The Huguenots In Later Stuart Britain Crisis Renewal And The Ministers Dilemma

The Huguenots in Later Stuart Britain is planned as one work to be published in three interlinking volumes (titles/publication dates detailed below). It examines the history of the French communities in Britain from the Civil War, which plunged them into turmoil, to the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, after which there was no realistic possibility that the Huguenots would be readmitted to France. There is a particular focus on the decades of the 1680s and 1690s, at once the most complex, the most crucial, and the most challenging alike for the refugees themselves and for subsequent historians. The work opens with the Calvinist French-speaking communities in England caught up in the Civil War. They could not avoid it, with many of their members largely assimilated into English society by the 1640s. Generally they favoured the Parliamentarian side, but any victory was pyrrhic because the Interregnum supported the rights of Independent congregations which undermined their whole Calvinist structure. Weakened by in-fighting, in the 1660s the old-established French churches then had to reassert their right to exist in the face of a sometimes hostile restored monarchy and episcopacy, a newly licenced French church emphasizing its Anglicanism and its loyalty to the crown, and the challenges of the Plague and the Fire of London which burnt the largest French church in England to the ground. They were still staggering to find their feet when the first trickle and then the full flood of new Huguenot immigration overwhelmed them. As for the newly arriving Huguenot ministers, not prepared for the England to which they came, they found they had to resolve what was often an intense personal dilemma: should they stand fast for the worship they had led in France, or accept Anglican ways? and if they did accept Anglicanism, to what extent? It is demonstrated that many ministers took the Anglican route, although Volume II will show that the French communities as a whole, old and new alike, voted with their feet not to do so. A substantial appendix provides a biographical account of over 600 ministers in the orbit of the French churches across this period. Volume II: Settlement, Churches, and the Role of London 978-1-84519-619-6 (2017); Volume III: The Huguenots and the Defeat of Louis XIV's France 978-1-84519-620-2 (2020).

These chapters explore how a religious minority not only gained a toehold in countries of exile, but also wove itself into their political, social, and religious fabric. The way for the refugees’ departure from France was prepared through correspondence and the cultivation of commercial, military, scholarly and familial ties. On arrival at their destinations immigrants exploited contacts made by compatriots and co-religionists who had preceded them to find employment. London, a hub for the “Protestant international” from the reign of Elizabeth I, provided openings for tutors and journalists. Huguenot financial skills were at the heart of the early Bank of England; Huguenot reporting disseminated unprecedented information on the workings of the Westminster Parliament; Huguenot networks became entwined with English political factions. Webs of connection were transplanted and reconfigured in Ireland. With their education and international contacts, refugees were indispensable as diplomats to Protestant rulers in northern Europe. They operated monetary transfers across borders and as fund-raisers, helped alleviate the plight of persecuted co-religionists. Meanwhile, French ministers in London attempted to hold together an exceptionally large community of incomers against heresy and the temptations of assimilation. This is a story of refugee networks perpetuated, but also interpenetrated and remade.

The result of over fifty years’ archival research, the book demonstrates the fundamental importance of the Huguenot refugees to the 1688 Glorious Revolution, victory in Ireland, the foundation of the Bank of England, and the subsequent defeat of Louis XIV and the rise of British power in the eighteenth century.

This volume advances a better, more historical and contextual, manner to consider not only the present, but also the future of ‘crisis’ and ‘renewal’ as key concepts of our political language as well as fundamental categories of interpretation.

Huguenot refugees were everywhere in the early modern world. French Protestant exiles fleeing persecution following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, they scattered around Europe, North America, the Caribbean, South Africa, and even remote islands in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The Global Refuge provides the first truly international history of the Huguenot diaspora. The story begins with dreams of Eden, as beleaguered religious migrants sought suitable retreats to build perfect societies far from the political storms of Europe. In order to build these communities, however, the Huguenots needed patrons, forcing them to navigate the world of empires. The refugees promoted themselves as the chosen people of empire, religious heroes who also possessed key skills that could strengthen the British and Dutch states. As a result, French Protestants settled around the world: they tried to make silk in South Carolina; they planted vineyards in South Africa; and they peopled vulnerable frontiers from New England to Suriname. This embrace of empire led to a gradual abandonment of the Huguenots' earlier utopian ambitions and ability to maintain their languages and churches in preparation for an eventual return to France. For over a century they learned that only by blending in and by mastering foreign institutions could they prosper. While the Huguenots never managed to find a utopia or to realize their imperial sponsors' visions of profits, The Global Refuge demonstrates how this diasporic community helped shape the first age of globalization and influenced the reception of future refugee populations.

This book examines the influence of the monastic tradition beyond the Reformation. Where the built monastic environment had been dissolved, desire for the spiritual benefits of monastic living still echoed within theological and spiritual writing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as a virtual exegetical template. The volume considers how the writings of monastic authors were appropriated in post-Reformation movements by those seeking a more fervent spiritual life, and how the concept of an internal cloister of monastic/ascetic spirituality influenced several Anglican writers during the Restoration. There is a careful examination of the monastic influence upon the Wesleys and the foundation and rise of Methodism. Drawing on a range of primary sources, the book will be of particular interest to scholars of monastic and Methodist history, and to those engaged in researching ecclesiology and in ecumenical dialogues.

This book assesses the service of Henri de Ruvigny, later earl of Galway, in France until the revocation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, his central role in transforming Ireland in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, and his service of the British monarchy as administrator, military commander and diplomat. The analysis rests on underutilized sources in French, shedding light on a hitherto overlooked civil servant in this crucial period of Irish and British history, wrought with constitutional crises, but also on the Protestant International and the lesser-known fronts of the war of 1689-1697.

This book is the first account of British Protestant conversion initiatives directed towards continental Europe between 1600 and 1900. Continental Europe was considered a missionary land—another periphery of the world, whose centre was imperial Britain. British missions to Europe were informed by religious experiments in America, Africa, and Asia, rendering these offensives against Europe a true form of "imaginary colonialism". British Protestant missionaries often understood themselves to be at the forefront of a civilising project directed at Catholics (and sometimes even at other Protestants). Their mission was further reinforced by Britain becoming a land of compassionate refuge for European dissenters and exiles. This book engages with the myth of International Protestantism, questioning its early origins and its narrative of transnational belonging, while also interrogating Britain as an imagined Protestant land of hope and glory. In the history of western Christianities, "converting Europe" had a role that has not been adequately investigated. This is the story of the attempted, and ultimately failed, effort to convert a continent.