De Ruvigny's Irish Refuge
Embittered Huguenot whose policies went hand in hand with repression of Catholics in William III’s Ireland or enlightened instigator of a unique French enclave which contributed to the 18th-century Ascendancy? In the summer which sees the tercentenary of the Battle of the Boyne, John Stocks Powell looks at the fortunes of Portarlington and its founding father.
One of the rulers of Ireland and a powerful enemy of the Catholics... seeks nothing but the destruction of the Catholic religion... by doing so he hopes to take vengeance for the expulsion of the French Huguenots and to gratify his followers by handing over to them the spoils of the Catholics.
So wrote Horatio Spada, the Papal Internuncio in Brussels, to his uncle cardinal in 1697. Spada's pastoral care was geographically wide, covering territories where, for various reasons, Catholics were subject to discrimination. A politically minded man, he engrossed himself with a campaign to vilify Henri Massue, 2nd marquis de Ruvigny, a Huguenot general close to the ear of William Ill.
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