m to worship Him in liberty, and to
entreat him to touch the heart of the French King, who had inflicted
such cruel persecutions on true believers.

The Prince of Orange attached two preachers to his person from the
church of Paris, and the Huguenot ladies found a noble protectress in
the Princess of Orange. Thanks to her most generous care, more than one
hundred ladies of noble birth, who had lost all they possessed in
France, and had seen their husbands or fathers thrown into dungeons, now
found comfortable homes at Harlaem, Delft, and the Hague. At the Hague,
the old convent of preaching monks was turned into an establishment for
French women. At Nort, a boarding-house for young ladies of quality
received an annual benefaction of two thousand florins from her liberal
hands. Nor did she forget these pious asylums, after the British
Parliament had decreed her the crown. Most of the refugees came from the
Southern provinces--brave officers, rich merchants of Amiens, Rouen,
Bourdeaux, and Nantes, artisans of Brittany and Normandy, with
agriculturists from Provence, the shores of Languedoc, Roussillon, and
La Guienne. Thus were transported into hospitable Holland, gentlemen and
ladies of noble birth, with polished minds and refined manners, simple
mechanics and ministers of high renown, and all more valuable than the
golden mines of India or Peru. Thus Holland, of all lands, received most
of the French refugees, and Bayle calls it 'the grand ark of the
refugees.' No documents exist, by which their numbers can be correctly
computed, but they have been estimated from fifty-five to seventy-five
thousand souls, and the greatest number were to be found at Amsterdam,
Rotterdam, and the Hague. In 1686, there were not less than _sixteen_
French pastors to the Walloon churches at Amsterdam.

Thus intimately, by a common faith, friendship, and interest, did the
Huguenots unite themselves with the people of Holland, who, about this
period, commenced the establishment of New-Netherland in America. We
have traced this union the more fully for the better understanding of
our general subject. The Walloons and Huguenots were, in fact, the same
people--oppressed and persecuted French Protestants. Of the former, as
early as the year 1622, several Walloon families from the frontier,
between Belgium and France, turned their attention to America. They
applied to Sir Dudley Carleton, for permission to settle in the colony
of Virginia, with th