the Strangers had formed until then a regular congregation. The first minister of the Southampton Walloon Church was Wallerand Thévelin, who we find from the Register was a native of Freylinghen in Flanders.

The Register, which is entitled "REGISTRE DES BAPTESMES MARIAGES & MORTS ET JEUSNES DE LEGLISE WALLONNE ET DES ISLES DE JERSEY, GUERNESEY, SERQ, ORIGNY, &C., ETABLIE A SOUTHAMPTON PAR PATENTE DU ROY EDOUARD SIX ET DE LA REINE ELIZABETH," is divided into five parts, viz.,— 1. Admissions à la Sainte Cêne. 2. Baptêmes. 3. Mariages. 4. Les Morts. 5. Les Jeusnes.

The first celebration of the Sacrament, at which eighty-two persons were present, is recorded as having taken place on 21st Dec., 1567. Of the eighty-two communicants, six are styled Anglois, and of these six, no less than four bear Channel Island names.

I shall refer to this later. Admissions à la Sainte Cene are recorded in the years from 1567 to 1602, from 1604 to 1632, one in 1661 and three in 1665, when they cease to be recorded. There is therefore a long lacune from 1632 to 1665, partly to be accounted for by the comparative peace and quiet enjoyed by the Protestants of France subsequent to the fall of La Rochelle, under the rule of Richelieu and Mazarin successively, who, although they did not love the Protestants, yet valued them as the source of very much of the wealth and tax-paying power of France. In 1635 the congregation of the Southampton Church was reduced to fifteen families, six only having been alien born. I do not suppose that the names recorded on each occasion, certainly after the first, represent the names of all the persons partaking of the Sacrament, but only those who were so admitted for the first time. This supposition is confirmed by the words nulz nouveaux adioins, recorded under the date 1st Dec., 1583. In 1572, after the date of the St. Bartholomew, that is from August to December 1572, there were but thirteen new admissions, but in 1573 there were one-hundred-and-fifty-two. On the occasion of the celebration on the 2nd August, 1584, the Register records the fact that a ceste céne tous les communians estoient 186, although this number included only five new admissions, of which three were from Guernsey. The troubles threatening the Huguenots of La Rochelle and L'Isle de Rhé in 1628 and 1629 caused a considerable immigration into Southampton from the latter

'It is probable that this title was given to the Book many years after it came into use.

place, for on 6th Jan., 1628-9 no less than forty-one Refugees from L'Isle de Rhé were admitted to the Communion, two more in 1629 and two in 1631. As may be supposed, admission to the Sacrainent was a solemn and important inatter, and, accordingly we find cases recorded in which La Sainte Céne was defendue1 to certain mal-doers. Some of the reasons for this are not without their ludicrous side; for instance on 2 Janvier, 1568-9 we find cene defendue à robert Cousin po ne point recognoistre dauoir trompé Cornille Poingdextre luy aiant vendu ung cheval qui ne voyait guerre et ne lauoir pas advertys.2 To another member of the congregation la cene est defendue, sad to relate, pour auoir battu et nauré sa femme. Personal peculiarities are not left unnoticed, for we find recorded the admission of two members of the Church as each n'aiant qu'un oiel, and of another on 31 Mars, 1583 as aians (sic) 2 jambes de bois.

Not only, as I have already said, was admission to the Sacrament a solemn matter, but it became, for their own security, increasingly important to the community tɔ scrutinize closely those strangers who applied for admission, and accordingly, we find it recorded, on the occasion of the Communion of 5 July, 1573, that by the authority of the magistrates of the town, testimony was to be given as to each applicant. The note is worth giving in full.-Les Recus a la cene qui se fit le 5e jo de Juillet 1573, auec les témoings quilz ont produicts por ferre paroir quilz estoient de la religion auparavant estre sortis de la france, de poeur de quelque faux frere quj vindroit por espier sous ombre de la Religion. Ceste ordre fut pour lors tenu suiuant le Comandem't des magistrats de la ville. From this date, in numerous instances, either the names of témoins as sponsors for respectability, or a reference to témoignage as having been produced is given. Sometimes the value of the témoignage is more or less qualified, for on 7 Juin, 1629, five admissions, all women, are recorded, these being referred to as venues des Isles de Jersee et de Guernesee auec passable tésmoignage de leurs mœurs, and on the same date three more as aussi venues des sus dites Isles auec fort bon tésmoignage. Again on 3 Juillet 1575, Matieu Molart demeurant a gernesé vint a la cene, sans

11568, Le Dimanche jour de Pâques; 1568-9, 2 Janvier; 1569, 3 Juillet; 1569, 2 Octre.; 1569-70, 1 Janvier; 1570, 2 Avril; 1570, 1 Octre.

This incident appears to refer to an early example of that singular moral obliquity which seems more or less to attach to persons engaged in horsedealing.

31580, 2 Octre.

ferre aparoir par gille Germain et Nicolas qui s'estoit bien porté par de la combien qui auoit promis le ferre aparoir par ceux la. At first this reads somewhat like a puzzle, but on second reading it appears that Matieu Molart had failed to produce certain promised witnesses, who are named, as to his conduct in Guernsey. There are but three or four actes de reconnaissance recorded in the register, these being only in connection with admission to the Sacrament, but there must have been numerous others which no doubt, were recorded in the missing acte books. This is most unfortunate, for these actes de reconnaissance would be amongst the most interesting and valuable of the records, for these two reasons, that they would supply, within a very few days, the date of the arrival of the Refugee in this country, as well as, probably, the place of origin. On the 5th April, 1573, the reconnaissances of two Refugees are referred to as recorded en lautre liure. On the 12th August, 1722, Mons. Pierre Carpentier prêtre de l'eglise Romaine du troisieme ordre des franciscains made a public abjuration of his faith and was received into the Protestant Church by Mons. de St. Denis, the Minister of the French Church.

In 1712, pressure was put upon the congregation by Queen's College, with threats as to the withdrawal of the Chapel from the Refugees if they failed to conform to the Liturgy of the Church of England. This led to much internal discord. Conformity had in Laud's time been forced upon this as well as on other foreign congregations, but after his attainder and execution, the Church had returned to the Calvinistic form of worship.

Although the Revocation must have brought Refugees in great numbers to Southampton, yet, as the Register of admissions to the Sacrament ceased in 1665, we have no help as to numbers from this source. Nowhere in the Register of Admissions à la Sainte Céne of the Walloon Church of Southampton, nor, so far as I know, in those of any of the Huguenot Churches of England, is any mention made of the méreaux, the distribution of which by the anciens to approved communicants, during the week preceding the quarterly Communion, became in the Reformed Church of France so essential a preliminary to participation in the celebration of the Holy Supper.

The earliest specimen known in France is believed to date from the last years of the reign of Henri IV, and is assigned to the great Church of the Charenton, near Paris. It was not,

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probably, until the years not very long anterior to the Revocation that the use of the méreau began to spread amongst the Churches of the Reformed Faith in France, and it was, perhaps, only in the days of L'Eglise du désert that its use became general, especially so, in the Provinces of Poitou, Saintonge, Aunis, and the south-west of France.

In the Channel Island Churches its use was no doubt unknown, because, as will be seen later, in Jersey, the Presbyterian form of Church Government came to an end in 1620, and, in Guernsey, at the Restoration. I am, however, under the impression that the méreau in some form or other, was not unknown in one, at least, of the French dissenting congregations of Guernsey, within this century. The méreau was a simple jeton, counter or token, generally of some kind of soft metal, with more or less rude impressions of one kind or other on either side; sometimes an eucharistic cup, an angel or other emblem, with a legend, and usually some initial letters to signify the name of the particular Church. Numbers of these are extant in France, in the hands of collectors, but, with the exception of two of quite early seventeenth century date, all the specimens are of dates subsequent to the Revocation. Many of these have been figured and described in the " Bulletin" of the Soc. de l'Hist. du Prot. Francais.1

The mother church in London protested loudly at the proposal for conformity in the Southampton Church, but

The subject has been exhaustively treated by M. H. Gelin, in “Le méreau dans les Eglises reformées de France. 1891-Niort.

The word méreau, in a corrupt form, is apparently not unknown in England. In "A Midsummer Night's Dream," Act II, line 98, Titania, replying to the reproaches of Oberon, says, "the nine men's morris is filled up with mud The nine men's morris, played on a rough kind of chess board, cut out of the turf, is, according to the notes on the Play in the Clarendon Press Series, a rustic game still extant in some parts of England, and so called from the Counters (old Fr. merclles) with which it is played. James, in his Variorum Shakespeare, says also that the game, which he describes, is played by the shepherds and country lads of Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, and that another form of the game is played in Suffolk. The figures, with which the game is played, are called by the country people "nine men's morris" or merrils, because each party has nine men or counters. The nine men's morris does not appear to have had any relation to the morris, morisco or morrice dances of moorish origin of which we read in early English literature. The Ency. Britt. gives a short article on the morris dance but makes no reference to the nine men's morris. See also Strutt's Sports and Pastimes.

That the word méreau was not exclusively limited to the tokens used as vouchers for the admission of the faithful to the Communion is evident from a note in the "Bulletin" of the Soc: de l'hist: du Prot: Fr: for January, 1894, from which it appears that it was applied also to those used for purposes of admission à certaines cérémonies des diverses corporations des métiers, and also to those used as a kind of tally for business and official purposes.

nevertheless, in 1712, the Church adopted the English Liturgy, many secessions from the congregation taking place at the same time. The first baptism according to the Liturgy of the Established Church took place on the 21st April, 1712. Further trouble befel the Church, later, owing to the unpopularity of the minister, Mons. Pierre Deneveu de St. Denis. This led eventually to his dismissal and to the election by the congregation, in 1723, of Mons. Daniel Duval as minister. In this unhappy quarrel the acte books were retained by M. De St. Denis, and they have been lost.

That dreadful scourge of Europe during the 16th & 17th centuries, the Plague, is often referred to in the Register. In 1583, under date 7th July, a note is made that because of the plague public service without a sermon would take place at five o'clock in the evening. Again, in 1665, in the absence of Mr. Bernert (? Bernard), minister of St John's Parish, on account of the plague, a child of English parents was baptized at the Parish Church by Mons' Couraud, the French pastor, on 23rd July, and two more children, of English parentage, also for like reasons on 26th, Nov' of the same year. Again on 4th Dec., 1665, Mons. Couraud married Jacob Berger and Sara Baylie of St John's, les Ministres Englois ayant abandonné leur troupeaus a cause de la peste qui rauagoit en ce lieu. Many marriages of English men and women took place at the French Church in this and the following year. A note is made with regard to the Communion of 4th August, 1583, that, in accordance with the advice of the last Synod, celebration should take place monthly, that is, not only on the usual quarterly dates, but the note goes on to say, et aussy entant que la Peste nous pressoit fut aduisé de la ferre ainsi pour nous fortifier en foi en lui priant avoir pitié de nous. In that dreadful year of 1583 the register of Les Morts gives, only too truly, an idea of the ravages of the plague. In April of that year, the words Peste a commencé introduce a long list of deaths from this cause, numbering over seventy in that small community. Amongst the victims is, apparently, Wallerand, Thévelin,1 the first minister of the Church. He succumbed on the 13th Sept., 1584, enuiron les 5 et 6 heurs du soir (et) fut enterré Lundi 14 dud.

Another dreadful outbreak of the plague is recorded in 1604, when one-hundred and sixty-three deaths are registered. In 1665, the year of its calamitous appearance in London, it

1 His wife Elizabeth Le Mahieu was admitted to the Communion le ler dimanche de Juillet, 1568.