GENERATION 1 NOTES FOR JOHN FRANSOY
Carolyn adds that, "both of our lines (her husband Harold's and our Michigan Franciscos) came from Henry (son of John Fransoy) who lived to be 134 years old as confirmed by 'Ripley's Believe It or Not'." I also have printed news and interviews by his sons to confirm this statement.
"His (Henry's) son John is next in line and descendant to both our lines. From there, our lines split. Yours (is) Thomas' and Harold's is Abraham's."
JOHN FRANSOY AND THE FIRST FRANCISCOS WERE "HUGUENOTS" WHO FLED FRANCE TO THE NETHERLANDS (WHILE MANY FLED TO OTHER COUNTRIES, INCLUDING ENGLAND) TO ESCAPE RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION AT THE HANDS OF FRENCH RULERS AS LEADERS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THEIR ARMIES. IN THEIR BOOK, "HISTORY OF FRANCE," G. DE BERTIER DE SAUVIGNY (Catholic Institute of Paris) AND DAVID H. PINKNEY (University of Washington) DESCRIBE THE BEGINNINGS OF FRENCH PROTESTANTISM:
"Only a Frenchman could provide his compatriots with a form of Protestantism well suited to their way of thinking. John Calvin, born in 1509 at Nyons, had studied law and classical letters at Orleans, Bourges, and Paris. Converted probably aroud 1532, he was threatened by the first persecution of Lutherans ordered by Francis I and took refuge first in Strasbourg, then in Basel. His most important work, 'The Institutes of Christian Religion', was published in Basel in 1536... Written in plain language, the book was an enormous success, for it lent the Protestant religion the support of a rigorous logical structure based firmly on Scripture." ("History of France", Savigny & Pinkney, Forum Press, Inc., 1983, p. 114)
By the end of 1561, there were 670 'established' Calvinist churches and a large number of small, less organized groups. A national synod, held secretly at Paris in May of 1559, adopted a 'confession' of forty articles in which Calvin's doctrines were codified. Because of their ties with Geneva, the French Calvinists were called Huguenots, from the German "Eidgenossen" (confederates). (Savigny p. 114).
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION WAS NOT THE NORM IN THE 1640'S FRANCE, FOR CARDINAL MAZARIN, WHO SUCCEEDED CARDINAL RICHILIEU AS HEAD OF THE KING'S COUNCIL, OR PRIME MINISTER, IS SAID TO HAD "readily pardoned opposition, and readily forgot benefits. All agreed that he labored tirelessly in the government of France, but even his industry could offend, for sometimes he left titled visitors waiting fretfully in his anterooms... One of his first acts was to confirm the Edict of Nantes (1598). He allowed the Huguenots to hold their synods in peace, and during his ministry, no Frenchman suffered religious persecution by the central government." (Will and Ariel Durant, "The Story of Civilization, Vol VIII: The Age of Louis XIV; "Simon and Schuster, New York, 1963; p. 5)
"In 1652, Louis (XIV) confirmed the Edict of Nantes of his grandfather, Henry IV; and in 1666, he expressed the appreciation of Huguenot loyalty during the Fronde (two violent attempts in 1648-1653 to overthrow the prime minister, Mazarin, and the monarchy). But it grieved him that the unity of France could not be religious as well as political;... The Church herself had never approved the toleration guaranteed by the Edict of Nantes. An assembly of the clergy in 1655 called for a stricter interpretation of the edict; their assembly of 1660 (the birth year of John Fransoy) asked the King to close all Huguenots colleges and hospitals, and to exclude the Huguenots from public office; their assembly of 1670 recommended that children who had reached their seventh birthday should be deemed legally capable of abjuring the Huguenot heresy, and that those who so abjured should be removed from their parents; in 1675 their assembly demanded that mixed marriages be declared null, and that the offspring of such marriages be classed as illegitimate...
"From the beginning of the captive reign, Louis--or his ministers with his consent--issued a succession of decrees that moved toward full revocation of the toleration edict. In 1661, he outlawed Protestant worship in most of the provinces of Gex, near the Swiss border, on the ground that Gex had been added to France since the edict; however, there were seventeen thousand Protestants in that Province, and only four hundred Catholics ('Cambridge Modern History, V. 22) In 1664 advancement to mastership in the guilds was made especially difficult for any but Catholics ('The Age of Louis XIV,; 2v, Henri Martin, Boston, 1865, I, 525). In 1665 boys of fourteen and girls of twelve were authorized to accept conversion to Catholicism and to leave their parents, who were thereafter required to pay them an annuity for their support (Ibid). In 1666, the Huguenots were forbidden to establish new colleges or to maintain academies for the education of the young nobility. I 1669 the emigration of Huguenots was made punishable with arrest if they were captured, and confiscation of goods; (Ibid) and anyone who aided a Huguenot to emigrate was subject to condemnation to the galleys for life. (Michelet, Jules, 'Histoire de France,' 5v. Paris: J. Hetzel et Cie., n.d.; iv. 520) In 1667 Louis permitted the endowment of a 'treasury of conversions' from which sums averaging six livres per head were given to Huguenots accepting conversion to the Catholic faith. To ensure durability of conversions, Louis decreed (1679) the banishment of all relapsed converts, and the confication of their property (Guizat, F., "History of Civiliationn, 3v., London, 1898. v. 23)... In 1682 he issued--and ordered all Protestant ministers to read to their congregations--an address threatening Huguenots 'with evils incomparably more terrible and deadly than before'. (Cam Mod History, v. 22) Within the next three years, 570 of the 815 Huguenot churches were closed; many torn down; and when the Huguenots tried to worship on the site of their ruined temples, they were punished as rebels against the state.
"Meanwhile the dragonnades had begun. It was an old custom in France to lodge troops in or at the expense of communes or homes. Louvois, minister of war, proposed to the King (April 11, 1681) that converts to Catholicism be exempt for two years from such billeting of troops. It was so ordered. Louvois now directed the military administrators of the provinces of Poitou and Limousin to house their dragoons (mounted soldiers) among Huguenots, especially among the well-to-do. In Poitou, Marechal de Marillac let his troops understand the he would not resent some apostolic zeal in their treatment of the heretic Huguenots. When Louis heard of these excesses, reproved Marillac, and when they continued he dismissed him. (Boulenger, Jacques, "The Seventeenth Century." New York, 1920, p. 263) On May 19, he ordered the suspension of conversion by billeting and condemned the acts of violence committed in some places against the Reformers (Martin: I, 552)... The dragonades spread through a large part of France, and brought in thousands of converts; some towns and provinces-Montpellier, Nimes, Bearn--abjured wholesale their Calvinistic faith. The majority of Huguenots, terrified, pretended conversion; but thousands, defying the laws, abandoned their homes and property and fled across frontiers or overseas. Louis was told that very few Huguenots were left in France, and that the Edict of Nantes had become meaningless. In 1684 the general assembly of the clergy petitioned the King that the edict be completely annulled, and that 'the undisturbed reign of Jesus Christ... be re-established in France...
"... a final clause (in the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, October 17, 1685) promised that the few remaining Huguenots would be allowed to dwell peacefully in certain towns. The article was carried out in Paris and its suburbs; Huguenot tradesmen there were protected and reassured by the lieutenant of police; there were no dragonnades in or near Paris; the dancing could go on at Versailles, and the King could sleep with a good conscience. But in many provinces under Lousois' urging, (Martin, II, 43) the dragonnades continued, and the obdurate Huguenots were subjected to pillage and torture. Says the leading French authority on the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes:
'All was permitted to the soldiers except murder. They made the Huguenots dance till exhausted; they tossed them up in blankets; the poured boiling water down their throats...; they beat the soles of their feet; they pulled out the hair of beards...; they burned the arms and legs of their hosts with candle flame...; they forced them to hold burning charcoal in their hands... a great fire... They forced women to stand naked in the street, to bear the mockery and outrages of passerby. They bound a nursing mother to a bedpost, and held away from her the infant crying for her breast; and when she opened her mouth to plead with them, they spat in her mouth.' (Buckle, H>T>, 'History of Civilization,' Ib, 492n, quoting Benoist, Elie "Histoire de 1 'Edict de Nantes' (1965), D, 887f)
"Of the 1,500,000 Huguenots who had been living in France in 1660, some 400,000, in the decade before and after the Revocation, escaped across guarded borders at the risk of their lives. A thousand tales of heroism survived for a century from those desperate years. Protestant countries welcomed the fugitives...Holland opened it's doors, built a thousand homes to house the newcomers, lent them money to set up business, and guaranteed them all the rights of citizenship; Dutch Catholics joined Protestants and Jews in raising funds for Huguenot relief. The grateful refugees not only enriched industry and trade in the United Provinces, they enlisted in Dutch and English armies fighting France. Some of them accmpanied or followed William III to England to help him against James II; the French Calvinist Marshal Shombert, who had won victories for Louis XIV, led an English army against the French, and died in defeating them in the battle of Boyne (1690). Everywhere in these hospitable lands, the Huguenots brought their skills in crafts, commerce, and finance; all Protestant Europe profited from the victory of Catholicism in France. An entire quarter of London was occupied by French silk workers. Huguenot exiles in England became interpreters of English thought to France, and prepared the conquest of the French mind by Bacon, Newton, and Locke," (Durant, vii, 69-74).