Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles, Part 6

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub.
Number of Pages: 926

USA > New York > New York County > Harlem > Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles > Part 6

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Sedan, on the Meuse, whither many were going, offered the nearest retreat ; and thither also went the De Forests, by way of the French border, some sixty miles southeastward. Though the exact date of their exode has not been found, collateral cir- cumstances assign it to the period directly succeeding the Wal- loon submission. Not to anticipate the important role reserved for this exiled family when they shall again come to our notice, under better auspices, we dare venture an opinion that it will justify this effort, imperfect though it be, to illustrate the more obscure portion of their history.

CHAPTER III.

OUR SETTLERS FROM FRANCE AND WALSLANT.

A N eventful century in the affairs of France had rolled its round since the collegiate halls of the Sorbonne at Paris echoed the first notes of the Reformation, uttered by the learned and inspired Le Fevre. That period, radiant with hope and promise, which directly followed the accession of Francis I., and in which the Reformed doctrines,-joyfully embraced by the sober, thinking classes,-were rapidly disseminated over all France, had been succeeded (1525) by terrible persecutions, when at times the whole land seemed fairly to reek with the blood of martyrs. Forced thereto in self-defense, the Huguenots took up arms in 1562, whence ensued a ruthless civil war, which raged, with only brief intervals, for over thirty years, during the reigns of Charles IX., Henry III., and, in part, of Henry IV. Assuming, as then and there was unavoidable, the double character of a politico- religious conflict, which involved in its toils king and clergy, noblesse and people, these long-protracted and bloody wars ex- hausted the country and reduced it to the verge of ruin. Only by this heroic stand, however, were the Huguenots able to main- tain even a recognized existence in the land; but when the King of avarre, their old leader,-distinguished on many a battle- field,-had fought his way to the throne, as Henry IV., he issued in 1598 that famous decree for the pacification of his kingdom, called the Edict of Nantes, which threw its protecting ægis over the Huguenots, and gave them a season of peace and prosperity such as they enjoyed at no other period. A knowledge of what this edict pledged, and how its pledges were violated in the succeeding reigns, will help us to understand the proper status of the Huguenots in the time of our refugees.

The edict was based on a limited toleration, but was "the best that the state of the times allowed." It declared a full amnesty, conceded to the Huguenots liberty of conscience, made them eligible to all public offices and dignities, and for their pro- tection provided special chambers within the local parliaments,

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the chief being the "Chamber of the Edict." in the Parliament of Paris. They were allowed to build and maintain churches and schools in all places where these had been permitted by former edicts. But this did not apply to episcopal or any walled cities, saving only La Rochelle and a few other strongly Hugue- not towns, which for their security they were suffered to hold under the edict. Further, all lords, nobles, and other persons of the pretended Reformed religion, holding a tenure by knight's service, or having the powers of a civil and criminal magistrate within their seigniory or manor, might, after due notice to the king's officers, and having the place registered, hold religious services at their principal residence, or cause them to be held for their families, subjects and all who wished to attend.

The last was a most important concession. The places other- wise assigned the Reformed in which to erect churches and schools were but few and scattered, and to multitudes in distant localities proved of no benefit; but under the friendly shelter of private castles and manor-houses many suspended churches could be regathered and new ones organized; as was done; though often only by persistent effort and in the face of violent opposition, because the Reformed worship was seldom tolerated nearer any sizable town than from three to five miles, and for its peaceful enjoyment the faithful were often obliged to journey as many leagues. Laboring under the same disabilities in regard to schools, it was creditable to their parental fidelity that the secular education of their children was cared for equally with their religious training; and hence we notice that nearly all of our refugees had enjoyed advantages and were good penmen. Under the edict the Reformed were not exempt from such bur- dens and annoyances as the payment of tithes to the parish priest, and the closing of their business places and suspension of all out-door and noisy labor on the oft-recurring festival days, when they must join in decorating the fronts of their houses in honor of the occasion, or permit it to be done by the official per- sons,-and to all which it was dangerous to object.

Briefly, these were the advantages enjoyed by the Huguenot population under the edict, during the halcyon days of Henry the Great. But trouble began with his assassination, in 1610, an event which excited the utmost alarm among the Reformed, who in the change of rulers saw reason to apprehend a change of policy fatal to their interests. In vain the queen-mother, as regent, in the name of the young Louis XIII., as also that king himself, on assuming the reins of power in 1614, tried to allay

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these fears by professing a purpose to maintain the Edict of Nantes. Concini, an Italian favorite, being elevated to the position of prime-minister, the government from the first was wholly under Jesuit influence,-which was regaining itself in the country ; while the king, in 1615, by the arbitrary dissolution of the old States-General or national parliament, that "guar- dian of the public liberty," for which he substituted an assem- bly composed of more pliant materials, plainly foreshadowed the imperious policy which he had marked out, and by which he sought to centre all power in himself; thus giving caste to an administration characterized by a French writer of that day as "the most scandalous and dangerous tyranny that perhaps ever enslaved a state."

Soon followed the predicted change of policy touching the Huguenots, which, first planned by the Archbishop of Paris, was now seconded by the ambitious Charles d'Albert, Duke de Luynes, who, with the blood of Concini fresh upon his hands, had supplanted the latter in the favor of the king and also as prime- minister. It was to humble the Huguenots and take away their power of self-protection, by wresting from them their fortified towns and their political organization, which latter Henry IV. had sanctioned as a means of conserving their interests, through their general assemblies. The new government looked with jealousy upon these assemblies, some of whose acts at this feverish juncture were dictated rather by passion than cool judgment; and these indiscretions were made a ground for the high-handed course to which the government now resorted.

At the bare mention of the new policy, which the Catholic pulpits everywhere zealously lauded, all the old animosity against the Reformed again burst forth, bearing fruit in numer- ous acts of violence, both in the towns and rural districts. The first aggressive step taken by the king was in 1620, when he ordered the Catholic worship to be restored in Bearn, a part of Southern France, where for sixty years the Reformed had been the only region. Being opposed, as a flagrant breach of the edict, the king invaded Bearn to enforce his decree by the bayonet. The Huguenots flew to arms, the cautionary cities act- ing with great spirit; and war desolated the Protestant con- munities of Bearn, Guienne and Languedoc. The royal arms were only too successful. But Montpellier, chief city of I.an- guedoc, having been taken by siege, and the regiments of Picardy and Normandy set at work to level its defenses, here a peace was proposed, and concluded October 19th, 1622. Only La

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Rochelle and Montauban, of all their strong places, now remained to the Huguenots.

. Deeply interested were the Reformed at the north in the struggles of their co-religiouists in arms; and scarce dissembling their sympathies, they feared as accomplices, being "given over to the hatred of the governors, the military commandants, the 'priests and the populace." Mob outrage was common; the fine temple at Charenton, near Paris, was pillaged and burned, though rebuilt, at the public charge, after peace had been established. The government disarmed the Huguenots of St. Quentin and others in Picardy, many of whom, in 1621, retired to Geneva, Sedan and England.

The hollow peace, as it proved, was ignored by Cardinal Richelieu, who became prime-minister in 1624. His grand idea, the unity of France and the supremacy of the church and mon- archy, involved the prosecution of the war against the Huguenots ; and the restless state of that people became the pretext. La Rochelle must be reduced, and was at length invested by powerful armies. The resistance was heroic, lasting a year and three months, while half its population died of famine and disease. Then it was forced to capitulate, October 28th, 1628.

Great excitement prevailed during this siege among the Huguenots at the north, who, under the guise of visiting, attend- ing weddings, etc., often met to confer together about their affairs. Hence exaggerated rumors which reached the king's camp, of conspiracies in Lower Normandy (about Caen and the Bessin), and in Picardy and Champagne. The king had demanded of the people of Amiens to send to his camp five hundred cloth suits and as many pairs of shoes; but the serge- makers, indignant at this demand, threatened the king's officer, who fled by night from his lodgings, while the mob threw his coach into the Somme.

But Richelieu followed up his successes. Montauban, in the heart of Southern France, was also reduced early in 1629, and its defenses razed. All the Huguenot strongholds were now in the king's hands, and the last civil war was at an end. The "Edict of Grace," so called, issued the same year, fixed the condition of the Protestants. Submission and loyalty were the specious terms on which they should continue to enjoy their re- ligious privileges. But well they knew that this meant nothing less than an absolute subjection to the royal will, with no ability to ward off any further aggression upon their rights, since they were robbed of their only safeguard,-that material power on

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which had depended the security of their persons, property and religion.

Alarmed and grieved as were the Protestants at seeing their cause thus utterly ruined, their trials were only beginning, for they were now to be subjected to a course of proscription, which, growing more and more oppressive, was at length to become insupportable. Deserted by nearly all the nobility, and gradually ousted from government service and from most of the civil offices, there was still this gain,-that they were freed from the temptations and snares of political life, which rendered so many idle and dissolute; while restricted in their pursuits to agricul- ture, to trade, and the industrial arts, they were repaid by a new development of their industry, and additions to their wealth. Even the infertile soils of the south, by dint of their toil, were made to wave with bounteous harvests. . As merchants and manu- facturers their integrity and proficiency was known and recognized in other lands. Nevertheless, they were ill at ease.

Anachronisms in regard to the Huguenots easily occur, from inattention to the order of events, or to the many diverse phases of their history. The period to which we have now arrived,- the era proper of our refugees,-was to them and their compeers fraught with no such promise as that which ushered in the Reformation ; nor yet a reign of persecutions dire, as that which immediately succeeded. In the past, the few bright years of Henry IV. came up in the memories of long and dismal civil wars as a little oasis in the almost boundless desert waste. These wars being ended, they now entered upon a term of thirty years, having the semblance of rest, but with its deep undercurrents of unrest. Even then was foreshadowed (but our refugees did not wait to see it) that final, doleful epoch, opening about 1661 with the destruction of temples or churches, with arrets du conseil, for excluding the Reformed from trades and professions, etc., and closing with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, with dragoons, dungeons and galleys; causing multitudes of these purest and noblest of the land,-artisans, tradesmen, professors and divines,-to escape to other countries, which were thus enriched by their industries, their talents and their piety.

Hence our refugees lived in times of but semi-repose, in which painful memories of the past gave ghastly form and reality to the graver presentiments of the future. True, it was an age of more enlightenment and less fanaticism than those preceding, but the popular aversion to the Huguenots had not essentially

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lessened. It had only in a degree transferred itself from their creed to their position as a social class. They were an unpopu- lar minority, having peculiarities repulsive to the habits and tastes of the people at large. Their views, feelings and mode of life, their strict discipline, the simplicity of their worship and scrupulous observance of the Sabbath, afforded nothing in com- mon with those within the pale of the dominant church. To them the Huguenot appeared reserved, rigid, and even haughty. His very gravity was thought to betoken a felt superiority. He claimed to be controlled by a purer faith, a better code of morals. Intelligence, discrimination and independence, as well as piety, were essential supports to the religious tenets he avowed and maintained. He valued and improved his freedom to in- quire and interchange opinions upon matters of church polity and questions of doctrine and discipline, as well as those af- fecting his civil rights. Keeping within the limited circle of his home and people, and wont to deny himself, the Huguenot yielded but sparingly to the luxury in which others indulged. Thus order and economy ruled both his house and business, and brought him thrift. In his frugality of living, and in the time saved from useless festivals for needful toil, he found a temporal gain. His industry and business assiduity seemed ever to re- proach his neighbors with their slackness and improvidence; and envy of his superior intelligence, advantages and prosperity too commonly showed itself, after the loss of his military and political significance, in an air of triumph over his humbled con- dition. He still trusted for protection to his legal charter, the Edict of Nantes; but this soon lost its prestige with the courts. His greatest fear was from the covert designs of government and clergy to effect his ruin,-the latter ever and anon reiterating their demands for new restraints upon the Reformed. In 1630 began systematic efforts to reclaim them in the church by means of convertisseurs, who were paid a definite sum for every prose- lyte; and in 1635 Richelieu created in each province a Royal Intendant, "to promote a stronger national unity," but which meant the use of all means for suppressing the religion. These officials, chosen with special reference to their fitness, dispensed their authority with rigor, and first instigated those severe and effective measures eventually employed to complete the ruin of the Huguenots. The decisions of the Intendant were invariably adverse to the Huguenot. And it was usually so in questions which came before the local parliaments; the rule obtaining in the various tribunals that the Reformed had no rights except by

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sufferance. Law and fact were wrested against them; every severe sentence became a precedent; and so, by one restriction after another, enarly all of value that the Edict of Nantes had pledged was taken away long before the edict was formally rescinded. With a painful sense of insecurity, it became an ever- present, momentous question with this afflicted people, how to avert the greater calamities, which passing events so plainly fore- shadowed, except by quitting their country.

What this question involved we may not apprehend. The bitter conflict going on within, as the stricken man pursued his daily vocation, was often known only to his family and his God. Thrice dear to him was his country, so venerable in antiquities, heroic in deeds, romantic in legends; all that was charming in stream and landscape, genial in the air and gen- erous in the soil; all that was prized in institutions and cus- toms, in social and home endearments. His religious ideas had not weakened, but, only in one direction, changed his attach- ments. With a sort of aristocratic pride he cherished the heredi- tary records of the virtue, constancy, or piety of his ancestors who had suffered for the faith. These were the letters of his nobility. They were links binding him only the more closely t ohis native soil-which had grown dearer with every trial or loss he had been called to embrace, and with each act of arbitrary power designed to force him from its bosom. But the very act of leaving was hedged with difficulties: business, property, and personal effects were more easily scrifiecd than converted into available means. The younger class, with few such entangle- ments, found a change much easier than did their seniors; and hence the emigrations at this era consisted very largely of the former.

Those spasmodic flights of the Huguenots under some great and sudden terror,- of which there had been many in the course of their history, when multitudes, by families, and of every age and class, left hastily for foreign lands,-had ceased with that which took place on the fall of La Rochelle and Montauban, when the final blow was dealt to the civil power of the Hugue- nots. For the thirty years ensuing, and during which most of the Harlem refugees sought other lands, the emigration was not large, but of a valuable character. The removals were usually undertaken thoughtfully and heroically,-in general, as just said, by a young and enterprising class,-in the belief that the time had come to leave a country in which, surrounded by so many hostile elements, it was especially difficult for them to live, and

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which threatened to become worse instead of better. Their eyes naturally turned toward Holland, England, and America, as more hospitable lands, and the chief emigration was to those countries from the marine provinces, Picardy, Normandy, and those south of them, for which their numerous seaports afforded every facility.

The West Indies, inviting both for climate and fruitfulness, were becoming the resort of many for whom the cold region of Canada had no attractions. Removals to these islands had been going on under the direction of a company formed at Paris in. 1626, at the instance of M. D'Enambus, who the year before had visited the island of St. Christopher, in a brigantine from Dieppe. There he planted the first colony in 1627, and which became the nursery of others afterward formed on the adjacent islands. In 1635, Martinique was occupied by a hundred old and experi- enced settlers from St. Christopher. But D'Enambuc died. In 1640 Jesuit missionaries arrived at Martinique (where were then near a thousand French, "without mass, without priest,") and, reluctantly admitted by the governor and people, heightened the public dissensions which broke out in the islands, and which grew so violent five years later, especially in Martinique, that many of the Huguenots were glad to get back to Europe; these going mostly to Holland, and some of them, as the Casier family, of Calais, eventually finding more tranquil abode at Harlem. We shall allude to these again before concluding our account of the homes and wanderings of our refugees .*

Home! Fancy is ever swifter than pen or pencil to draw the picture. The old familiar spot around which the heartstrings entwine, endeared by many tender associations, perchance made sacred by its sanctified sorrows. And how bitter the moment when the refugee, gazing upon it for the last time, turned his steps toward a foreign soil; like the great patriarch departing from Haran, knowing not his destiny, but trusting his covenant God. But, alas! to too many of our refugees,-forced to changes as they were by a regard for their personal safety or to secure a livelihood, or both,-home, as restricted to the place of their birth and early life, must have lost much of its significance. To these pilgrims home was often less the locality and society of which

* Inquiry can but partially break the silence which hangs over these wanderings. And here starts a query: was our David Demarest a sharer with Philip Casier in his West India, as he was in some of his subsequent travels? Did he sustain toward Sieur Des Marets (an old captain of St. Christopher, who was beheaded September 7, 1641, by the governor, De Poincy, for joining the populace in opposing his tyranny) such relations as made him one most deeply affected by his tragic fate? Oisemont, in Picardy, the seat of the Demarests, had a Commandery of Malta, of which De Poincy was commander. Strange coincidences, if merely accidental!

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they bore the type, than the circle or community of like faith in which for the time being their lot was cast. Difficult ofttimes as this makes it to trace the refugee to his original home, we shall leave the reader to note how far our efforts in that regard have succeeded.

Saintonge was one of the provinces lying within the Bay of Biscay, and which, owing to the tendency of the Huguenots dur- ing their protracted trouble to remove from the interior into the marine districts and towns, became crowded with refugees, and were a principal theatre of the bloody civil wars. Sain- tonge was the birthplace of our "very learned" Dr. Johannes De La Montagne, whose history will contribute much of interest to these pages. La Montagne was not his family name, but an adjunct which finally took the place of the former, and was originally derived,-as correlative facts seem to indicate,-from La Montagne, a district of Burgundy. But Dr. La Montagne was called a Santo, which is the provincial designation for a native of Saintonge,-akin to that of Norman, Picard, etc. His birth happening in 1595, but three years before the Edict of Nantes restored order to the realm and peace to the Huguenots,- and under which emigration mostly ceased up to the death of Henry IV.,-it is highly probable that La Montagne left France somewhere within the ten years of public unrest succeeding the murder of the king, and culminating in the last civil wars under Louis XIII., which opened in 1620. Prior to that date, how- ever, La Montagne and others of his family were enjoying peace and security in Holland. He therefore knew as little personally of these latter wars as he did of the earlier troubles which pre- ceded the Edict of Nantes. Among our French refugee fam- ilies his was the first to become exiles. We speak irrespective of the Walloon families, of whom the first to flee their country were those of De Forest and Vermeille or Vrmilye, the latter, in the troubles of the sixteenth century, taking refuge in England. Not till after the last civil wars, as before said, and which oc- curred quite too early for them to have borne arms, did the body of our refugees leave their native France.

Saintonge counted among its cities La Rochelle, with its heroic memories, and which gave us Jacques Cousseau and Paul Richard, both sterling characters and identified with Harlem. We know not if either was old enough at the time of the final siege and reduction of La Rochelle, in 1628, to have shared its terrors and miseries; but both probably left on account of the severe measures pursued by Louis XIV. for restoring Catholi-

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cism in that old Protestant stronghold, and which occasioned many removals.

Northerly from La Rochelle, the rugged peninsula of Bre- tagne, or Brittany,-jutting far into the Atlantic,-is as remark- able for its strange vicissitudes as for its dreary forests, barren heaths, pent-up valleys, vast fields of Druid remains, and lone hillocks crowned by the ruins of castles ; or yet its brawny peas- antry in grotesque garb, and (in Lower Brittany) still speaking the harsh Celtic tongue. Long a distinct sovereignty, it was conquered by the Norman dukes; later an affluent duchy, for which Charles of Blois and his race valiantly but vainly battled with the house of Montfort, it was finally engrossed by the crown. But not feudal nor royal tyranny could ever crush the native independence and hauteur of the Breton, which so cropped out in the case of our Glaude Le Maistre (Delamater), whose ancestors were the lords of Garlaye, in the diocese of Nantes, though he happened not to be born in Brittany. Near La Mous- saye, in the interior of Lower Brittany, southward from St. Malo, was the original seat of the family of our David Uzille. The Reformed churches at Nantes and La Moussaye found in the Le Maistres and Uzilles warm supporters.

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Revised History of Harlem (City of New York): Its Origin and Early Annals. : Prefaced by Home Scenes in the Fatherlands; Or Notices of Its Founders Before Emigration. Also, Sketches of Numerous Families, and the Recovered History of the Land-titles, Part 6

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889 Publication date: 1904 Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub. Number of Pages: 926

Author: Riker, James, 1822-1889
Publication date: 1904
Publisher: New York, New Harlem Pub.
Number of Pages: 926