Historical and biographical articles

When my Uncle William died in 1988 he left me a legacy. Immediately after the funeral his executor placed in my hands a battered cardboard box containing yellowing birth, marriage and death certificates, copies of records found in parish church registers and numerous sepia photographs. There were even two delightfully painted watercolour miniatures predating even the earliest camera. The records spanned two hundred and fifty years of Perrin family history. Of course, I had known of his interest and painstaking research for many years and the gift came as no surprise. Nor could my delight have been greater, had the box been full of gold sovereigns. Had I not promised my uncle before he died, that I would do my best to continue the task that he had begun?

The records I inherited had been set in order clearly and with great accuracy – six generations, going back to Thomas Perrin (b1730) who, in 1754, moved to a small village in Kent called Wateringbury. There my great (x4) grandfather set up in business as a builder, and married Elizabeth Tomlin who bore him eleven children.
My uncle had always believed that the family had originally come from France as Huguenot refugees. Having been told on numerous occasions when cycling or walking in France ‘you have a French name, monsieur’, usually followed by the question, ‘Why can you not speak our language better?’ there seemed little reason to doubt this. But where was the evidence of any such link when no family records relating to Thomas prior to his marriage seemed to exist? Sadly Uncle William died before any Huguenot or ‘French connection’ could be established. Indeed, several years would pass before any further research was undertaken, but by this time a tool was available that William never had – a personal computer with access to the internet. And this is how, on the 5 January 2009, with mixed emotions of excitement and tears, I came to be shouting from my study window to my wife in the garden. An experienced genealogist and very distant relative living in Scotland whose help I had enlisted had just sent me an email. Attached was the record of a seventeen year old French boy called Jean (John) Perrin who lived with his family in a small fishing village named St Valery en Caux, just fifteen miles west of Dieppe.

Jean’s story must have been typical of so many who were struggling to come to terms with a situation few of us could scarcely imagine. The year was 1685; the time of the infamous Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. By this means, Louis XIV effectively stripped French Protestants of every right they possessed – the right to own property, earn a living, raise their own children, possess a Bible, worship God as their conscience dictated; even the right to life itself unless they converted to Catholicism. In spite of the original Edict of Nantes drawn up in 1598 by Henry IV (Henry of Navarre) giving Protestants a fair degree of religious liberty, France had been disturbed by waves of persecution and religious warfare for more than one hundred and fifty years. As a result, throughout those troubled times there had been a steady trickle of Huguenot refugees leaving France for the comparative peace and freedom of the Low Countries, the New World, Ireland and the England of Elizabeth I. When persecution intensified, as it certainly did with the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, 24 August, 1572, when seventy-five thousand Protestants were slaughtered in Paris and other major French cities, so the numbers seeking refuge abroad increased. Now, however, the king’s decision to revoke the Edict of Nantes left all Huguenots in an even more dangerous situation. The options were stark – either embrace Catholicism or face years as a galley-slave, imprisonment or even execution, depending on the severity of the court.

In spite of the borders and ports being closed and guarded by the dragoons to prevent any escape, many thousands left everything in a desperate attempt to reach safety. Families were forced to split up as they fled to Switzerland and Germany not knowing whether they would ever see each other again. Children were frequently sealed in barrels (some tragically suffocating) and smuggled on to ships at La Rochelle, Nantes and the Channel ports in an attempt to reach Jersey, or the English coast. Jean’s extended family made their way along the coast to Dieppe. Living in that area would have given them an advantage. They would have known of pathways seldom used, and which of the local population they could trust and approach for help. A small sailing vessel was found willing to take them around the Kent coast and into the Thames Estuary. Their aim was to reach London. For some reason unknown, possibly weather or the tide, they were put ashore on the Hoo Peninsular, between the Isle of Sheppey and Gravesend. Being welcomed by local people, there they found shelter and there they chose to stay.

Jean found work on the land. How he and Sarah Sticker met we do not know. She was a young widow who had lost both her husband and their newborn child, Thomas, a year earlier (malaria was endemic on the peninsular in those days). However, the church register at High Halstow records that Jean and Sarah married on July 23 1694, describing Jean as an ‘agricultural labourer’. Their union was blessed with two boys: John born in 1696 and Richard in 1698. Two daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth, followed in 1700 and 1703. And what is the significance of all this? Their second son, Richard, grew up and married, his wife Anne giving birth in 1730 to a son whom they named Thomas, who would serve an apprenticeship as a builder and, when he was twenty-four years of age, move to a small village in Kent called Wateringbury, marry Elizabeth Tomlin and raise eleven children! Jean was my great (x6) grandfather, and he was French!

The tears I wept that morning in January amid the excitement at having made such a discovery sprang from a sense of shared grief with those who were prepared to sacrifice so much for their faith and value Christ above all that this world might offer. There were tears of shame, too, that my own commitment as a Christian and the lengths that I would go for my Saviour, appeared to fall so far behind theirs. Surely, when comforts abound, complacency so quickly sets in. Indeed, it was that stark reality that made me wonder just how long such a spirit of ‘counting all things loss for Christ’ continued to burn in the hearts and minds of those Huguenot refugees. As they made new homes for themselves in the comparative comfort and tranquillity of rural Kent, was it still ‘the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus’ their Lord that remained their overwhelming priority? What about Thomas Perrin, I wondered? Was the ‘sincere faith’ of Timothy’s grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice, which played such a vital part in his own spiritual upbringing (2 Timothy 1:5), replicated in Thomas’ life in Wateringbury? After two and a half centuries, it seemed highly unlikely I would ever find an answer to that question. Or was it?

Just three weeks after I received the account of Jean’s arrival in Kent, I came across the website of some Perrins who lived in Wellington, New Zealand. On their ‘message board’, six months earlier a lady from Cardiff had posted the following enquiry: ‘My name is Juliet Hailwood. I am not aware of anyone called ‘Perrin’ associated with my family, but among the possessions of my father who died recently I found an old book. Printed in 1746 it was a builder’s manual, and written on the flyleaf are the words: ‘Thomas Perrin. His booke. 1756, Wateringbury, Kent’. Please can anyone shed any light on this?” I at once sent an email explaining that Thomas was my great (x4) grandfather. Juliet now lives in Italy, but within two hours she replied, attaching two photos. One showed the words quoted above. The other, these four lines of verse written on the following page: ‘Thomas Perrin is my name, and England is my nation. Wateringbury is my dwelling place – and Christ is my Salvation’! Our joy overflowed. And with this answer to our ‘unanswerable’ question came the overwhelming desire that God would so work within us that although ‘the world was not worthy’ (Hebrews 11:38) of those who suffered willingly for their Saviour in the 17th century, we might be – and not ‘worthy’ of them alone, but all the more worthy of our Saviour, even ‘Christ’ who is our ‘Salvation’.