Huguenot Refugee Stories

November 8, 2022

An event with Dan Rafiqi, Bert Portal and Tessa Murdoch discussing the first hand accounts of Huguenot refugees Suzanne de Robillard and Issac Minet as part of the Crossings: community and refuge exhibition.

Isaac Minet (1660-1745) was the son of a grocer in Calais. In 1674, he was sent to Dover to learn English. He stayed there nearly two years and returned to Calais to run the family business after his father's death.

In 1685, when the Protestant Church in Calais has been demolished and the dragoons were billetted on the Protestant population, Isaac Minet and his mother left their home and hid in the house of a Dutch shopkeeper for three days. Then disguised as a porter's wife and a carpenter, they attempted to leave the town. Unfortunately, Isaac's mother was recognised and imprisoned. Isaac was later caught and joined his mother in the same prison. They were taken to a Catholic chapel where they were compelled to sign a form of abjuration. When they returned home they found that their house was still occupied by three soldiers.

Isaac then arranged for his brother Stephen, who was already in England, to send a boat to collect them from a point two miles east of Calais at midnight on Sunday 31 July 1686. Despite a coast guard of 25 soldiers and patrol vessels from Dunkirk, Isaac, his mother, his brother Ambrose and his sister managed to board the vessel. They landed at Dover on Monday 1st August.

Isaac Minet settled initially in London, where he hired a house in Newport Street and set up a small grocer's shop. In 1690 he returned to Dover where his brother Stephen was dying. Isaac kept 1 August as a fast in memory of his escape until his death in April, 1745.

A Huguenot refugee from Saintonge who resettled first in the United Provinces and then Lower Saxony, Susanne de Robillard wrote down her story in French of her escape from France two years after the 1685 Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Her evocative account of her experience as a stowaway on a merchant ship at La Rochelle heading for Falmouth reflects on her own humility.

Suzanne de Robillard’s family home Chateau de Berneré at Charente Maritime.

Dan Rafiqi has an Arts and Humanities Research Council Collaborative Doctoral Award: ‘Dr Williams’s French Books’, King’s College London and Dr Williams’s Library. He studied History and French at University of Warwick and has a Masters in History from University of Oxford. He is currently working on a Ph.D. research project focused on exploring refugee experience in Huguenot autobiographical writings, 1681-1750.

Dr Tessa Murdoch has forty years curatorial experience at the Museum of London and the Victoria and Albert Museum. She is Acting Chair of the Huguenot Museum, Rochester, which reopened in August 2022 and tells the story of Huguenot refugees in the United Kingdom through the historic collections of the French Hospital ‘La Providence’ founded in London in 1708 and located in Rochester since 1959. Her book Europe Divided: Huguenot Refugee Art and Culture was published by the V&A, 2021

Isaac Minet’s account by Dan Rafiqi and Bert Portal

Open transcript

Suzanne de Robillard’s account by Dan Rafiqi and Dr Tessa Murdoch

Open transcript

The event followed a reception at the French Hospital at La Providence in Rochester marking the intention to launch the Huguenot Museum's new Patrons' and Friends' programme but most importantly to engender good will. We hope that this will be the first of future collaborations between the Huguenot Museum and the Cathedral.

Dr Tessa Murdoch,
Huguenot Museum, Rochester

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