THE NARRAGANSETT SETTLEMENT 155 



for a place of shelter, in our distressed condition ; and hearing that 

 many of our distressed country people had been protected and well 

 treated in Boston and Yorke, to seek out new habitations, where the 

 Governments had compassion on them, and gave them relief and help, 

 to their wives and children subsistauce. Only two families moving to 

 Boston, and the rest to New York, and there bought lands, some of 

 them, and had time given them for payment. And so was they all 

 forced away from their lands and houses, orchards and vineyards, 

 taking some small matter from some English people for somewhat of 

 their labour ; thus leaving all habitations. Some people got not any- 

 thing for their labour and improvements, but Greenwich men who had 

 given us the disturbance, getting on the lands, so improved in any 

 way they could, and soon pulled down and demolished our church. 



It is only fair to the "Greenwich men" to state that 

 the tract of land occupied by the French had been granted Greenwich 

 to these ''unruly persons" by the legislature of Rhode 

 Island in 1677, so that they looked upon the refugees as 

 nothing short of interlopers. Besides doing everything 

 in their power to dispossess the Huguenots, the peojile of 

 Greenwich sent a petition to the governor in which they 

 desired to know ' ' by what order or Lawe or by what means 

 those Frenchmen are settled in our town bounds," and 

 in which they asserted that the presence of these intruders 

 ''proves great detriment to us," and prophesied that 

 unless the French were made to vacate their illegal hold- 

 ings the persons to whom the land belonged would "be 

 utterly ruined." 



Their plan for establishing a community proving itself scattered 

 a failure, and having sunk the greater part of their funds ° °°^ 

 in the common venture, the refugees could no longer pro- 

 ceed as a body but were forced to become widely scattered • 

 upon leaving the Narragansett settlement. The condi- 

 tions prevailing in the province of New York seemed 

 most favourable to the majority of the Huguenots, and 

 of the twenty-five families who removed thither the fol- 

 lowing found homes in New York city itself : Bouniot, 

 Coudret, the three David families, Galay, Grazilier, 

 Jamain, Lafon, Lambert, La Vigne, LeBreton, the two 



