Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/271

 to make sail-cloth." The whole of Weiss’s chapter entitled “Of the principal manufactures with which the refuge endowed England,” is worthy of perusal. I extract the following statement as a specimen:—

“Hat making became one of the most important manufactures taken into England by the refugees. In France it had been almost entirely in the hands of the Protestants. They alone possessed the secret of the liquid composition which serves to prepare rabbit, hare, and beaver skins, and they alone supplied the trade with the fine Caudebec hats. Alter the Revocation most of them went to London, taking with them the secret of their art, which was lost to France for more than forty years. . . . . The French nobility, and all persons making pretensions to elegance in dress, wore none but English hats during those years; and the Roman cardinals themselves got their hats from the celebrated manufactory at Wandsworth established by the refugees.”

The refugees also improved our paper, especially printers’ and writing paper. Ours had been “a brownish and very coarse paper,” says Professor Weiss, who adds, “the first manufactories of fine white paper were founded in London in 1685 and 1686 by French workmen from Casteljaloux, Thiers, Ambert, and especially from Angouleme.” Mr. Smiles quotes the terms of a patent for making writing and printing paper granted in 1686 to “M. Dupin, A. de Cardonels, C. R. M. de Grouchy, J. de May, and R. Shales,” they having “lately brought out of France excellent workmen, and already set up several new-invented mills and engines for making thereof, not heretofore used in England.” Nicolas De Champ and his daughter Marguerite are remembered as refugee paper-makers in Scotland. They came from Normandy in 1679. Champ began business at Colinton, near Edinburgh, but soon joined a firm at Woodside, near Glasgow. “Nicolas De Champs, Paper-maker in Glasgow,” was a subscriber of £100 sterling to the Darien Company. He afterwards built a mill for himself in the parish of Cathcart, on a site beside a fall of the river Cart; “the place was called Newlands, and retains the appellation of Paper Mill to this day.” In 1726 his grandson, John Hall, was in occupation of this paper-mill. James Hall, De Champ’s apprentice, had married his master’s daughter (“Margrat Deshan”) on 19th April 1695. De Champ himself as “Nicolas Deshan” was registered as a witness to a marriage at Cathcart, 14th November 1701.

Monsieur Pierre Nouaille was a refugee from Nismes; he is said to have forfeited considerable property in France. In 1693 he married Susanne Jollis. Their son, Pierre, was baptized in the Glasshouse French Church, London, on 26th November 1693. He was known as Mr. Peter Nouaille of Hackney, “a merchant of considerable eminence in the Levant and Italian trade.” And he was the father of a third Pierre, namely Peter Nouaille, Esq. (born 1724, died 1810), of whom there is a long obituary notice in the Annual Register. In 1745, having been assumed by his father as a partner, he set out on a tour through France, Italy, and Sicily, by which he greatly increased his knowledge and accomplishments. In 1747 he returned to his desk in Throgmorton Street. He married, in 1760, Elizabeth, sole heiress of a descendant of Huguenot refugees, Peter Delamare, Esq. of Greatness, near Sevenoaks (she died in 1805). In 1778, having, through untoward circumstances, become bankrupt, he resumed business through the countenance and aid of “many of the most eminent merchants in the city, among the foremost of whom was his ever-valued friend, Peter Gaussen, Esq., then Governor of the Bank.” In 1800 he retired from business with an independent fortune, which was at that date increased by his succession to a relative’s property. He died at Greatness, “the oldest member of His Majesty’s Court of Lieutenancy in the city of London.” “He first introduced the manufacture of crapes into England, which, before his time, were imported from Bologna. By his own ingenuity he discovered the process of their manufacture, and soon rivalled them in his manner of preparing them.” He established a manufactory which, with the property connected with it, he gave up to his son in 1800.

I find some indications of the inventive talent of the refugees in the English Patent-Rolls:—

2 Aug. 1681. John Joachin Becher — his invention for winding of silk.

19 Aug. 1681. John Joachin Becher and Henry Series — new way of making pitch and tarre.

28 April 1682. John Joachin Becher — floating mills.

29 July 1682. Francis Ammonet, Claude Hayes, and Daniel du Thais — their invention of the manufacture of draped stockings. 