Category: historical fiction

I’m delighted to welcome Rosemary Griggs and her new book, The Dartington Bride, Daughters of Devon series, to the blog with Refugees in Elizabethan England.

Refugees in Elizabethan England

Current media coverage sometimes gives the impression that refugees and asylum seekers are a recent concern. Yet, throughout history, people have sought refuge in safer, more welcoming nations to escape persecution and conflict.

While researching for The Dartington Bride, I came across fascinating similarities between the difficulties encountered by refugees in Elizabethan England and those faced by asylum seekers today. Empathy for their predicament often became overshadowed by skepticism and doubt. This was particularly evident in difficult times, like the 1590s, when consecutive poor harvests led to higher prices and a scarcity of food.

The inspiration for my latest novel was a young Huguenot woman named Roberda, who married Gawen Champernowne in 1571. Her father, Gabriel de Lorges, Count of Montgomery, a Huguenot military leader, gained fame in 1559 for accidentally killing King Henri II of France in a jousting accident. Gawen’s father, Sir Arthur Champernowne, was the brother of Queen Elizabeth’s childhood governess and Chief Lady of the Privy Chamber, widely known as ‘Kat’ Astley. 

After the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris in 1572, Gawen’s father,  the Vice Admiral of the Fleet of the West, opened his doors to Roberda’s family at Dartington Hall in Devon.

Sixteenth century French Huguenots, like Roberda’s family, were not the first people to seek a haven in England.

Over two hundred years earlier, in 1336/37, King Edward III welcomed a substantial number of weavers from Flanders, where they were being mistreated by the aristocracy. However, compassion for their situation wasn’t the King’s only motive. He wanted them to bring their expertise in wool spinning, carding, and weaving to Kent. Instead of exporting wool as a raw material to be fashioned into cloth overseas, he wanted Kentish wool to be woven in England. As well as encouraging the settlers, King Edward banned the export of wool to the Netherlands and stopped the import of foreign cloth. As a protectionist measure, this scheme had limited success. However, the local population remained unsettled for a century because of the sudden arrival of so many newcomers.

The Black Death ravaged the whole of Europe in the mid-fourteenth century. As communities recovered, industries flourished again and trade became buoyant. By the time the Tudors came to power in England in the late fifteenth century, people were choosing to move around more, seeking opportunities or escaping hardship.

For example, Breton carpenters arrived in the west of England during the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. We can still see examples of their work can in churches in Devon and also in Cornwall, where a common language and culture may have smoothed over potentially difficult situations.

Throughout this time, the incomers came as a trickle, not a flood. But during the reign of another Edward, Edward VI, a larger wave of refugees made their way to England. They were Protestants seeking to escape persecution in the Low Countries and France. King Edward permitted them to settle in England and granted them the right to establish their own ‘Strangers Churches.’ (The term refugee was unknown in Tudor England — people called the new arrivals ‘strangers’ or ‘aliens’.) In 1550, the King gave the predominantly Dutch-speaking incomers the church at Austin Friars, while another church, in Threadneedle Street, served French-speaking immigrants. The Strangers Church in Soho, where a slightly higher class of refugees settled, soon followed.

After Edward’s death in 1553, Mary became queen. She ordered the Protestant immigrants to leave the country. But in 1558, she too died. Elizabeth I was more welcoming. She offered asylum and protection to all seeking to escape persecution, but was particularly keen to welcome Protestants from the Spanish Netherlands. In 1568, King Philip of Spain sent the Duke of Alba to the Spanish colony to impose his Catholic authority there, causing many Protestants to seek refuge elsewhere. Later that same year, the Duchess of Parma, who was acting as regent, told her brother, King Phillip, that around 100,000 people had fled to England, taking their goods and money with them. She expressed concern that this would enrich England at the expense of the Spanish Netherlands.

But when they arrived in England, the newcomers had to settle in designated towns and worship in their own churches. These churches were required to provide for the poor sick in their own congregations. The churches also had to enforce stringent regulations to govern the conduct of their community. The immigrant communities thus became somewhat isolated from their neighbours.

By 1572, the French Wars of Religion had been going on for ten years, periods of fierce fighting interspersed with intervals of uneasy peace. The treaty of St Germain-en-Laye, signed in 1570, brought the third war of religion to an end. It secured some concessions for the Protestants, but some catholics felt it went too far. Tensions were again rising.

Many Huguenots were in Paris on August 24, St Bartholomew’s Day, to celebrate the wedding of their leader, Henry of Navarre, to the catholic king Charles’ sister, Marguerite. The hope was that the marriage would cement the peace between the two religious factions. It’s thought that the French King, Charles IX, sanctioned murdering several Huguenot leaders accused of planning rebellion.

The targeted assassinations ignited an unprecedented  massacre, when mobs roamed the streets hunting down Huguenots. They killed everyone who did not show their catholic allegiance by wearing a white armband or a white cross in their hats. Some sources suggest that as many 3,000 Protestants perished in Paris alone. The mobs did not spare even the women and children.

The Queen Mother of France, Catherine de Medici, has historically blamed for the atrocity, although recent scholars, including Estelle Paranque, argue that she is unlikely to have plotted a massacre of the people with whom she has been trying for decades to negotiate peace.

Violence soon spread beyond the city. Throughout October, mass killings persisted in various French cities, including Rouen, Lyon, Bourges, Bordeaux, and Orleans, leading to around 70,000 additional deaths across France.

After these tragic events in France, refugees flooded into England. They arrived in Dover, Canterbury, London, and Norwich. Others may have entered through Devon ports such as Dartmouth and Plymouth, which had, for generations, traded with Normandy and Brittany.

Initially, the tragic events in France led to a massive surge of solidarity with the Huguenots. Queen Elizabeth and all the court wore mourning clothes.

The English Protestant community, people like Sir Arthur Champernowne, were sympathetic to fellow believers fleeing France. They saw the tragic events in Paris as a signal that they must be vigilant against a perceived Catholic threat. Elizabeth and her chief adviser, William Cecil, Lord Burghley, continued to extend a welcome to skilled refugees. The authorities protected them from local opposition, regulated their activities and taxed them to the full. By the 1580s, new arrivals had to navigate tough social, legal, work, and tax conditions.

The refugees received a warm welcome in Norwich and other eastern towns. They brought special skills and new techniques in weaving, helping to revive the cloth trade, which was in serious decline. Large numbers of weavers settling in Kent received a similar welcome as they could create lighter fabrics made from a mix of fibres (not only wool), for export. The queen gave the growing immigrant population in Canterbury permission to use the undercroft of the Cathedral for their worship. Later they were allowed to use the Black Prince Chantry, still in use to this day.

Against all the odds, Roberda’s father made a dramatic escape from the Paris massacre and Sir Arthur welcomed the Montgomery family to his home. However, not everyone showed the same level of acceptance. The queen’s government gladly received the incomers, dispersed them into various parts of England, and encouraged to resume their occupations. But for many English working people, sympathy and welcome would quickly turn into suspicion and distrust.

‘Foreigners’ were not popular in Tudor England. At the start of King Henry VIII’s rule, the number of immigrants was small, possibly two per cent of London’s population. However, the court and aristocracy favoured foreign merchants who provided luxury goods like silk, wool, and exotic spices. The exemption of Flemish cobblers from Guild design provisions gave them a competitive edge over English workers. Resentment grew amongst English merchants and the working population. In 1517, an inflammatory xenophobic speech by a preacher known as Dr Bell brought already simmering discontent to a boiling point. On 30 April a mob of 2,000 looted buildings, and caused chaos on the streets of the City. Hundreds of rioters were arrested for disturbing the peace and for treason. Fourteen men were executed before the King heeded Queen Catherine of Aragon’s pleas for mercy and granted pardons. This event became known as the “Evil May Day riot” — see also below.

After Queen Mary married Philip of Spain in 1554, Simon Renard, the Ambassador to the Holy Roman Empire and an employee of Emperor Charles V, observed,

‘It will be very difficult to foster good relations between Spaniards and Englishmen. There is the barrier of language, and… the English hate strangers.’

People harboured a  particularly deep dislike for the French, whom they referred to as ‘the old enemy,’ after enduring centuries of wars. When Roberda’s family came to England in 1572, there were many Devon families who still had memories of fathers and grandfathers who never returned from King Henry VIII’s last campaign in France. That campaign and the loss of the Mary Rose were within living memory.

While some believed immigrants would take jobs from locals, others argued they sought better lives and higher-paying jobs, not just to escape persecution. But England needed the important skills they brought with them. Elizabeth’s reign saw many skilled craftsmen arrive — weavers and cloth workers, silversmith, watchmakers — as well as clergymen, doctors, merchants, soldiers, and teachers. It has been tentatively suggested that French Protestant refugees may have played a role in establishing the bobbin lace industry in Honiton, Devon.

It was probably the newcomers’ ability to use their skills for monetary gain that caused a resurgence of resentment, distrust, and fear. In 1576 the cordwainers (shoemakers), concerned about long-term competition from the newcomers, complained to the queen asking whether she would allow the ‘strangers’ to remain in the country with full rights of citizenship.

The population of England rose by around one million during the Elizabethan period. According to historian W. G. Hoskins, Devon, the most sparsely populated county in England in the fourteenth century, had become one of the most densely populated by the end of the sixteenth. A string of poor harvests in the 1590s caused flour prices in London to nearly triple between 1593 and 1597. Hostility towards immigrants rose as the number of unemployed individuals, or ‘vagabonds’, increased.

English working families struggled with rampant inflation while businesses resented what they saw as unfair competition. In 1592, London shopkeepers complained the strangers could sell their goods in areas forbidden to others. Unrest spilled onto the streets in riots amongst the London apprentices. Curfews were imposed and several royal proclamations sought to prevent riots. In December 1593, the Mayor prohibited football playing or other unlawful assemblies, and in June 1595, another directive required ‘apprentices and servants to be kept within their masters houses on Sabath dayes and holy dayes,’ and ‘idle persons’ to be committed to Bridewell’. London citizens even accused immigrants of causing a plague outbreak in 1593 and attacked their homes. Soon the French and Dutch were being blamed for all the problems in England.

It is thought that William Shakespeare may have collaborated with others on a late Elizabethan play, ‘The Book of Thomas Moore.’ The authors composed and revised the manuscript from 1593 to 1600. A scene in the play is significant as it portrays Londoners calling for the expulsion of the ‘wretched strangers’ in their community. This refers to the 1517 ‘Evil May Day riots’, mentioned above. Including this scene implies that intolerance towards immigrants persisted in late Elizabethan England.

In The Dartington Bride, scarred by her own childhood experiences in France, Roberda is determined to help others whose lives have been blighted by conflict. After considering the evidence that the ‘strangers’ were not universally accepted, I realised she might face an uphill struggle. It seems those seeking refuge in Elizabethan England met with obstacles, attitudes and sentiments very similar to those facing the asylum seekers of our time.

Rosemary Griggs

            21 March 2024

I have drawn this article together from a wide range of sources including:

W.G. Hoskins: Devon

Estelle Paranque — Blood , Fire and Gold

Jane Marchese Robinson: Seeking Sanctuary -—A History of Refugees in Britain

H. J. Yallop: The History of the Honiton Lace industry

British Library Medieval manuscripts Blog. 13 November 2021: ’Strangers’ in Tudor England and Stewart Scotland

Two articles form ‘The Conversation’: ‘Refugees and riots in Shakespeare’s England’ published March 17, 2016,  and ‘The asylum seekers who frightened Elizabethan England’ published January 21.

Here’s the blurb

1571, and the beautiful, headstrong daughter of a French Count marries the son of the Vice Admiral of the Fleet of the West in Queen Elizabeth’s chapel at Greenwich. It sounds like a marriage made in heaven…

Roberda’s father, the Count of Montgomery, is a prominent Huguenot leader in the French Wars of Religion. When her formidable mother follows him into battle, she takes all her children with her.

After a traumatic childhood in war-torn France, Roberda arrives in England full of hope for her wedding. But her ambitious bridegroom, Gawen, has little interest in taking a wife.

Received with suspicion by the servants at her new home, Dartington Hall in Devon, Roberda works hard to prove herself as mistress of the household and to be a good wife. But there are some who will never accept her as a true daughter of Devon.

After the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Gawen’s father welcomes Roberda’s family to Dartington as refugees. Compassionate Roberda is determined to help other French women left destitute by the wars. But her husband does not approve. Their differences will set them on an extraordinary path…

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Meet the author

Author and speaker Rosemary Griggs has been researching Devon’s sixteenth-century history for years. She has discovered a cast of fascinating characters and an intriguing network of families whose influence stretched far beyond the West Country and loves telling the stories of the forgotten women of history – the women beyond the royal court; wives, sisters, daughters and mothers who played their part during those tumultuous Tudor years: the Daughters of Devon.

Her novel A Woman of Noble Wit tells the story of Katherine Champernowne, Sir Walter Raleigh’s mother, and features many of the county’s well-loved places.

Rosemary creates and wears sixteenth-century clothing, a passion which complements her love for bringing the past to life through a unique blend of theatre, history and re-enactment. Her appearances and talks for museums and community groups all over the West Country draw on her extensive research into sixteenth-century Devon, Tudor life and Tudor dress, particularly Elizabethan.

Out of costume, Rosemary leads heritage tours of the gardens at Dartington Hall, a fourteenth-century manor house and now a visitor destination and charity supporting learning in arts, ecology and social justice.

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