588 HISTORY OF THE COUNTY OF WESTCHESTER. 



PETITION FROM NEW ROCHELLE. 



" To His Excellency Col. Benjamin Fletcher, Governor in 

 Chief, and Captain General of ye Province of New- York, 

 and dependencies, &c. 

 The humble petition of ye inhabitants of New Rochelle, 



Humbly Sheweth, 



That your petitioners having been forced by the late persecutions in France to 

 forsake their country and estates, and flye to ye Protestant Princes. Their 

 Majestyes by their proclamation of ye 25th of Aprill, 1689, did grant them an 

 azile in all their dominions, with their Royall protection ; wherefore they were 

 invited to come and buy lands in this province, to the end that they might by 

 their labour help the necessityes of their familyes, and did spend therein all their 

 smale store, with the help of their friends, whereof they did borrow great sums 

 of money. They are above twenty (MS. torn) poor and needy, not able .... 

 ties and clothing, much .... they did hitherto beare above their .... 

 thereby reduced to a lamentable condition, as having been compelled to sell for 

 that purpose the things which are most necessary for their use. Wherefore 

 your petitioners humbly pray, 



That your Excellency may be pleased to take their case in serious considera- 

 tion, and out of Charity and pity, to grant them for some years what help and 

 priveleges your Excellency shall think convenient, 



And your petitioners in duty bound shall ever pra} r , &c. 



Thauvet Elsi Cothouneau."* 



" The cruelties which they suffered in France are beyond anything of 

 the kind on record, and in no age was there ever such a violation of all 

 that is sacred, either with relation to God or man ; and when we con- 

 sider the exalted virtues of that glorious band of brothers, we are 

 amazed, while we are delighted with their fortitude and courage. Rather 

 than renounce their Christian principles they endured outrages shocking 

 to humanity, persecutions of unheard of enormity, and death in all its 

 horrors. The complaint of Justin Martyr to the Roman Emperor, that 

 the Christians were punished with torture and death upon the bare pro- 

 fession of their being such, might have been made by the French Pro- 

 testants. To be a Huguenot, was enough to ensure condemnation. 



a Doc. Hist. N. Y., vol. iii, p, 926. The Rev. Antoine Vorren, D.D., in a discourse delivered 

 ou the 26th June, 1862, at the laying of the corner stone of the Prot. Epis. French Cn. Dien St. 

 Esprit, N. Y , says: '-I have it from a parishioner more than octogenerian (the deceased 

 pious Vaultiere of Reade street, whose loneliness daring the first months of my arrival among 

 you r used frequently by the side of his bed to comfort with the words of the Lord), vrho re- 

 lated to me that he had seen here himself old men the fathers of whom had told them often 

 that they had emigrated to this country after the capture (l<;-2s) of La RochellQ, by the Cardi- 

 nal ministre, and by hundreds, hundreds, hundreds, under his successors, and before that 

 monarch had repeal- <l, tin; Edict of VanU s; for already our poor brethren had settled churches 

 and pastors at Narraganset and Boston, which is a fact shown by our correspondent wi'h 

 them all then preserved to this day, in our archives, and the first minutes of our own old 

 records, are, by several year-, of a date anterior to that revocation. "The Hugenots." A 

 discourse by Rev. Antonine Verreu, D.D. Translated from the French by Rev. William Mor- 

 ris, LL.D. New Yor!' : George F. Nesbit & Co., printers, 1802. 



