The Huguenots in London: How Refugees Transformed the Silk Trade | Reformation History for Sleep

We're now live on Spotify. 🎧 Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0QQo4TA... When Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes in October 1685, close to two hundred thousand French Protestants left France, and between forty and fifty thousand of them made for England. By 1700 about one person in twenty in a London approaching six hundred thousand souls was a French Protestant or the child of one. It is a small number to say and a large one to imagine, and it remade one of the capital's signature trades. The Huguenots were French Calvinists, shaped by psalms sung in unison, plain sermons, and discipline enforced by elders. After a century of civil war, massacre in 1572, and the engineered peace of 1598, they had grown into a settled, skilled middle class of weavers, silversmiths, watchmakers, merchants and bankers. Louis XIV's drive for one law, one king, one faith, pursued through office closures, dragonnades from 1681 and the demolition of temples, ended with the Edict of Fontainebleau, which outlawed Protestant worship, expelled pastors and forbade laypeople to leave. We'll explore every major chapter of their London story, from the night sailings in small boats and the relief count of thirteen thousand and fifty in December 1687, to the two quarters of Soho and Spitalfields, the garret looms with enlarged windows, throwing of organzine and tram, the drawboy on the frame, flowered silks, designers including Anna Maria Garthwaite and James Leman, the French Hospital of 1718, the smuggled French silks called the free trade, the Calico Acts, the cutters and the hangings of December 1769, the Spitalfields Act of 1773 with its Books of Rates, the Derby silk mill, the repeal of 1824, the distress recorded by Henry Mayhew, and the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty of 1860. From Versailles to the weaver town of Spitalfields, we'll follow the complete tale of conscience, skill and assimilation that gave English the word refugee from French refugie, left one word resistez in the Tower of Constance, and turned exile into industry before free trade and fashion closed the looms. Told in a calm and soothing style, this video invites you to relax, unwind, and drift off to sleep while experiencing the quiet endurance of the Huguenots of London and the world they wove from almost nothing. Please note that while the narrative is thoroughly based on historical research, its primary purpose is storytelling for entertainment and relaxation. As such, it is not intended to be used as a formal academic or scientific source. Chapters: 00:00 The Revocation That Impoverished France 03:45 Who the Huguenots Were 09:46 Civil War and Massacre 14:49 The Edict of Nantes as a Machine 21:31 One King, One Faith 29:35 Fontainebleau and Escape 38:33 Landing in London 47:29 Soho and Spitalfields 58:19 Garrets, Looms and the Drawboy 01:06:14 Designers and Institutions 01:16:02 Smuggling and Calico 01:23:24 Cutters and the Spitalfields Act 01:33:37 Repeal, Distress and Free Trade 01:47:05 Closing the Ledger Sources: The Huguenots in London | London Museum https://www.londonmuseum.org.uk/colle... Industries: Silk-weaving | British History Online (Victoria County History, Middlesex Vol. 2) https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch... Today in London industrial history, 1769: The Bold Defiance attack looms of silkweavers working below the agreed rate, Spitalfields | Past Tense, London Radical Histories https://pasttense.co.uk/2018/08/17/to... Huguenot and French London | The Proceedings of the Old Bailey https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/stati... Huguenot silk weavers in Spitalfields | Our Migration Story https://www.ourmigrationstory.org.uk/...