Huguenots

Guess what we really have to do is with the meaning "What is a Huguenot? The Huguenots were now in fact the Protestants who abandoned France under Louis XIV. We' re not among the Huguenots who abandoned France because of the Revolution (they were fugitives ), so it's a pretty tightly defined one.

When the Huguenot Society was founded in the nineteenth centuary, however, they resolved to incorporate former Protestant expellees from their lands into their research mission. Among them were the Walloons from French-speaking Flanders, the Dutch from the Netherlands in the sixteenth and early Huguenots, Frenchmen who fled France, especially the St. Bartholomew massacre of 1572, but there was a succession of refugees from other periods and places.

If you like, the two major protagonists, especially the Huguenots, were Martin Luther, who gave the impetus. In 1517 he was a Holy Roman Catholics friar who nail his 95 propositions on the reforms of the Holy Roman Empire to the doors of the Wittenberg parish priest. There was a long, long time of dissatisfaction about the way the Holy Roman Empire was run, about the kind of corrupt practices that had sneaked into it, and also about the way the leaders of different nations used their religions to support their positions, and about the abuse that they had committed against them.

Jean Calvin is the other main actor for us in the Huguenots. Considering that he was a Franciscan theologist, he supported a much more extremist, more fundamental version of Protestantism than Martin Luther. The Bishops, the Archbishops, kept the hierarchical structure of the Orthodox churches. Every congregation should have its own chosen organ: the Ancients.

When we look at Protestantism in England, it began in 1534 with Henry VIII. In many ways, making oneself the leader of a Church of England was a step forward politically. But there were those who really wanted to make changes in England.

Since 1550 fugitives came from parts of Europe already, because England was a Lutheran state, Edward VI gave these various groups in France and the Netherlands a charter and founded the Church in London, Canterbury, Norwich and Southampton. The ones of you who have been reading Foxes Martyr's Book will know the consequences of such things.... And so at this point many of you went back to where you came from.

Things may be quite awful there, but it was also awful in England and at least they knew the languages when they went home. So, folks went back and forth. Ever since, England has been a church of England, an English state. Of course it didn't look like that at the beginning, but since 1558 England is in general an English, a Lutheran state. Over the years different kinds of different kinds of human beings have come here.

It was the Inquisition - you know, the Spanish Inquisition that tortured humans until they turned to God and then, for the life of their soul, usually burned them. That'?s the cathedral they were.... their charter in the city of London. It' the Dutch Orthodox in Austin Friars.

Bombarded and reconstructed during the Second World War, it is still a Flemish church. They serve the Netherlands, who work in London, and the Huguenot Society often meet and hold meetings there. I' ve already told you about the Parisians. So they began to come over in small ripples, but it was the Saint Bartholomew massacre in 1572 that caused a great surge of migrants.

But it got out of control and over several month about 10,000 persons were slaughtered all over France, and obviously those who could escaped. That was actually in the midst of the French religious wars. Out of England, unexpectedly we got away one way or the other very easily.

We have had men who have been put to death and such things, but there has not been a full-scale conflict, as has been the case in France, for example. The French religious wars began around 1562. So if we look at the evidence of Huguenot descent, the data. In 1598 the French religious conflict ended with the Edict of Nantes.

It was his Protestant turn to become king of France (they came through the kingdoms there at an astonishing speed).... they said: "Well, you can be king, but you will have to change to Catholicism. So, if you look at the Huguenot lineage - we always ignore both the Dutch and the Dutch as well as the Jewish people, but your early immigrants, up to about 1600, when someone from there appears all of a sudden, it is something to consider.

However, the largest inflow of Huguenots came from the 1680s to 1720s, and I will speak a little more about why this is the case later. In fact, if your forefather comes from France after 1750: no Huguenot, no religue. One of my friends had this beautiful romance about how his forebears were Huguenots, they had gotten away... Well, when he saw that, he found out that his forebear was a pretty old France man who had left his ship[laughter].

More and more he found that Huguenots were not permitted to do so, that they were not permitted to do so, that they could not hold assemblies. It was only slowly separated off, but in 1681 he resolved to establish the Dragonades - dragon troops, who were armoured troops of huguenots who had to help them on their own.

A lot of Lutheran fugitives were awaiting their departure. I have searched my own forefathers in the parish books and went to the Roman Catholics, apparently compliant, but I waited for their times until they could get away. This is one of the possible Huguenot forefathers.... Your forefather shows up at a very important moment, a date that.... If you find an forefather, they may have come to London, for example, or one of these places for any reason.

Here, too, the Flemish last names are very, very similar. Netherlands and England are similar in language; they come from the same group. Crockett is written by the Dutches, but of course the British employee who writes it would spell it C-R-O-C-K-K-K-E-T-T and that would look perfect in German for anyone who reads it.

Frensh surnames: these are obviously much easier to recognize now. I have forefathers named Deschamps, Montaillet, Renier; all of them are obviously Frensh. For my part, I think the whole familiy was just tired of correction: "No, it's not Brown, it's Bruneau" and they just gave in. In the early nineteenth centurys, the main warfare between France and England lasted for hundreds of years, but since the 1790' s, after the Revolutionary Wars and then the Napoleonic Wars, England was at full throttle with France.

Englishmen were very distrustful of the French. Many Huguenots at that time were changing their name to something that spoke English. You can find the same kind of information, in some plates they are Dubois, in some plates they are Wood and that is a really, really important hint.

The largest municipality, the largest demographic, was in London because most of the inhabitants appeared in the town. Lamerie, Paul de Lamerie, like that. They were wigmakers, all the folks involved with the Saint James farm. There was another important group in the city: traders, and it amazes me how many Huguenots came out with large sums of cash.

Bank of England, many of the folks who began it, have helped raise funds to launch it, a really significant part were Huguenots. Fortunately, although the notes did not survive in Greenwich, they did quite well to repeat all their ministries in the English vicarage, because that was a document.

They knew that....Anglican registries, because it was an establishment religion, were acceptable in court. That' s really right, many Huguenots in the Greenwich congregation seemed to have been quite wealthy. So they wanted to make sure that there could be no problem so that they could repeat all their rituals in the chaplaincy.

Chelsea community notes have not been preserved, but we hope....some of them we know use the parochials. It is the last preserved Protestant Christian in London. It is the old Threadneedle Street Orthodox Cathedral, which was the great one.

Though it was a non-conformist religion (they did not correspond to the English one, they had no diocesan leaders, they had the fundamentalistic non-conformist faith). It was the parent of all the English Orthodox and Orthodox congregations. You still have service there; it is still a big deal for the whole of London to have.

All the other ecclesiastical structures will be preserved. It is the old artillery chapel that was the large Spitalfields church[shows a picture]. Begun as a non conformist reformed Lutheran Christian congregation, all Spitalfeld congregations were non conformist. In Soho, in West London, some of them were non-conformist, some were adapted to the English Congregation.

That is the last breath of....This is Leicester Fields Church[shows a picture]. It was a bigger municipality in France, so it is a little smaller in reconstruction. Guess it could be one of the ones being purchased and renovated, because that's something a whole bunch of folks in the area are trying to do: renovate the homes the way they were.

Well, Thorney, whom we know, was framed by a Dutchman who emptied the Fens up there. This is now the Netherlands connection again. They are not Huguenots from a technical point of view, but we have included them in the Huguenot society, we have their records and they were non-conformists, they were Protestants. Later.... This community almost vanished and the parish was kept in operation only until the second flood of immigrants who came from the Channel Islands.

Now, the Channel Islands: There were quite a few Huguenots who went there, but of course the Channel Islands already spoken France and were quite likeable with the non-conformity. We do not therefore have separated Huguenot communities in the Channel Islands, they simply vanish, they blend in with the locals, who, as I said earlier, were, on the whole, French-speaking anyway.

It is the cathedral of Canterbury, where the Huguenot community is located. You still have a French language facility there, I think it's a week. Well, outside England there were other fellowships - at least one in Scotland. There were four Irish Lutheran congregations in Dublin.

The Huguenots were very important in the development and, as we all know, they were very, very succesful. Portarlington is very interesting because it is the only one in the British Isles that has been specially constructed for Huguenots. Most of the men who went there were military servicemen of William III, the Dutchman William, who came in 1688 to take over the throne with this woman Mary.

They don't like it, but it's the truth. Most of them were Protestants from the Netherlands. Many Huguenots also wanted to really do battle with the French, but in the army you have no option but to do what you say. Newchâtel: Virtually a thousand flocked in.

Registries have been made public and the veterans' pension register is another option. Here are some of the clues for the persecution of Huguenot descent: the date, the name and the place where your forefather came from. Of course, the most important resources are the parishbooks. Not all of them survive, as I indicated, but parish books of baptism and marriage.... Most of them had no cemeteries.

Therefore, most of them are entombed in their own village ministry, and here you sometimes find funerals of very strangely named souls. It' a kind of sacristy in the Anglican religion. The ecclesiastical agencies were.... gathering to make all kinds of choices about making payments, about providing aid to their arms, but what they mainly did there was to inquire about the morality and behavior of the catholic community.

Survivors' records have been released by the Huguenot Society in the accounts. The HSQS is the'Huguenot Society Quarto Series'. That is a big series: there are over 50, I think up to 60 volumes about various things to do with the Huguenots in Britain. All of the registries have been released and are available on CD-ROM.

The Netherlands cathedrals in London and Norwich, however, have not yet been translated. Austin Friars, the Netherlands Cathedral, it's on film. There are no..... There have been a few releases of Victorians on listings of members of the congregation and the like. Norwich Netherlands Orthodox Cathedral, I don't think it was ever translated or used, but the originals are so much to see in London's Metropolitan Archives.

Some have been released as some bands of the Consistory, I think Threadneedle Street at different times, but not all. Some are still in the Huguenot Library, which is here until now. This way you can retrieve the recordings two working day a week. 2.

This is the archive of the French Church on Soho Square, which still contains a whole series of recordings, not only of Threadneedle Street Church, but also of some others. There are a few guides: The Huguenot Society has released various catalogs of things and where they are.

As I have already said, the parish books themselves are the Acts of the Apostles of the Consistory and there are also certain things to do with Protestantism itself. It was a kind of testimony that you were to receive from your former parish when you appeared in a new ministry and testified that you were a good Catholic and a member of the Shrine.

As I have already said, before they could get away, they had to adapt to Catholicism. So, there are incantation notes. If he had returned to France after 1685 as a Protestant, he could have been put on the manor houses, he could have been put to death, he could have done all kinds of things to himself.

Bringing your Tempoignage from a Normandy chapel means you know you are from there. Charitable organizations: The Huguenots have founded a large number of charitable organizations, a relatively large number of charitable organizations. A total of about 50,000 came to England. You put up an adequate number and folks continued to give them legacies.

French hospital is the most important. The Huguenot Society publishes all the documents related to it and keeps the documents in the archive so that they can be viewed and they are also available on CD-ROM. Coqueau charitable organisation which will be publicised with the documents of the French hospital; a lady named Esther Coqueau founded a charitable organisation for ten impoverished girls, either unwed or widowed, and she disbursed a certain amount.

So, the footage of it is also very, very useful. Education: The Huguenots also payed the bonuses for the education of Huguenot -originals. They can be applied for; if you like, they endorse those who practice Huguenot crafts. Writings will again show where your forefathers lived and how many kids were in the extended group.

The main thing was to give the clergy, the Franciscan minister, funds. They also had a number of Huguenot education programs and now there are....scholarships for education for Huguenot-Ancestors. We had two school in France: one in Spitalfields and one in Westminster. All students' listings have been posted in the Huguenot Society meetings, the magazine they publish[Huguenot Society Journal, formerly known as the Huguenot Society Proceedings].

During the Second World Peace, the French hospital moved to Horsham and remained there for a while. This place is named because the occupants used to call it the French hospital. That' s what it's known today and if you can show that you're of Huguenot descent, you can move into an apartment there.

And there were other things, especially Huguenot things. For example, there were a number of Huguenot-Friendly Societies. Lintot's society, which was the society of high and low Normandy, the society of Saintonge and Angoumois, the Parisians, the 43:29 unfamiliar, all kinds of friendly societies. That guy Bitoux, he got.... The slips are in the Society of Saintonge notes and he got alms from them for a long while, so he must have been sick for a while.

I really have to see if he went to the French hospital later. You see Chauvet's find, they' re leaving them charity cash. They have become part of the family, they have married each other, they have been defeated if you like Huguenotism, but they have kept the memories of it and they know where to go if they need help because of Huguenot descent.

Varden, Debord, Plange are the only ones who seem to have kept the Huguenots' name. Since my forebear was living in Spitalfields and he was a weber, he must have been a Huguenot. That' s not the truth; many folks woven, it was a big, big UK deal.

Huguenots had an immense edge in these areas, because France was in fashion, France was snappy. So they had an edge because they were a Frenchman and knew what fashion was. There I bought my goggles out of Huguenot sympathy (laughter), but they were now taken over by Boots.

Bazalgette: Of course, the Bazalgette couple had some significant impact on British people. He' s the one who gave us Big Brother, so he had a slightly different impact on British people. And so he too came from a Huguenot backdrop. These are all in The National Archives here, edited by the Huguenot Societys.

Huguenot society made them, but they were all transliterated. So, if your forefather shows up there, they may not be Huguenots, they've all transliterated them. These have been released, again from the 1500-1800 recordings. Some of the City of London's living businesses, some of their recordings have been released and some of them are still with the firm and some of them are in the Guildhall Library.

Weavers' Co. recordings were released by the Huguenot Society. You will find here very often as an indicator of Huguenot descent the transfer of funds to a certain secretary. Or I' ve just seen one where one of the fiduciaries is a well-known Huguenot, so..... or they left a heritage to one of the Huguenot charity organizations.

Their forefathers, who came to England from France, may have made a stop at other places along the way. In Switzerland, even Denmark and some went to Scandinavia and then to England. These are the Huguenots who are welcome in Berlin[shows a picture]. So, you may have some distant Huguenot family.

After all, the Huguenot crucifix, a very emblematic thing, you can get one if you are of Huguenot descent. Hopefully I have given you an impression of some of the ways to find Huguenots.