[Magdalen] Huguenot Heritage.

[Roger Stokes]

On 31/12/2014 09:23, Cantor03--- via Magdalen wrote:
> My quarterly newsletter from the Huguenot Heritage Society came this  week.
> The periodical had not been published for nearly a year because of  the
> death of the organization's long time guiding light, Jack Strang, a  distant
> relative.  We both trace ancestry to the same Huguenot immigrants who  left
> France in 1685 at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV and
> his minister, Cardinal Richlieu, and arrived, buy way of a three year  stint
> in England, at New York's New Rochelle in 1688.

That was a time of religious tension in England.  Charles II died in 
1685 and was succeeded by his RC brother James II (and VII of 
Scotland).  He was suspected of being pro-French and wanting to be an 
absolute monarch like his father (Charles I) had been.  Suspicion turned 
to opposition in June 1688 when a Catholic heir was born and the middle 
classes turned to William of Orange and invited him to mount an invasion 
over.

A number of Protestant leaders in the army defected to William when he 
arrived on 5 November, coincidentally the anniversary of the attempt to 
assassinate James I on the Gunpowder Plot. James declined to fight 
despite the numerical superiority of his army and tried to flee to 
France but was captured.  However he was allowed to escape from his 
Dutch guards and made it to France just before Christmas.

Roger