitch, fearful lest the jeering crowd should
discern a sign of weakness, the victim of the Roman emperors stepped forth
into the arena without the slightest tremor. Physical pain, the
apprehension of death, were lost in the light of the glorious crown which
the witness of Christ's word felt already encircling his brow. Some such
feeling may have stirred the humble preacher that the Intendant sentenced
to be hanged, or the obscure peasant whom the dragoons dragged away to the
Toulon galleys. But nothing short of a very rare uprightness of mind, a
sound probity towards self, could drive Justel to forsake all that a man
and a scholar loves--his books, his friends, his ease, his beloved
country. Saint-Evremond failed to understand Justel's higher motives of
conduct. "Allow me," he wrote to him, "not to approve your resolution to
leave France, so long as I shall see you so tenderly and so lovingly
cherish her memory. When I see you sad and mournful, regretting Paris on
the banks of our Thames, you remind me of the poor Israelites, lamenting
Jerusalem on the banks of the river Euphrates. Either live happily in
England, with a full liberty of conscience, or put up with petty severities
against religion in your own country, so as to enjoy all the comforts of
life."[197]
So the tempter spoke, and, to support his hard lot, Justel had none of the
martyr's incentives. To those of his own faith, his constancy must have
seemed surprising. Far from encouraging him to keep within the fold, the
Consistory of Charenton had grossly insulted him.[198] The great value to a
country of men like that faithful scholar is their love of spiritual
independence. A letter that he wrote to Edward Bernard, professor of
astronomy at Oxford, on February 16, 1670, shows what a price he paid to
keep his fathers' faith. After stating that Claude is preparing an answer
to a book of Arnault, and wishes to adduce against transubstantiation the
evidence of some modern Greeks, he says that all the libraries in France
being closed to the religionists, he must perforce have recourse to the
Bodleian Library and its rich collection of oriental manuscripts.[199] In
this appeal of a scholar I find as much pathos as in any account of
dragonnades.
[Illustration: A SCHEME OF THE PERSECUTION]
Yet Saint-Evremond could not understand that the prize was worth the fight.
His sense of equity was undisturbed by the Revocation. The King's method of
dealing with heretics was rough, but justifiable. Instead of resisting
openly, the Protestants should more or less sullenly acquiesce, and count
on their sharpness of wits to evade the ordinances. "Churches are opened or
closed according to the Sovereign's will, but our hearts are a secret
church where we may worship the Almighty."[200] "Be convinced," he wrote to
Justel, "that Princes have as much right over the externals of religion as
their subjects over their innermost conscience."[201]
In its far-reaching consequences, the Revocation can be compared only to
the French Revolution. Both events excited in England a profound pity for
the victims and a feeling of execration against their tormentors; both led
to a protracted struggle with France; both, after giving France a temporary
glory, plunged her into misery, humiliation, and defeat. The Huguenots fled
to divers countries, some settling in New England, others in South Africa,
the most considerable portion finding a new home in Holland and England.
In Holland they met the English Whigs, driven from their country upon the
Tory reaction following the defeat of the Exclusion Bill. A close
relationship was established between the Huguenots in England and in
Holland, and when the crown of England was given to a Prince of Orange, the
refugees in both countries formed one colony whose thoughts and aims were
the same, and whose sympathy and interests were with the more liberal party
in England. The sentimental impression made by the persecution strikes one
the most: "The French persecution of the Huguenots," wrote Evelyn, "raging
with the utmost barbarity, exceeded even what the very heathens used....
What the further intention is, time will show, but doubtless portending
some revolution."[202] Several accurate accounts of the persecution,
besides Claude's famous book, appeared in England, written or inspired by
the refugees, and printed in a form suitable for speedy circulation.[203]
The people showed themselves as eager for news from France as, at a later
date, for Bulgarian or Armenian atrocities. "The people in London,"
Ambassador Barillon reported, "are eager to believe what the gazettes have
to say on the measures resorted to in order to further the conversions in
France."[204] When James II. ascended the throne, the Whigs made capital
out of the treatment of Protestants by a Catholic Prince. Loyal as he was,
Evelyn could not help blaming the King for the scant charity extended to
the Huguenots and the silence of the _Gazette_ about the persecution. When
at the instance of the French ambassador, Claude's book was burned by the
common hangman, Evelyn ominously exclaimed: "No faith in Princes." The
innate anti-popish feeling of the English was easily roused, and
contributed in 1687 to the unpopularity even among the higher clergy of a
Royal Indulgence. "This (Repeal of the Test)," said a contemporary
pamphlet, "sets Papists upon an equal level with Protestants, and then the
favour of the Prince will set them above them."[205] Allusions to the
persecution are innumerable. "Witness," says the anonymous hack-writer
after setting forth the dangers of tolerating Popery, "the mild and gentle
usage of the French Protestants by a King whose conscience is directed by a
tender-hearted Jesuit." When Ken, suspected of leaning towards Roman
Catholicism, preached on the persecution, Evelyn remarked that "his sermon
was the more acceptable, as it was unexpected."[206]
But the official Press tried to counteract the bad impression made by the
Revocation; then it was that an extreme member of the Court party roundly
asserted that persecution was the only remedy that Louis XIV. could devise
against losing his crown, and inferred the expediency of persecuting the
equally seditious English dissenters.[207] A few years later, a change
coming over the policy of the Court towards the dissenters, His Majesty's
intentions derived an advantageous construction from his granting relief to
the French Protestants, "a kind of Presbyterians, who, because they would
not become Papists, are fled hither."[208]
In rousing England against Popery, the Revocation dealt a blow at arbitrary
government. The sequel to the Revocation was the English Revolution.
Weakened by the Tory reaction, the Whig party, on the accession of William
III., found welcome allies in the Huguenot immigrants. It was remarked that
the refugees generally sided with the Whigs. The Low Church party also
found recruits in the numerous Huguenot ministers, the best known of whom
are Allix, Drelincourt, Samuel de l'Angle, who all three took Anglican
orders. William III., and especially Mary, showed them great favour. While
the Prince of Orange was with the Dutch fleet on the way to England, in the
most anxious time of her life, Mary every day attended prayers said by two
refugees, Pineton de Chambrun and Menard.[209]
The refugees enthusiastically adopted the dogmas of the Whig party, or
rather of William III.; they furthered his system of Church settlement,
declaimed against Popery, hated France as cordially as he.
During the debates on the Toleration and Comprehension Bills, Dr. Wake, the
future Archbishop of Canterbury, published a letter in which the dissenters
were blamed by French ministers for approving James II.'s Declaration of
Indulgence. "The dissenters," he adds, "ought by no means to have separated
themselves for the form of ecclesiastical government nor for ceremonies
which do not at all constitute the fundamentals of religion. On the other
side, the Bishops should have had a greater condescension to the weakness
of their brethren."[210] Even on a question of internal policy, the opinion
of the persecuted Church bore weight.
Popery of course was the arch-enemy to the refugees, some of whom refused
to the last to believe that the King persecuted them, ascribing their
misery to the evil counsels of the Jesuits. One of the worst consequences
in England of the Revocation was an intensified hatred to Popery. The
policy pursued by Louis XIV. made James II.'s indulgence impossible and
thwarted all the attempts of William III. to relax the penal laws. When the
Act of 1700 was passed, making confiscation of Catholic estates a rule in
England, as kind a man as Evelyn wrote: "This indeed seemed a hard law,
but the usage of the French King to his Protestant subjects has brought it
on."[211]
The enmity that the English bore to France is a well-known fact. "The
English have an extraordinary hatred to us," observed Henri IV.[212] "They
hate us," said Courtin, the French envoy, at a time when French literature
and French fashions were in highest favour in England. As Spain in the
sixteenth century, so France in the seventeenth, embodied the power of
darkness in Europe. This feeling was fostered by the refugees. A little
after the Revocation, Louis XIV. received from Barillon a dispatch on the
harm done him in London "by the most violent and insolent French Huguenots,
minister Satur, minister Lortie, minister De l'Angle, above all a dangerous
man named Bibo, who plays the philosopher, Justel, Daude, La Force, Aime,
Lefevre and Rosemond, and a vendor of all the wicked pamphlets printed in
Holland and elsewhere against religion and the French Government. His name
is Bureau, who provides every one with them and is now printing[213] in
French and English a supposed letter from Niort relating a hundred
cruelties against the Protestants. People talk quite freely in the London
coffee-houses of all that is happening in France, and many think and say
loudly that it is the consequence of England having a Catholic King and
that the English are thus unable to help the pretended Reformed their
brethren." In England, as in Holland, the Huguenot pamphleteers organised
an anti-French agitation. No doubt the ambassador was right in a sense in
stating that the charges against France were exaggerated. The English
during all the eighteenth century imagined the French monarch was a Western
grand-signior. The stories of the Bastille, popularised by the refugee
Renneville, gave an incorrect idea of the French administration.[214] This
popular prejudice is ridiculed by Pope in his attack upon Dennis the
critic, whom he describes as "perpetually starting and running to the
window when any one knocks, crying out 'Sdeath! a messenger from the French
King; I shall die in the Bastille.'"[215] With his keen eye for absurdity,
Voltaire noticed the prejudice. "In England, our government is spoken of as
that of the Turks in France. The English fancy half the French nation is
shut up in the Bastille, the other half reduced to beggary, and all the
authors set up in the pillory."[216]
The Revocation was turned to good use by the Whigs against France, James
II., and later against the Pretender. "You shall trot about," says a
pamphlet almost contemporary with the advent of William III., "in wooden
shoes, _a la mode de France_, Monsieur will make your souls suffer as well
as your bodies. These are the means he will make use of to pervert
Protestants to the idolatrous Popish religion. He will send his infallible
apostolic dragoons amongst you.... If you fall into French hands your
bodies will be condemned to irretrievable slavery, and your souls (as far
as it lies in their power) shall be consigned to the Devil."[217] At the
height of the Tory reaction that marked the closing years of Queen Anne's
reign, the same argument was urged against a Popish successor. The _Flying
Post_ (7th March 1712-3) published one day a list of persecuted Huguenots
"to convince Jacobite Protestants what treatment they are to expect if ever
the Pretender should come to the throne, since he must necessarily act
according to the bloody House of B(ourbon), without whose assistance he can
never be able to keep possession, if he should happen to get it."
That the Whigs fully endorsed their pamphleteers' opinions seems evident
from what such a judicious man as Locke once wrote to Peter King, the
future Lord Chancellor, advising him as a Member of Parliament to aid
William in his designs of war against France: "The good King of France
desires only that you would take his word, and let him be quiet till he has
got the West Indies into his hands and his grandson well established in
Spain; and then you may be sure that you shall be as safe as he will let
you be, in your religion, property, and trade."[218]
The influence of the refugees was due less to the weavers of Spitalfields,
to the army of seventy or eighty thousand Huguenots who fled to England
after the Revocation, than to the intelligent sergeants of that army, the
men of letters, journalists, and pamphleteers. They usually met in London
at the Rainbow coffee-house, near the Inner Temple Gate, in Fleet Street.
Unlike the Casaubons and Scaligers of the early Stuart period and the
Justels and Colomies of the Restoration, they were no dependents on either
Court or Church, and, earning a journalist's living or with a calling
exclusive of literary patronage, they forestalled more or less the modern
type of the man of letters. Over their meetings presided Pierre Daude, a
clerk in the Exchequer; round that doyen gathered the traveller Misson,
Rapin Thoyras, then planning his _History of Great Britain_, Newton's
friend, Le Moivre, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, Cornand La Croze, a
contributor to Le Clerc's _Bibliotheque universelle_.
In those convivial meetings many a project was sketched for the advancement
of learning. When Le Clerc, then a young man, was preaching at the Savoy,
he took part in them. Later on, Pierre Coste came as tutor to the Mashams,
with whom Locke then lived; later still, for the company grew less select
as the years rolled by, Themiseul de Saint-Hyacinthe, a converted dragoon,
to whom France owes at least in part her translation of _Robinson
Crusoe_;[219] and lastly, in 1726, the elder Huguenots who still repaired
to the familiar tavern, beheld, fresh from the Bastille, his conversation
sparkling with wit that must have taught them what a change had come over
France since the death of the old persecuting King, M. de Voltaire.
In coffee-houses such as this, in Rotterdam and in London, during the
eventful period between the Revocation and the death of William the Third,
all the eighteenth century was thought out. Alone the refugees were able to
establish a fruitful exchange of ideas between England and the Continent.
Men of greater learning would not have done the work so well. These alone
were possessed of the indispensable qualities: the journalist's curiosity,
eager to know, little caring about the relative importance of what he
knows, and the teacher's lucidity, not unmixed with shallowness. Thanks to
them, the literary journals of Holland circulated in England and English
thought found its way into France. The correspondents of those papers
anticipated the modern reporter's methods to the extent that Locke one day
read a private conversation of his printed in full in the _Nouvelles de la
Republique des Lettres_.[220] Coste, of course, had written down the
conversation and thought it worthy of publication. Better than Bayle and Le
Clerc, indefatigable Desmaizeaux corresponds with most European scholars,
advertises their opinions, reviews their books, writes their obituary
notices, and edits their posthumous work, being withal incapable of
uttering a single original idea.
One defect the refugees shared with the English Puritans, a supreme
contempt of art. When Bossuet's _Histoire des Variations_ appeared, they
thought it long and tedious. "The book," exclaimed Jurieu, "will lie buried
under its bulk and ruins."[221] Their knowledge, like a good reviewer's, is
universal. Bayle, their leader, never wrote a veritable book, but cast his
revolutionary thoughts in the mould of an encyclopaedia. The masterpiece of
refugee speculation is the _Critical Dictionary_. Nor was it the only
dictionary that they produced--witness Chaufepie's _Dictionary_, Ancillon's
_Memoires_, Desmaizeaux's _Lives_, Le Clerc's _Eloges_. Their newspapers
collect material for encyclopaedias and their encyclopaedias compile anas.
Now that was exactly how the eighteenth century writers worked: neither
Voltaire, Montesquieu nor Diderot cared about composing a book, as a
skilful architect builds a house, to stand alone, imposing and complete.
They jotted down ideas, dashed off a chapter or two, then passed on to
another subject. You cannot compare the _Spirit of Laws_ and the _History
of Variations_, for while the latter forms a harmonious whole, whose
splendid proportions inspire every one with admiration, the former is an
indigested mass of research, brilliant wit, and profound criticism. To
usher in the nineteenth century, a readjustment of traditional doctrines
was necessary, and this the eighteenth century effected by leaving in the
background literature and works of imagination and taking up the foreground
with anecdotes, memoirs, and various disquisitions on philosophy, ethics,
divinity, and politics. But the refugees had made the task easy. To these
seemingly innocent compilers must be ascribed the sudden development in
Europe of the spirit of criticism. When they had made the reading public
familiar with doctrines hitherto confined to the schools, they disappeared,
leaving it to others in England and France to give those now popularised
doctrines a literary expression.
Another trait of the refugees is their cosmopolitism. Some were born in
Geneva, others in France; not unlike a Semitic tribe, they roamed about
Switzerland, Holland, Germany, England. After preaching in London, Le Clerc
settled in Amsterdam. Before living at Oates with the Mashams, Coste had
been a proof reader in Amsterdam, and after an adventurous life in Holland
and Germany, he ultimately died in Paris. A barrister in early life, Rapin
Thoyras fled to England after the Revocation, then to Holland, where he
became a soldier, following first the Prince of Orange in his expedition
against James II., then Marshal Schomberg to Ireland, became tutor to the
Duke of Portland's children, drifted back to the Hague, and ended a
singularly chequered career at Wesel. Through the medium of the refugees
the learned societies could correspond. Such refugees as had remained on
the Continent showed their desire to have information about England.
"England," wrote Bayle, "is the country in the world where metaphysical and
physical reasonings, spiced with erudition, are the most appreciated and
the most in fashion."[222] For Jurieu, England was "the country in the
world the most replete with unquiet-minded men, fond of change and aspiring
to new things."[223] The refugee seeking, Narcissus-like, to see himself in
his adoptive country, credited England with his own characteristics,
turbulency and the thirst for scientific information.
An important fact is that these men, as their predecessors had done under
the early Stuarts and the Commonwealth, learned English. No stronger
contrast can be imagined than the indifference that courtly Catholic
Saint-Evremond exhibited towards the language of his adoptive country, and
the eagerness with which the French pastors, compelled now to read prayers
and preach in the Church of England, studied English. And yet, it was after
all natural that the Huguenots who took part in all the internal conflicts
of their new Fatherland, should be ready to further their religious and
political ideals by the tongue and the pen as well as the sword.
FOOTNOTES:
[140] _Rousseau et le cosmopolitisme litteraire_, 1895.
[141] _Shakespeare en France sous l'ancien regime_, 1898.
[142] _Litterature francaise a l'etranger_, 2 vols., Geneva, 1853.
[143] See Gairdner, _Lollardy and the Reformation_, iii. pp. 118-122; and
for a bibliography of the translations of Calvin's works, Upham, _French
Influence in English Literature_, App. A.
[144] Schickler, _Eglises du refuge_, i. pp. 5, 13.
[145] _Ibid._ i. p. 259 n.
[146] _Life of Parker_, i. p. 276.
[147] Sidney Lee, _French Renaissance in England_, p. 301. In 1586,
Recorder Fleetwood warned Burghley of an intended apprentices' riot against
Dutch and French settlers. See _N. and Q._, 1st July 1871.
[148] See Chapter VII.
[149] Theophile de Viau, for instance.
[150] _Lettres choisies_, iii. p. 9.
[151] _Letter to the Synod of Alencon_, 1637.
[152] _Lettre a M. Morley_, p. 4 (1650).
[153] Collier, _Church History_, ii. p. 399. "The French Protestants,"
wrote Pierre Du Moulin in the same spirit, "keepe their zeale of religion
for higher matters than a Surplice or a Crosse in Baptisme" (_A Letter of a
French Protestant to a Scotsman of the Covenant_, 1640, p. 35).
[154] Allusion, of course, to Descartes.
[155] _Reunion du Christianisme_, pp. 117-19.
[156] _Reunion du Christianisme_, p. 173.
[157] _Op. cit._ p. 198.
[158] _Avis aux refugies_, pp. 128, 129.
[159] _Ibid._ p. 155.
[160] Aymon, _Actes des Synodes_, 2 vols., La Haye, 1710, ii. pp. 38, 39.
[161] _Ibid._ ii. p. 106.
[162] _Actes des Synodes_, ii. p. 636.
[163] _Ecclesiasticae Disciplinae; et Anglicanae Ecclesiae ... dilucida
Explicatio._
[164] Penry's _Appellation_ and Throckmorton's _M[aster Robert] Some laid
open in his Colours_, 1590. Cf. Sir Sidney Lee, _French Renaissance in
England_, p. 303.
[165] _Memoires de Lenet_, p. 599. and Ch. Normand, _Bourgeoisie
francaise_, pp. 400 _ssq._ See also Chapter VIII.
[166] _Lettre a M. Morley_, p. 112.
[167] _Eikon Basilike_, Preface to translation.
[168] There had already appeared pamphlets by Vincent, minister at La
Rochelle, and Herault, minister at Alencon. Bochart, _op. cit._ p. 113.
[169] _Discours sur la Souverainete des Rois_, Saumur, 1650.
[170] _Lettre a M. Morley._
[171] Bochart, _op. cit._ p. 23.
[172] _Discours sur la Souverainete_, p. 117.
[173] [Greek: Eikon Basilike], _ou Portrait Royal de sa Majeste de la
Grande Bretagne dans ses souffrances et sa solitude_, La Haye, 1649.
[174] [Greek: Eikon Basilike], _Le Portrait du Roy de la Grande Bretagne
durant sa solitude et ses souffrances_, Orange, 1650.
[175] _Prediction ou se voit comme le Roy Charles II. doit estre remis aux
royaumes d'Angleterre, Ecosse, et Irlande apres la mort de son pere_,
Rouen, 1650.
[176] Aymon, _Actes_, ii. p. 723.
[177] _Ibid._ p. 734.
[178] Written 1574, published 1579. Under the pseudonym of Stephanus Junius
Brutus, the author argues that the royal title coming from the people, the
king who is idolatrous or defies his subjects' rights must be deposed.
[179] _Lettres choisies_, i. p. 420.
[180] _The Conformity of the Discipline and Government of the Independents
to that of the Ancient Primitive Christians_, London, 1680.
[181] Schickler, _Eglises du refuge_, ii. pp. 110 _ssq._
[182] Bochart, _op. cit._ p. 115.
[183] _Shibboleth ou reformation de quelques passages de la Bible_, dedie
au Protecteur, 1653.
[184] Schickler, _op. cit._ ii. p. 93.
[185] See Chapter VIII.
[186] Schickler, _Eglises du refuge_, ii. p. 318 n.
[187] The foreign letters addressed to the Synods are commanded to be given
up, with unbroken seals, to the King's commissioner. Aymon, _Actes_, ii. 5,
571, 636, 719, 740, etc.
[188] Bochart, _op. cit._ p. 2.
[189] He married the daughter of Cyrus du Moulin, sometime French pastor in
Canterbury, and thus retained family ties in England. So much it is
necessary to know to understand the minute knowledge of English affairs
displayed in his polemical works.
[190] Saint-Evremond, _Oeuvres_, i. p. 87 (1753).
[191] _Ibid._ iv. p. 323.
[192] _Ibid._ iv. p. 146.
[193] Saint-Evremond, _Oeuvres_, iii. p. 272.
[194] _Ibid._ iii. p. 265.
[195] _Diary_, 13th March 1691.
[196] His only published work is the _Bibliotheque de Droit canonique_,
edited by Guillaume Voet in 1661. See Ancillon, _Mem. hist. et crit._,
Amst. 1709. P. 221.
[197] Saint-Evremond, _Oeuvres_, iv. p. 309.
[198] For details on this affair, so singularly suggestive of the arrogance
in the seventeenth century of the most important Consistory in France, see
Ancillon, _op. cit._ 223.
[199] _Smith MSS._, viii. f. 25-27.
[200] Saint-Evremond, _Oeuvres_, iii. pp. 266-267.
[201] _Ibid._ iv. pp. 319-320.
[202] _Diary_, 1st November 1685.
[203] Such is _An Abstract of the Present State of the Protestants in
France_, Oxford, 1682.
[204] Schickler, _op cit._ ii. p. 356.
[205] _A Letter to a Dissenter in England by his friend at the Hague_,
1688.
[206] _Diary_, 14th March 1686.
[207] _Toleration proved Impracticable_, 1685.
[208] _Some Expostulations with the Clergy of the Church of England_, 1688.
[209] _Lettres et Memoires de Marie_, pp. 84, 89.
[210] _A Letter of Several French ministers fled into Germany upon the
Account of the Persecution in France, to such of their Brethren in England
as approved the King's Declaration touching Liberty of Conscience_, 1689.
[211] _Diary_, April 1700.
[212] Writing to M. de Beaumont, 21st March 1604.
[213] He was printing at the same time: _Cruelties at Montauban_, and _The
Present Misery of the French Nation compared with that of the Romans under
Domitian_.
[214] _Inquisition francoise ou histoire de la Bastille_, Amst. 1715, 2
vols.
[215] _Narrative of the Frenzy of Mr. John Dennis._
[216] _Letter to Thieriot_, 24th February 1733.
[217] _Jacobites' Hopes Frustrated_, 1690.
[218] King, _Life of Locke_, p. 261.
[219] See Chap. XI.
[220] _Original Letters_, pp. 68-69.
[221] _Pastoral Letters_, III. 1. vi. p. 122.
[222] _Lettres choisies_, ii. p. 706.
[223] _Pastoral Letters_, IV. 1. xiv. p. 329.