112 
GHiltshive’s Contribution to the Picdmontese 
fund in 1655. 
By J. WayYLen. 
SHYT is not many months since a remarkable gathering took 
a place in Torre Pellice, the capital of the Waldensian valleys 
lying in the midst of the Cottian Alps, in the north of Italy, thirty 
miles, more or less, from Turin. The object of the meeting was to 
commemorate what has long been termed the “ Glorious Return ” 
of the expatriated Waldenses just two hundred years ago; when 
eight hundred resolute men, gathering on the shore of the Lake of 
Geneva from the various scenes of their exile, fought their way back 
to their beloved homes in the face of terrible hardships and the 
opposition of French soldiery. At the bi-centenary celebration of 
that event which came off in September, 1889, not only were 
delegates present from many Protestant lands, but the King of 
Italy expressed his personal sympathy by addressing an affectionate 
letter to his Waldensian subjects, by commanding the Prefect of 
Turin to attend the conclave as His Majesty’s representative, by a 
donation of five thousand francs, and by knighting the Rev. J. P. 
Pons—the ‘“ Moderator of the ‘Table,’ as he was termed—and 
investing him with the order of the Corona d’Italia. Among the 
English visitors the venerable figure of Sir Henry Layard, the 
explorer of Nineveh, was conspicuous, himself a descendant of 
French Huguenots. 
But a narrative of the Glorious Return of 1689, how attractive 
soever it might prove, is not so much the object of the present 
article as to accept it as a suitable occasion for reviving the memory 
of what took place in our own country, and in our own county of 
Wilts too, when the Waldenses underwent the previous catastrophe 
of the massacre of 1655. These two events in fact constitute the 
two most prominent epochs in their history as a suffering Church, 
They had been a proscribed race all down the centuries ; but the 
tragedy of 1655 was of so desolating a character as to awaken the 
horror of all the Protestant states of Europe. John Milton’s well- 
known sonnet on the occasion by no means exaggerates the affair. 
