Huguenots in England

• Tasks
• Background
• Teachers' notes
• External links
• Connections to curriculum

The Huguenots were Protestants who fled France and Wallonia (southern Belgium) from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century due to religious persecution during the European Wars of Religion. After the English Reformation, England was seen as a safe place for refugees.  

What did Huguenots find when they arrived in England? How did they settle and set up their own religious and economic communities? How did they impact upon English society, especially in urban settings?  

This lesson shows that the Huguenots came to England as immigrants and were on occasion in need of economic and governmental support. Importantly, they also brought their skills and expertise as silk-weavers, silversmiths, merchants, vine-growers, wig makers, and hat-makers to England, helping England to expand its global horizons. While Huguenots could be praised for adding value to the English economy, the English could be hostile to what they saw as a threat to their own livelihoods. 

Use this lesson to explore the Huguenot experience of migration in seventeenth century England, with original documents ranging from 1553-1765.  

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Tasks

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Background

The Huguenots gave the word ‘refugee’ to the English language. They were French Protestants who followed the teaching of John Calvin, the Protestant reformer. The Huguenots fled to England, Germany, the Netherlands, and the New World between sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in order to escape religious persecution from the Catholic monarchy in France who were caught up in the violent Wars of Religion.

There were two significant waves of Huguenot migration to England. The first influx came in the wake of the 1572 St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, which saw 70,000 Huguenots across France brutally murdered, and Elizabeth I’s court enter a period of mourning in honour of the Protestant lives lost to the Catholic terror. Migration slowed in the early seventeenth century due to the Edict of Nantes in 1598, instigated by Henry IV of France, who had granted freedom for French Protestants to practice religion without fear. However, the loss of important Huguenot centres in France (despite English military assistance), including La Rochelle in 1628, further weakened the Protestant cause on the continent. Henry IV’s grandson, the fiercely Catholic Louis XIV, slowly chipped away at the rights of Protestants. First came the dragonnades in 1681, a French government policy of intimidation that involved the forced lodging of the king’s soldiers (a “Dragonnade”) in Huguenot homes. The revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 was the death knell for religious toleration, as Huguenots were officially denounced as heretics. Although Louis XIV banned the Huguenot’s right to leave the country, 200,000 Protestants did manage to escape; 50,000 of those went to England, in the second significant wave of migration. England had long been seen as a Protestant haven for those seeking religious persecution. It is suggested that one in six people living in Britain today has Huguenot heritage. 

Escaping France by boat, their reception in England was complex. England did provide a safe refuge for Protestants, with significant Huguenot communities established in Spitalfields, Wandsworth, Canterbury, Sandwich, Faversham, and Maidstone. Within defined limits and regulations, the English government provided poor relief to refugees who needed it, and could also provide letters of denization, sanctioning Huguenots to become British subjects. 

The government allowed them to practise their trades, and importantly, permitted them to establish their own religious communities, allowing them to worship freely. The Huguenots wasted no time in setting up their own churches. The first French church in Threadneedle Street was founded in 1550; ‘The Strangers Church’ in Soho soon followed. After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, thirty French churches in London were founded, with ten elsewhere in England.  

Seventeenth century criticisms of the Huguenots find their parallel in modern day discourses around immigrant groups, with cultural markers of difference such food choices, clothes, and language use being singled out as points for derision.  English tradesmen and craftsmen were particularly anxious that the highly skilled Huguenot artisans would take their employment from them. At the same time, the Huguenots made important contributions to the country financially and economically in sectors of industry, including silk, wine, jewellery, paper, and architecture. One such example is James Leman (c.1688-1745). A celebrated silk designer, he was one of the first Huguenots to serve on the Court of Weavers’ Company, and his exquisite silk designs are available to view in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.  

Importantly, Huguenot production in industry reduced the need for the English government to import luxury goods and allowed them to export such goods at a considerable profit. As Owen Stanwood’s book ‘The Global Refuge: Huguenots in an Age of Empire’ (2019) explores, some Huguenots dreamt of building a new Edenic settlement beyond Europe. With the help of their European imperial sponsors, they scattered in North America, the Caribbean, South Africa, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, and would be involved in the processes and networks of colonisation and transatlantic slavery. 

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the Huguenots had adjusted and assimilated into English society. Many of them had become fluent in English, risen to positions of authority within society, and married into English families. Broadly, the wealthier Huguenot families were able to assimilate faster, while the poorer communities, which remained largely in Spitalfields, retained a distinct identity for longer. In Spitalfields today, you can visit Dennis Severs’ House, a reconstruction of the home of a family of eighteenth-century Huguenot silk weavers.

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Teachers' notes

This lesson uses sources from The National Archives to explore Huguenot migration to England in the seventeenth century. Before starting, it would be helpful to ensure that students are familiar with these key terms and ideas: Reformation, Protestantism, Calvinism, Catholicism, Huguenot, migration, and refugees.  

To start, students explore two visual sources. Firstly, an illustrated engraving for the ‘Reverend Dr Southwell’s New Book of Martyrs’, 1765. It is worth referring to the earlier famous work of history of the Protestant martyrs by John Foxe published in 1563 called ‘The Actes and Monuments’, or ‘ Foxe’s Book of Martyrs’ and its similar intent. Our source shows a view of the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of protestants in Paris in 1572, a significant event in the history of the Huguenots and a major cause for their migration to Britain. The second visual source is William Hogarth’s engraving entitled ‘Noon’. Here, students can explore how the Huguenot’s settled and assimilated in the country. 

The second source that students examine comes from the Privy Council Papers held at The National Archives. It was written the year that Mary I ascended the throne (1553) and was in the process of returning England to a Catholic state. The source prompts students to consider England’s diplomatic history with both Catholic France and the French Huguenots before the seventeenth century. Mary I’s actions marked a departure from the foreign policies of Henry VIII (1509-1547) and his son Edward VI (1547-1553), who had protected dissident Protestant communities arriving from France and Wallonia.   

Next, students look at two sources from the summer of 1621, which concern the emigration of Walloons and French Protestants to Virginia. The Virginia Company failed in 1623 due to disease, mismanagement, and poor relations with the indigenous people of North America. From this point the king assumed direct control of Virginia. Permitting skilled tradesmen, silk weavers, and vine-growers to emigrate to Virginia in 1621 may have been part of the Virginia’ Company’s strategy to rejuvenate the colony. These two sources also allow students to consider how the Huguenot’s failure to keep their Protestant strongholds in France during the 1620s may have furthered their desire to emigrate to England and other global outposts. It is also important to discuss with students what is missing from the document in describing early contact between indigenous people who were already living in Virginia and European colonists. 

The fourth task comprises two extracts from the Privy Council Registers during the reign of James II (1685-1688). They provide the opportunity to explore the impact of Huguenot migration on English trade patterns and structures, and the attitudes of the English towards foreign immigration. They also provide an insight into the challenges that Huguenots faced in attempting to assimilate into English society in the seventeenth century.  

The fifth source is a printed tract detailing the charity that Huguenots have received. When examining this source, it is useful to remind students that James II was a Catholic king of England when this tract was published (c.1685-1688). As a Catholic, James II was covertly hostile to Protestant refugees, seeking to limit the power of their Churches and trying to restrict the number of refugees reaching English shores. The English Protestants were incensed, and the collection for the refugees that the printed tract discusses was part of an attempt to pacify public opinion in England. The source helps students discuss the role of royal propaganda, as well as understand the poverty that some Huguenots faced as refugees. The source also provides an opportunity for students to discuss how we understand modern ideas of religious and national difference, and how they differ from understandings prevalent in the seventeenth century.  

The sixth and final source is the personal will of James Payroulleau, a Huguenot refugee from west-central France. Students can consider the unique nature of the source as a document revealing personal lives and family relationships, providing a micro-view of history. This source also enables students to think about the companionate nature of marriage in the seventeenth century, as well as providing space for reflection upon the split nature of Huguenot experience, often remaining emotionally and economically invested in France while attempting to make a new home for themselves in England. Teachers could further explore the reasons for the emigration of the Huguenots and the Palatines, their reception, their impact, and the extent of their assimilation. 

You may want to split the lesson for students working individually or use the sources in paired/group work. Students should be encouraged to think about the limitations of looking at different kinds of evidence to evaluate their understanding of the experience of Huguenots in seventeenth century England, and the response of English residents to the migration of the Huguenots in the period. Teachers could also extend the lesson to discuss how the experiences of migrants in Britain changed significantly in the period c.1700–present. How far do students agree?  

All sources are transcribed, and difficult language is explained in square brackets or other glossary terms provided at the top of the transcript. To retain the spirit of the language, we have not further simplified the transcripts.  

Finally, although this lesson is aimed at Key Stage 4, teachers could use these documents and provide their own questions and/or create simplified transcripts to use with younger students.

Sources

Banner image: An English trade card for Huguenot Philip Fruchard, coal merchant, London. On the north bank of the Thames near All Hallows Lane, a coal barge unloads its cargo in sacks for a waiting cart. In the background is its source, a collier, probably from Newcastle, discharging into a lighter. (The church in left background is St Saviour’s, Southwark Cathedral.) Merchant Philip Fruchard gave evidence to the House of Commons on 25 March 1730 about abuses in the coal trade. A few lighter (barge men) owners had engrossed the business. An act for ‘the better regulation of the coal trade’ was passed in 1730 ‘to the preventing the inhancing the price of coals in the river of Thames by the keeping of turn in delivering of coals there’.  © The Trustees of British Museum

Source 1a: Daniel Dodd, The St Bartholomew’s Eve Massacre: men, women and children are thrown out of windows or slaughtered with swords and pikes on the streets of Paris in 1572. 1765. Image © The Wellcome Collection.  

Source 1b: William Hogarth, Times of Day: Noon in Hogarth’s prints. Vol. I. 1738.  Wikimedia Commons 

Source 2: ‘[Meeting] At the Star Chamber, the xvj of September, 1553’. Catalogue ref: PC 2/7 f.21.   

Source 3a: ‘Round Robin from Walloon Emigrants. Promise in the form of a round robin, by certain Walloons and French to go and inhabit Virginia, a land under obedience of the Kings of Great Britain’. Catalogue ref: CO 1/1 f.181 [Moved to MFQ1/ 565].  

Source 3b: ‘The humble answer of so many of his majesties Council…their opinion concerning certain Articles putt up by some Walloons and French men desirous to go to Virginia’. Catalogue ref: CO 1/1 f.182-3. 

Source 4a: Privy Council: Registers. James II.’ Vol 1. 18th December 1685. Catalogue ref: PC 2/71. f.91v. 

Source 4b: Privy Council: Registers. James II. Vol 1. 17th July 1686. Catalogue ref: PC 2/71. f.155. 

Source 5: A printed tract, an audit of money contributed to a charity to relieve distressed French Protestants’. c.1685-1688. Catalogue ref: SP 32/11/203 f.347-8. 

Source 6: Will of James Olivier Payroulleau, Peruke Maker of Saint Martin in the Fields, Middlesex 22nd June 1698. Catalogue ref: PROB 11/446/158.   

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External links

• The National Archives Education Resource: ‘England’s Immigrants, 1330-1550’ 
• The National Archives online talk: ‘Alien and Strangers- migration to England in the Early Modern Period’ with Dr Daniel Gosling.  
• Learn more about Huguenot History by exploring the website of The Huguenot Society of London. 
• History Today: England’s ‘First Refugees’ by Robin Gwynn, author of Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain, 1985.  
• Not Just the Tudors Podcast, created by Suzannah Lipscomb: ‘The Massacre of the Huguenots’ with Dr Sophie Nicholls.  
• Learn more about tracing Huguenot ancestors by listening to The National Archives online talk: ‘Tracing Huguenot Ancestors’, with Dr Kathleen Chater. 

Connections to curriculum

These documents can be used to support any of the exam board specifications covering migration in early modern England. 

Key stage 4

AQA History GCSE 
Option AC Britain: Migration, empires and the people: c790-present.  

Edexcel History GCSE 
Option 13: Migrants in Britain, c800-present. 

OCR GCSE History 
Migrants to Britain c1250 to present.  

Key stage 5

AQA History GCE: Louis XIV and the Church: Gallicanism; relations with Huguenots; Jansenists and Quietists 

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