nades struck at heart and conscience; then men feared for their all." The one emigration consisted for the most part of nobles and clergy, who left no traces of their settlement in the countries which gave them asylum; the other emigration comprised all the constituent elements of a people-skilled workmen in all branches, manufacturers, merchants, and professional men; and wherever they settled they founded numerous useful establishments which were a source of prosperity and wealth. Assuredly England has no reason to regret the asylum which she has in all times so freely granted to fugitives flying from religious persecution abroad. Least of all has she reason to regret the settlement within her borders of so large a number of industrious, intelligent, and high-minded Frenchmen, who have made this country their home since the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and thereby not only stimulated, and in a measure created, British industry; but also influenced, in a remarkable degree, our political and religious history. APPENDIX. I. EARLY SETTLEMENT OF FOREIGN ARTIZANS IN ENGLAND. THE first extensive immigration of foreign artizans of which we have any account took place in the reign of Henry II. It was occasioned by an inundation in the Low Countries which dispossessed many of the inhabitants, when large numbers of them came over into England. They were well received by the king, who forwarded a body of them to Carlisle, for the purpose of planting them on the then unsettled and almost desert lands adjacent to the Scotch border. But the lawless state of the district was fatal to the quiet pursuits of the Flemings, and Henry subsequently directed their removal to the peninsula of Gower in South Wales. There the Flemings began and successfully carried on their trade of cloth-weaving. They formed a community by themselves, and jealously preserved their nationality. The district long continued to be known as “Little England beyond Wales ;" and to this day the community of Gower is to a great extent distinct and separate from that of the surrounding country. Another colony of Flemings settled about the same time at Worsted near Norwich, and “worsted" stuffs soon became common. These colonists were the first to introduce into England water-driven corn-mills, wind-mills, and fulling-mills. They also re-introduced the art of building in brick, which had not been practised in England since the time of the Romans. Traces of their early brick-work are still observable in several of the old churches at Norwich and Worsted,--Worsted church furnishing an unmistakeable specimen of early Flemish architecture. Other colonies of Flemish fishermen settled at Brighton, Newhaven, and other places along the south coast, where their lineage is still traceable in local words, names, and places.* Other Flemings established themselves still further north. At Berwick "Strombolo" or "stromballen" (streamballs) is the pure Flemish name given here to pieces of black bitumen, charged with sulphur and salt, found along the coast. It is one of the many indications of an early Flemish colony of fishers.-MURRAY's Sussex. A writer in the Edinburgh Review (July 1863) says " During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Flemish colonies have been traced in Berwick, St. Andrews, Perth, Dumbarton, Ayr, Peebles, Lanark, Edinburgh, and in the districts of Renfrewshire, Clydesdale, and Annandale. These strangers lived under the protection of a special code of mercantile law; and recent investigations have established the fact that, a hundred years before the great Baltic Association came into being, we had a Hanseatic League upon-Tweed they occupied a large factory called the Red Hall, situated in the main street of the town. The principal business carried on by them there was the export of wool, wool-fells, and hides, and the import of iron, weapons, implements, and merchandise of various kinds. These Flemish traders were under the special protection of the Scotch king, to whom they rendered loyal service in return; for history relates that on the storming of Berwick by Edward I. in 1296, the Flemings barricaded themselves in the Red Hall, and defended themselves with such courage and obstinacy that, rather than surrender, they were buried to a man in the ruins. A new impulse was given to the immigration of Flemish artizans into England by the protracted intestine feuds arising out of the dynastic quarrels of the Burgundian princes, which unsettled industry and kept the Low Countries in a state of constant turmoil. But perhaps a still more potent cause of Flemish emigration was the severity of the regulations enforced by the guilds or trades unions of Flanders, Ghent, Bruges, Liege, and the other great towns, which became so many centres of commercial monopoly. The rich guilds combined to crush the poorer ones, and the privileged to root out the unprivileged. Such artizans as would not submit to their exactions were liable to have their looms broken and their dwellings gutted, and to be themselves expelled with their families beyond the walls. If they took shelter in the neighbouring villages, and began to exercise their calling there, they were occasionally pursued by the armed men of the guilds, who burned down the places which had given them refuge, and drove them forth into the wide world with no other possession than their misery.* These persecuted artizans, who had earned their living for the most part by working up English wool into Flemish cloth, naturally turned their eyes in the direction of England, and all who could find the means of emigrating made haste to fly, and place the sea between them and the tyranny of the trades unions. Although the early English kings had been accustomed to encourage the immigration of foreign artizans, it was not until the reign of Edward -III. usually styled "the father of English commerce," that any decided progress was made by this country in manufacturing industry. That sagacious monarch held that, as regarded the necessaries of life, clothing as well as food, the people of his kingdom should be as much as possible independent of foreign supply. In the early part of his reign the English people relied mainly upon the Flemish manufacturers for the better sorts of clothing, while the English wool-growers looked to the Flemish wool-markets as the chief outlet for their produce. So long as peaceful relations existed between the two countries, the exchange of the raw produce for the manufactured articles went on, to the benefit of both. But when these were interrupted by civic broils in Flanders, by feuds amongst the guilds, or by war between the two countries, serious inconveniences were immediately felt. The English producer lost a market for his in Scotland, small and unimportant comparatively, but known by that very name, This was in the time of David I., towards the middle of the twelfth century." * See ALTMEYER's curions pamphlet illustrative of this subject, entitled Notices Historiques sur la Ville de Poperinghen, Ghent 1840. |