Hello Listers I am sharing this information with a few mailing lists connected with Huguenots and Walloons and also the Fens in general. This information is taken from the Introduction to the typed transcript of the Thorney French Register at the Cambridgeshire Records Office in Cambridge, England. These are extracts of the 6 page introduction. Because of it's length, I have put it into 2 emails. Part 1 contains some general history about the French/Walloon colonies that were at Hatfield, Sandtoft and Thorney, and Part 2 contains lists of names that were in the introduction. I hope you find it interesting, useful, and even groundbreaking. Regards David Anker --------------------------------------- This Register contains almost the only record of a colony of French or Walloon Protestant Refugees, whose existence is for the most part forgotten even by their own descendants. The names of these strangers - anglicised and corrupted often past recognition - are still to be found in every village and hamlet throughout the fen-country. .............. There were two great immigrations of Huguenots from Flanders and France. The first commenced a few years anterior to the Massacre on St. Bartholomew's Day (1572) and continued for many years with varying flow, as the persecution waxed and waned. It consisted partly of French and partly of Flemish Protestants - these latter were French-speaking Walloons. The second, and numerically the greater, immigration occurred at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) and consisted almost entirely of French Huguenots. The congregation at Thorney, however, does not appear to have received any accession of members at this later period. In the five years next after the Revocation, not a single baptism occurs in any family which was not settled at Thorney before that event. Holland, Germany, Switzerland and England constituted the principal asylums of the exiled Huguenots, especially of those resident in the Northern Provinces of France, many of the refugees passing through Holland on their way to England. In the Low Countries they naturally became adepts in the art of embanking and drainage. It is therefore not surprising that when in England they should be amongst the first to rally to the call of Vermuyden - the Dutch engineer - in the gigantic drainage works he undertook in the fens of Lincoln and the adjacent counties. The two geographical areas associated with the refugees of the fen drainage are, singular to say, neither of them wholly in Lincolnshire - a county which to this day is popularly, though erroneously, known as one of "flats and fogs and fens". Both areas are on its borders at opposite ends of the shire. The Level of Hatfield Chase, extending over a portion of the Isle of Axholme at the extreme N.W. corner of the county, is partly in Yorkshire, whereas the Great Bedford Level, within the Isle of Ely, at the S.E. corner of the county, is almost wholly within the county of Cambridge. ................ Many of the Thorney settlers came from the Level of Hatfield Chase; there is however, no evidence to show that at any one period there was anything in the nature of a general migration from one Level to the other. On the contrary it was rather an instance of the removal of isolated individuals of the community, and at different times. The period, too, over which this removal extended was a much longer one and began at an earlier date than has generally been supposed. The drainage of Hatfield Chase was commenced in 1626. Two years later, as a result of the persecution which Richelieu renewed against the Huguenots, eighty families resident in Walloon Flanders fled to England and settled in this Level. Seven years later (1635) there was another large influx of artisans and agriculturists from Normandy and the Walloon country. The disturbed condition in which the Isle of Axholme remained for nearly twenty-five years and the general insecurity of property had undoubtedly the effect of driving away the more timorous at a very early period, to be followed by a constant leakage from time to time. The native inhabitants were from the first hostile to the drainage of the Level, alleging that the "participants" * were robbing them of their "right of common". Between the years 1628 and 1631 there were fourteen outbursts of violence. This was happily followed by nine years of comparative repose, but in 1642, the year of the commencement of the Civil Wars, the whole district was plunged in a condition of greater lawlessness than ever. During these troublous times the agitation was renewed again and again, and finally culminated in the great riots of 1650, when the chapel at Sandtoft was defaced, the little village which had grown up around it demolished, the floodgates pulled up and the waters of the Trent once more allowed to overflow the Level. It is highly probable that at this period a considerable number of the refugees shook the dust of Axholme off their feet forever and determined to try their fortunes in the fens and marshes of the Bedford Level. The French Church first began to assemble at Thorney two years later (1652), and there are other circumstances, of small moment in themselves, but which, taken collectively, are conclusive in the light they throw upon the origin of the Thorney colony. ..................... These early stragglers from Hatfield congregated at Whittlesey, a place more centrally situated with regard to the whole drainage than Thorney, and here the first French Church in this district was established. There was perhaps another reason which influenced them in selecting Whittlesey as their place of residence. In this parish there are two tracts of fenland known respectively as "Willow Hall Land" and "The Commons," which appear to have been set out and offered for sale in lots of fifteen acres. Several lots were purchased by the more prosperous of the refugees, who then became small freeholders. It was an early attempt at peasant-proprietorship, or allotments, and the result was eminently satisfactory. The Willow Hall estate was much nearer to the village of Eye, in Northamptonshire, than to either Whittlesey or Thorney, which will in a measure account for the number of refugee families found at a later period living in that village, although they continued members of the Congregation which assembled at Thorney, and their names are entered in this Register. ............... On the 26th day of May, 1654, a month after the proclamation of peace between England and the United Provinces of the Low Countries, Cromwell issued an Ordincance "for the better preservation of the works of the Great Level of the Fens," which contained this clause: "if any person or persons of a foreign nation, in league and amity with the Commonwealth, being Protestants, shall become purchaser or farmer of any lands, part of the said 95.000 acres, the said person or persons, their heirs, executors and administrators, shall be accounted free denizens of this Commonwealth, and enjoy the like privileges and advantages for descent to their children, dower to their wives, and otherwise, as denizens of this Commonwealth ought to enjoy". This was practically an invitation to the Protestant refugees from Flanders, and it had undoubtedly the effect of directing the flow of the proscribed foreign Protestants towards Thorney, as well as of attracting those who in earlier years had settled at Sandtoft and other places. There is also the authority of the Italian historian, Gregorio Leti, who wrote in 1683 concerning the origin of the Thorney colony, and this at a time when many of the first settlers were still living, and could speak of the circumstances he records. He says "that some Frenchmen who had rented lands in the county of Yorkshire, near to Doncaster, having been molested by the peasantry of the place, heard that the Earl of Bedford possessed an estate here (Thorney) which was almost uninhabitable, and resolving to make their fortune by industry, they asked him to let them rent it (now more than forty years ago) that they might drain and cultivate it. The Earl had no hesitation in granting a request so advantageous to himself, and making certain honourable conditions with the Frenchmen, he allowed them to commence, and after immense fatigue and expense, they drained the greater part of it." There is apparently some slight discrepancy in his dates, but the fact that many of the Sandtoft settlers did remove to Thorney is established, and this is confirmed by the similarity of the names of the persons occupying the two Levels.