Engraving from a set of the complete Bayeux tapestry, showing William the Conqueror’s troops crossing the English Channel and landing in Sussex, in The tapestry of Bayeux by Charles Alfred Stothard, published in 1823. Image credit: Wikipedia
As a retired French teacher and francophile I was naturally drawn to the idea that Roger Conant’s family might be of French origin.
F.O. Conant's monumental work can be read online
Its name, as Frederick Odell
Conant pointed out in his 640-page ‘History and Genealogy of the Conant Family
in England and America’ (1887), appears to be of Celtic origin. ‘It is possible
the family is descended from some Breton follower of William the Conqueror,’ he
suggested.
There’s another theory, even more intriguing for us today, at a time when thousands of peoples are fleeing war and persecution in their homelands. This is the tradition, mentioned by Clifford Shipton in his 1945 book about Roger, that the Conants were French Huguenot refugees.
Just as in England, the Reformation in France during the 16th century had been characterised by a rejection by many people of traditional aspects of Catholicism. Protestants refused to accept the authority of the Pope, rejected many symbols of ceremony and ritual and encouraged the reading of the Bible in vernacular language rather than in Latin.
The so-called reformed religion found supporters in every class of French society, including Marguerite de Navarre, sister of King Francois I of France. However French Protestants antagonised the king in 1534 when anti-Catholic posters appeared in Paris and other major cities, including one posted on the door of the royal bedchamber. Persecution of Protestants as so-called heretics and traitors soon followed. Their number in France grew during the 16th century, but never enough for any official change of religion as had happened in England.
St Bartholomew's Day Massacre by the 16th century Huguenot artist François Dubois. Image credit: Wikipedia
It’s true that at the time of Roger’s birth around 1592, France was being torn apart by religious wars between Catholics and Protestants, the latter often known by the term Huguenots. Twenty years earlier, on the night of 23-24 August 1572, the conflict had reached a height of savagery with the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Starting in Paris with the assassination of Huguenot leaders on the orders of the Catholic King Charles IX, it spread throughout France resulting in thousands of deaths. It’s been claimed that as many as 30,000 Huguenots perished.
The young Walter Ralegh,
depicted, left, with his half-brother Humphrey Gilbert, in a famous painting by
the Pre-Raphaelite artist Sir John Everett Millais (1870). The painting, on
loan from Tate Britain, was displayed at Budleigh Salterton’s Fairlynch Museum
in 2018 for an exhibition marking the 400th anniversary of Ralegh’s
death
An intriguing thought for people of East Budleigh is that the young Walter Ralegh, born around 1552 at the farmhouse of Hayes Barton just a mile or so west of Roger Conant’s home on Hayes Lane, is known to have fought on the Huguenot side as a teenager. He spent four years in France from 1568, and may even have witnessed the horrors of the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre.
Raleigh and his 'History of the World': This
portrait of Sir Walter Raleigh in All Saints’ Church, East Budleigh is a copy
of one of the best known portraits of Sir Walter formerly attributed to Zuccaro
but now to the monogrammist 'H' (? Hubbard) and dated 1588. It shows Raleigh in
court dress at the height of his favour with Queen Elizabeth I
Much later in his life, while a prisoner in the Tower of London, and writing his 'History of the World' (1614), he reflected: ‘The greatest and most grievous calamity that can come to any state is civil war; for therein subjects take arms against their prince, or among themselves, whereof followeth a misery more lamentable than can be described.’
It’s usually assumed that in Millais’ famous painting The Boyhood of Raleigh the two boys are listening to the sailor’s tales of exotic lands in the New World. But sometimes I wonder whether the sailor’s outstretched arm is pointing to France as he tells Walter and Humphrey of the persecution of the fellow-Protestants.
Two Huguenot-themed paintings by Sir John Everett Millais: Left, ‘Huguenot lovers on St Bartholomew’s Day’ and ‘Mercy: St Bartholomew’s Day 1572'. Image credit: Wikipedia and www.tate.org.uk
It’s an idea which may have struck the author John Buchan. In his 1911 book about Ralegh, he writes of how young Walter is inspired by tales told by an old merchant, Master Laurens, ‘a Frenchman of the Reformed faith and mightily incensed against the Pope’. Two paintings by Millais himself have the massacre of the Huguenots as their theme.
Henri IV of France, by
Frans Pourbus the Younger, and the Edict of Nantes of 1598 Image credit:
Wikipedia
The religious conflict continued until 1598, when the Protestant heir to the French throne, Henri de Navarre converted to Catholicism and was crowned king as Henri IV. One of his first acts was to issue the Edict of Nantes, which granted many rights to Huguenots.
Louis XIV, known as ‘Le Roi Soleil’ (The Sun King), in
a painting by Hyacinthe Rigaud. Image credit Wikipedia
The 17th century saw an increasing weakness in the
minority position of Huguenots, vastly outnumbered by Catholics in France. Finally,
in October 1685, Louis XIV, Henri IV’s grandson, took the foolish step of revoking
the Edict of Nantes. Protestantism was declared illegal. Its ministers were given two weeks to leave France unless they
converted to Catholicism.
Huguenot refugees arriving
in Antwerp after fleeing persecution in France, as depicted by the 19th
century Dutch artist Jan Antoon Neuhuys.
Image credit: Wikipedia
All other Protestants were prohibited from leaving the country, but in the face of religious persecution as many as 400,000 Huguenots fled for their lives. The exodus deprived France of many of its most skilled and industrious individuals, some of whom thenceforward aided the country’s rivals in the Netherlands and in England.
James II by Sir Peter Lely. Image credit:
Wikipedia
England may have seemed a strange choice for some of them. For at the time of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the country, strangely, had a Catholic king in spite of the Protestant nature of the Church of England. James II had succeeded to the throne on the death of his brother Charles II on 6 February 1685.
However, it was during the reign of this Catholic king that the first steps towards establishing religious freedom in England were made when on 4 April 1687 James issued his Declaration of Indulgence, also known as the Declaration for Liberty of Conscience. Penal laws enforcing conformity to the Church of England were suspended, and people were allowed to worship in their homes or chapels as they saw fit.
Evidently James saw the Declaration of Indulgence as a means of encouraging his fellow-Catholics to return from abroad, but a major result was the influx of Huguenots. It’s been noted that relatively few had arrived in the immediate aftermath of the Revocation, but in 1687 they arrived in large numbers.
Jacques Fontaine, as depicted ‘after an
original likeness in the possession of Miss Fontaine, Bexley, England’, reproduced
in Memoirs of a Huguenot Family, published by George P. Putnam, New York, 1853
Huguenots, particularly from Western France, crossed the English Channel and sought refuge in South West England. Devon seems to have given them a special welcome. One of them, Jacques Fontaine, published his memoirs in 1722.
Appledore Quay in 2004. Image credit: Sannse
He recalled landing on the North Devon coast at Appledore on 1 December 1685, and the sympathy shown by Devonians to the refugees in the nearby town of Barnstaple.
‘The good people of Barnstaple were full of compassion; they took us into their houses, and treated us with the greatest kindness. Thus God raised up for us fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters in a strange land.’
St Anne’s Chapel Image credit: Ethan Doyle White – Wikipedia
Barnstaple’s citizens even decided to make one of the town’s oldest religious buildings over to the refugees for their worship. This was the early 14th century St Anne’s Chapel, on Paternoster Row, where French language services were held until 1762.
According to the Guide to the Parish and non-Parochial registers of Devon & Cornwall 1538-1837, the Huguenot congregations in Devon were 'more numerous than in any other English county outside London and its vicinity, probably due to local diocesan sympathy'.
Jonathan Trelawny, Bishop of Exeter, by a follower
of the artist Godfrey Kneller. The painting is part of the Collection of the
Bishop’s Palace, Exeter Image credit: Wikipedia
But the West Country at the time of this Huguenot influx had a bishop who would be seen as a hero for his opposition to James II. A Cornishman by birth, he was Bishop of Bristol from 1685 to 1689. He was one of the Seven Bishops who opposed James II's 1687 Declaration of Indulgence and as a result were arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London on charges of seditious libel. The bishops said that whilst they were loyal to King James II, their consciences would not agree to allowing freedom of worship to Catholics even if it were to be within the privacy of their own homes as the Declaration proposed, and thus they could not sign.
The Trial of the Seven Bishops by the Victorian artist John
Rogers Herbert Image credit: Wikipedia
Trelawny was held for three weeks before trial, then tried and acquitted by a jury on 30 June to popular rejoicing.
St Mark's Church, Bristol, west front. Image credit: NotFromUtrecht - Wikipedia
As Bishop of Bristol, he had encouraged Huguenots in the city to found their own church what is now known as the Lord Mayor’s Chapel, on College Green.
Of course as far as the British population in general were concerned, the refugees were not universally welcomed in spite of their Protestant religion. Shown above is the title page of a pamphlet reproducing the speech to the House of Commons made by Sir John Knight, Mayor of Bristol in 1690 and the city’s Member of Parliament from 1690 to 1695. His speech was made in opposition to a House of Commons Bill of 1693 proposing the naturalisation of Foreign Protestants.
Reminiscent in its tone of many utterances by today’s politicians, Sir John complained of ‘the great noise and croaking of the Froglanders’ and urged the House that ‘the Sergeant be commanded to open the doors and let us first kick the Bill out of the House, then the foreigners out of the kingdom’.
Support by English bishops for the Huguenot immigrants was particularly vital when they were proposed as ministers of the Church of England. They were indeed foreign, after all, speaking with a strange accent and perhaps difficult to understand for some parishioners! No doubt sympathetic bishops like Trelawny would have pointed out to objectors that the refugees had suffered for their Protestant faith and that many of them would have been more knowledgeable of the Bible than most members of English congregations.
The horror with which events like the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre were viewed in England may have given Huguenots a heroic status in the eyes of many English people. They had after all suffered for their loyalty to the reformed faith. The same status would have been attached to them across the Atlantic, in the Protestant communities of New England.
Thomas Conant (1785-1870), as shown in ‘The Autobiography of Rev Thomas Conant’, published by Andrew F. Graves 1861 Image credit: https://commons.ptsem.edu
Thus it was that we find Roger’s descendant Thomas Conant, born on 5 October 1785 in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, proudly claiming a family link to Huguenots. In his autobiography, published in 1861 at Boston, he claims of Roger: ‘He was one of twelve brothers, six of whom being Protestants, fled into England from France, at the revocation of the edict of Nantz [sic], leaving behind them six other brothers, who were Papists.’
No doubt Thomas Conant firmly believed in the link. He tells us how in his youth he was ‘fond of balls and parties’, but at the age of 21 had undergone a spiritual conversion, spending an entire night in prayer. ‘I was for the first time in my life thoroughly convinced that there was no solid enjoyment in parties of pleasure, or in vain and sinful amusements, whatever; but I now had the conviction that there was something in religion of which I was ignorant, and which alone could furnish true peace of mind.’ Joining the First Baptist Church of Middleborough in Massachusetts, he obtained a license to preach and devoted his life to preaching in various New England communities.
Life for such a profession was not easy; he was totally dependant on voluntary contributions. On account of the prejudice against Baptists it was difficult to find places in which to preach, and there was sometimes open hostility, as occurred in a hall at Edgartown. ‘I was seized by a mob, while I was preaching, and dragged out of the hall backwards, down the stairs, and out of doors,’ he recalled. ‘I continued talking, however, all the time.’ In spite of such difficulties he lived until 85, dying in 1870.
Sadly however, his claim to Huguenot ancestry has been dismissed. Genealogist Frederick Odell Conant, pictured above, considered it briefly in his profile of Thomas Conant in the 640-page ‘History and Genealogy of the Conant Family in England and America: ‘Evidently Mr. Conant did not take the trouble to consult the accounts of the family then in print.’ As for the story of the twelve brothers, which apparently was told in other branches of the family: ‘Its absurdity is apparent.’
You can read about a truly French 17th century resident of East Budleigh at https://conant400.blogspot.com/2021/11/44i-french-connections-huguenot-claims.html
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