Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 11 - Section IV
IV. Various Persons and Memorabilia.
From much more ancient times than the era of the dragonnades and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, English manufactures had been immensely indebted to foreign Protestant immigrants and refugees. The comparative toleration which the Huguenots reaped from the Edict of Nantes, they repaid to France by their skill, industry, and inventive powers, so that the beautiful, industrial products and manufactures of France were mainly the work of Protestant hands. These goods brought annually a great flow of money into the kingdom, especially from England. Both the money and the manufactories were to a great extent lost to France, when the masters and workmen had to fly by tens of thousands from fanatical persecution. The benefit was largely transferred to Britain.
As Mr. Durrant Cooper, the editor of “The Savile Correspondence,” observes, to Henry Savile “belongs the honour of suggesting that wise course which turned the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes to such an advantage for the future prospects of England.” He wrote to Secretary Jenkins from Paris, 21st October 1681:—
“I send this in favour of a Protestant linen-draper who with all his substance has resolved to retire into England, in order to which he has packed up his shop and sent it in specie to Dunkirk, having paid all the duties and customs on this side for exportation; but, being now told that his religion will not hinder the confiscation of his goods, he goes first to London himself before he will hazard his effects.” The postscript adds, “Here is a Protestant haberdasher in the same trouble about carrying his effects. Pray instruct me what to say to such people upon the like occasions. I assure you it is worth a serious consideration, for if you refuse to take substantial tradesmen with their ware, they will go into Holland; so that they will get the rich merchants, and we only the poor ones.”
In my Historical Introduction it has been recorded that leave was granted to refugees to come “with their ware.” The linen-draper was Bonhomme, of whom Savile said, “This man will bee able alsoe to give you some lights into the method of bringing the manufacture of sayle cloathe into England.” Professor Weiss informs us, “In 1681 the company of elders and deacons of the French Church in Threadneedle Street [London] supplied funds for the establishment of a linen-manufactory at Ipswich, where Charles II. had permitted a great number of refugees to found a colony. Bonhomme, one of the most skilful manufacturers of linen cloth in Paris, spread its manufacture in England, and at the same time taught the English 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.”[1] 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,[2] 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.[3]
29 July 1682. Francis Ammonet, Claude Hayes, and Daniel du Thais — their invention of the manufacture of draped stockings.
10 Aug. 1682. George Hager — making paper.
31 July 1682. John Duson — making salt and draining brine-pits and mines.
1 Aug. 1684. James Delabadie — an engine very useful for the beautifying of cloathes, freezes, and other woollen manufactures, in napping the same.
William and Mary, by the grace of God, to all to whom these presents shall come, greeting. Whereas Anthony Du Vivier, Esquire, hath by his humble petition represented unto us that he hath by his industry found out and invented a way to make a ship go against wind and tide by a very easie and not costly machine, and yet knowne by noe others, which will be of great use and service to our subjects, &c. Westminster, 29th Feb., 4 W. & M. (1692).
2 Sept. 1698. Francis Pousset — an invention for making black and white silk crape.
12 Dec. 1701. Richard Laurence De Manoir and Lewis Anne St. Marie — an engine for the making of large rough-looking glass plates and chimney-pieces.
19 Nov. 1715. Peter Dubison — printing, dying, or staining of callicoes.
5 Feb. 1719. James Christopher Le Blon — multiplying pictures and draughts by a natural colloris with impression.
25 June 1720. John Theophilus Desaguliers and others — making the steam and vapour of boiling liquors useful for many purposes.
12 Aug. 1721. Isaac De la Chaumette — a cannon or piece of ordnance, also a machine to cure smoky chimneys, and several other new inventions.
20 April 1723. Nehemiah Champion — invention for making a much greater quantity of brass from the copper and calamy, and of nealing the plates and kettles with pit coal.
1 June 1727. James Christopher Le Blon — making or weaving tapestry in the loom.
One of the most celebrated of the Huguenot colonies still survives in London, namely, in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green. I have already quoted from the present vicar’s valuable Paper on this colony; he (Rev. Isaac Taylor) remarks as to the flight of this people’s ancestors from France:—
“Whole villages were depopulated. At Tours, of 8000 silk looms only 100 remained. Of 40,000 persons employed in the silk trade in that city, only 4000 were left. Of the 12,000 silk-weavers of Lyons, 9000 fled. It was the same throughout the manufacturing districts of France. The more skilful and intelligent of the artisans were those who had thought for themselves on religious questions, and had embraced the principles of the Reformation. The more cultured of the nobles and the more thoughtful members of the professional class had been the natural leaders of the Huguenot democracy. Hence it was that almost all of the manual skill, as well as of the brain, the intellect, the wealth and the thrift of France found itself proscribed. The unknown terrors of exile and the difficulties of flight once more morally winnowed the chaff from the wheat. The man of weak character conformed, outwardly at least; the grave, earnest men, men of powerful convictions, strong will, and dauntless courage, resolved to run the terrible risks of flight, and to endure the ruinous worldly losses which it involved. Hence, by a process of natural selection, the very cream of the manhood of France was lost to her for ever. Her chief industries were destroyed, or rather, transplanted to flourish more vigorously in rival lands.”
“From carefully-prepared statistics, compiled from a series of observations and enquiries made about the year 1810, it appears that at that date there were above 10,000 silk looms in Spitalfields and its neighbourhood. About the same period 2852 of these looms were unemployed, and the members of the families dependent upon those unemployed looms amounted to 9700. About 3000 looms are only half employed, implying half subsistence for nearly 10,000 other persons. . . . The weavers were at intervals in a state of comparative comfort and prosperity, but always liable to be overtaken by severe trial and poverty through enforced idleness. The more industrious and steady among them were famed for their love of flowers, which they cultivated abundantly in window-boxes at home, and on a more extensive scale in numerous small plots of land (on the allotment system) at Hoxton and the City Road, then a suburban district of gardens and brick fields, but now brought miles within the embrace of street and terrace, square and crescent.” (Life of Peter Bedford.)
I may here insert a compendious statement compiled for the first edition of this work from printed books and periodicals:—
Thousands of the Huguenot refugees made their way to London, and settled in fields near London called Spitalfields, belonging to St. Austin’s Spital (or Hospital). For a century they preserved their French habits, both social and religious, and they had mathematical, historical, and floricultural societies; Simpson and Edwards, the Woolwich mathematical professors, came to their chairs from the silk looms of Spitalfields. Huguenot weavers also went to Manchester. Dr. Aikin reckoned that before 1690, the manufacturers in Manchester earned no more than their livelihood. But “the second epoch extended from 1690 to 1730, where, from the time of their reception of the French emigrants they began to acquire little fortunes, but still worked as hard as before, and lived as plainly; the modern brick houses beginning however, to take the place of those of wood and plaster.” The French refugees introduced “the art of calico-printing and wax-bleaching, the weaving of velvet, silk stockings, crapes, bombazines, gauzes, damask table linen, cambric, &c. They brought with them improved ways of manufacturing ribbons, tapestry, baize, sail-cloth, and sacking; new modes of dyeing, and of making hats, pins, needles, watches, lace, and looking-glasses. The first person who contrived a machine moved by steam in England was Savary, the best maker of telescopes was Dollond, and the most famous biscuit-baker was Le Mann, near the Royal Exchange, London.” In 1845 a Christian Society of Operative Silk-Weavers in Spitalfields erected a Tablet, “as a public declaration of their faith, that of late the sufferings of the Silk-Weavers have been greatly aggravated through a departure from those principles of piety which enabled their forefathers, the French Refugees, who planted the silk trade in Spitalfields, to endure the loss of all things; also to record their intention to erect a House of God. — Haggai i. 7, 8, 9.” The last French minister was Rev. G. Huelins; he became a clergyman of the Church of England, but continued to care for his old flock.
“During the fifty years which immediately succeeded the Revocation,” says Mr. Taylor, “the English silk manufactures increased no less than twenty-fold.” As a specimen of the prosperity to which the weavers in those times attained, I refer to the will of John Blondell, weaver, of the parish of St. Mary Matfelle, alias Whitechappell, Middlesex, 5th March 1698 (n.s.). His heirs are several cousins of the name of Boudrie, to whom he leaves grounds in Coleman Street, and freeholds in Bishopgate Street — £500 to each of three cousins named Delfosse — to my brother-in-law Peter Petit, £100; to Rachel, wife of John Michie, £50; to Mary Blondell of Canterbury, widow, £40; to the poor of the French Church, Threadneedle Street, £40; to the poor of the Walloon Church, Canterbury, £40; unto my good friend Major Peter Le Keux, my copyhold estate in the parish of Stepney, alias Stebonheath, commonly known by the name of the Angell and Trumpet — unto my said very good friend, my six messuages or tenements in Gravell Lane, Houndsditch; to my god-son James Le Keux, £20.
Mr. Taylor picturesquely describes the weavers and weaving processes, as now existent. He informs us that a silk-weaver, requiring a broad and full light, must live in the upper portion of a house, and having a window extending across the whole breadth of his room; such houses, having their upper stories with long rows of broad weavers’ windows glazed with small diamond panes, may be seen in street after street in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green. Enter one of these houses, climb to the upper storey, knock at a door and enter the weaver’s dwelling. “The room is airy, light, and scrupulously clean (for no master weaver would suffer costly and delicate fabrics to be made in a room reeking with abominations); with the exception of the ponderous looms, there is little furniture, two or three unsteady chairs, a deal table, a bed-stead that folds up against the wall, a few cheap framed prints, a struggling fuchsia or nettle-plant on the window sill, and on the chimney-piece the family heir-looms, those inevitable china ornaments.” “The refugees had no English settlement, and consequently no claim upon the poor-rate. Self-reliant by nature, they started friendly and provident societies to provide for the necessities of sickness and old age. One of the earliest of these, the Norman Society of Bethnal Green, survived till within the last five years (1869). From this germ arose the English Friendly Societies.” “The weavers have two hereditary hobbies, gentle tastes brought with them from the sunny south, the love of birds and the love of flowers.” The roofs of the older houses are frequently covered with wooden stages for pigeon-cotes. The songs of canaries, finches, larks, and linnets enliven the weavers at their weary work. Many of their windows are a perfect flower show. The first refugees were often skilful gardeners. They introduced their craft at Rye and Sandwich, and there it still survives. The Rye flower-shows are in high repute in Kent and Sussex. One of the earliest flower-shows ever held in England was the annual weavers’ show in Spitalfields. Twenty or thirty carefully trained plants may sometimes be seen in a single room, and their flower-shows are now being re-organized.[4] The History of Dublin states that the resident Huguenot refugees founded the Dublin Florists’ Club in the reign of George I.; annual meetings were held in the Rose Tavern in Drum-coudra Lane (now Dorset Street); before that era, the cultivation of flowers was little attended to, and exotics were scarcely known.
One very remarkable inventor is rather a descendant of a refugee than a refugee — I mean Lewis Paul. His father, a refugee druggist and medical practitioner, left him a competency, his guardians being the Earl of Shaftesbury and Hon. Maurice Ashley Cooper. But not till he had squandered away his property did his genius appear. Mr Smiles describes his invention for spinning wool and cotton by rollers, of which Sir Richard Arkwright’s spinning machines were practical improvements, or adaptations on a gigantic scale. The Edinburgh Review (April 1865), discussing the law of patents, says, “Upon the principle of the Patent-Law, Arkwright ought never to have had a patent; his spinning-frame was not new, having actually been patented before by Lewis Paul in 1738.” Paul died at Brook Green, Kensington, April 1759.
The surname of Du Pre was introduced by the refugees. A Belfast family is descended from Mark Henry Du Pre, a reed maker, whom Crommelin induced to settle in Lisburn, in order to improve the manufacture, or rather the preparation, of reeds for the looms.
I should mention another industrial item regarding Wandsworth, although its proper place would have been in my Vol. I. “Protestant refugees set up in Wandsworth a manufacture of brass plates for kettles, &c, which they kept a mystery. The houses in which it had been carried on were long afterwards called The Frying Pan Houses.” {Sunday at Home, No. 1295.)
With regard to the manufacture of Gobelin tapestry at Exeter, there is a question as to the Protestant origin of the speculation in England. Jehan Gobelin, inventor of a scarlet dye, established his works in Paris about the year 1450, so that this far-famed tapestry was two centuries old at the period of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. It is very likely that the workmen at this late date would, to a large extent, be Huguenots. But the man who enticed some of them into England was a French Capuchin Friar, named Nobert, who came here with the Pope’s blessing, though he afterwards took the name of Monsieur Parisot. He swindled both the English subscribers who enabled him to set up a manufactory at Fulham, and also the French workmen, and absconded. A French Protestant, Jean Ulric Passavant, went to the sale by auction at the Fulham manufactory, and bought the looms and implements for a small sum. The wretched workmen had not dared to return to Paris, which they had left without permission. M. Passavant engaged all the survivors, and set up the looms at Exeter, where there was a French Protestant refugee congregation. I have been unable to give any dates; but I am informed that Passavant was born at Strasburg in 1678, so that his factory cannot have been set up at Exeter before 1700.
- ↑ Brown’s “History of Glasgow” (1795). vol. ii., p. 211.
- ↑ The British Magazine, March 1760.
- ↑ This eminent chemist and inventor (born 1635, died 1682) was, by birth, a German Lutheran. During his brilliant career in Mayence, Munich, and Vienna, he worshipped with the Papists. But at Westminster, 10th May 1681, he was naturalized as a Protestant. (See my List i.)
- ↑ Rev. Isaac Taylor’s Paper in “Golden Hours” for 1869, pp. 25S, &c.