110 



The Palatine Emigration. 



naturalization of Protestant foreigners, immigrating to and 

 residing in the kingdom, provided they would take the 

 oaths and commune in the church of England. The mea- 

 sure had for thirty years been largely discussed in news- 

 papers and pamphlets ; the larger proportion of Protestant 

 emigrants from Catholic states that had settled in Holland 

 and Germany rather than in England, had shown the 

 government the importance of adopting some measure 

 to turn the tide in favor of England. The act was passed 

 in March of this same year. 1 And Mortimer and Anderson 

 say : " In consequence of the naturalization act, there came 

 over in May, 7,000 of the poor Palatines and Swabians, who 

 had been utterly ruined and driven from their habitations 

 by the French." Although the passage of the law is thus 

 alleged to have been the cause of this year's emigration, it 

 apparently was too nearly simultaneous with it, to have 

 operated to any great extent as the motive. However, 

 Holland only two months after, engaged in measures for 

 naturalizing French and other refugees, so as to retain 

 them in her territory, leading one to think that the emi- 

 gration to England was understood in Holland to be in 

 consequence of the new naturalization law. On the 24th 

 of June, the states-general made a general proclamation 

 for the naturalization of Protestant refugees, who should 

 register their names in a manner prescribed. 



Steele, in the Tatler, two months after the E nglish law 

 was passed, says : " Our late act of naturalization hath had 

 so great effect in foreign parts, that some princes have 

 prohibited the French refugees in their dominions to sell or 

 transfer their estates to any other of their subjects : and 

 at the same time have granted them greater immunities 

 than they hitherto enjoyed." 2 



Hewatt's North Carolina. 



2 Tatler, No. 13, May, 1709. 



