Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew (1st ed. vol 3).djvu/88

 

The Volume of Memoirs of Refugees, which I originally planned, was to date from the epoch of those persecutions of French Protestants, of which Louis XIV. was guilty. An enlarged plan, which afterwards resulted in two volumes, was resolved upon for the purpose of surveying the same ground more thoroughly; because, within that limit, there was some probability that an almost complete work might be produced.

Information as to refugees in former reigns has incidentally been gathering around me; and the unexpected idea of a third volume enables me now to present such Memoirs to my readers. In the title page, I call these Memoirs “introductory,” first, because, as compared with the substance of the two volumes, they are unavoidably fragmentary and incomplete: and secondly, because the exiles of older date may be said to have prepared the way for the reception in Britain of the crowds of fugitives from the later and greater persecutions and thus to have introduced their brethren to the acquaintance and to the hospitality of our countrymen.

The older refugees were not only from France proper, but also from the regions now known as Holland and Belgium. Part of the latter territory was in those persecuting days known as French Flanders, because under French rule; and the inhabitants, on account of the old French dialect which they spoke, were called Walloons. The Dutch refugees had churches in England for worship in their own tongue. But some of them seem to have been familiar with the French language, and even to have been members of French churches; one or two Dutch memoirs are accordingly inserted here.

Of Walloon refugees, the English representative who has risen to the highest rank is the Earl of Radnor. The chief of the descendants of French refugees of the St. Bartholomew period is the Earl of Clancarty. There were also many clergy and other literati. These Introductory Memoirs may therefore be arranged in four groups — (i.) The Radnor Group. (2.) The Clancarty Group. (3.) The University Group. (4.) A Miscellaneous Group.  

The Earl of Radnor presides over the ancient and only club of French Protestant Refugees, namely, the Directors of the French Hospital of London. The motto of his family, as a British family, expresses the unanimous sentiment of the Refugees, (dear to me is my native country, but liberty is more dear). The surname of this family is now Bouverie, but it was originally Des Bouveries. Laurent Des Bouveries, a silk manufacturer, who was born at Sainghin, near Lille, fled to England from the persecution in French Flanders, and settled first at Sandwich. Burn’s History gives extracts from the Book of Accounts as to funds for the relief of the poor “de l’Eglise de Sandenuyt Françoise,” from 1568 to 1570, in which “Laurens des Bouveryes” gets credit for 20s. as the proceeds of “bayes” sold for the benefit of the poor; and in the list of contributors to the poor, October 1571, we observe Laurent des Bouueryes, 1s., Jan des Bouueryes, 8d. The enterprising exile removed to Canterbury and established a good business, in which he was succeeded by his son Edward. Edward was succeeded by his son, also named Edward Desbouveries (born 1621, died 1694). The latter had removed to London, in which city he died, a wealthy Turkey merchant. For several generations each head of this family obtained a step in worldly