The Palatine Emigration. 



107 



In the representations authoritatively made in their be- 

 half, it was stated that they had emigrated to England on 

 account of persecution in their own land, and especially 

 owing to oppression from the French, whereby 2,000 of 

 their villages had been burned to the ground, and they had 

 been driven into the fields, deprived of all shelter. 



The period of the emigration was in the later years of 

 Queen Anne's and Louis Fourteenth's reigns. The region 

 from which the emigrants came, extended from Landau, 

 Spire and Mannheim on the Rhine to near Cologne, though 

 there were many from Swabia or Wurtemberg. The larger 

 part of the district was politically distinguished as the Pala- 

 tinate of the Lower Rhine, or absolutely, the Palatinate, no 

 other one having that distinction. Its prince, at the present 

 time, 1690 to 1716, was the elector, John William of the 

 house of Newburg, who had become a Roman Catholic, 

 though a large portion of his subjects were Lutherans or 

 Calvini3ts. 



England, in alliance with Holland and Germany, was en- 

 gaged in war with France, on the question of the succession 

 of the Arch-duke Charles to the throne of Spain, and also 

 in consequence of the support given by France to the pre- 

 tender. The world has rarely seen such devastation and 

 massacre as had been executed by the French in the Pala- 

 tinate, in 1689, and in 1692. Although during the past 

 ten years there had been no such marked instances of 

 cruelty by the French towards their enemies, yet their 

 armies were frequently traversing the* territory of the Pala- 

 tinate, and for a long period, the people had seen more of 

 war than of peace. The spirit which had led to the revo- 

 cation of the edict of Nantes in 1685, twenty-four years 

 previous, and which had been the occasion of the emigra- 

 tion of seven hundred thousand Frenchmen to Germany, 

 Holland and England, was experienced in a measure by 

 these Germans. Their prince, a Catholic, on religious 



