Abstract
England, as an island, and in part because she was an island, had always been accessible to European, or at least to Western European cultural influences. In a cultural sense the Channel had been a highway and not a moat. English culture was not insular but Western European long before the arrival in numbers of the Huguenot Diaspora of Louis XIV’s reign.1 The English constitution, it is true, was very different from that of any other European country, and it became increasingly different after 1689. The English became convinced that they had no political lessons to learn from any foreigner. Nor did European travel, in the form of the increasingly fashionable Grand Tour, do anything to diminish in Englishmen their sense of the superiority of the English political system; indeed, it seems often to have confirmed that sense of superiority, narrowed the English political mind, and reinforced national prejudices and stereotypes about foreigners.2 Moreover, if the Grand Tour in many cases did little to broaden the political horizons of those English aristocratic young bloods who were obliged to engage in it — and greatly irked some of them — the real sufferers seem usually to have been their French tutors, frequently Huguenots. A tutorship in a noble household may have constituted a lifebelt to a literate and penurious Huguenot of good family, but it also constituted for some an intolerable yoke.
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Notes
Sir George Clark, Three Aspects of Stuart England (London, 1960) pp. 1–23.
Jeremy Black, The British and the Grand Tour (London, 1985) pp. 164, 170, 172, 178–80, 183, 186, 236–7, 239; and ‘France and the Grand Tour in the Early Eighteenth Century’, Francia: Forschungen zur West-Europaischen Geschichte, ii (1984) p. 415
C. C. Barfoot, ‘A Patriot’s Boast: Akenside and Goldsmith in Leiden’, in J. van Dorsten (ed.) Ten Studies in Anglo-Dutch Relations (Leiden/Oxford, 1974) pp. 204–8.
J. R. Robinson, Philip, Duke of Wharton, 1698–1731 (London, 1896) pp. 11–13. For other cases, see G. C. Gibbs, ‘Abel Boyer Gallo-Anglus glossographus et historicus 1667–1729; from tutor to author, 1689–1699’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, xiv, pp. 48–55, and ‘some Intellectual and Political Influences of the Huguenot Emigrés in the United Provinces, c. 1680–1730’, Bfijdragen en] M[ededelingen betreffende de] G[eschiedenis der] N[ederlanden], 90/2 (1975) pp. 268–9; R. Sedgwick, History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1715–1754 (London, 1970) 2 vols, ii. p. 271; N. Japikse (ed.) Correspondentie van Willem III en van Hans Willem Bentinck, eersten graaf van Portland (Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatien, Kleine serie, 23) (’s-gravenhage 1927) 2 vols, i, pp. 526–8, letter from Thoyras Rapin, 2 March 1701, relating to the Grand Tour of Lord Woodstock.
G. C. Gibbs, ‘The Role of the Dutch Republic as the Intellectual Entrepôt of Europe in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’, BMGN, lxxxvi (1971) pp. 327–8.
For a comparative study of the three periodicals, see H. J. Reesink, L’Angleterre et la littérature anglaise dans les trois plus anciens périodiques français de Hollande de 1684 à 1709 (Zutphen, 1931)
for more detailed studies of two of the periodicals, see H. Bots (ed.) Henri Basnage de Beauval en de Histoire des ouvrages des savans, 1687–1709; Verkenningen binnen de Republiek der Letteren aan de vooravond van de verlichting (Amsterdam, 1976: Studies van het instituut voor intellectuele betrekkingen tussen de Westeuropese landed in de seventiende eeuw, 4) 2 vols
H. Bots, H. Hillenaar, J. Janssen, J. van der Korst and L. van Lieshout (eds) De ‘Bibliothèque universelle et historique’ (1686–1693): Een periodiek als trefpunt van geletterd Europa (Amsterdam, 1981: Studies, 7) especially pp. 10–48, 61–74 (for information on Le Clerc’s motives in launching the periodical, and on his editorial collaborators, de la Crose and Bernard).
Gibbs, ‘some Intellectual and Political Influences’, p. 273 (with the references cited in note 93). For foreign news in English newspapers see E.S. De Beer, ‘The English Newspapers from 1695 to 1702’, in Ragnhild Hatton and J. S. Bromley (eds) William III and Louis XIV: Essays 1680–1720 (Liverpool, 1968) pp. 124–5
G. C. Gibbs, ‘Newspapers, Parliament and Foreign Policy in the Age of Stanhope and Walpole’, in Mélanges Offerts à G. Jacquemyns (Brussels, 1968) pp. 298–302.
R. A. Day, Told in Letters: Epistolary Fiction before Richardson (Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1966) pp. 28–9.
De Beer, ‘English Newspapers’, p. 125; G. C. Gibbs ‘Newspapers, Parliaments and Foreign Policy’, pp. 301–2; M. A. Thomson, Some Developments in English Historiography during the Eighteenth Century (an inaugural lecture delivered at University College, London, 1956) p. 5.
De Bibliothèque universelle et historique, pp. 40–6; R.P. Bond (ed.) Studies in the Early English Periodical (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1957) pp. 33–4.
Reesink, ‘l’Angleterre et la littérature anglaise, pp. 130–1; Erich Haase, Einführung in die literatur des Refuge (Berlin, 1959) pp. 401–4; E. S. De Beer, ‘Huguenots and the Enlightenment’, Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, xxi, p. 185.
R. N. Cunningham, Peter Anthony Motteux 1663–1718 (Oxford, 1933) pp. 6, 85, 103–5
Huntington Brown, Rabelais in English Literature (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1933) pp. 126–7.
W. Graham, The Beginnings of English Literary Periodicals (New York, 1926) pp. 44–5, and English Literary Periodicals (New York, 1930) p. 57; Cunningham, Peter Anthony Motteux, pp. 9, 13–27, 50; Bond, Studies, pp. 20–1.
Ibid, pp. 24, 48; Bond, Studies, p. 21; J. Klaits, Printed Propaganda under Louis XIV (Princeton, 1976) p. 67
E. Sullert, Histoire de la presse feminine en France des origines à 1848 (Paris, 1966), p. 9
H. Bots (ed.) Pieter Rabus en De Boekzaal van Europe 1692–1702 (Amsterdam, 1974; Studies, 2) p. 42
Bertha-Monica Stearns, ‘The First English Periodical for Women’, Modern Philology, 28 (1930–1) pp. 45–59
G. E. Noyes, ‘John Dunton’s Ladies Dictionary, 1694’, Philological Quarterly, xxi, April, 1942, pp. 129–45.
F. C. Roe, Sir Thomas Urquhart and Rabelais: The Taylorian Lecture 7957 (Oxford, 1957) passim.
The Works of F. Rabelais, MD, Motteux’s ‘The Life of Dr Francis Rabelais’, p. i, Preface, pp. xliv, cvi, cx, cxv; E. I. Perry, From Theology to History: French Religious Controversy and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (The Hague, 1973) pp. 26 and 30.
T. P. Fraser, Le Duchat, First Editor of Rabelais (Geneva, 1971) pp. 41, 71, 73–4.
Ibid, pp. 40, 147, 159–61, 189; M. de Grève, ‘Les érudits du xviic siècle en quête de la clef de Rabelais’, Etudes Rabelaisiennes, v (Travaux d’humanisme et renaissance, lxv) (Geneva, 1964) pp. 48–52; Perry, From Theology to History, p. 7.
Cunningham, Peter Anthony Motteux, pp. 97, 103; G. Becker, Die aufnahme der Don Quijote in die englische litteratur 1605 bis c. 1770 (Berlin, 1902) pp. 23–5 (plagiarism by Charles Henry Wilmot).
Geoffrey Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 1680–1730 (London, 1982) pp. 256–7; Cunningham, Peter Anthony Motteux, p. 181.
Joseph Addison, The Freeholder (edited, with an Introduction and Notes by James Leheney) (Oxford, 1979) pp. 74–5, 89, 207.
Cunningham, Peter Anthony Motteux, pp. 191–2; The Freeholder, p. 48, note 4, and p. 52, note 3. For details of Motteux’s trial, see A. Boyer, The Political State of Great Britain, 60 vols (London, 1711–40) XV, pp. 425–36. There was some doubt as to whether Motteux was strangled or died accidentally of self-strangulation resulting from an excess of physical effort. Even if it was an accident, César de Missy observed in 1740, it was an accident ‘qui ne lui seroit jamais arrive s’il ne s’y fut exposé par une impuissance beaucoup trop volontaire’. (Remarques de Pierre le Motteux, pp. 17–18).
The Fellows were: Henri Justel, Denis Papin, Sir John Chardin and Frémont d’Ablancourt in Charles II’s reign; Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in James II’s reign; Louis Paule or Pau, Moises Pujolas, Abraham de Moivre, Basnage de Beauval, Paul Buissière, Pierre Silvestre and Le Vassor in the reign of William III; Jean Christophe Fatio de Duillier, elder brother of Nicolas, and the Rev. John Theophilus Desaguliers in Anne’s reign; and, in the reign of George I up to 1720, Claude Amyand, Albert Henri de Sallengre, and Pierre Desmaizeaux. I derive this information from The Record of the Royal Society of London (London, 1897) (Chronological Register of Fellows, pp. 384–96.)
Michael Hunter, The Royal Society and its Fellows 1660–1700: The Morphology of an Early Scientific Institution (London, 1982) pp. 24, 107, and his ‘Reconstructing Restoration Science: problems and pitfalls in institutional history’, Social Studies of Science (SAGE) (London and Beverly Hills, 1982) pp. xii, 461
J. S. Bromley, ‘Britain and Europe in the Early Eighteenth Century’, History, 66, no. 218 (October 1981) p. 394.
Robin D. Gwynn, Huguenot Heritage: The History and Contribution of the Huguenots in Britain (London, 1985) p. 5. The statement concerning Huguenot elections comes from figures in Hunter, The Royal Society.
Die mitglieder der deutsche akademie der wissenschaften zu Berlin 1700–1950 (Berlin, 1950) pp. 10–14, 56–61; J. Kämmerer, Russland und die Huguenotten im 18. jahrhundert (168SM789) (Wiesbaden, 1978) p. 100.
Dictionary of National Biography, xxx, pp. 231–2; René Ternos, ‘Les débuts de l’anglophilie en France’, Revue de littérature comparée, 13(1933) pp. 588–605.
E. R. Labrousse, ‘Les coulisses du journal de Bayle’, in Paul Dibon (éd.) Pierre Bayle le philosophe de Rotterdam: Etudes et documents (Paris, 1959) pp. 101, 102, 108.
P. Burke, ‘The Politics of Reformation History: Burnet and Brandt’, in A. C. Duke and C. A. Tamse (eds) Clio’s Mirror: Historiography in Britain and the Netherlands (Zutphen, 1985) pp. 80–1
E. S. De Beer (ed.) The Correspondence of John Locke (Oxford, 1976) vol. II, pp. 109–10, Letter 506. Justel to Locke, c. 24 September/4 October 1679.
Georges Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne devant l’opinion française, 2 vols (Paris, 1930), Vol. I, p. 231.
For Buissière, see Dictionary of National Biography, vii, p. 228; George C. Peachey, A Memoir of William and John Hunter (Plymouth, 1924) pp. 9–10; Holmes, Augustan England, pp. 168–235 (for an extended statement on the coming of the doctor and the medical profession, with a particular mention of Buissière on p. 198). For details of Silvestre’s life, see British Library, Additional MS 4288 (Birch, Letter to M. Des Maizeaux) f. 178 (no date, signed B. Silvestre)
Elisabeth Labrousse, Inventaire critique de la correspondence de Pierre Bayle (Paris, 1961) pp. 395–6; Randolph Vigne, ‘Mayerne and his successors, some Huguenot Physicians under the Stuarts’, lecture delivered to the Royal College of Physicians, 1985, published abridged and unannotated in the Journal of the Royal College of Physicians of London, 1986, pp. 224–5.
For details of de Moivre’s life, see Dictionary of National Biography, xxxviii, pp. 116–17; for a contemporary assessment of his work, see Maty, Mémoire sur la vie et sur les écrits de Mr Abraham de Moivre de la Société Royale de Londres et des Académies Royales de Paris et de Berlin (A La Haye, 1760); for the standing of mathematics in the seventeenth century, see G. N. Clark, The Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1950) p. 233.
Carl B. Boyer, A History of Mathematics (New York, 1968) pp. 464–7; A. Hald, ‘A de Moivre: ‘De Mensura Sortis’ or ‘On the Measurement of Chance’ (Philosophical Transactions, no. 329, for the months of January, February and March, 1711); Commentary on ‘De Mensura Sortis’, International Statistical Review (1984) pp. 52–3, 229–62. I wish to thank my colleagues at Birkbeck College, Dr E. H. Kronheimer and Professor P. Holgate for drawing my attention to these works, and for other bibliographical help with de Moivre.
F. N. David, Games, Gods and Gambling: The Origins and History of Probability and Statistical Ideas from the Earliest Times to the Newtonian Era (London, 1962) p. 172.
Sir George Clark, Science and Social Welfare in the Age of Newton (Oxford, 1970) 2nd edn, pp. 119–46.
J. T. Desaguliers, A Course of Experimental Philosophy (London, 1734) Preface.
W. A. Speck, ‘Politicians, Peers, and Publication by Subscription, 1700–50’, in I. Rivers (ed.) Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-century England (Leicester, 1982) p. 50.
R. S. Porter, ‘science, Provincial Culture and Public Opinion in Enlightenment England’, The British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 3, no I, Spring 1980, pp. 20–46.
Ibid, p. 44; Ascoli, La Grande-Bretagne, pp. ii, 66–7; N. Hodgson and C. Blagden, The Notebook of Thomas Bennet and Henry Clements 1686–1719, With Some Aspects of Book Trade Practice (Oxford, 1956) (Oxford Bibliographical Society. New series, vi (1953) pp. 15, 34.
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Gibbs, G.C. (1987). Huguenot Contributions to England’s Intellectual Life, and England’s Intellectual Commerce with Europe, c.1680–1720. In: Scouloudi, I. (eds) Huguenots in Britain and their French Background, 1550–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-08176-9_2
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