FOOTNOTES:

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 theSynod 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 Louisxvi.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, Porrée 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 bodilyinjury, 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'sEikon Basilikéhad a great success in France, two translations penned by Huguenots appearing, that of Denys Cailloué[173]in 1649, that of Porrée[174]a year later. Lastly, all students of English literature remember that Claude de Saumaise wrote theDefensio regia pro Carolo Primo, and Pierre Du Moulin theClamor sanguinis regiæ ad cœlum 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, Charlesii., by proclaiming his title to the Crown of England.[175]

The Restoration coincided with the majority of Louisxiv.The Synod of Loudun, whose moderatorwas Daillé, 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 theVindiciæ 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 Frémont 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 everyHuguenot 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 Jamesi., 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 Charlesii.and Prebendary of Canterbury, is the author ofClamor sanguinis, wrongly attributed by Milton to another French pastor, of Scottish descent, Alexander Morus. A staunch Royalist, he published in 1640 aLetter of a French Protestant to a Scotsman of the Covenant, and also in 1650 aDéfense de la Religion réformée et de la monarchie et Eglise Anglicane, and after the RestorationA 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 Charlesii.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 strikinginstance 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 Hérault, the minister of Alençon, 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 possiblecoup d'état, his main coadjutorsseem 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 Louisxiv., 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, Colomiès, 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 twoFrances, Catholic and Huguenot, not without an admixture of "libertinage," met, a picture of what might have been, had the dream of Michel de l'Hôpital and De Thou, maybe of Henriiv., been realised.

The most notable Huguenot in this circle was Louisxiv.'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 ascholar 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.

A SCHEME OF THE PERSECUTIONA 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 newhome 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 Jamesii.ascended the throne, the Whigs made capital out of the treatment of Protestantsby 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 theGazetteabout 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 Louisxiv.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 Williamiii., 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 Ménard.[209]

The refugees enthusiastically adopted the dogmas of the Whig party, or rather of Williamiii.; they furthered his system of Church settlement, declaimedagainst 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 Jamesii.'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 Louisxiv.made Jamesii.'s indulgence impossible and thwarted all the attempts of Williamiii.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 Henriiv.[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, Louisxiv.received from Barillon a dispatch on the harm done him in London "by the most violent and insolent French Huguenots, minister Satur, minister Lortié, minister De l'Angle, above all a dangerous man named Bibo, who plays the philosopher, Justel, Daudé, La Force, Aimé, Lefèvre 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 Kingand 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, Jamesii., and later against the Pretender. "You shall trot about," says a pamphlet almost contemporary with the advent of Williamiii., "in wooden shoes,à la mode de France, Monsieur will make your souls suffer as well as your bodies. These are the means he will make use ofto 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. TheFlying 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 tothe 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 Colomiès 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 Daudé, a clerk in the Exchequer; round that doyen gathered the traveller Misson, Rapin Thoyras, then planning hisHistory of Great Britain, Newton's friend, Le Moivre, and a Fellow of the Royal Society, Cornand La Croze, a contributor to Le Clerc'sBibliothèque 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, Thémiseul de Saint-Hyacinthe, a converted dragoon, to whom France owes at least in part her translation ofRobinson Crusoe;[219]and lastly, in 1726, theelder 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 theNouvelles de la République 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, andedits 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'sHistoire des Variationsappeared, 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 encyclopædia. The masterpiece of refugee speculation is theCritical Dictionary. Nor was it the only dictionary that they produced—witness Chaufepié'sDictionary, Ancillon'sMémoires, Desmaizeaux'sLives, Le Clerc'sEloges. Their newspapers collect material for encyclopædias and their encyclopædias 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 theSpirit of Lawsand theHistory 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 traditionaldoctrines 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 littéraire, 1895.[141]Shakespeare en France sous l'ancien régime, 1898.[142]Littérature française à 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. SeeN. and Q., 1st July 1871.[148]See Chapter VII.[149]Théophile de Viau, for instance.[150]Lettres choisies, iii. p. 9.[151]Letter to the Synod of Alençon, 1637.[152]Lettre à 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]Réunion du Christianisme, pp. 117-19.[156]Réunion du Christianisme, p. 173.[157]Op. cit.p. 198.[158]Avis aux réfugiés, 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]Ecclesiasticæ Disciplinæ; et Anglicanæ Ecclesiæ ... dilucida Explicatio.[164]Penry'sAppellationand Throckmorton'sM[aster Robert] Some laid open in his Colours, 1590. Cf. Sir Sidney Lee,French Renaissance in England, p. 303.[165]Mémoires de Lenet, p. 599. and Ch. Normand,Bourgeoisie française, pp. 400ssq.See also Chapter VIII.[166]Lettre à M. Morley, p. 112.[167]Eikon Basiliké, Preface to translation.[168]There had already appeared pamphlets by Vincent, minister at La Rochelle, and Hérault, minister at Alençon. Bochart,op. cit.p. 113.[169]Discours sur la Souveraineté des Rois, Saumur, 1650.[170]Lettre à M. Morley.[171]Bochart,op. cit.p. 23.[172]Discours sur la Souveraineté, p. 117.[173]Εικων Βασιλικη,ou Portrait Royal de sa Majesté de la Grande Bretagne dans ses souffrances et sa solitude, La Haye, 1649.[174]Εικων Βασιλικη,Le Portrait du Roy de la Grande Bretagne durant sa solitude et ses souffrances, Orange, 1650.[175]Prédiction où se voit comme le Roy Charlesii.doit estre remis aux royaumes d'Angleterre, Ecosse, et Irlande après la mort de son père, 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. 110ssq.[182]Bochart,op. cit.p. 115.[183]Shibboleth ou réformation de quelques passages de la Bible, dédié 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,Œuvres, i. p. 87 (1753).[191]Ibid.iv. p. 323.[192]Ibid.iv. p. 146.[193]Saint-Evremond,Œuvres, iii. p. 272.[194]Ibid.iii. p. 265.[195]Diary, 13th March 1691.[196]His only published work is theBibliothèque de Droit canonique, edited by Guillaume Voet in 1661. See Ancillon,Mém. hist. et crit., Amst. 1709. P. 221.[197]Saint-Evremond,Œuvres, 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,Œuvres, iii. pp. 266-267.[201]Ibid.iv. pp. 319-320.[202]Diary, 1st November 1685.[203]Such isAn 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 Mémoires 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, andThe Present Misery of the French Nation compared with that of the Romans under Domitian.[214]Inquisition françoise 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.

[140]Rousseau et le cosmopolitisme littéraire, 1895.

[141]Shakespeare en France sous l'ancien régime, 1898.

[142]Littérature française à 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. SeeN. and Q., 1st July 1871.

[148]See Chapter VII.

[149]Théophile de Viau, for instance.

[150]Lettres choisies, iii. p. 9.

[151]Letter to the Synod of Alençon, 1637.

[152]Lettre à 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]Réunion du Christianisme, pp. 117-19.

[156]Réunion du Christianisme, p. 173.

[157]Op. cit.p. 198.

[158]Avis aux réfugiés, 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]Ecclesiasticæ Disciplinæ; et Anglicanæ Ecclesiæ ... dilucida Explicatio.

[164]Penry'sAppellationand Throckmorton'sM[aster Robert] Some laid open in his Colours, 1590. Cf. Sir Sidney Lee,French Renaissance in England, p. 303.

[165]Mémoires de Lenet, p. 599. and Ch. Normand,Bourgeoisie française, pp. 400ssq.See also Chapter VIII.

[166]Lettre à M. Morley, p. 112.

[167]Eikon Basiliké, Preface to translation.

[168]There had already appeared pamphlets by Vincent, minister at La Rochelle, and Hérault, minister at Alençon. Bochart,op. cit.p. 113.

[169]Discours sur la Souveraineté des Rois, Saumur, 1650.

[170]Lettre à M. Morley.

[171]Bochart,op. cit.p. 23.

[172]Discours sur la Souveraineté, p. 117.

[173]Εικων Βασιλικη,ou Portrait Royal de sa Majesté de la Grande Bretagne dans ses souffrances et sa solitude, La Haye, 1649.

[174]Εικων Βασιλικη,Le Portrait du Roy de la Grande Bretagne durant sa solitude et ses souffrances, Orange, 1650.

[175]Prédiction où se voit comme le Roy Charlesii.doit estre remis aux royaumes d'Angleterre, Ecosse, et Irlande après la mort de son père, 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. 110ssq.

[182]Bochart,op. cit.p. 115.

[183]Shibboleth ou réformation de quelques passages de la Bible, dédié 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,Œuvres, i. p. 87 (1753).

[191]Ibid.iv. p. 323.

[192]Ibid.iv. p. 146.

[193]Saint-Evremond,Œuvres, iii. p. 272.

[194]Ibid.iii. p. 265.

[195]Diary, 13th March 1691.

[196]His only published work is theBibliothèque de Droit canonique, edited by Guillaume Voet in 1661. See Ancillon,Mém. hist. et crit., Amst. 1709. P. 221.

[197]Saint-Evremond,Œuvres, 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,Œuvres, iii. pp. 266-267.

[201]Ibid.iv. pp. 319-320.

[202]Diary, 1st November 1685.

[203]Such isAn 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 Mémoires 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, andThe Present Misery of the French Nation compared with that of the Romans under Domitian.

[214]Inquisition françoise 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.

The foreign land to which the Huguenot was compelled to fly acted upon him as a mental stimulus. With such an incitement, the progress of Huguenot thought after the Revocation becomes profoundly interesting. We shall examine it from the threefold point of view of theology, political speculation, and toleration, the last question being intimately connected with the two former, and all three questions being moreover inseparably related.

Most of the men of letters with whom we are now dealing being pastors or having been trained for the ministry, theology occupied a foremost place in their thoughts. In France, the Calvinistic discipline, though it had not suppressed heterodoxy, at least made its expression very guarded. When Locke was staying at Montpellier, he remarked that there was in the land room only for Roman Catholicism or Calvinism, no other creed being tolerated. A Toleration Act in the most narrow sense of the word, the Edict of Nantes recognisedbut one dissenting Communion. But in Holland and even in England, before the Revolution, the refugees could indulge in a certain freedom of thought. The charge of Socinianism brought against Colomiès does not seem to have indisposed against him his patron, the Archbishop. Heterodoxy spread so easily among the Huguenots in England that their orthodox brethren in Holland were alarmed: "We have learned from the good and excellent letter addressed to us by Messieurs our dearest brethren the Pastors of the dispersion at the present moment in London, that the evil has crossed the seas and spreads in England amongst the brethren of our communion and tongue."

These words are an extract from the debates of a Synod convened at Utrecht in 1690 to remedy the spread of heresy among the refugees. Not being backed by civil authority, its freely-distributed and strongly-worded anathemas fell flat. The efforts of the orthodox party were spent in petty intrigues like that which deprived Bayle of his Professorship. They endeavoured to lay a gravestone upon a living tree and were surprised to find the stone split.

This freedom in theology was exerted in two directions: the latitudinarian tenet that the Bible was the religion of the Protestants, now commonly repeated,[224]led to much regard being paid to textual criticism, and in this close study of the divine messageall parties were united; the heterodox in their search after truth, the orthodox in their controversy with the Catholic doctors. It was the age when Richard Simon, the Catholic founder, according to M. Renan, of modern exegesis, flourished, and Le Clerc wrote his first book to dispute his conclusions. A more dangerous method was that of Bayle. The first to lead the life of an absolute free-thinker, whose mind is entirely severed from traditional theology, dispassionate to the verge of inhumanity, a perfect example of the abnormal development of the reasoning faculty to the detriment of sensitiveness, he must not be mistaken for a Pyrrhonist albeit he poses for one from time to time.[225]The contemporary Pyrrhonist would write in the spirit of Pascal'sPensées, and showing up the futility of man's effort to fathom transcendental mysteries, submit to a higher spiritual reason "the reason of the heart that reason knoweth not." With the subtlest dialectician's skill, Bayle merely opposes reason and faith. In every Christian dogma he delights in showing up the latent logical absurdity; not sneering, however, as Voltaire was soon to do, not even hinting at the consequences of his method. The little intellectual exercise over, he passes on to another subject. In spite of his destructive criticism, once out of the professorial chair, he leadsthe life of a good Christian and a righteous Huguenot. In the outward expression of his faith he never wavered. Unlike Montaigne, a sceptic of a different stamp, he never gave undue advantage to his personal comfort. To this day he remains, Sphinx-like, a faint smile lighting up his countenance, a psychological enigma.

In 1709 the greatDictionarywas translated into English by J. P. Bernard, La Roche, and others, and again in 1739-41 by Bernard, Birch, Lockman, and others; already long familiar to English readers, who were not slow in recognising a very high literary merit in its lucidity of style and its extraordinary interest, it had thus been greeted almost on its appearance by a good judge, Saint-Evremond: "Monsieur Bayle clothes in so agreeable a dress his profound learning, that it never palls."[226]A direct influence could be traced of Bayle upon Shaftesbury, the author of theCharacteristics.

But the influence of the heterodox Huguenot weighed little when compared with that of the orthodox. Much led to annul the effect of theCritical Dictionaryon the mass of readers. For one thing, it came a little too late; then, a bomb exploding in the open does less damage than a bomb exploding in a closed room. Though looked upon as suspicious by an Archbishop who had never read them,[227]Bayle's works were allowed to circulatefreely in England. On the other hand, a larger portion of the English public read treatises of devotion bearing the names of learned and illustrious sufferers in the cause of religion. Bishop Fleetwood's translation of Jurieu'sTraité de la dévotionwent through no less than twenty-six editions, and Drelincourt'sConsolations d'une âme fidèlewas a success before Defoe appended to it as a vivid commentary the story of the ghost of Mrs. Veal. In the struggle against deism that marked the first quarter of the eighteenth century, the widespread influence of such books told against infidelity.

Politics were then a part of theology. In the same way as the Revocation helped to break up the traditional Calvinistic theology, it shattered the system of politics most in accordance with the French reformer's political creed. As long as the Huguenots enjoyed the liberties granted them by Henriiv., their doctors had preached passive obedience. When the wave of persecution broke, some faltered, while others obstinately upheld the doctrine that had then become part of their Church divinity. No doubt in showing the glaring insufficiency of the old creed to meet the facts, the Revocation had a demoralising effect. To the reflective few the sudden change of doctrine of many illustrious theologians must have seemed very distressing. One bulwark of their faith, as they had been often told, passive obedience, was being swept away. What destruction might not threaten their faith itself?

Modern Protestant writers, especially in our democratic age, glory in those obscure predecessors of 1789 who asserted in the teeth of absolutism, the rights of the people; yet had the Edict of Nantes never been repealed, and the Huguenots suffered to live on, the hardy victims of petty vexations, it is highly probable that the same doctors who in Holland asserted the sovereignty of the people, would in their French Synods have hurled excommunication at any "followers of the Independents."

Jurieu's apology for his new opinion was frank and ingenuous: obedience was due to Louisxiv.as long as the Protestants were his subjects; compelled by persecution to renounce his allegiance, they obeyed another Prince who allowed them to profess other political opinions.[228]A little demoralisation must pay for every readjustment of conviction due to progress.

Up to the eve of the Revocation, the duty of passive obedience was set forth by the Huguenots. In the absence of solemn declarations issued by Synods, the last being held in 1660, we may record the individual sayings of the luminaries of the party. "Any Huguenot," Jurieu had written in 1681, "is ready to subscribe with his blood to the doctrine that makes for the safety of kings, viz., that temporally our kings depend on no one but on God, that even for heresy and schism kings may not be deposed, nor may their subjects be absolved fromtheir oath of allegiance."[229]Acting as spokesman for his co-religionists, he added: "Our loyalty is proof against any temptation, our love for our Prince is unbounded."[230]Another pastor, Fétizon, opposing the factious doctrines of the Roman Church to the loyalty of the Huguenots, showed how they supported the King's absolute powers: "Where is it commonly taught that kings depend only on God and have a divine power that may be taken away by no ecclesiastical person, no community of people? Is it not in the Protestant religion? Where is it at least allowed to believe that royalty is only a human authority that always remains subject to the people that have granted it, or to the Church that may take it back? Is it not in the Roman Church?"[231]In his famous dispute with Bossuet, Claude maintained the divine right of kings.[232]Writing in theNouvelles de la République des Lettresfor April 1684, Bayle censures Maimbourg for charging Protestantism with sedition, and alleges the Oxford decree of the preceding year condemning Buchanan and Milton. The subject visibly haunts him; again and again he reverts to it, suggesting difficulties, arguing on both sides according to his wont, but clearly inclining to obedience. The persecution shakes his political faith a little; must the Huguenots in France go to their forbidden assemblies in "the Desert"? If it be true that it is better to obey God thanman, who is to determine what the will of God is?[233]And again, the accession of Jamesii.is a good opportunity for Protestantism to show its true spirit; because the King frankly avows his Catholicism, his Protestant subjects are in honour bound to obey him. "The Protestants have never had so good an opportunity of showing that they are not wrong in boasting of their loyalty to their sovereign, whatever the religion he should follow."[234]The very year of the Revocation, Elie Merlat, a pastor who after suffering imprisonment had fled to Lausanne, published a treatise on the absolute power of sovereigns, written four years before, and which he, in spite of persecution, felt no disposition to cancel or modify. The subjects owe their king "civil adoration," and far from dictating to him, may not question his decisions. "If it is permitted to the subjects in certain cases to examine their rulers and ask them to render an account of their actions, the bond of public union is snapped asunder and the door opened to all kinds of sedition."[235]A faint echo is perceptible of Hobbes's teaching. All men are in the origin equal and free, but sin engendering a state of war, a few men, by God's design, have been instrumental in saving through their ambition mankind, whom they have reduced to obedience.[236]Absolute power, though not good in itself, is the supreme remedy devised by God to save man. The Calvinist's sombre teaching finds here its proper expression.

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