ad, in
spite of the most stringent measures of prevention, left their
homes and made their escape across the frontiers. These had settled
for the most part in the Protestant cantons of Switzerland, in
Holland, or England. As many of those who reached our shores were
but poorly provided with money, they naturally settled in or near
the ports of landing.

Canterbury was a place in which many of the unfortunate emigrants
found a home. Here one Gaspard Vaillant, his wife, and her sister,
who had landed in the year 1547, had established themselves. They
were among the first comers, but the French colony had grown,
gradually, until it numbered several hundreds. The Huguenots were
well liked in the town, being pitied for their misfortunes, and
admired for the courage with which they bore their losses; setting
to work, each man at his trade if he had one, or if not, taking to
the first work that came to hand. They were quiet and God-fearing
folk; very good towards each other, and to their poor countrymen on
their way from the coast to London, entertaining them to the best
of their power, and sending them forward on their way with letters
to the Huguenot committee in London, and with sufficient money in
their pockets to pay their expenses on the journey, and to maintain
them for a while until some employment could be found for them.

Gaspard Vaillant had been a landowner near Civray, in Poitou. He
was connected by blood with several noble families in that
district, and had been among the first to embrace the reformed
religion. For some years he had not been interfered with, as it was
upon the poorer and more defenceless classes that the first fury of
the persecutors fell; but as the attempts of Francis to stamp out
the new sect failed, and his anger rose more and more against them,
persons of all ranks fell under the ban. The prisons were filled
with Protestants who refused to confess their errors; soldiers were
quartered in the towns and villages, where they committed terrible
atrocities upon the Protestants; and Gaspard, seeing no hope of
better times coming, or of being permitted to worship in peace and
quietness, gathered together what money he could and made his way,
with his wife and her sister, to La Rochelle, whence he took ship
to London.

Disliking the bustle of a large town, he was recommended by some of
his compatriots to go down to Canterbury, where three or four
fugitives from his own part of the country had s