Authority in the French Church in Later Sixteenth-Century London

Abstract

The French Church at Threadneedle Street was first established after Edward VI granted a charter to persecuted strangers in 1550, making it the oldest of the French Huguenot Churches in England.¹ The community of the French Church was comprised of French-speaking refugees from northern France and the Low Countries following the Genevan Calvinist example. During this early period, the Polish Protestant Jan Laski, then superintendent of the Strangers’ Church in England, had produced the organizational work, Forma ac ratio, printed in French at Emden in 1556 and Dutch in 1557, which provided a blueprint for congregational discipline in the Church for at least one hundred years.² The death of Edward caused the communities to disband, with many returning to the continent, but after the accession of Elizabeth, the French Church was re-established in 1559. Edward Grindal, Bishop of London, a supporter of the stranger Churches, became, as bishop of the diocese, their official superintendent.³ By 1560, the Church began to order itself, electing elders and deacons in July of that year.⁴ However, Elizabeth I never formally confirmed Edward’s original charter, leaving the stranger Churches in an ambiguous and nervous position as to their status and permanence in England during this period.