The Huguenots In Waterford - Waterford County Museum

Waterford County Museum - P.M. Egans History Of Waterford

The Huguenots In Waterford - 1. Introduction

Everybody in Waterford can tell you where the "French Church" is, or was. People coming into Waterford from other cities think the term a strange one, and their wonderment becomes increased when the old Franciscan Abbey is pointed out to them as the "French Church." but most people get along very well and quite happily without having their curiosity for derivation in any way disturbed by a desire to arrive at the origin of the term "French Church," which is involved in some knowledge of The settlement of the Huguenots in Waterford. What is the origin of the word Huguenot? We are not able to answer, only to guess at it like all other etymologists.

Derivation - One of the probable theories is that it originated in a Swiss word which means "a league". To describe the general history of the Huguenots would be to give a full account of the Protestant Reformation, and it is needless to say that this subject is entirely outside the scope the writer of local history. The religious dissension's which arose on the Continent of Europe, in Germany, and Switzerland, of course spread into France in the 15th and 16th centuries, producing all the strife and horror of civil war, and ending in the banishment of the weaker party from France. Each succeeding King of France petted or tyrannised over the reformers, according to his own will or passion or religious proclivities; or apparently as the dictates of political diplomacy guided him for the time being; and this uncertainty of being victor or vanquished kept the votaries of the reformed religion in a state of trouble and anxiety during the period in the 15th and 16th centuries in which the reformed religion became an accomplished fact. The followers of John Calvin, in France, were termed "Huguenots", which is since known as the name then applied to French Protestants. After the vicissitudes and changes of fortune, which the reformers had been subjected to in France for half a century, had made their history eventful, in 1598, King Henri, of Navarre, by the edict of Nantes, made every Frenchman a freeman in matters of religious belief. But in 1685, after a whole century had nigh passed away, this law was revoked, and a large section of French Protestants were exiled to whatever countries which gave them shelter, including England, and thereby Ireland.

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