Some 700 refugees flooded into Rye in the space of six days and the English Channel was dotted with boats full of men, women and children fleeing from religious massacres – but they were Protestant Huguenots and this was the 16th century. “The Huguenots” featured in last week’s talk at Rye Castle Museum’s East Street premises, as part of a four month long festival in London and the South East, celebrating the lives and talents of the Huguenot refugees who fled to England from Catholic persecution in France.
“The Huguenot Summer” festival has been organised around Spitalfields in London, where many of them settled and in co-operation with the City of London Corporation; but Rye is where many of these refugees first landed – and, indeed, some settled. (For more information on events go to www.huguenotsofspitalfields.org).
The museum talk, by former Mayor Jo Kirkham, was based on research she did a few years ago, for one of the many booklets available in the museum, on different aspects of Rye’s long and colourful history. The East Street museum features on the Spitalfields Huguenot website.
Events in France mirrored in many ways the tensions in England between Protestants and Catholics in the Tudor and Stuart periods, though the English state often encouraged the Huguenots, when it felt threatened by the Catholics – and the refugees proved to be a valuable resource in many parts of the English economy – from silk and shipping to finance in the City of London.
Rye had links to religious non-conformity, even before England under the Tudors broke away from the Papacy to form its own church, so it was an obvious choice for those fleeing persecution in mainland Europe in the 1500s and 1600s. After the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of Protestants in 1572, hundreds fled across the Channel to practise their skills, like weaving silk. Rye still has some mulberry trees, planted to feed the silkworms.
Some refugees returned home, when persecution lessened and religious freedom was restored in the late 1500s, only for persecution to slowly increase in the next century. Rye again housed about 1500 refugees in the late 1680s. Around 60-80,000 Huguenots in total settled and stayed in England and saw the transition from the Catholic James II to the Protestant William and Mary from Holland.