THE STORY OF THE HUGUENOTS
OF all the minority groups that have entered our country to join the Anglo-Celto-Saxon main stream, the Huguenots of France have been the most noteworthy. They have to this very day had a profound and lasting influence, and their religious zeal and example are still an inspiration. Determined to serve God according to their convictions and the dictates of conscience, they were willing to forfeit all material benefits, to surrender their possessions, become exiles from their native land for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s, and even to sacrifice life itself.
From time to time since the Anglo-Saxon, Danish-Norse and Norman conquests and settlements, various groups of kindred stock entered these islands – Flemings, whose planting in the Gower peninsula of Pembrokeshire, so well known as Little England beyond Wales, is an outstanding example; the Walloons, descendants of the ancient Belgae, traces of whose presence are still to be found in Canterbury and Norwich; Dutch and North German influences brought over through our contact and political union with Holland during the reign of William III, and the Hanoverian connection from 1714 to 1837. The Vansittart and Bentinck families are amongst those that entered this country with William of Orange.
It is not generally realised that although the worst period of religious persecution was just after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the actual restraint of Huguenot expression in France lasted for just over 100 years, all restrictions being removed in 1789 on the eve of the dreadful Revolutions. During the whole of this period, and after, refugees poured into this country, Holland and Germany, the major portion, however, coming over just prior to the turn of the century (circa 1687 -1689).
The Huguenots were the Orangemen of France and were proud of it.They were staunch Protestants prepared to adhere to the truth though it cost them life itself, and many of them indeed sealed their testimony with their blood, dying a martyr’s death. It was mainly in Dauphiny, Normandy and Brittany that this movement had its chief support, and a large number of its adherents were members and cadets of the old aristocratic families of Nordic race, and of the Bourgeoise, a good, solid and
stolid stock. The Alpine peasantry of the middle belt of France and the swarthy groups in the South were but little influenced by this noble, religious revolution. Like
the title “Orangemen” already referred to, the term “Huguenots,” at first applied to these brave Christians as a label of derision, became eventually the badge of their adherence to truth and righteousness. It proclaimed not only their staunch Protestantism but the fact that they were Frenchmen. In spite of persecution and oppression as well as suppression they held on and were faithful unto death, determined at all hazards to sacrifice everything if necessary, in the cause of Christ and Truth. They obtained their name from the word Huguon, a designation employed in Touraine to describe Protestants who walked at night in the streets, and mustered near the gate of King Hugo. A monk in the course of an address derisively stated that because the heretic would only go by night as did King Hugo, they should be called Huguenots. The name, or nickname, stuck and became an emblem of pride and honour to the Church in the French Wilderness.
As early as 1550 some refugees who had escaped the massacre of Vaudois (1545) and the Gestapo-like “Chambre ardente” which was set up in 1549 for the purpose of rooting out the Protestant heresy, entered these islands. Again just after the dreadful Massacre of St. Bartholomew on the night of August 24, 1572, for which a “Te Deum” was sung in Rome and a commemorative medal struck, many more escaped to England and freedom. But the main body followed almost a century later and from the middle of the seventeenth century, there was a constant exodus of the very best elements in France – the very flower of the nation, principally from Brittany and Normandy and other parts where the Celto-Nordic and Norse (Norman) elements predominated. Another remnant of God’s Israel was finding its way to the Appointed Place (II Samuel 7:10). The emigres were men of leaming and character and many were expert craftsmen who brought new industries to this land of ours and helped to make Britain great. There were ministers and pastors noblemen, solid merchants and industrious artisans and landed gentry well as husbandmen, gardeners and skilled agricultural workers. In a few months followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In 1685, fifty thousand families left the shores of France to make their homes in England, the Netherlands and Protestant Germany. Many settled in the East End of London where they set up silk manufactories and hat-making concerns. A goodly number found their way to our American colonies and a body numbering approximately 200, was settled at the Cape of Good Hope by the States-General of the Netherlands, where it still forms an element in the population.
It should be pointed out that the departure of the emigres from their native land was no orderly, well-planned affair. It was a wild panic of anxious and harassed people eager to escape a fearful and inhuman . terror worse than death. They fled, many of them, without possessions or belongings of any description. The 400,000 who left France during the two decades prior to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and the 600,000 who escaped thereafter, a million in all,drained France and enriched the lands to which they fled. Holland and Prussia (Brandenburg), Denmark and England gladly received these elements and were spiritually, intellectually and materially blessed for doing so. They were truly a God-granted acquisition to the countries of their adoption.
As pointed out, the greater part of the Huguenot refugees who entered Great Britain and Holland were from Picardy, Normandy and Brittany, and although, comparatively speaking, they were not a numerous addition to the race, their influence on its national character has been far reaching indeed, as genealogists and historians have pointed out. They were akin to the racial type of these islands and were thus of Israel stock.
One of the marks of Israelite identity is found in heraldry, I have no need here to discuss our British Coat-of-Arms and its remarkable Israelite and prophetic significance, nor to comment on the Great Seal of the United States of America which definitely establishes the Great Republic to be Manasseh. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah appears in the Royal arms of Holland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and Finland, which fact speaks for itself, as those countries are in the main of Israel stock and our brethren. What identifying heraldic mark did the brave Huguenots possess? The emblem of the French Church was truly an Israelite one – the Burning Bush! How symbolic of Israel and their later descendants! Israel was never consumed and never can be, for, right in the centre of the bush is found the name of Jehovah, the name which is above every name, even Jesus. The Lord God, who was the Centre and Circumference of the old Israel economy, the Sustainer of our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their posterity, was with the Huguenots, and is still the same God today – Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever” – (Hebrews 13:8).
FOOTNOTES
1) John Finnemore in his “Social Life in England” (A. and C. Black, Ltd, 1924), tells us that “Between 1670 and 1690 no less a number than 80,000 French Protestants came toEngland.They were well received, and they were worthy of a welcome. For one and all belonged to the thrifty, hard-working, deft-handed class which has always been the salt of France.”
2) These skilled workmen brought in new methods of work, and in many cases new trades. Take the silk trade as an example. Before these French refugees came into the country, the silk trade in England was a very small affair.But among the newcomers was a large body of silk-weavers from Lyons, the headquarters of the French silk industry.They settled chiefly in Spitalfields, and with their aid the English trade advanced by leaps and bounds.
Among other trades introduced by these refugees were the making of sailcloth, of paper, of hats, of velvets and damasks, while other trades much benefited were those of watchmaking, clock-making, lock-making, cutlery, glass and pottery.
One industry, that of hat-making, seemed to come over bodily to England. The art of dealing with the beaverskin was brought to such perfection among the Huguenot refugees that from the factory in London even the Cardinals of Rome used to obtain their hats. §
