Page:Protestant Exiles from France Agnew vol 2.djvu/31

 that compass of time whether England can in any degree be a sanctuary for distressed Protestants.”

The notorious Jeffries, who had been continued in office as Chief-Justice, was made Lord Chancellor on Sept. 28, as the reward of his recent cruelties. One of his chaplains bore the French Protestant name of Beaulieu or De Beau lieu; but as in 1685 he was rector of Whitchurch (Oxfordshire), we have reason to believe that he did not attend his patron in public, or share in the odium of the Chief-Justice and the Lord Chancellor.

In October of the first year of James the Second, Louis XIV. revoked the Edict of Nantes. Great numbers of refugees came over, and a collection in the churches, which had to be authorised by the Lord Chancellor’s brief, could not be refused. Jeffries did what he could to gratify the king’s private wishes, first by putting off the collection as long as he could, and then by requiring conformity to the English ceremonies from the refugees as the condition of receiving their individual shares of the fund. The multitudes who left the inhospitable gate without relief while this embargo lasted have made sufficient impression on the national memory to convince us that those refugees who declared their indifference as to the English liturgical disputes did not represent the majority of their brethren.

In the end of 1685 the Marquis de Bonrepaus was sent from France as a special envoy to entice back the industrious refugees. He was ostentatiously welcomed by the king, but failed in his overtures to the exiles as a body. In the following May he reported the embarkation for France of 253 of the industrial classes; and with them were 27 naval officers and 354 sailors. A letter in the Ellis Correspondence of two years’ later date summarises the envoy’s ill success and its cause in the following concise sentence:— “London, 24th July 1686. — The French king is said to be inviting back his subjects from all parts, especially the handicraft part of them, whose departure is said to have much prejudiced his revenue, and promiseth them his toleration; though it doth not appear they are forward to believe that an Order of Council can preserve what the Edict of Xantcs could not.” In a despatch with regard to the aforesaid embarkation, dated 5th May 1686, Bonrepaus writes:— “The King of England, who looks upon the fugitives as his enemies (qui regarde ces fugitifs comme ses ennemis), took no heed of the complaints made to him upon the subject.”

A complaint of an opposite kind met with attention. On May 8th, 1686, the French Ambassador formally complained of the translation into the English language of Claude’s “Plaintes des Protestans.” By order of the King in Council, copies, both of the original and of the translation, were burnt in the city of London by the common hangman before the Royal Exchange. The indignation of the people was tremendous; and the Ambassador Barillon in his despatch hinted that Louis XIV. must regard such demands as inexpedient for the future, the feeling of the nation never having been so greatly roused since James’s accession.

The Pasteur Claude (formerly of Charenton, and a refugee in Holland), had published anonymously the pamphlet entitled, “Les Plaintes des Protestans Cruellement Oprimés dans le Royaume de France.” The title-page of the English translation was, “An Account of the Persecutions and Oppressions of the Protestants in France. Printed in the year 1686;” this was a quarto pamphlet, which was reprinted in a tract of a pocket size at Edinburgh, entitled, “An Account of the Persecutions and Oppressions of the French Protestants, to which is added, The Edict of the French King prohibiting all publick exercise of the Pretended Reformed Religion in his kingdom, wherein he recalls and totally annuls the perpetual and irrevocable Edict of King Henry the IV., his grandfather, given at Nantes, full of most gracious concessions to Protestants. With the Form of Abjuration the revolting Protestants are to subscribe and swear to. Printed by G. M., Anno Dom. 1686.” [The printer was George Mosman, or Mossman.] A new translation appeared in 1707; it was a pocket volume entitled, “A short Account of the Complaints and Cruel Persecutions of the Protestants in the Kingdom of France. London: Printed by W. Redmayne, 1707.” There is a long Preface, which informs us regarding the former translation, “The translator for some regard he had to those times, when the enemies of our holy religion were in great credit, did designedly omit several matters of fact, and them the most important to the cause of the refugees; insomuch, that above the fourth part of it was cut off in the translation; though the translator fared ne’er the better for it.” I have compared the two translations, and I find that the pamphlet of 1686 was quite a faithful abridgement, there being only two omissions of any length, viz. (1st), an Account of the original Edict of Nantes, showing the internal evidence for its perpetual obligation, and (2d) the detailed protest at the end, fitted to impress