SECOND ORDINARY MEETING OF THE SESSION, 1894-95, HELD AT THE HOTEL WINDSOR, VICTORIA STREET, WESTMINISTER, WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 1895. SIR HENRY W. PEEK, BART., President, in the Chair. THE Minutes of the Ordinary Meeting, held on November, 14, 1894, were read and confirmed. Henry Sidney Darlot, Esq., and Leonard Hawthorn Darlot, Esq., both of Weld Club, Perth, West Australia, were elected Fellows of the Society. A Paper was read by Captain W. H. Hinde, R.E., on The Huguenot Settlement at the Cape of Good Hope.' THIRD ORDINARY MEETING OF THE SESSION, 1894-5, HELD AT THE HOTEL WINDSOR, VICTORIA STREET, WESTMINISTER. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 13, 1895. SIR HENRY W. PEEK, BART., President, in the Chair. THE Minutes of the Ordinary Meeting held on January 9, were read and confirmed. The following five candidates were elected Fellows of the Society: The Rev. Léon Dégremont, Pastor of the French Church, Soho Square, W. Bradley Depledge, Esq., 3, Gracechurch Street, E.C. The Right Hon. Sir George Grey, K.C.B., 7, Park Place, St. James's, S.W. Henry Ainslie Hill, Esq., 4, Rosslyn Gardens, Hampstead, N.W. Colonel Edward Matthey, F.S.A., Beauchamp Lodge, Warwick Crescent, W. A Paper was read by Mr. Perceval Landon, on 'Heraldry of the Huguenots.' ELEVENTH ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, HELD AT THE HOTEL WINDSOR, VICTORIA STREET, WESTMINISTER, WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1895. SIR HENRY W. PEEK, BART., President, in the Chair. THE Minutes of the Third Ordinary Meeting held on March 13, were read and confirmed. The following seven candidates were elected Fellows of the Society : Henry John Guerrier, Esq., Colville, Woking. Albert Edward Towle Jourdain, Esq., 89, Wigmore Street, W. James H. A. Majendie, Esq., Hedingham Castle, Essex. The President then read the following "Address":Address to the Eleventh Annual General Meeting of the Huguenot Society of London. By SIR HENRY W. PEEK, BART., President: Ladies and Gentlemen, As you are aware, it has hitherto been the custom at our Annual Meetings to present to you first the Report of the Council, and then for the President to deliver an Address touching on the principal events of Huguenot interest that may have taken place during the past twelve months, both among ourselves and in foreign countries. But our Meeting this evening may, with good reason, be considered to be of a very exceptional nature, and to call for some deviation from our ordinary mode of procedure. It has been thought well, therefore, to combine together in a brief form on this occasion the Report of the Council and the Presidential Address, and I have been requested to read to you the following joint remarks of myself and my colleagues on the past and present of the Society. But before doing this, I feel it is only proper for me to say a few words in my own name only, occupying, as I do, this Chair as your President at the first General Meeting that has been held since the death of its first occupant, the late Sir Henry Austen Layard. It is scarcely necessary for me to remind you of the immense loss we have all suffered in his death, for I am sure you all feel with me how varied and how valuable his services were to the Society, and what an inestimable advantage it was to us to have had during the early years of the Society's existence, when it had all its way to make, a President of such brilliant talent, such world-wide reputation, and such interest in everything relating to the Huguenots, as Sir Henry Layard. To succeed such a man as President of this Society adds, if anything can add, to the honour which you have done me in electing me to fill that office-an honour for which I beg to return you my most hearty thanks. I will now no longer delay proceeding to the remarks which have been suggested to myself and to the Vice-Presidents and Council by the anniversary we have met to celebrate this evening. We have met not only to close the present Session and to enter upon a new year in our history, but to close the first ten years of the Society's existence, a period which perhaps may be considered as the most important through which it is ever likely to pass. We say the most important, for the years of a Society's first beginning, and contending with the difficulties which, in a greater or less degree, inevitably fall to the lot of both Societies and individuals at the outset of life, may be taken as a very good test of its right to exist at all, and of its capability of carrying out the objects for which it was founded. Some of us here this evening will remember how just ten years ago, on the 15th of April, 1885, a small number of descendants of the refugees who flocked to England by hundreds and thousands during the years of trial and persecution which lasted, with little or no intermission, from the time of the fatal St. Bartholomew in 1572, to the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, how some few of those refugees' descendants met in a room in London to discuss the desirability of founding a Society in memory of their brave and unfortunate ancestors. Such a thought may perchance have passed through the mind of some amongst them before but, if so, it was but a fleeting one, dismissed and forgotten as quickly as it came. It was reserved for one man alone to seize on the idea, and by anxious thought and self-denying toil to give it form and substance and, with the aid of others whom he had inspired with his own enthusiasm, to found the Huguenot Society of London. It cannot be unknown to any of us, here in England at least, that for our founder we have to look to Mr. Arthur Giraud Browning, who was not only our guide in earliest days, but to whose constant and unflagging zeal and helpfulness, to say nothing of his consummate knowledge of Huguenot history, we have been unceasingly indebted during the whole of the past ten years. His colleagues in the Council are well aware that the success which has attended his efforts and enabled us to assemble here this evening, is felt by him to be ample reward for all that he has done; but we think you will agree that it would be ungrateful in the extreme if we did not give utterence on this occasion to our keen appreciation of our indebtedness to him. You will share too in our deep regret that, owing to recent sad bereavement, Mr. Browning is not with us to-night to receive the welcome we should have accorded him. But I will ask you to give your unanimous assent to the resolution which I have the privilege and pleasure of proposing. It is this: That the President, Vice-Presidents, Council, and Fellows of the Huguenot Society of London, desire to express to Mr. Arthur Giraud Browning, Founder of the Society, their sense of the gratitude they owe to him, first of all for his exertions in establishing the Society ten years ago and also for the never-failing efforts he has made during those years to ensure its prosperity and usefulness, to make it the means of promoting a knowledge of a most important and interesting portion of modern history, and to bring together in pleasant social intercourse the decendants of those Huguenot refugees, whose best characteristics are so conspicuously reproduced in him. And this Meeting further desires to express to Mr. Browning its respectful and affectionate sympathy |