The French Hospital, Rochester
/In 1957 Bishop Chavasse was amongst the directors and administrators responsible for the purchase of Theobald Square in Rochester to become the fourth La Providence of The French Hospital charity. Featured in The Friends of Rochester Cathedral Annual Report for 1995-1996.
'Safety and prosperity to Old England'. At special formal lunches and dinners the Directors, Residents and guests of the French Hospital stand to drink this last toast, and not without reason as England had become their refuge and home.
Huguenots, the name applied to French Protestants in the 16th century, is probably a corruption of the German eidgenossen, 'confederates'. They were severely persecuted in France under Francis I and Henry Il, and following the massacre of St. Bartholomew in 1572 many Huguenots came as refugees to settle in England, some to Canterbury where they founded their church in the Black Prince Chapel in the Crypt of Canterbury Cathedral. The thirty years war which followed failed to exterminate them. Although in 1598 Henry IV of Navarre had granted tolerance by the Edict of Nantes, in 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict and the forcible conversion and persecutions started again with renewed vigour with the result about 200,000 people left France. Many migrated to England.
The Huguenots were well-received in this country and they brought many skills in finance, industry and arts with them. They contributed to the rise of British industry and trade. But there were some who did not succeed. The terrors behind them had left them traumatised and destitute. Charles II provided some funds, and William III and Mary founded the Royal Bounty to help the poor refugees, Jacques de Gastigny, a gentleman, master of the Buckhounds to William I, was concerned at their plight. When he died in 1708 he left £1,000 in his will to benefit the poor he had seen in the Old Pest House in Cripplegate. His friend and executor, Reverend Philippe Menard, worked to bring this bequest to the maximum benefit. He succeeded with 36 other men to petition George I, obtained a Royal Charter and founded the French Hospital in 1718, with Henri de Massue, Marquis de Ruvigny as the first Governor and himself as Secretary.
Land was bought in Bath Street in the parish of St. Luke's, Finsbury and the French Hospital, soon to be known as La Providence, was built in the form of a quadrangle (strangely enough not so very unlike La Providence today).
It was easy to find people in need and by 1723 there were 125 residents. The number rose to about 230 over the next 70 years. The French Hospital was amongst the first institutions to care for the mentally ill and special rooms were provided for them. The first rules for the poor may seem odd today - such as 'Article VII: none shall be allowed to carry a lighted candle into the chambers without the Steward's leave'. Sensible enough as much of the bedding for the poor was straw changed daily - which was considered advanced in those days!
By the middle of the 19th century many of the Huguenots had been absorbed into English society and the Hospital was in decline with part of the quadrangle demolished. In 1862 the Directors bought some land at Victoria Park, Hackney and one of the Directors, Robert Roumieu, designed for no fee a new building, a gothic version of a French chateau. This was opened in 1865. The Residents, now some 60 people, moved from the old La Providence to their new home, leaving behind a road called Radnor Street off Bath Street - no doubt commemorating past Governors. This still marks the old site.
The new La Providence was self-contained with its own brewery, bakehouse, workrooms etc, run much on a workhouse basis, though the Charity Commissioners criticised the Directors that the inmates were treated too well.
In spite of this, a Mary Tempest née Ruffy was expelled in 1877 for 'repeated drunkenness and insulting behaviour'. In the Jubilee year of 1887 the residents made and presented a silk dress to Queen Victoria. In the minutes of July 1925 it is recorded that £34.00 was spent for the 'installation of the wireless apparatus'; quite an innovation. One can imagine the old folk wearing ear phones attached to crystals and cats whiskers!
Life ran smoothly enough till 1933 when the LCC wrote a letter of compulsory purchase. Negotiations dragged on until the Second World War. The Hospital was requisitioned for the war effort in 1941.
The Directors had made some preparation for the war. In June 1939 a contract was placed with Messrs Holland Hannen & Cubits to build a blast-proof shelter in the basement for £489.00 and arrangements were being made to move some of the valuables into the country.
The Hospital was damaged in the autumn of 1940 by repeated air raids and the residents were dispersed to various private homes. Further damage was sustained in January 1945 by a V2 rocket falling nearby. The building was in a poor state and still part-occupied by requisition of the Hackney Borough Council. About a year later it was resolved to move the Hospital and finally, in April 1948, La Providence Victoria Park was sold by auction.
La Providence had by then moved to Comptons Lea, a large Edwardian house in Roffey near Horsham in Sussex. Did they leave behind them a ghostly number?
In June 1978 the Governor and some Directors, taking an old photograph album with them, paid a visit to the Old Hospital, which is now a Roman Catholic primary school known as Howarth House. The assistant Head Mistress claimed that she and some children at various times in the late winter afternoons had seen two old ladies sitting on the landing as shown in the photograph.
La Providence at Comptons Lea was run as a residential home but was too isolated and inconvenient and it was doubtful if it was necessary now that there was the welfare state. The Directors were considering providing sheltered accommodation and a supplemental charter was granted by the Queen in 1953 to do this.
In the early part of 1956 the Surveyor, Mr Grellier, reported that he had found a suitable place for the French hospital in Rochester. Theobald Square was inspected by the Directors and negotiations for purchase started. The first Directors meeting was held in the King's Head and then later, invited by the Bishop, held at Bishopscourt.
In 1957 the Bishop of Rochester, Rt. Revd. Christopher Chavasse, and Oliver Grace MBE, both eminent members of the Friends of Rochester Cathedral, were elected Directors of the French Hospital and it was through Bishop Chavasse's influence, together with John Duval, Deputy Governor, and Thomas Ouvry, Secretary, that Theobald Square was bought to become the fourth La Providence.
The square had become run down. There was a statue of the Duke of Sussex in the centre (does any reader know why the Duke should have been there and what became of the statue?) The houses were restored and converted into 39 self-contained flats. There have been many flats added since the official opening by the Lord Lieutenant of Kent, Lord Cornwallis (who was a Vice-President of the Friends), assisted by Bishop Chavasse, on 21st June 1960.
Some of the new residents had moved in during September 1959 and for the late Miss Strachen, one of the first residents, it was returning home. She was born in the Square some 60 years earlier. Some of them worshipped in the Cathedral including Mrs Doyle's little dog. This brave fellow bit and chased a camel down the High Street which was advertising the Gordon hotel.
The French Hospital became a corporate member of the Friends in 1965, when they gave the card tables for the Friends' Festival teas in the Garth. The certificate of membership is signed by R. W. Stannard, then Dean of Rochester. Bishop Stannard was elected a Director in 1960. Princess Marina, the Duchess of Kent, paid a visit to La Providence after visiting the Friends as patron on the Festival Day, 8th June 1968. It was to be one of her last engagements; she died shortly after.
Being nearer Canterbury, the new home freshened the contact with the Congregation of the French Chapel in the Cathedral Crypt and many exchange Visits have been made in recent years. In 1978 the Directors learnt that the French congregation was about to auction off their Charles I silver communion cup. The late Mr Peter Minet, then Deputy Governor, successfully made negotiations and the cup was bought. It is now used for the communion service in the Common Room taken by the Chaplain, currently the Revd Howard Daubney.
The management of the French Hospital is still carried on much as set out in the Charter of 1718, with the Directors' meetings held each month. The meetings are presided over by the Governor or the Deputy Governor, assisted by the Treasurer and Secretary who are elected annually. The Governor is elected every three years. But most of the hard administration work is carried out for the Directors by the Clerk with help from the Solicitor and Surveyor. The Steward and Deputy Steward carry out the day-to-day needs and provide help for the residents.
In order to qualify for residence within La Providence, applicants must conform to rule 35: 'None but French Protestants, or their descendants being Protestant, who have been resident and settled in Great Britain for six months at least, are admitted as residents in the Hospital'. (If any reader is interested they are invited to write to the Clerk at 41 La Providence). Since being in Rochester, many of the residents have come from the neighbourhood and are related.
Over the years and generations the names recur. The Governorship has been held by many of the Earls of Radnor since 1770, following the death of Lord Ligonier, Governor from 1748. Many of the Duval family have been Deputy Governors since 1813. Indeed there have been more than 20 Duvals as Directors.
Other names ring from the 18th and 19th century to our present time: Bosanquets, Cazalet, Grellier, Minet, Ouvry, Portal and Romillys.
In 1987 the first lady Directors were elected. Lady Monson, President of the Huguenot Society and great-grandaughter of Edward Majolier - Director in 1900, Mrs Christie née Lefanu, and Miss de Crespigny, now Mrs Willis, a descendant of one of the original 37 Directors and second secretary. There have been a number of lady Directors elected since including another Duval!
The names of people of the French Hospital mingle with the names of the Friends of Rochester Cathedral. Canon Maurice Sharp, Hon. Secretary, Treasurer and later Vice-President, was also chaplain to the Hospital for more than 10 years and was about to go for election as a Director when he died.
His widow, Mrs Joan Sharp, was our last Chairman. Incidentally her father, Dr C. W. Greene, was a founder of the Friends and a member of its first council. Norman Ouvry, former secretary of the Hospital was on the Council of Friends (I later succeeded him in both posts when he retired.) The late John Fry, Treasurer, was also Chaplain. Today the Dean of Carlisle, The Very Revd. Henry Stapleton, Oliver Grace and Edward Darwin, are Directors;
Canon Geoffrey Young was a former chaplain; Les Davies, former Steward of the Hospital and his wife, and residents Mrs Traupaud, Mrs Quinn, Mrs Foulser and Mrs Dennis, to name but a few, are also members of the Friends.
What of the future connections with La Providence as we come to the end of the 20th century? The annual anniversary services will continue to be held in the Cathedral with the Dean's permission. It is fairly certain both the Friends and La Providence will be in Rochester for many years to come and to enjoy special anniversaries. No doubt in 2018, the Tercentenary of the French Hospital, glasses will be raised again to 'Safety and prosperity to Old England'
A. F. Stephen de Crespigny
The Huguenot Hospital of La Providence
A Sermon by The Venerable D. N. Griffiths at The French Hospital
Commemoration Service at Rochester Cathedral in June 1991.
Two hundred and seventy-three years may seem a long time, but the Huguenot presence in England had already been established for over two centuries when the French Hospital first opened its doors in the year 1718. The French Protestant Chapel in Threadneedle Street was founded by King Edward VI.
Between these two extremes lies another English date of Huguenot interest, and that is 1616, which is just 375 years ago. I ought perhaps to have waited another twenty-five years in order to confront you with a Quatercentenary, but (if you will excuse the pun) to plan along those lines might have been seen as tempting Providence.
In the year 1616, there was a young Prince of Wales named Prince Charles. He was an eligible bachelor (even at the age of sixteen), and his advisers were paying careful thought to the choice of his bride. What better candidate, they asked themselves, than Princess Christine, the daughter of Henry of Navarre, the greatest of all the Kings of France? For all that Henry had once been the leader and hero of the Hugenot party, even of the Protestant world, and later the author of the Edict of Nantes, Henry had died a Catholic and the parent of Catholic children. In order to promote his royal marriage, the French court would need some reassurance about the status of the Church of England. Was it Catholic or was it Reformed?
It was hard to know how best to set about doing this, but the Lord Keeper (a Welsh bishop serving in England) had no doubt at all. He commissioned a new translation of the English Book of Common Prayer into French so that the French negotiators could judge for themselves how delicately the Church of England trod the tightrope between its Catholic origins and its Protestant tendencies.
So it was that in 1616 Pierre de Laune, Pastor of the French Walloon church in Norwich, was commissioned to make the translation. His more famous brother, Gideon, was apothecary to Anne of Denmark, Queen Consort to King James I, and a founder member and benefactor of the Society of Apothecaries in London.
That particular royal marriage (between Charles and Christine) never happened, and seven years later Prince Charles was on the point of marriage to the Infanta of Spain. Again the Lord Keeper set out to clinch the matter with a timely Prayer book translation. A Spanish Prayer Book was prepared, uniform with the French, and this time it cut no ice with the Spanish Court. It is of course a sound rule never to throw anything away, in case you need it later, and so the next time daughter of King Henri IV and so the whole process began again. Fortunately, they were ring prepared for the next eligible bride turned out to be andine Laune's 'Liturgie Angloise' was ready to hand, and the French plenipotentiaries were invited to a service of Evensong in Westminster Abbey on Christmas Eve, so that they could sit behind an arras to watch the Prayer Book in action.
One man was so disgusted that he left his copy behind him (it is still there), but another was so impressed that he asked to come back the next morning to watch the Christmas Communion. This time all went well. A few months later the Prince of Wales had become King Charles I, and one of his first acts was to marry his bright-eyed little French Princess, Henrietta Maria.
From the domestic point of view they both lived happily ever afterwards. In other respects, her influence may have been less helpful, either to Charles or to the growing number of Huguenot residents. Archbishop Laud made a determined effort to impose this French Prayer Book on the Huguenot communities, but he was still having little success when he fell from power.
In due course, both Laud and King Charles were executed, the Book of Common Prayer was forbidden and de Laune's translation was forgotten. Time went by, Oliver Cromwell died, and King Charles II ascended the throne, having stayed the night I believe at Restoration House, a few hundred yards from this spot, There were soon so many French Protestant refugees in this country, even before the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, that French churches began to spring up all over London and the South of England; everywhere I am tempted to say, but Rochester.
The new Government was far more humane about the style of worship in these churches than Laud had been, and indeed more broad-minded about them than about its own people. Some were allowed to go on worshipping in the plain Calvinist style they had known in France, whereas others opted to conform to the Book of Common Prayer, and to accept the authority of bishops, using the current version of de Laune's book of 1616.
They did so in their own way, the ministers without surplices and never making the sign of the Cross. They also used the French metrical psalter of Clement Marot and Theodore de Beze. All the time they maintained friendly relations with the Church of England and their nonconforming French colleagues.
As many of you will know, La Providence, The French hospital is now in its fourth home. In its formative years, from 1718 to 1862, its buildings were in Finsbury, and its chapel was one of those which conformed to the Book of Common Prayer. Every two or three years a new edition of de Laune's book (now twice revised) was published by one or other of the Huguenot booksellers in the Strand, although one of them seems to have been an out-pensioner of the Hospital in his declining years.
The Huguenot booksellers eventually died out as a separate trade, as did the nonconforming churches. After two or three generations, the Huguenot community stayed together, but it had been anglicised. Those who were Anglicans were happy to attend their parish churches and worship in English; the others attached themselves to a French or English nonconforming church.
From the beginning of the 19th century, it seems that most of the candidates for La Providence were members of one of those French congregations, and it would be interesting to know what effect this had on the services in the chapel.
Just as de Lane's book long outlived the royal marriage for which it had been compiled, its later editions also outlived the conforming churches. There have been twice as many new editions since then (not counting reprints) as there were before, and the book has remained in print to this day.
It is still being used in the well-established French-speaking Anglican churches in Canada and the United States, and only within living memory did it die out in the Channel Islands. Modern adaptations are still appearing in unexpected parts of the world, such as the mission churches in Mauritius and Zaire.
French Books of Common Prayer have been in circulation for almost as long as the English original. More to the point, the example has been followed again and again, until translations have become available in all the principle languages of the world. At last they too are going out of fashion, and their modern descendants are having the usual struggle for survival.
If they have provided for the spiritual needs of millions over a period of nearly four centuries, all this labour will not have been in vain. You can detect something very like the hand of Providence in an impulse which creates a book for one purpose and then allows it to evolve for other wider purposes, including the care of the Huguenot pensioners at the French Hospital.
You can detect the hand of Providence in the dispersal of the Huguenot people to many lands, when the bigotry of one nation was made the instrument of blessing to so many others. You can detect it in the history of 'La Providence' itself, where the impulse to relieve need within the Huguenot community has given the community itself a continuing focus to ensure its survival. It may also be that their coming to Rochester thirty years ago will turn out to have been a source of blessing to this city as well as themselves.
Few nations can be unreservedly proud of their past history. But English relations with the Huguenots have almost always been good. Providentially as it turns out, they were made welcome remarkably soon, and their subsequent contribution to English life has been out of all proportion to their numbers.
So many Huguenot names have passed unnoticed into the general stock, and so many artefacts and enterprises have become familiar parts of daily life that the rest of us can easily forget how much England owes to this vigorous and talented nation within a nation. We thank God today for the vision and the foresight of those who made it possible.
The Venerable D. N. Griffiths
The Friends of Rochester Cathedral were founded to help finance the maintenance of the fabric and grounds. The Friends’ annual reports have become a trove of articles on the fabric and history of the cathedral.
Canons, colleagues, volunteers and staff have shared their memories and reflections in many forms over the years.
