EARLY MODERN MIGRATION to Britain c. 1500-1730

Question 1

why did the WALLOONS AND HUGUENOTS come to Britain?

Answer 1

• the reformation divided Europe between Catholic and Protestant states. England became a protestant country.
• In the 1560s Walloons (from what is now now Belgium) were suffering under the Spanish Catholic rule of the Duke of Alba and came to England.
• after the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s day in Paris 1572 when over 10,000 Huguenot Protestants were murdered, many fled to England.
• A second, larger, wave of Huguenots fled from France in the 1680s when King Louis XIV revoked a previous royal edict protecting Protestants and they were again attacked.

Question 2

how were the WALLOONS AND HUGUENOTS treated?

Answer 2

• most Walloons and Huguenots were well received because they were seen as allies and fellow Protestants.
• When the biggest wave of Huguenots came in the 1680s they were granted denotation by King Charles II, mainly because they were victims of the French King Louis XIV (England’s greatest enemy at the time).
• Walloons and Huguenots were allowed there own churches.
• Although some were rich, with relatives already living here, many refugees were poor and dependent on handouts. the Anglican Church organised collections of money to help support the refugees.
• Walloons and Huguenots settled mainly in London and SE of England, often setting up communities in distinct areas such as Soho in London.

Question 3

what was the political impact of the WALLOONS AND HUGUENOTS?

Answer 3

NONE

Question 4

what was the economic impact of the WALLOONS AND HUGUENOTS?

Answer 4

• the Huguenots had a huge economic impact on Britain.
• they revitalised the silk weaving trade, kick-started various manufacturing industries, such as cutlery making in Sheffield, and investing heavily in growing businesses.
• the skills and energies of Huguenot immigrants played an important part in the transformation of Britain into Europe’s major industrial power.
• they also introduced many other skills to England, such as feather and fan work, high quality clock making, woodcarving, paper making and clothing design.

Question 5

what was the social impact of the WALLOONS AND HUGUENOTS?

Answer 5

• over a few generations, Huguenots integrated well into British society. Up to a quarter of Londoners may have some Huguenot ancestry.
• Huguenot fashions and styles, influenced by their own craftspeople, became fashionable.
• Walloons and Huguenots were allowed their own places of worship. at that time the same freedom was not allowed to English Nonconformists or Catholics.
• However, the allowances given to Protestant refugees paved the way to make British society more open to religious differences.

Question 6

why did the Rhineland Palatines come to Britain?

Answer 6

• the Rhineland Palatines came from Middle Rhine, part of which is now Germany.
• they were suffering under French Catholic landlords and very poor harvest.
• they came because of a 1709 law, the Foreign Protestants Naturalisation Act, which invited European Protestants to come and settle in Britain.
• Some Palatines also migrated because they hoped to travel from England to a new life in N America.

Question 7

how were the Rhineland Palatines treated?

Answer 7

• when 13000 Rhineland Palatine Germans arrived in the Thames estuary in 1709, £20000 was raised by church congregations to support them because they were seen as fellow protestants. However, their initial welcome did not last.
• they arrived at a time of rising poverty in England with high food prices and rising taxes.
• local authorities in London feared that Palatines would be classed as “vagrants” that by law they would have to support under the Poor Laws.
• when it was discovered that 1/3 of the immigrants were in fact Catholics and arriving because of poverty and not persecution, sympathy for them drained away.
• in the short term, the government set up refugee camps in Blackheath and Clerkenwell, near London.
• the longer term solution was to ship the Palatines to America but that proved too expensive so the Government planned to send them to Ireland instead.
• A few refused and managed to find their way to America. Most returned to they homeland, leaving a very few to try to survive in England. for those 3000 that did go to Ireland, it was a disaster.
• they were hated by the local Catholic who were suffering under English rule, could not apply their farming skills in a different environment, and were as poor as they had been in Germany.

Question 8

what was the political impact of the Rhineland Palatines?

Answer 8

as a result of the arrival of the Rhineland Palatines, the Foreign Protestants naturalisation Act was repealed in 1712. Britain no longer had an “open border” policy for European migrants.

Question 9

why did the returning jews come to Britain?

Answer 9

• after the execution of Charles I, a small number of Jews were allowed to return, nearly 400 years after they were expelled from England.
• in 1655 Oliver Cromwell submitted a petition to the Council of State calling for Jews to be allowed to return to Britain. Ultimately it was decided that as England’s Jews had been expelled in 1290 by a king, and there were no longer kings ruling England, the previous expulsion had no basis.
• Cromwell accepted Jews for several reasons. he thought they might be a source of revenue and help him fight against his catholic enemies.
• he was also persuaded by Dutch rabbi Menasseh Ben Israel to help Jews fleeing persecution in many parts of Europe.
• Cromwell shared a widely held view that the end of the world was coming. In keeping with Bible teaching, he believed that Jews would be recalled from the four corners of the world at the time of the last judgement.

Question 10

how were the returning jews treated?

Answer 10

• Cromwell initially met with resistance at the Whitehall Conference in December 1655 but overruled them.
• When the first group arrived from Spain in 1656 they came quietly, settling in East London and building a synagogue
• they did not have full rights but they were allowed to trade and work in finance, as well as construct their own synagogues
• small communities grew up in London and some other coastal cities.
• some became rich but others were poor street traders who probably experienced some prejudice and discrimination.

Question 11

what was the economic impact of the returning jews?

Answer 11

jewish businesses contributed to the economy and helped to develop coastal towns such as Hull, Portsmouth, Plymouth and Liverpool.

Question 12

what was the social impact of the returning jews?

Answer 12

as with the Walloons and huguenots, Jewish refugees were granted religious freedoms to worship as they wished. this paved the way to similar freedoms for other groups and helped make British society more open to religious differences.

Question 13

why did the gypsies come to Britain?

Answer 13

during the late medieval and Tudor period, nomadic Roma gypsies began arriving in England, working as farmworkers and entertainers. Over the centuries they had migrated from Northern India through Central Europe.

Question 14

how were the gypsies treated?

Answer 14

• gypsies suffered extreme persecution.
• they moved from place to place at a time when most people still lived all their loves in the same village.
• their nomadic lifestyle meant that they existed outside the control of the authorities, and they were seen as a threat.
• they faced a lot of prejudice and in the 16th century there were several attempts to expel them from the country.
• in 1530 King Henry VIII ordered that all Gypsies should be expelled from England.

Question 15

what was the social impact of the gypsies?

Answer 15

• despite the prejudice faced by Roma gypsies, there remains a sizeable traveller community in Britain, which has grown with the influx of Irish travellers in the 19th century
• aspect of gypsy language have also been integrated into English such as “bar” and “gibberish”.

Question 16

why did the Africans in Tudor England come to Britain?

Answer 16

• after the reformation, when King Henry VIII rejected the Catholic Church, relations between the Protestant English and Muslim North African governments were good because they had a common enemy in Catholic Spainish.
• the North Africans resented the fact that Spanish forces had re-conquered Spain and taken control away from its previous Moorish rulers.
• other African immigrants were Moors who had come directly from Spain.
• they may, like one of the attendants of Queen Catherine of Aragon, have been Muslims who converted to Christianity.
• Other immigrants came from West Africa. they included the son of a prince sent to England for an education, a group who had been enslaved on a Portuguese ship which attacked by and English ship. they were brought to England to learn English: the plan was for them to become translators.

Question 17

how were Africans in Tudor England treated?

Answer 17

• from what we can tell, Africans living in Tudor England lived quiet lives in a range of occupations including court trumpeter, needle maker and servant.
• Black people living in England were free.
• racist attitudes existed but were not yet dominant and there are lots of examples of black people being treated fairly at this time.
• when John Blanke, one of King Henry VIII’s trumpeters, asked for a pay rise the king granted it. Henry also gave Blanke and his bride a wedding gift.
• religious difference mattered far more than “racial” difference in Tudor England and it may have been far easier to be black than to be catholic.

Question 18

what was the social impact of the Africans in Tudor England?

Answer 18

not much is known about this group as only a small amount of research has been carried out so far but we know that African people did live normally and were accepted into English society.

Question 19

why did Africans and Indians during the early years of enslavement and empire 1560-1730 come to Britain?

Answer 19

• in 1660, the monarchy under King Charles II set up the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa (which later became the Royal African Company).
• it had a monopoly over trade with West Africa, protected by the Royal Navy. English involvement in the trade in enslaved Africans grew rapidly.
• the small number of free Africans in England were joined by others who arrived because of enslavement.
• how most came to Britain is unknown.
• some came directly from the Caribbean and North America as servants.
• By the mid-18th century Britain dominated trade in Asia and the East India company took control of India.
• several of the English people who went as employees of the company hired Indian children and women as wet nurses/nannies for their children.
• when they returned home they sometimes brought the child servants and nannies (ayahs) with them. they wanted to continue in England the opulent lifestyle they had enjoyed in India.

Question 20

how were Africans and Indians during the early years of enslavement and empire 1560-1730 treated?

Answer 20

• the fashion for wealthy families to have and show off African or Indian child servants, seen in many paintings of the time, meant that many children lived far from their families.
• they were often well looked after, but also patronised. their lives may have been lonely, surrounded by people of an alien culture and language. some, when they were no longer children, were abandoned.
• the law was confused. enslavement in the colonies was allowed by law, but not lawful in Britain.
• Some africans and Indians working as servants were not free, as it is clear from court cases and advertisements about runaways. However, court and parish records also show that others were treated equally.
• treatment of servants varied from kindness to extreme violence.
• in a few cases black people were actually sold into slavery in Britain, and some owners treated their servants as slaves even though the law in theory protected them.
• most black residents appear to have lived ordinary lives and worked alongside white maids, washerwomen, labourers, cooks and sailors, sharing their lives.
• there were black people in many occupations including innkeepers, barmaids and farm labourers.

Question 21

what were the economic impacts of Africans and Indians during the early years of enslavement and empire c. 1560-1730?

Answer 21

• financed by the banks and insurance companies, businesses shipped goods, such as guns and metalware, to west Africa
• there the guns were exchanged for enslaved people who were transported to the Americas to be sold ad work on plantations.
• the commodities they produced, sugar and tobacco above all, were shipped to Britain and sold to generate great profits for the trading companies.
• africans who came to Britain were caught in this system and part of what built Britian’s wealth.

Question 22

what were the social impacts of Africans and Indians during the early years of enslavement and empire c. 1560-1730?

Answer 22

• the racist idea that darker skinned people were inferior began to spread and influence social relations.
• negative references to people of African and Indian origin, with comments on their blackness, became increasingly common.
• as religious divisions became less significant, “racial” ones became more noted.
• whereas Africans in Tudor England seem to have lived easily within wider society, now relationships between black and white people were affected by racial ideas.