Excellence in Scholarship and Learning
Ireland’s Huguenots and Their Refuge
An Unlikely Haven
Raymond Pierre Hylton is Associate Professor of History at Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia. He has lectured and studied at University College, Dublin, and is the recipient winner of the National Huguenot Society Publishing Award for 1987.
Of the 200,000-odd Huguenots whose consciences
compelled them to leave France during the 17th–18th centuries,
some 10,000 chose to settle in that most unlikely of refuges –
Ireland. The story of why and how these most ardent of Protestant
believers found themselves in this most fervently Catholic of islands
is one of history’s great paradoxes.This book explores this
question and attempts to reveal precisely who these Huguenots were,
what they contributed to and received from their adopted land, and
why Huguenot ancestry is so respected and prized even among devout
Irish Catholics.
The true chronicle of Ireland’s Huguenots is, in opposition
to the narrow misrepresentations of the past, one of extraordinary
richness and variety, as befits an ethnic group whose influence
permeated into every nook of Irish life and society. Here are some
of the towering personalities that left such an imprint on Ireland’s
history, character and heritage: Henri, Earl of Galway; warrior
turned financial tycoon David Digues Latouche; the scholar/librarian
Elie Bouhereau; and many other greater and lesser luminaries.
Hardback ISBN: | 978-1-902210-78-0 |
Hardback Price: | £55.00 / $69.50 |
Release Date: | May 2005 |
Paperback ISBN: | 978-1-84519-079-7 |
Paperback Price: | £25.00 / $39.95 |
Release Date: | September 2013 |
Page Extent / Format: | 240 pp. / 229 x 152 mm |
Illustrated: | 24 illustrations |
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Prologue Lines in Ink
Introduction The French Non-Connection, Pre-Ormondite Huguenots, c.1569–1661
Part I The Ormondite Refuges
1 The Early Ormondite Refuge, 1662–1680
2 The Late Ormondite Refuge, 1681–1691
3 The Ormondite Years in Perspective, 1662–1691
Part II The Ruvignac Refuges
4 “Fortress Ireland”: The Linchpin – Portarlington's Saga,
1692–1720
5 “Fortress Ireland”: The Dublin Core, 1692–1745
6 “Fortress Ireland”: The Hinterlands: Lingering Questions
Part III Unfulfilled Refuge?
7 Matters of Faith and Politics
Epilogue Legends and Facts
Bibliography
Index
Hylton offers new insights into
Ireland’s Huguenot settlements, providing in many cases new
data on Irish Huguenot families and their function within Irish
society.
Eighteenth-century Ireland
Hylton highlights the key issues that hindered the development
of a cohesive Huguenot community in Ireland … He renders a
valuable service by situating Ireland’s Huguenot refugees
within a wider context. The text elegantly summarizes the period
in Huguenot history before the revocation of the Edict of Nantes
and traces how conflicts between politique and zealot Huguenots
had far-reaching consequences for the refugees in Ireland … He also provides helpful miniature biographies of many of the key
ecclesiastical and political actors within the French community
and those within the Irish establishment who rendered them aid.
Hylton’s care in recounting these incidents along with his
detailing of the Huguenot role in the Protestant ascendancy in Ireland
ensure that both specialist and nonspecialist readers can glean
important insight from the text. Hylton’s work also demonstrates
that genealogical interests can coexist with the concerns of professional
historians.
The Journal of British Studies
Hylton’s study has two distinct
merits. First, he has combed through archival sources, identifying
individuals, tracing their trades, social status, and family affiliations,
and attempting to assess their contribution to Irish social and
economic history. Second, he correctly argues that the three successive
waves of Huguenot immigration into Ireland were distinct. The incentives
offered in 1662 by the ‘act for encouraging protestant-strangers
and others, to inhabit and plant in the kingdom of Ireland’
attracted some two hundred French Protestants to Ireland; but they,
like the Flemish weavers who also came at this time, were economic
migrants rather than refugees… Hylton deserves credit for
debunking many of the myths that surround the Huguenot presence
in Ireland.
The International History Review
The Huguenot communities in Ireland
have long attracted interest. In particular, three investigators
– Grace Lawless Lee, Albert Carré and T.P. Le Fanu
– laid sturdy foundations of evidence and interpretation.
Raymond Hylton’s study, while generous in its acknowledgement
of the pioneers, goes far beyond them. So far as the sources are
concerned, it is unlikely that much will come to light to modify
his authoritative account of the successive stages of the settlements
in Ireland. Possibly the archives of particular families of Huguenot
origin will yield new information.
... Dr Hylton’s
account, originating in a doctoral dissertation, will now achieve
the wider circulation
that it deserves. The author
shows an impressive mastery of the detail and the contexts in his
painstaking treatment. In essence, he identifies three phases.
In
the earliest, French Protestants were welcomed into Ireland, thanks
to the patronage of the first Duke of Ormond and other Irish Protestant
landowners. These patrons were motivated by feelings of solidarity
with fellow Protestants and by hopes of economic gains. Already
the specialized skills and commercial contacts of the French immigrants
were appreciated. Next, in the 1680s came a second, larger influx:
the result of the dragonnades and the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. Finally, more were drawn into Ireland following William
III’s victories. Dublin remained a magnet. In addition, the
inland town of Portarlington and other provincial outposts attracted
immigrants, among whom veterans from the army were prominent.
The
provincial settlements were conceived as military bastions against
possible Catholic invasion. Dr Hylton suggests a total of between
8,000 and 10,000 Huguenots in early 18th-century Ireland, about
half of whom lived in Dublin. Portarlington may have contained
650,
with sizeable communities in Cork, Lisburn and Waterford.
This
is the fullest and most judicious account of the refuge in Ireland.
Proceedings
of The Huguenot Society
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