London Huguenot Silver

Abstract

For the purposes of this survey, the following definition has been adopted: silver plate made in London by French-speaking Protestant silversmiths, who had decided to leave France or the Southern Netherlands (now Belgium and northern France) during the various periods of religious persecution in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It has been decided to include with the French Protestants, those who were listed as ‘Walloons’; they spoke a related dialect and, to the average Englishman, were virtually indistinguishable from the French Protestants. Indeed, around 1570 the French-speaking church that existed alongside the Dutch one at Sandwich (Kent), for example, was predominantly Walloon and in 1591 the minister of the Walloon/French church of London, Jean Castel, reported that the greatest part of his congregation came not from France but from ‘Hannonii, Artesii, Flandri, Gallicani, that is, sprung out of the countries which obey the Spaniard’ — in today’s terms, the Franco-Flemish area approximating to that of modern Belgium.1 This account will attempt to assess their contribution to the formulation of new fashions and tastes among the English patrons and to the adoption of new techniques by the London craftsmen.