and is out of all
proportion to the immense number which must have been introduced at
various periods of our history. Even the expert, who is often able to
detect the foreign name in its apparently English garb, cannot rectify
this disproportion for us. The number of names of which the present
form can be traced back to a foreign origin is inconsiderable when
compared with the much larger number assimilated and absorbed by the
Anglo-Saxon.

THE HUGUENOTS

The great mass of those names of French or Flemish origin which do not
date back to the Conquest or to medieval times are due to the
immigration of Protestant refugees in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. It is true that many names for which Huguenot ancestry is
claimed were known in England long before the Reformation. Thus,
Bulteel is the name of a refugee family which came from Tournay about
the year 1600, but the same name is found in the Hundred Rolls Of
1273. The Grubbe family, according to Burke, came from Germany about
1450, after the Hussite persecution; but we find the name in England
two centuries earlier, "without the assistance of a foreign
persecution to make it respectable" (Bardsley, Dictionary of English
Surnames). The Minet family is known to be of Huguenot origin, but
the same name also figures in the medieval Rolls. The fact is that
there was all through the Middle Ages a steady immigration of
foreigners, whether artisans, tradesmen, or adventurers, some of whose
names naturally reappear among the Huguenots. On several occasions
large bodies of Continental workmen, skilled in special trades, were
brought into the country by the wise policy of the Government. Like
the Huguenots later on, they were protected by the State and
persecuted by the populace, who resented their habits of industry and
sobriety.

During the whole period of the religious troubles in France and
Flanders, starting from the middle of the sixteenth century, refugees
were reaching this country in a steady stream; but after the
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) they arrived in thousands,
and the task of providing for them and helping on their absorption
into the population became a serious problem. Among the better class
of these immigrants was to be found the flower of French intellect and
enterprise, and one has only to look through an Army or Navy list, or
to notice the names which are prominent in the Church, at the Bar, and
in the higher walks of