Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/29

 (Page 16). The execution of King Charles I. on the scaffold greatly lessened the sympathy between the Huguenots and the English people. The most celebrated writers against that deed were French Protestants.

(Page 17). Claudius Salmasius was Claude Saumaise. Petrus Molinaeus was Peter Du Moulin, D.D. Of him and of Brevint I shall speak in the supplementary section of memoirs. Only I must here warn my readers against the Rev. John Durel, as being neither a Huguenot nor an impartial looker-on.

(Page 18). The sentiments entertained by individual Huguenots regarding the English broils varied, each individual depending for his information upon different English friends or correspondents. Du Bose’s biographer thought that all Huguenots were on the side of the titular Charles II., and of his brother the Duke of York — while the Duke of York himself thought they were all on the side of Cromwell, as Bishop Burnet informs us.

The fact was, that as Charles I. had damaged his influence by leaning on a Roman Catholic Archbishop, so Cromwell rose in estimation through his beneficence to poor Protestant people. The Republican Protector was courted by Cardinal Mazarin, and on the other side by the Prince of Condé who proposed to join him in a Spanish Alliance. Cromwell sent Jean Baptist Stouppe, one of the pasteurs of the City of London French Church, into France to consult the Huguenot population, and it was ascertained that the Protestants disapproved of Conde’s projects. England therefore accepted the French Alliance.

(Page 19). Here I give the two memorable interventions of Cromwell with Mazarin in behalf of persecuted Protestants, and conclude by giving Anthony a-Wood’s account of French Protestants incorporated into Oxford University during the period embraced in this section. These shall be transferred into the supplementary section.

I have said of Pasteur Stouppe “he was a native of the Orisons, and at heart more a layman than a pastor, as he ultimately proved, by becoming a Brigadier in the French army.” I wish to note what can be said in extenuation of his conduct. From information lately obtained, I must acquit him of the suspicion of having abjured Protestantism in order to be qualified for the army. At the restoration of Charles II. he could not stay in London, the royalists being furious against him for having acted as a diplomatist under Cromwell. He hoped to preach in Canterbury unmolested, but was followed to that retreat. Among the records of the French Church of Canterbury Mr Burn found a document thus described:— “28th August 1661. The king’s letter requiring the church not to admit or use Mr Stoupe as minister, but give him to understand he is not to return to this kingdom, he being a known agent and a common intelligencer of the late usurpers.” During the early campaigns of the Williamite war in Flanders, he was colonel of a regiment of Swiss Auxiliaries in the French service. Soon after his death a number of his men went over to our king. “Brigadier Stouppe,” says D’Auvergne, “died of the wounds he received at the battle of Steenkirk. That Stouppe was a Protestant and had been a minister. But I was told that Colonel Monim, who had the regiment after him, was a Roman Catholic, and had turned out the minister that belonged to the regiment, and put a priest in his place, which so disgusted his soldiers that it occasioned a general desertion in his regiment.” (D’Auvergne’s History of the Campagne in the Spanish Netherlands, 1694, Page 24).  Section IV. (pp. 21, 22, 23) is entitled The Correspondence of the French Protestants with England in the time of Charles II. There were two occasions on which some of the Huguenot Pasteurs complied with the request of English friends to fortify them with letters.

(Page 22). The first occasion was the restoration of the younger Charles as King Charles II. If Cromwell had accepted the Spanish Alliance, the brothers Charles and James would have fraternized with the French Protestants, and might perhaps have led them into England in