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The Huguenots and the imaginative geography of Ireland: a planned immigration scheme in the 1680s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Ruth Whelan
Ruth Whelan*
Affiliation:
Department of French, National University of Ireland, Maynooth
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Extract

The phenomenon of European migration during the early modern period — whether to overseas locations or across frontiers within Europe — is a complex one. In general, people migrate of their own volition from places of low opportunity or deprivation to areas of higher opportunity, where they hope to find employment or a better life.2 In the early modern period, however, the reasons why people migrated are less clear. Of course, many thousands migrated to improve their circumstances, usually in the hope of returning to make a permanent home in their place of origin. Yet, according to Nicholas Canny, English migration to transatlantic destinations in the early part of the seventeenth century was ‘high-risk subsistence migration’, since both the Chesapeake and the West Indies proved lethal for Europeans. The precise reasons why migrants continued to leave home, when such were the prospects before them, remain opaque to historians.

Type
Research Article
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 35 , Issue 140 , November 2007 , pp. 477 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 2007

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References

1 Nicholas Canny, ‘In search of a better home? European overseas migration, 1500–1800’ in idem (ed.), Europeans on the move: studies on European migration, 1500–1800 (Oxford, 1994), p. 267.

2 P. J. Duffy, ‘Migration management in Ireland’ in idem (ed.), To and from Ireland: planned migration schemes, c. 1600–2000 (Dublin, 2004), p. 3.

3 Canny, ‘In search of a better home?’, pp 266, 273, 277; idem, ‘English migration into and across the Atlantic during the seventeenth and eighteen centuries’, ibid., p. 75.

4 Canny, ‘In search of a better home?’, p. 278; Duffy, ‘Migration management’, p. 12; Bailyn, Bernard, ‘Europeans on the move, 1500–1800’ in Canny, (ed.), Europeans on the move, p. 5Google Scholar; Cressy, David, Coming over: migration and communication between England and New England in the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1987), pp 74–106, 213–34Google Scholar.

5 Moogk, Peter, ‘Manon’s fellow exiles: emigration from France to North America before 1763’ in Canny, (ed.), Europeans on the move, p. 242Google Scholar, which suggests that the settlement in the Rhineland-Palatinate was a primary migration. Although many Huguenots emigrated to the Rhineland-Palatinate in 1681, the majority settled there in secondary migrations from the United Provinces and Switzerland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, largely in response to recruitment initiatives.

6 ‘some major cause which acted as a propulsion’; ‘the love for homeland, belongings, households, kin and kith, the fine air, plentiful wine, and other of life’s conveniences’. The comment is made by the editor of the early eighteenth-century edition of Claude, Jean, Les plaintes des Protestans, cruellement oprimez dans le royaume de France (London, 1707), p. 10Google Scholar, which was originally published in 1686.

7 Moogk, ‘Manon’s fellow exiles’, p. 243; Labrousse, Elisabeth, ‘Le refuge huguenot’ in Le Genre Humain, xix (1989), p. 153Google Scholar.

8 Boles, L. H., The Huguenots, the Protestant interest, and the War of the Spanish Succession (New York, 1997), pp 195–257Google Scholar.

9 Labrousse, Elisabeth, ‘Une foi, une loi, un roi’? La révocation de l’Édit de Nantes (Paris, 1985), pp 173–34Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 175.

11 Cal. S.P. dom., 1680–81, pp 366, 397–8, 525, 561, 622, 629; Gwynn, R. D., ‘Government policy towards Huguenot immigration and settlement in England and Ireland’ in Caldicott, C. E. J., Gough, Hugh and Pittion, Jean-Paul (eds), The Huguenots and Ireland: anatomy of an emigration (Dublin, 1987), pp 215–17Google Scholar; idem, Huguenot heritage : the history and contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (2nd ed., Brighton, 2001), pp 166–7.

12 Labrousse, ‘Une foi, une loi, un roi’?, p. 175.

13 News of this reached England in October: Cal. S.P. dom., 1680–81, p. 511; Nusteling, H. P. H., ‘The Netherlands and the Huguenot émigrés’ in Bots, J. A. H. and Meyjes, G. H. M. Posthumus (eds), La révocation de l’Édit de Nantes et les Provinces-Unies (Amsterdam & Maarssen, 1986), pp 17–19Google Scholar.

14 Ane. rec. Dublin, v, 228–9; [Pierre Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, et des avantages qu’y peuvent trouver les protestans françois: en une lettre d’un des chapelains de monseigneur le duc d’Ormond, viceroi d’Irlande, à un de ses amis en Angleterre (Dublin, 1681), pp 6–7, which was reliably attributed to Drelincourt by the late Mary Pollard. The text of this pamphlet is published in Whelan, Ruth, ‘Representing Ireland through imperial eyes: a Huguenot recruitment document in 1681’ in Michael Brophy, Phyllis Gaffney and Mary Gallagher (eds), Reverberations: staging relations in French since 1500: a festschrift in honour of C. E. J. Caldicott (forthcoming, Dublin, 2007)Google Scholar. See also Hylton, R. P., ‘The Huguenot communities in Dublin, 1662–1745’ (Ph.D. thesis, University College Dublin, 1985)Google Scholar, p. 40; idem, Ireland’s Huguenots and their refuge, 1662–1745: an unlikely haven (Brighton, 2005), pp 34–5, which seems unaware of the three immigration prospectuses analysed in the present article; Clark, Mary, ‘Foreigners and freedom: the Huguenot refuge in Dublin city, 1660–1700’ in Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland (henceforth Huguenot Soc. Proc), xxvii (2000), pp 385-6Google Scholar.

15 Clark, ‘Foreigners and freedom’, p. 385; Gwynn, ‘Government policy’, pp 216–17; Hylton, R. P., ‘Dublin’s Huguenot refuge, 1662–1817’ in Dublin Hist. Rec, xl (1986-7), p. 18Google Scholar; idem, Ireland’s Huguenots & their refuge, pp 34–5.

16 [Drelincourt], De l’état presente d’Irlande (see above, n. 14)

17 Jane McKee, ‘Pierre Drelincourt et sa contribution à la vie intellectuelle en Angleterre et en blande’ in Häseler, Jens and McKenna, Antony (eds), La vie intellectuelle aux refuges protestants (Paris, 1999), pp 269–88Google Scholar; Oxford D.N.B.

18 [Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, p. 6.

19 ‘Mémoire pour encourager les protestáns de venir habiter en Hirlande’ (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (henceforth B.N.), MS f.fr. 21622; MS f.fr. 304 (Coll. Clérambault)) includes ‘Mémoire pour encourager les protestáns de venir s’habituer [sic] en Irlande’. The text of the manuscripts is substantially the same, although there are a few significant variants, introduced by the copyists, either deliberately or through inattentiveness: see Ruth Whelan, ‘Promised land; selling Ireland to French Protestants in the 1680s’ (forthcoming).

20 Fayçal, E. G., ‘En marge du tricentenaire de la révocation: un mémoire inédit destiné à favoriser l’établissement des Protestants français en Irlande (1684)’ in Annales de Bretagne et des Pays de l’Ouest, xcii (1985), pp 403-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 ‘to flee from one place to another, as the Scripture commands’ (B.N., MS f.fr. 21622, f. 74; MS f.fr. 304, f. 358; [Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, p. 3) (the allusion is to Matthew 10: 23). For the variants between the manuscript and printed texts see Whelan, ‘Promised land’.

22 Labrousse, ‘Une foi, une loi, un roi’?, pp 167–95.

23 Oxford D.N.B. entry on Ormond.

24 Bodl., Carte MS 36, ff 330, 521, 609, quoted in Raymond Gillespie, ‘Planned migration to Ireland in the seventeenth century’ in Duffy (ed.), To & from Ireland, pp 47–8; Hylton, ‘Huguenot communities in Dublin’, pp 17–22; idem, ‘Dublin’s Huguenot refuge’, pp 15–16; idem, Ireland’s Huguenots & their refuge, pp 19–31.

25 Commons’ jn. Ire. (3rd ed.), i, 700; Whelan, Ruth, ‘Liberté de culte, liberté de conscience? Les Huguenots en Irlande, 1662–1702’ in Häseler, & McKenna, (eds), La vie intellectuelle, pp 71-2Google Scholar.

26 Ormond to Abp Boyle, 30 Nov. 1665, quoted in LeFanu, T. P., ‘The French church in the Lady Chapel of St Patrick’s cathedral, 1666–1816’ in Lawlor, H. J., The fasti of St Patrick’s, Dublin (Dundalk, 1930), p. 278Google Scholar; Hylton, Ireland’s Huguenots & their refuge, p. 25. Thus the congregation at the Lady Chapel was not permitted to retain their Calvinist ecclesiastical polity, as Gillespie alleges (‘Planned migration’, p. 55).

27 Gillespie, ‘Planned migration’, pp 50, 54.

28 Ormond to Abp Boyle, 30 Nov. 1665, quoted in Lawlor, Fasti, p. 278.

29 Bodl., Carte MS 45, f. 578, quoted in Gillespie, ‘Planned migration’, p. 54.

30 Gillespie, ‘Planned migration’, p. 55.

31 Hylton, ‘Huguenot communities in Dublin’, p. 26; idem, ‘Dublin’s Huguenot refuge’, p. 17; idem, Ireland’s Huguenots & their refuge, pp 29–30.

32 Conroy, Jane, ‘Changing perspectives: French travelers in Ireland, 1785–1835’ in eadem, (ed.), Cross-cultural travel: papers from the Royal Irish Academy symposium on literature and travel (New York, 2003), pp xx, 132Google Scholar.

33 Browning, Andrew (ed.), English historical documents, viii: 1660–1714 (London, 1953), p. 722Google Scholar.

34 Gwynn, ‘Government policy’, p. 214.

35 ‘in so great a freedom as to the temporal and spiritual’; ‘so excellent a government’; ‘laws so mild’; ‘they must rest assured that they will be favourably received, and will be able to settle easily’(B.N., MS f.fr. 21622, f. 74; MS f.fr. 304, f. 358; [Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, p. 3).

36 Sir Cyril Wyche to Ormond, 11 Feb. 1678[/9], 1 Apr. 1679 (H.M.C., Ormonde, n.s., iv, 321; v, 21–2).

37 ‘Besides, the Protestant religion has the justice system, power, and all authority under control; backed by a fine army of ten thousand men, distributed throughout the country in different garrisons, and made up of Protestant soldiers’ ([Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, p. 5).

38 Pratt, M. L., Imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation (London & New York, 1992), p. 4Google Scholar.

39 ‘It would seem more appropriate to accept the Anglican liturgy, as does the French Church of Dublin, since besides the fact that it is the same thing in the end and any difference consists in the form and manner, which could be thought unimportant, it is the way to ensure the upkeep of their ministers, to win the benevolence of the authorities (princes), and to maintain that close union, which is always such a beautiful thing and so worthy of true Christians’ (B.N., MS f.fr. 21662, f. 75).

40 ‘The other thing is that it would be appropriate for those who want to come to get together in settlements like little colonies so that they can help and support each other and do without the native population more easily’ (ibid.).

41 Said, Edward, Orientalism: Western conceptions of the Orient (2nd ed., Harmondsworth, 1995), pp 54–5Google Scholar; idem, Culture and imperialism (London, 1993), pp 6, 93; McLeod, John, Beginning postcolonialism (Manchester, 2000), p. 59Google Scholar.

42 Chinard, Gilbert (ed.), Un François en Virginie: voyages d’un François exilé pour la religion avec une description de la Virgine et Marilan dans l’Amérique. D’après l’édition originale de 1687 (Paris, 1932), p. 27Google Scholar; van Ruymbeke, Bertrand, ‘Le refuge huguenot en Caroline du Sud: terre d’exilé ou terre promise?’ in Bulletin de la Société de l’Histoire du Protestantisme Français, cxli (1995), pp 185–206Google Scholar.

43 ‘I am aware that this country is generally thought of as wild and barbarian; and I thought it was too. But, Monsieur, it is not as deserted as people imagine, and although it is not as populated as one might wish, there are no plots of land, even the most uncultivated, that are not definitively leased out. So much so, that there are no terra incognita here, or any new discoveries to be made. However, it is so vast and extensive, and the land is so good that it could easily welcome and support twice as many inhabitants than it has. That is the only thing wanting, as much for establishing all kinds of manufactures, as for cultivating plots of land that are lying fallow, either for want of inhabitants, or because of the extreme idleness of the natives’ ([Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, pp 3–4).

44 I am adopting the distinction between colonialism (the settling of communities from one land in another) and imperialism (the extension of trade and commerce under the protection of political, legal and military controls) mooted by Childs, Peter and Williams, R. J. P., An introduction to post-colonial theory (Hemel Hempstead, 1997), p. 227Google Scholar.

45 For the concept of positional superiority see Said, Orientalism, p. 7; idem, Culture & imperialism, p. 8.

46 Canny, Nicholas, ‘The ideology of English colonization: from Ireland to America’ in William & Mary Quart., xxx (1973), pp 575-98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 ‘Besides, you must not imagine that there are only Irish here, and that we are living among savages ... although here, like everywhere else, there are rustic and brutish people, I do not believe that we are less civilised here than elsewhere. There are a number of English and Scottish people, cantons and even towns where they will not tolerate the Irish among them. And the Irish, although numerous, saving some persons notable for their quality or possessions, are but mostly paupers, who live in a shameful listlessness, and a strange indolence’ ([Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, p. 4). For the consideration of peoples as civilisationally inferior see Said, Orientalism, p. 14.

48 For a consolidated list of Orientalist stereotypes see Said, Orientalism, pp 38–9; idem, Culture & imperialism, p. 48; McLeod, Beginning postcolonialism, pp 44–6.

49 Pratt, Imperial eyes, p. 7; Said, Orientalism, p. 7.

50 Alexander, J. C., ‘Citizen and enemy as symbolic classification: on the polarizing discourse of civil society’ in Lamont, Michele and Fournier, Marcel (eds), Cultivating difference: symbolic boundaries and the making of inequality (Chicago, 1992), pp 289–308Google Scholar; Yardeni, Myriam, ‘Le refuge allemand et la France: histoire d’une aliénation’ in eadetn, , Le refuge Huguenot: assimilation et culture (Paris, 2002), p. 197Google Scholar, makes this point about the refugees’ attitude to Germany, to which, as they believed, they brought civilisation.

51 [Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, pp 7–8; ‘by the first parliament of Ireland or England’ (ibid.). In fact an act of general naturalisation was not passed by the English parliament until 1709, and was soon repealed (Gwynn, Huguenot heritage, pp 152–3).

52 Van Ruymbeke, ‘Le refuge huguenot en Caroline du Sud’, pp 194–5.

53 Chinard (ed.), Un François en Virginie, p. 14.

54 ‘to see our French people rushing overseas looking for settlements for themselves among the Indians and savages of America, when they have such a good country so close to them’([Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, p. 3).

55 Bertrand van Ruymbeke, ‘Le refuge in an Atlantic perspective: the Huguenot experience in British North America, 1670–1740’ (forthcoming); Canny, Nicholas, Kingdom and colony: Ireland in the Atlantic world, 1560–1800 (Baltimore, Md., 1988)Google Scholar.

56 Gwynn, Huguenot heritage, pp 44, 71.

57 Cal. S.P. dom., 1680–81, pp 697–8. The experience of crossing the Atlantic, ‘that frightful ocean’, etched itself deeply into the consciousness of migrants to the Americas, and of those whom they influenced in the early modern period: see Elliott, J. H., ‘Colonial identity in the Atlantic world’ in Canny, Nicholas and Pagden, Anthony (eds), Colonial identity in the Atlantic world, 1500–1800 (Princeton, 1987), pp 3–12Google Scholar; Cressy, Coming over, pp 144–77.

58 Ormond to Abp Boyle, 1 Aug. 1681 (H.M.C., Ormonde, n.s., vi, 116).

59 Boate, Gerard, Histoire naturelle d’Irlande (Paris, 1666), pp 90–91Google Scholar (a translation of the English edition of 1652).

60 ‘It is always very difficult for those who have nothing to set themselves up well, and no matter how good and bounteous this country is, people can die of hunger here as elsewhere. But it will not be difficult for those who have some capital or reliable trades to set themselves up well, and the poor can live here with the rich as well as in any other country, and even better, as long as they do not add bad husbandry or idleness to poverty’ (B.N., MS f.fr. 21622, f. 74).

61 Ibid.

62 Van Ruymbeke, ‘Le refuge huguenot en Caroline du Sud’, p. 197.

63 ‘A country like this could be a fine sanctuary, all the better because being so near to them they can easily be transported here at little cost’ (B.N., MS f.fr. 21622, f. 74). On the high cost of transplantation to North America see Cressy, Coming over, pp 107–29.

64 Canny, ‘In search of a better home?’, p. 278.

65 Without a protective convoy, emigrant ships were vulnerable to privateers (Cressy, Coming over, p. 161).

66 B.N., MS f.fr. 21622, f. 75. Government controls on emigration required such lists to be established by officials before emigrants could leave England (Cressy, Coming over, pp 130–43).

67 Mayor Thomas Earle and four aldermen to Secretary Jenkins, 10 Dec. 1681 (Cal. S.P. dom., 1680–81, p. 609).

68 ‘it is a land flowing with milk and honey’ (B.N., MS f.fr. 21622, f. 74; MS f.fr. 304, f. 358; [Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, p. 4).

69 Said, Orientalism, p. 58.

70 ‘an easy sanctuary, and a favourably disposed asylum against the attacks of oppression’ ([Drelincourt], De l’état present d’Irlande, p. 5).

71 Said, Orientalism, p. 54; idem, Culture & imperialism, p. 6.

72 Gwynn, ‘Government policy’, p. 215. This claim is repeated by Hylton, Ireland’s Huguenots & their refuge, pp 34–5.

73 Gillespie, ‘Planned migration’, p. 41.

74 Canny, ‘In search of a better home?’, p. 278.

75 Gillespie, ‘Planned migration’, p. 42.

76 Drelincourt, Pierre, A speech made to his grace the duke of Ormond, lord lieutenant of Ireland, and to the lords of his Majesties most honorable privy council, to return the humble thanks of the French Protestants lately arriv ‘d in this kingdom, and graciously reliev’d by them (Dublin, 1682), pp 3, 5Google Scholar.

77 Ibid., p. 7.

78 Arran to Jenkins, 2 May 1682 (Cal. S.P. dom., 1680–81, p. 320).

79 Drelincourt, Speech, p. 4.

80 [SirL’Estrange, Roger], Apology for the Protestants of France (London, 1683), p. [i]Google Scholar; this work first appeared in 1681.

81 Ormond to Abp Boyle, 7 July 1683 (H.M.C., Ormonde, n.s., vii, 65–6); Whelan, ‘Liberté de culte’, p. 73; Hylton, Ireland’s Huguenots & their refuge, p. 40.

82 Ormond to Boyle, 7 July 1683 (H.M.C., Ormonde, n.s., vii, 65–6); Arran to Ormond, 24 July 1683 (ibid., p. 81); Ormond to Arran, 11 Aug. 1683 (ibid., p. 104).

83 Hylton, R. P., ‘The less-favoured refuge: Ireland’s nonconformist Huguenots at the turn of the eighteenth century’ in Herlihy, Kevin (ed.), The religion of Irish dissent, 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1996), p. 87Google Scholar; Whelan, ‘Liberté de culte’, p. 73.

84 Caldicott, C. E. J., ‘The legacy of the Huguenots’ in Huguenot Soc. Proc, xxvi (1995), p. 356Google Scholar; Beckett, J. C., Protestant dissent in Ireland, 1687–1780 (London, 1948), p. 16Google Scholar.

85 Apologie des François reffugiez establis en Irlande, escritte à l’occasion d’un article qui les regarde dans la dernière Representation que le clergé de ce royaume a faitte à sa majesté (Dublin, 1712), p. 6Google Scholar. This pamphlet was also published in English as An apology of the French refugees established in Ireland ... (Dublin, 1712), where the reference is on p. 7Google Scholar: ‘So it is not surprising that the French refugees, who had in all other Protestant Countries the Liberty of Worship after their own Way, did not come to live in this, while there was no such permission.’ The French version names the lack of permission more bluntly as coercion (contrainte).

86 Duffy, ‘Migration management’, p. 6.

87 For the detail of this argument see Whelan, ‘Representing Ireland through imperial eyes’.

88 Caldicott et al. (eds), Huguenots & Ireland, p. 424; Caldicott, C. E. J., ‘On short-term and long-term memory’ in Huguenot Soc. Proc, xxvii (1999), p. 280Google Scholar.

89 Sir Cyril Wyche to Ormond, 11 Feb. 1678[/9] (H.M.C., Ormonde, n.s., iv, 321).

90 Whelan, Ruth, ‘Sanctified by the Word: the Huguenots and Anglican liturgy’ in Herlihy, Kevin (ed.), Propagating the word of Irish dissent, 1650–1800 (Dublin, 1998), pp 74–94Google Scholar.

91 This was the model they adopted in Germany: see Myriam Yardeni, ‘Refuge et encadrement religieux de 1685 à 1715’ in eadem, Le refuge huguenot, p. 60.

92 Doiron, Normand, ‘L’art de voyager. Pour une définition du récit de voyage à l’époque classique’ in Poétique, lxxiii (1988), pp 83–108Google Scholar.

93 For the detail of this argument see Whelan, Ruth, ‘Persecution and toleration: the changing identities of Ireland’s Huguenot refugees’ in Huguenot Soc. Proc, xxvii (1998), pp 20–35Google Scholar; eadem, ‘Remembering with integrity’, ibid. (1999), pp 281–3; eadem, , ‘Writing the self: Huguenot autobiography and the process of assimilation’ in Vigne, Randolph and Littleton, Charles (eds), From strangers to citizens: the integration of immigrant communities in Britain, Ireland and colonial America, 1550–1750 (Brighton, 2001), pp 463–77Google Scholar; eadem, , ‘Repressive toleration: the Huguenots in early eighteenth-century Dublin’ in eadem, and Baxter, Carol (ed.), Toleration and religious identity: the Edict of Nantes and its implications in France, Britain and Ireland (Dublin, 2003), pp 179–95Google Scholar; eadem, , ‘Marsh’s Library and the French Calvinist tradition: the manuscript diary of Elie Bouhéreau (1643-1719)’ in McCarthy, Muriel and Simmons, Ann (eds), The making of Marsh’s Library: learning, politics and religion in Ireland, 1650–1750 (Dublin, 2004), pp 209–34Google Scholar.

94 Magdelaine, Michelle, ‘L’Irlande huguenote: utopie ou réalité?’ in eadem, , Pitassi, Maria-Cristina, Whelan, Ruth and McKenna, Antony (eds), De l’humanisme aux Lumières, Bayle et le protestantisme (Paris & Oxford, 1996), pp 273-87Google Scholar; eadem, , ‘Conditions et préparation de l’intégration: le voyage de Charles Sailly en Irlande (1693) et le projet d’édit d’accueil’ in Vigne, & Littleton, (eds), From strangers to citizens, pp 435-41Google Scholar.

95 I am grateful to Roger and Line Zuber for their hospitality in Paris, which made it possible to complete some of my research; Bernadette Gardiner, librarian at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, for her persistence in securing on inter-library loan some of the books I draw on here; and John Hughes, President of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, who granted me a research professorship (2004–5), which freed me from the ordinary obligations of academic life and bestowed the time to write this article.