French Anglicans : a clerical network in England and Ireland c.1640 - c.1685

Abstract

This thesis reconstructs and analyses the lives of a number of men who left France for England and Ireland over the seventeenth century and became clergymen in the Church of England and Church of Ireland. Such clergymen have been somewhat neglected in traditional histories of the Huguenots in England and Ireland. These have favoured other aspects of French Reformed migrant experience, focussing on migration post- 1685 and have stressed their commitment to maintaining the same ecclesiastical structure they had had in France. Gradually over the eighteenth century, these Huguenot communities became assimilated into English society, and their churches into the Anglican Church. The 'French Anglicans' who are the focus of this thesis offer an alternative experience of French Reformed migration. These clergymen left France several decades earlier than the wider French Reformed refugee community, some in the 1620s, and others in the 1660s and 1670s. All rather quickly joined the Church of England and Church of Ireland, and became firm defenders of its episcopal structure.