Yet the Huguenots, with all their submissiveness, were not thought sincere. Public opinion had not forgotten the lessons of the sixteenth century. "To be candid," wrote Richard Simon to Frémont d'Ablancourt, "most of your ministers were not born for a monarchy such as that of France. They take liberties permissible only in a Republic, or in a State where the King is not absolute."[179]
The factious individualism latent in every Huguenot only awaited favourable circumstances to come to light. The concessions of a vanquished party to their victors explain how political thought depended on theological thought. But among the refugees in England, the passive-obedience doctrine imbibed in the mother-country did not endure. Pierre Du Moulin, who, at the invitation of James i., had twice visited England, in 1615 and in 1623, left two sons, Peter and Lewis, who both settled in England. The elder, who accepted the living of Saint John's, Chester, and became at the Restoration chaplain to Charles ii. and Prebendary of Canterbury, is the author of Clamor sanguinis, wrongly attributed by Milton to another French pastor, of Scottish descent, Alexander Morus. A staunch Royalist, he published in 1640 a Letter of a French Protestant to a Scotsman of the Covenant, and also in 1650 a Défense de la Religion réformée et de la monarchie et Eglise Anglicane, and after the Restoration A Vindication of the Protestant Religion in the Point of Obedience to Sovereigns (1663). The younger brother, Lewis, threw in his lot with the Commonwealthsmen, was appointed Camden Professor of Ancient History at Oxford (September 1648), and deprived on the accession of Charles ii. He remained, in spite of the idle story of his recanting on his death-bed in presence of Burnet, a sturdy Independent, publishing the very year of his death an apology for Independency.[180] A more striking instance of the discord which rent England during the Civil War could hardly be found. Party spirit ran high among the refugees, Jean de la Marche, the pastor of the French congregation in Threadneedle Street, being violently opposed by his flock for becoming an Independent,[181] while Hérault, the minister of Alençon, having during a stay in London vented his Royalist opinions, was compelled to seek safety in flight.[182] Another minister, Jean d'Espagne, sided with the Protector, who granted him permission to preach in Somerset House, and graciously accepted the dedication of a book.[183] At an earlier date, three French divines had sat in the Westminster Assembly.[184] About the same time, some active, intelligent Huguenot was busy publishing in London for Continental readers a French newspaper.[185]
The refugees thus took part in the internal dissensions of their adopted country. As a rule, to be favourable to the Stuarts they need be dependents on the Court or the Church; if merchants, they would usually side with the opposition, thus revealing the revolutionist ever lurking in the Calvinist. When Shaftesbury, at the time of the agitation on the Exclusion Bill, thought of making London a Whig stronghold, in view of a possible coup d'état, his main coadjutors seem to have been the elected sheriffs for Middlesex, Papillon and Dubois, two refugees. The battle fought and lost, Papillon fled to Amsterdam; but not before the thought crossed his mind of returning to the beloved mother-country: "I should not," he wrote from Holland, "have taken refuge here if I could go to France and worship there freely."[186]
Such a letter helps us to realise the loss suffered by France from the exile of men like Papillon. Their talents were not uncommon; in their own country, unmolested, they would have led useful, obscure lives, open-minded enough withal to welcome the inevitable change sooner or later to take place in European politics.
In spite of the efforts of the French King[187] and the disfavour shown the Huguenots by the exiled Anglicans,[188] the intercourse between England and the Huguenots continued after the Restoration. The French churches in England formed a natural link which survived the Act of Uniformity. The Huguenots, as well as Louis xiv., had their ambassadors in London, and, in some cases, these unofficial envoys were better informed than Colbert de Croissy or Barillon, for they could speak and write English and showed little reluctance to become Churchmen. Some obtained high preferment. This explains how Jurieu, called to England on leaving college by the Du Moulins, was ordained in the Church.[189]
In the precincts of the Court gathered some men of letters, refugees and scholars, Catholics and Protestants, the best known of whom is Saint-Evremond. Vossius, his "ami de lettres,"[190] was then Canon of Windsor, and to the latter's uncle Du Jon (Junius), librarian to the Earl of Arundel, who though born at Heidelberg was of Huguenot descent, England owes some of the earliest studies in Anglo-Saxon. These literati gathered round the Duchess of Mazarin, the Cardinal's niece, at her little court at Windsor, when Vossius, a pedant like most scholars in his age, would discourse on Chinese civilisation and the population of ancient Rome,[191] Saint-Evremond read a paper of verses, the Duchess speak of her interminable lawsuit with the bigoted, doting old Duke, her husband; and the company would be merry upon her recounting how he directed his grandchild's nurse to make the infant fast, in literal accordance with the Church commandments, on Fridays and Saturdays.[192] The librarian to Archbishop Sancroft, Colomiès, may have been admitted to the circle. On his arrival in England, he had found Vossius a useful friend, and through the latter's exertions was ordained in the Church of England, became a thorough Episcopalian, and was, like his patron, strongly suspected of Socinianism. Their friendship for Dr. Morales, a Jew of Amsterdam and one of this literary circle, only confirmed the suspicion. But in Madame de Mazarin's salon theological disputes were infrequent. For France, anti-Protestantism then was not an "article of exportation." Far from being fanatical, the temper of these literati savours somewhat of a much later indifferentism. Perhaps the courtly scepticism of the Restoration proved contagious. For Saint-Evremond a system of ethics did very well in place of a Confession of Faith. "The Faith is obscure, the Law clearly expressed. What we are bound to believe is above our understanding, what we have to do is within every one's reach."[193]
Most of his friends were Protestants, and he never felt bitterness against them: "I never experienced that indiscreet zeal that makes us hate people, because they do not share our opinions. That false zeal takes its rise in conceit, and we are secretly inclined to mistake for charity towards our neighbour what is only an excessive fondness for our private opinions."[194]
This paragraph strikes the keynote of the temper that reigned in the French circle at Windsor. On foreign land, out of the reach of Gallican maxims of policy and priestly intrigue, the two Frances, Catholic and Huguenot, not without an admixture of "libertinage," met, a picture of what might have been, had the dream of Michel de l'Hôpital and De Thou, maybe of Henri iv., been realised.
The most notable Huguenot in this circle was Louis xiv.'s ex-secretary, Henri Justel, a "great and knowing virtuoso,"[195] as Evelyn calls him, whom Charles II. appointed King's librarian in 1681. He seems to have been a very grave, courteous, and modest scholar. Having no literary ambition,[196] he went through life exciting no envy, free from envy himself. His religious convictions were sincere, and he made sacrifices to ensure them. Martyrdom, Renan said, is not so difficult after all. With nerves strung to a high pitch, fearful lest the jeering crowd should discern a sign of weakness, the victim of the Roman emperors stepped forth into the arena without the slightest tremor. Physical pain, the apprehension of death, were lost in the light of the glorious crown which the witness of Christ's word felt already encircling his brow. Some such feeling may have stirred the humble preacher that the Intendant sentenced to be hanged, or the obscure peasant whom the dragoons dragged away to the Toulon galleys. But nothing short of a very rare uprightness of mind, a sound probity towards self, could drive Justel to forsake all that a man and a scholar loves—his books, his friends, his ease, his beloved country. Saint-Evremond failed to understand Justel's higher motives of conduct. "Allow me," he wrote to him, "not to approve your resolution to leave France, so long as I shall see you so tenderly and so lovingly cherish her memory. When I see you sad and mournful, regretting Paris on the banks of our Thames, you remind me of the poor Israelites, lamenting Jerusalem on the banks of the river Euphrates. Either live happily in England, with a full liberty of conscience, or put up with petty severities against religion in your own country, so as to enjoy all the comforts of life."[197]
So the tempter spoke, and, to support his hard lot, Justel had none of the martyr's incentives. To those of his own faith, his constancy must have seemed surprising. Far from encouraging him to keep within the fold, the Consistory of Charenton had grossly insulted him.[198] The great value to a country of men like that faithful scholar is their love of spiritual independence. A letter that he wrote to Edward Bernard, professor of astronomy at Oxford, on February 16, 1670, shows what a price he paid to keep his fathers' faith. After stating that Claude is preparing an answer to a book of Arnault, and wishes to adduce against transubstantiation the evidence of some modern Greeks, he says that all the libraries in France being closed to the religionists, he must perforce have recourse to the Bodleian Library and its rich collection of oriental manuscripts.[199] In this appeal of a scholar I find as much pathos as in any account of dragonnades.