Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/30

 order to renew the civil war. But Cardinal Mazarin, having won the Protector to a French Alliance, had dismissed the brothers from France, and the Huguenots approved of peace with England. It was therefore now the brothers’ policy to encourage an Anti-Protestant league against Cromwell, and it was reported that Charles had secretly converted himself to Popery. In 165S he denied this accusation in a letter to Rev. Thomas Cawton. But in 1660 more decisive evidence of his Protestantism was desired. Letters in the king’s favour were accordingly written by the Pasteurs Daillé, Drelincourt, Gaches, and De l’Angle. Drelincourt’s letter was to Stouppe; that from Gaches was addressed to Richard Baxter at the request of their mutual friend, Anna Mackenzie, Countess of Balcarres. Many letters, hostile to the nonconformists, having been despatched from England into France, an Apology for the Puritans of England was published in the French language at Geneva in 1663; the author was Rev. Thomas Hall, B.D.

(Page 23). The second occasion was when Stillingfleet was printing a prelatical book entitled “The Unreasonableness of Separation.” A few formal questions were put in circulation abroad, and answers received from Messieurs Le Moyne, De l’Angle, and Claude (all dated in 1680) were printed.

With regard to the letters of 1680, I make the following extract from “An Historical Account of my own Life, 1671-1731, by Edmund Calamy, D.D.,” imprinted and edited by John Towill Rutt in 1829, 2 vols. In Calamy’s 1st vol., p. 173, he says, “Dr Frederick Spanheim, (born 1632, died 1701), the son of Frederick, is acknowledged to have written as well and to as good a purpose, upon Ecclesiastical History, as any one that has appeared in the Protestant Churches. . . . This Dr Spanheim was one of those divines to whom the Bishop of London [Compton] wrote, for his sentiments about the Established Church of England and Conformity to it, at the very same time that he wrote to Monsieur Le Moyne and Monsieur de l’Angle upon the same subject; whose letters are printed by Dr Stillingfleet at the end of his Mischief of Separation. Spanheim’s answer was not printed among the rest, not being thought enough in favour of the Church of England. . . . Le Moyne was a great and learned man. . . . I cannot help upon this occasion recollecting a passage of a worthy English Divine, who was speaking of a letter of this Monsieur le Moyne, relating to our contests here in England, of which he had made much use. He says that he had certain knowledge that M. Le Moyne had both with his tongue and pen declared, that Mr Durell had much abused him, in leaving out sundry passages in his letter, wherein he did moderate and regulate the episcopal power, which if they had been inserted, the letter would not at all have fitted his design. (Bonasus Vapulans, or some Castigations given to Mr John Durell, &c., p. 80).”

V. (which extends from page 24 to page 29) is entitled The Reception of the French Refugees in England in 1681. This was the first year of the Dragonnades. Our ambassador at Paris, Hon. Henry Savile, corresponded with his brother Lord Halifax and with Secretary Sir Leoline Jenkins and secured a hospitable reception for Refugees in England. I give an abstract from those letters contained in a Camden Society Volume, entitled Savile Correspondence, edited by Mr William Durrant Cooper.

(Page 25). Savile writes on 5th July, “Old Monsieur De Ruvigny has given a memorial to the king concerning the edict coming forth about the children of the Huguenots. The king said he would consider of it. But these poor people are in such fear that they hurry their children out of France in shoals.” Savile’s final appeal was dated, Paris, 22d July 1681, and was successful.

(Page 26). Mr Secretary Jenkins wrote to Savile on 7th August, that a collection would be ordered to be made in the churches. On the same date (28th July old style) the order in Council was issued for the Naturalization of foreign Protestants. I print this, with the names of Privy Councillors present. [The Clerk of Council signed himself. The