Robin Gwynn<scp>:</scp>The Huguenots in Later Stuart Britain. Volume <scp>III</scp>. The Huguenots and the Defeat of Louis <scp>XIV</scp>'s France. Liverpool; Liverpool University Press, 2023; pp. xxiii +449

This is the final volume of a trilogy, which brings together half a century of archival research by the author into the fate of the Huguenot refugees who fled from France and settled in Britain ― largely in England and predominantly in London, although there is one recorded settlement in Scotland (at Edinburgh) ― from the 1680s to the opening decade of the eighteenth century. The central thesis of this monumental work (total pp. lxi + 1291) is that the Huguenot refugees “critically influenced the course of events in mainline English and European history” (Gwynn, Volume I. Crisis Renewal and the Ministers' Dilemma, 2015, p. 1). There is much truth in this contention; however, Gwynn tends to over-argue it, at times polemically, as is the case in the volume under review. This third volume (itself in three parts) focuses on the political aspects of the Huguenot presence in a Britain that was at war with France from 1689 to 1713, albeit with a cessation of armed hostilities between 1697 and 1701. In Part I, Gwynn considers the “critical role” the French refugees played “largely unintentionally, in what unfolded at the time of the [so-called Glorious] Revolution” (p. 38, also p. 18) of 1688, when the Protestant William of Orange invaded England and acceded to the throne, as the reigning Catholic James II had fled to France. Largely unintentionally, because their impact was related to the socio-political context in which they found themselves, the timing of their arrival, and the numbers arriving. Gwynn rightly reminds us that the Huguenots crossing the Channel came into a fearful society which was in political turmoil as a result of the Popish Plot (1678) with the popular panic it engendered, the Exclusion crisis (1679–1681), and the accession of James II, with his overt Catholicism, to the throne of England, Scotland and Ireland (6 February 1685). Huguenot immigration into England differs from that to other continental Protestant states in as much as it had twin peaks. The first occurred in 1681 in the wake of the dragonnades (the billeting of mounted infantry on Protestant households to intimidate them into abjuration); the second not from winter 1685 to spring 1686 (as on the continent) — at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes when Protestantism was proscribed and churches razed to the ground — but in 1687, following the Declaration of Indulgence proclaimed by James II, which suspended the laws requiring conformity to the Church of England and granted toleration to Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters. This measure ramped up the ever-present anti-popery sentiments of the English while concomitantly attracting Huguenots in search of religious freedom to take refuge in England. They could be heard speaking French on the streets in the east and west London suburbs of Spitalfields and Westminster; they were known to be seeking financial and other assistance between 1685 and the end of 1687—some fifteen thousand (excluding those who had arrived before the Revocation), with some twenty thousand still in need of assistance in March 1688, and others arriving daily. Gwynn estimates that upwards of 50,000 French Protestant refugees fled to England over the whole period studied, which is a higher number than heretofore believed, with an estimated 33,611 present in London and the provinces by 1690 (Volume II. Settlement. Churches and the Role of London, 2018, pp. 197–8). They were a highly visible and vocal minority, bearing witness to the suffering and losses that had turned them into refugees, and which made them living examples, in English eyes, of the future outcomes likely to result from a Catholic Stuart monarchy. In other words, their very presence was a reminder, on the one hand, of so-called popish cruelty and, on the other, of the hegemonic ambition of Louis XIV and the threat that was seen to pose to the Protestant nations of Europe. In this way, they contributed unintentionally to the Williamite cause especially in England, but also internationally. However, the Huguenot contribution to the Williamite cause was also undeniably intentional, as Gwynn argues in Part II, when considering the Irish Wars, 1689–1692 during which the Huguenot component (one cavalry and three infantry regiments) contributed to the defeat of the Jacobite army and the 6,000 troops sent by Louis XIV from France. The author is particularly on the defensive in this section in his determination to defend the reputation of Frederick Herman von Schomberg, commander-in-chief of William's expeditionary forces in Ireland until his death at the battle of the Boyne (1 July 1690). Thus, the critique by previous historians of Schomberg's overly cautious command of the Irish campaign is dismissed by Gwynn as “unreasonable” because it was based on “spurious personal attacks” lacking “serious evidence” (p. 91). Even more surprising, perhaps, is the author's contention that the defeat of the Jacobite troops at the battle of Aughrim (12/22 July 1691), was “their [i.e., the Huguenots] victory” (p. 106, author's italics). The Huguenot infantry was certainly on the front line and the Huguenot horse did extraordinary service, consequently suffering much greater losses proportionally than the rest of the multinational Williamite forces. However, contemporary sources speak rather of the “extraordinary valour” of all involved in this the bloodiest battle fought on Irish soil in which an estimated seven thousand died. Gwynn's stated aim is to demonstrate the critical importance of the Huguenot refugees “to the future of England, Ireland and […] France” (p. 170, italics mine), which probably explains his overeagerness in interpreting their contribution to the reduction of Ireland by the armies of William III. The author plays to his strengths in Part III, which is based on archival research into the role played by the refugees in the development of the Bank of England. No fewer than nine of the leading members of the French Reformed Church in Threadneedle Street, London, subscribed to the initial call for money by the Bank when it was founded in 1694. And casting the net more widely to include descendants of earlier refugees, Gwynn estimates that Huguenots in England were responsible for 10 per cent of the initial subscriptions and made up 11 per cent of the initial subscribers. Given that the Bank was founded with the specific purpose of advancing sums of money to the Crown “towards carrying on the war against France” (p. 123), the author rightly concludes that the refugees' financial contribution expressed a political commitment to defeating the “Catholic absolutism” (p. 145) that had caused their own undoing. At the outset of this monumental undertaking, Gwynn acknowledged that the period he writes about “is a minefield of disputed interpretations” (Volume I. Crisis Renewal and the Ministers' Dilemma, p. 9). Historians and informed readers may well take issue with some of Gwynn's interpretations. The author is surprisingly influenced by Jules Michelet's romantic historiography in which French Protestants are portrayed as harbingers of liberty in France (paving the way for the Revolution in 1789) and in Europe, starting with the “deliverance” of England in 1688 (p. 16). But scholars will value this trilogy for many years to come for the series of appendices incorporated into each volume: a biographical dictionary of Huguenot ministers in England (Volume I); lists of lay leadership in the churches (Volume II); lists of Huguenot military and of the elders and deacons of the Threadneedle Street Church, 1640–1713 (Volume III). Gwynn describes this aspect of his extraordinary achievement as “hopelessly ambitious” (Volume I, p. 8) given the extant sources. He is to be lauded for undertaking such a Sisyphean task and for the generosity with which he shares detailed references wherever possible to primary sources or works that cite them. One of the stated aims of this trilogy is to provide the next generation of scholars with a firm foundation with regard to sources so that they can approach the subject with confidence. Gwynn has accomplished this with aplomb.