CHAPTER VII. STORY OF THE HUGUENOTS. HE story of the Huguenots-their persecutions and strug gles-is one of the saddest incidents in the sable-studded page of ecclesiastical history. The term Huguenots was an appellation given by way of contempt to the Reformed or Protestant Calvinists of France. The name had its rise in 1650; but historians differ as to its origin. Gaul, which is now called France, in the time of Christ, was a prov ince in the Roman empire, and some of the apostles planted Christianity in it. In the first centuries, Christianity extended and supported itself without the help and against the persecutions of the Roman emperors. Numbers were converted from paganism, several Christian societies were formed, and many eminent men having spent their lives in preaching and writing for the advancement of the Gospel, sealed their doctrine with their blood. In the Fifth century, Clovis I., a pagan king of France, fell in love with Clotilda, a Christian princess of the house of Burgundy, who agreed to marry him only on condition of his becoming a Christian, to which he consented in the year 491. The king, however, delayed the performance of this condition until five years after the marriage, when, engaged in a desperate battle, and having reason to fear the total defeat of his army, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and uttered this prayer: "God of Queen Clotilda! grant me the victory, and I vow to be baptised, and thenceforth to worship no other God but thee!" He obtained the victory, and, on his return, was baptised, at Rheims, December 25th, 496. His sister, and more than three thousand of his subjects followed his example, and Christianity became the professed religion of France. Conversion implies the cool exercise of reason, and whenever passion takes its place, and does the office of reason, conversion is nothing but a name. Baptism did not wash away the sins of Clovis. Before it he was vile; after it he was infamous, practicing all kinds 1 As to the character of the first settlers of Staten Island, as well as the country generally, it is manifest, from the indubitable evidences which they have left behind, that they were men uniting vigorous bodies with firm and energetic minds; possessed, in no ordinary degree, of inborn wisdom and industry, to gether with a daring, hardy, adventurious spirit of enterprise. So that the Staten Islander of the present day. who can trace his lineage back to the Huguenots, will find nothing in the history of his ancestry to crimson his cheek, or make him feel abashed.-Van Pelt's History of Staten Island. of treachery and cruelty. The court, the army, and the common people, who were pagan when the king was pagan, and Christian when he was Christian, continued the same in their morals after the conversion as before. The acts which followed rendered the reformation of the Sixteenth century essential to the interests of all mankind. The state of religion at that time was truly deplorable. Ecclesiastical government, instead of that evangelical simplicity and fraternal freedom, which Christ and his apostles had taught, was become a spiritual domination under the form of a temporal empire. The irregular church polity was attended with quarrels, intrigues and wars. Religion itself was made to consist of the performance of numerous ceremonies of pagan, Jewish and monkish extraction, all of which might be performed without either faith in God or love for mankind. The church ritual was an address, not to the reason, but to the senses of men. Blind obedience was first allowed by courtesy, and then established by law. For at least one hundred and fifty years complaints were made of the excesses of the church, and the cry for reformation made France tremble! The French had a translation of the Bible, which had been made in 1224. It had been revised, corrected, and printed in Paris in 1487, by order of Charles VIII., and the study of it began to prevail. Although in 1535, he went in procession to burn the first martyrs of the Reformed Church, yet, in the same year, he sent Melancthon to France to reconcile religious differences; and although he persecuted his own Protestant subjects with infinite inhumanity, yet, when he was afraid that the German Protestants would strengthen the hands of Charles V., he made an alliance with the Protestant princes of Germany, and allowed the Duke of Orleans to offer them the free exercise of their religion in the Dukedom of Luxemburg. And now began that period of terror that ran throughout the reign of many crowned murderers. Years and years of persecution and murder followed. After many negotiations a peace was concluded in 1570, which lasted for a short time, and then began scenes that shook the civilized world. One of the gates of the City of Tours is called the gate of Fourgonbeing a corruption from feu Heugon-signifying "the late Hugon." According to Eginhardus, the historian of Charles the Great, this Hugon was Count of Tours, and by the concurrent testimony of others, it appears that he was a wicked, fierce and cruel man, who made himself so dreaded while living that after his death, according to the superstition of the age, his ghost was supposed to stalk about at night, punishing all those with whom he met. In consequence of this tradition Davila and other historians aver that the appellation of Huguenots was first given to the French Protestants because of their frequent nocturnal assemblings in vaults, and in the vicinity of feu Heugon. Others credit it to a French corruption of the German word "edig. nossen "-or confederates-as originally given to that valiant portion of the Genevians who entered into a confederation with the Swiss cantons in order to make united resistance to the lawless encroachments of Charles III., Duke of Savoy. Others assign it to a more intimately illustrious origin, and ascribe to those who bore it, a design for keeping the crown upon the head of the third race of the French monarchy, descended from Hugh Capet; from whom they derive the term Huguenots. But whatever may have been the origin of this appellation, those who are here to-day will recount with interest the story of those unprecedented persecutions which drove those early Huguenot Christians of France into exile on Staten Island. During the reign of Charles IX., on the 24th day of August, 1572, was enacted the direful tragedy of the massacre of St. Bartholomew, when seventy thousand Huguenots were butchered throughout France. Many of the principal Protestants were invited to Paris under a solemn oath of safety, upon the occasion of the marriage of the King KING CHARLES II. of Navarre, with the French king's sister. The queen dowager of Navarre, a zealous Protestant, however, was poisoned by a pair of gloves before the marriage was solemnized. Coligni, admiral of France. was murdered in his own house, and thrown out of the window to gratify the malice of the Duke of Guise. His head was afterwards cut off, and sent to the king and queen-mother; and his body. after a thousand indignities offered to it. hung by the feet to a gibbet. After this the murderers ravished the whole city of Paris, and butchered in three days above ten thousand lords, gentlemen, presidents. and people of all ranks. The very streets and passages resounded with the noise of those who met together for murder and plunder. The groans of those who were dying, and the shrieks of those who were going to be butchered, were heard on every hand; the bodies of the slain thrown out of the windows; the courts and chambers of the houses filled with them; the dead bodies of others dragged through the streets, their blood running through the channels in such plenty. that torrents seemed to empty themselves into the neighboring river. In a word, an innumerable multitude of men, women and children were all involved in one common destruction. From the city of Paris the massacre spread throughout the whole kingdom. The same cruelties were practiced everywhere. Some historians claim that at least one hundred thousand were murdered. But all these persecutions were far exceeded in cruelty by those which took place in the time of Louis XIV. It can not be pleasant, however, to any one's feelings, who has the least humanity, to recount these dreadful scenes of horror, cruelty and devastation, and so we will pass them by at this time. In 1598, Henry IV. passed the celebrated Edict of Nantes, which secured certain rights and privileges to the Protestants, with the free prosecution of their religious rites. This edict, founded in the true spirit of Christian benevolence, was revoked by Louis XIV., and the scenes of their former persecution were revived with a vigor that had gained strength with its short respite. Their churches were destroyed, thousands were put to the sword, and those who survived, being about fifty thousand, after bearing every indignity from the soldiery, were driven into exile. They retreated into Holland, where they erected several places of worship, and had among them a number of eminent preachers, among whom were Superville, Dumont, Dubosc, and the eloquent Saurin, who, in one of his sermons, descanting at length upon their persecutions, concludes with the following fine apostrophe to Louis XIV., the tyrant monarch, who had torn open their old wounds, and by whose cruel policy they were driven into exile. The calm, forgiving, philosophical spirit of Christianity with which it abounds, stamps its author as a man of the noblest and most exalted character: "And thou, dreadful prince," said Saurin, "whom I once honored as my king, and whom I yet respect as a scourge in the hand of Almighty God, thou shalt have a part in my good wishes! These provinces, which thou threatenest, but which the arm of the Lord protects; this country, which thou fillest with refugees, but fugitives animated with love; these walls, which contain a thousand martyrs of thy mak ing, but whom religion renders victorious, all these yet resound benedictions in thy favor. God grant the fatal bandage that hides the truth from thine eyes may fall off! May God forget the rivers of blood with which thou hast deluged the earth, and which thy reign hath caused to be shed! May God blot out of his book the injustices which thou hast done us; and while he rewards the sufferers, may he pardon those who exposed us to suffer! O, may God, who hath made thee to us, and the whole church, a minister of His judgments, make thee a dispenser of His favors-an administrator of His mercy! It is generally believed that the Huguenots worshiped with the Waldenses at Stony Brook for some time. They came to this country in considerable numbers from the middle to the close of the Seventeenth century. It is not exactly known at what date they estab 2 We now come to a period in the civil and religious history of Staten Island of great and even romantic interest: the arrival of the French Protestants or Huguenots. Years before, it is true, some had emigrated with the Dutch from Holland, but now they landed on these shores in considerable numbers, bringing with them useful arts, a knowledge of gardening and husbandry, and above all, their own well-known virtues, with a pure, simple, lished their church at Marshlands,3 (now Green Ridge); but mention is made in the records of a "meeting house" at that place in 1695. It is claimed by some that the edifice, in which the Huguenots worshiped as a separate congregation, was standing as early as 1680. The proof of this theory is the inscription from an old brown gravestone, which stood in its appointed place up to about twenty-five years ago, and was then carried away in the night evidently by a relic seeker: "Atil * nette Colon, er 21, 1678; E 64." * * The following interesting document is of a later period, but certainly relates to the same church property. It is taken from one of the earliest records of the county: "This following deed of Gifte was recorded for the french Congreygashone Residing with In the Countey of Richmond on statone Island the 22 day of may Annoque dom: 1698. "To all Christaine peopell To whome Theas present wrighting shall Come John bevalle Seanior of the Countey of Richmond and provence of new yorke weaver and hester his wife sendeth Greeting In our Lord God Eaver Lasting now know yee that wheare as Townas Ibbosone of the Countey of Richmond yeoman did by his certen wrighting or deed pole under his hand & sealle bearing date The seaventh day of feberary and in the Third yeare of the Reign of our souvring Lord william the third by the Grace of God of England scotland france & Irland King annoque dom 1692 Grant bargone sell and convay unto John belvealle of the Countey of Richmond & provence of new yorke weaver his heirs Exekitors Admsios And asignes A serten trakt or parcell of Land sittiate Lying and being on the west side of statones Island neare the fresh killes begining by the medow and strechig in to the wood by the Lyne of fransis oseltone dyrekt south three hundred Rood from thence west six degrees & northerly thirtey six Rood thence dyrekt north by the Lyne of Abraham Lacmone three hundred Rood thence East thirtey six Rood Containing In all sixtey acres as by the Recited deed pole Relashone theareunto being had doth and may more fully and att Large Appeare Now Know yee that the said John belvealle of Statone Island And provence of New Yorke and hester his wife Testified by her being A partey to the Ensaling and delivery of thease presents Reaell Loufe and Afeccone that they beare to the min Bible faith. Many of the descendants from this noble stock now remain to honor the Island of their birth with the sterling character which they have inherited from their ancestors. Preston's History of Richmond County. 3 The Huguenots, I believe, came to Staten Island, if not at the same time, certainly not more than a decade later, than the Waldenses, and they became closely identified with each other because of their persecutions, their language and their religion. The fact is clearly established that the .aldensian settlement at Stony Brook contained quite a number of Huguenot emigrants. Results prove, however, Tysen's Historical |