Page:Historic towns of the southern states (1900).djvu/336

 From the "pigeon holes," the highest point in the tower, patriots of the Revolution watched the coming and progress of the British fleets of Parker and Arbuthnot, and almost a century later the war-ships of Dupont and Dahlgren were sighted from the same aerie long before they crossed the bar.

Its congregation is so largely composed of the élite of Charleston society that a local wit had irreverently called the venerable structure "the Chapel of Ease of the St. Cecilia Society."

It is claimed that the French Protestant (Huguenot) Church in Charleston is nearly if not quite coeval in date with the present city. There is some evidence that the church owes its origin to the colony of French Protestants sent out to the Province in 1680 by Charles II. of England. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes and the consequent Huguenot emigration to America in 1685 put the church on a solid foundation, though many of the Huguenots who came to Carolina settled at Orange Quarter, on the Santee River, at St. John's, Berkeley, and possibly in St. James, Goose Creek. In 1687, came Elias Prioleau, the first recognized and regular pastor of the