and were among those who fled from the cruel persecutions which,
in the beginning of the reign of Louis XIV., followed close upon
the re-admission of the Jesuits into France. The edict of Nantz,
which had been issued under the auspices of Henri IV., and by which
the Huguenots had been guaranteed, with some slight qualifications,
the securities of the citizen, almost in the same degree
with the Catholic inhabitants, had, under the weak and tyrannous sway
of the former monarch, proved totally inadequate to their protection.
Long before its formal revocation, the unmeasured and inhuman
persecutions to which they were subjected, drove thousands of them
into voluntary banishment. The subsequent decree of Louis,
by which even the nominal securities of the Huguenots were withdrawn,
increased the number of the exiles, and completed the sentence of separation
from all those ties which bind the son to the soil. The neighboring
Protestant countries received the fugitives, the number and condition of whom
may be estimated by the simple fact, not commonly known, that England alone
possessed "eleven regiments composed entirely of these unhappy refugees,
besides others enrolled among the troops of the line. There were in London
twenty French churches supported by Government; about three thousand refugees
were maintained by public subscription; many received grants from the crown;
and a great number lived by their own industry.* Some of the nobility
were naturalized and obtained high rank; among others, Ruvigny,
son of the Marquis, was made Earl of Galway, and Schomberg received
the dignity of Duke."**

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* Memoires et Observations faites par un Voyageur en Angleterre, 12mo.
La Haye, 1698, p. 362. Quoted by Browning in his History of the Huguenots.
** Browning, [William Shergold]: History of the Huguenots.
London: Whittaker and Co. 1840. p. 256. Of the Refugees from France,