"During that interval Mr. Du Marest the minister having discoursed Sir John Reresby upon this business, this worthy Justice of the Peace sent for a constable (deus ex machina!), and gave him a warrant. The constable performed his commission, brought the widow and her niece, but the other Papists prevented his seizing them by making their escape in the crowd.
"The Justice of the Peace examined them concerning the maid, they confessed that she was not an apprentice, but a maid they set to work, and to whom they gave twenty shillings a year; upon this, and the declaration which the young maid made, he discharged her ('apprentices to trades,' said Blackstone almost a hundred years later, 'may be discharged on reasonable cause, either at the request of themselves or masters, at the quarter sessions, or by one justice, with appeal to the sessions'), and recommended the care of her to the minister, and then proceeded to examine to the bottom ('au fond' is the French legal term which would naturally occur to the writer of this pamphlet) the violent action which the women had committed, and upon their confession, and the depositions of several witnesses, he bound them to the sessions (here should the story end, but the writer thinks it needs a moral, and so he proceeds).
"This conduct of the Papists would something startle me, if I did not daily hear of such-like violences. But when I am assured that a certain Papist called Maistre Jacques (let us hope Sir John Reresby will have him hanged at next Middlesex Assizes), upon a dispute of religion, did so wound a Protestant that he is since dead of it; when people of honour assure me, that they hear Papists call the illustrious Queen Elizabeth a whore, and beat those who oppose them upon this subject; when I hear that the Papists threatened some years since, that they would set the streets a-flowing with blood (the Popish Plot again!); when that I see people that are perverted every day, and who are taken from us by force; when I see that the Papists contemn the King's Proclamations, that, instead of withdrawing according to his pleasure to some distance from London, they crowd to that degree this City and its suburbs, that one would say they designed to make a garrison of it; I do not wonder at this last insolence, and I apprehend much greater if care be not taken."
Such a pamphlet could be the production only of a Frenchman, most probably of mean condition, certainly no scholar. The interest lies less in the narrative itself, than in the frame of mind which it reveals among the humbler Frenchmen then living in London. While the Protestant refugees are in fear for their safety, their Catholic fellow-countrymen exhibit a singular arrogance in so small a minority. No doubt the effects of the French King's policy were being felt even in England, some knowledge of the secret articles of the Treaty of Dover filtering down, through the medium of priests and monks, to the ranks of the working people: they now suspect Charles II. to be in the pay of Louis xiv., and hope that the King of England will soon proclaim his Catholic faith and call in the aid of the French dragoons to convert the reluctant heretics. In a similar manner are the private arrangements between Sultans and European Powers divined and commented on at the present time by the native population in Persia or Barbary. The slightest quarrel, the most commonplace street brawl are pretexts for rival factions to come out in battle array. Among men of the same race and blood, feelings of hatred and instances of perfidiousness are manifest. As is always the case in time of civil war, the aid of the foreigner, be he an hereditary enemy, is loudly called for and order is finally restored by constable, judge, and gaoler.
FOOTNOTES:
[281] The Relation of an Assault made by French Papists upon a Minister of the French Church, in Newport Street, near St. Martin's Lane, 11th June 1682.
[282] Mémoires et observations faites en Angleterre, La Haye, 1698.