During the last twenty
years of the seventeenth century, the French emigration into that
country became a political event. Amsterdam granted to all citizenship,
with freemen's privilege of trade, and exemption of taxes for three
years; and all the other towns of that nation rivalled each other in the
same liberal and Christian spirit. In the single year of the revocation,
more than two hundred and fifty Huguenot preachers reached the free soil
of the United Provinces. Pensions were allowed to them, the married
receiving four hundred florins, those in celibacy two hundred. The
Prince of Orange attached two French preachers to his person, with many
French officers to his army against James II.--thanks to the generous
Princess of Orange, who selected several Huguenot dames as ladies of
honor. One house at Harlaem was exclusively reserved for young ladies of
noble birth. At the Hague, an ancient convent of preaching monks was
changed into an asylum for the persecuted ladies. Of all lands which
received the refugees, none witnessed such crowds as the Republic of
Holland; and hence Boyle called it '_the grand arch of the refugees_.'
No documents exactly compute their number; one author calculates it at
fifty-five thousand, and another, in 1686, at nearly seventy-five
thousand souls.
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