Saint Bartholomews Eve | Page 2

For thirty years the Huguenots had been exposed to
constant and cruel persecutions; many thousands had been massacred
by the soldiery, burned at the stake, or put to death with dreadful
tortures. Fifty thousand, it was calculated, had, in spite of the most
stringent measures of prevention, left their homes and made their
escape across the frontiers. These had settled for the most part in the
Protestant cantons of Switzerland, in Holland, or England. As many of
those who reached our shores were but poorly provided with money,
they naturally settled in or near the ports of landing.
Canterbury was a place in which many of the unfortunate emigrants
found a home. Here one Gaspard Vaillant, his wife, and her sister, who
had landed in the year 1547, had established themselves. They were
among the first comers, but the French colony had grown, gradually,
until it numbered several hundreds. The Huguenots were well liked in
the town, being pitied for their misfortunes, and admired for the
courage with which they bore their losses; setting to work, each man at
his trade if he had one, or if not, taking to the first work that came to
hand. They were quiet and God-fearing folk; very good towards each
other, and to their poor countrymen on their way from the coast to
London, entertaining them to the best of their power, and sending them
forward on their way with letters to the Huguenot committee in London,
and with sufficient money in their pockets to pay their expenses on the
journey, and to maintain them for a while until some employment could
be found for them.
Gaspard Vaillant had been a landowner near Civray, in Poitou. He was
connected by blood with several noble families in that district, and had
been among the first to embrace the reformed religion. For some years
he had not been interfered with, as it was upon the poorer and more
defenceless classes that the first fury of the persecutors fell; but as the

attempts of Francis to stamp out the new sect failed, and his anger rose
more and more against them, persons of all ranks fell under the ban.
The prisons were filled with Protestants who refused to confess their
errors; soldiers were quartered in the towns and villages, where they
committed terrible atrocities upon the Protestants; and Gaspard, seeing
no hope of better times coming, or of being permitted to worship in
peace and quietness, gathered together what money he could and made
his way, with his wife and her sister, to La Rochelle, whence he took
ship to London.
Disliking the bustle of a large town, he was recommended by some of
his compatriots to go down to Canterbury, where three or four fugitives
from his own part of the country had settled. One of these was a weaver
by trade, but without money to manufacture looms or set up in his
calling. Gaspard joined him as partner, embarking the little capital he
had saved; and being a shrewd, clear-headed man he carried on the
business part of the concern, while his partner Lequoc worked at the
manufacture.
As the French colony in Canterbury increased, they had no difficulty in
obtaining skilled hands from among them. The business grew in
magnitude, and the profits were large, in spite of the fact that numbers
of similar enterprises had been established by the Huguenot immigrants
in London, and other places. They were, indeed, amply sufficient to
enable Gaspard Vaillant to live in the condition of a substantial citizen,
to aid his fellow countrymen, and to lay by a good deal of money.
His wife's sister had not remained very long with him. She had, upon
their first arrival, given lessons in her own language to the daughters of
burgesses, and of the gentry near the town; but, three years after the
arrival of the family there, she had married a well-to-do young yeoman
who farmed a hundred acres of his own land, two miles from the town.
His relations and neighbours had shaken their heads over what they
considered his folly, in marrying the pretty young Frenchwoman; but
ere long they were obliged to own that his choice had been a good one.
Just after his first child was born he was, when returning home one
evening from market, knocked down and run over by a drunken carter,

and was so injured that for many months his life was in danger. Then
he began to mend, but though he gained in strength he did not recover
the use of his legs, being completely paralysed from the hips downward;
and, as it soon appeared, was destined to remain a helpless invalid all
his life. From the day of the accident Lucie had taken the management
of affairs in her