WHY THE FRENCH WEAVERS CAME TO ENGLAND
My dear ****,
This is going to be a story all about Samuel Gilbert and his wife, Mary, who came out here to New South Wales with three of their five children nearly 200 years ago, and I do hope that you will like it so well that you will read it from the beginning to the end.
What do those stars mean ?
Well, you see that they stand for the letters of your name, the name of the girl or boy who is reading this story, and you must put the letters in for yourself, because I cannot do it for you, as I do not know the names of any of the girls or boys at the Samuel Gilbert Primary School.
So, if your name is Jack, or if it is Joan, the number of stars will be all right for you, but if your name is Joyce or Katherine, or Herbert, all you have to do is add as many stars as you like. But if your name is Joy or Jim, what you must do is take away a star, and there you are. When you have changed the stars into letters of your name, you will see that the story is really and truly written for you, my dear ****.
Suppose that I were to ask you to tell me all about your own home, you would say, "Why. That's easy enough", and you would tell me what kind of house it was, and where it was, and perhaps, who built it, almost without stopping to think. And then perhaps, you would go on to tell me all about the garden and the fruit trees and the fowl yard and the dog kennel, and where the cats and their kittens live. You know all about it.
And, if I were to ask you about your school, you would be just the same. You might have everything at your fingertips, and you could tell me all about the classrooms and the playgrounds, where the boys play cricket and football, and where the girls play basketball and softball. But, if I were to ask you to tell me all that you know about Samuel Gilbert, the man after whom your school was named, do you really know anything ? I am quite sure that girls and boys do not know the story of Samuel Gilbert at all, although they should, if they want to tell others that they go to the Samuel Gilbert Public School at Castle Hill. And if you were ever a Brownie or a Cub in the Scouts, you will D.Y.B. I am sure.
This story is being written by me because he was my Great Great Great Grandfather, and I wish to tell you all about him, so that you will be just as proud of him as I am.
It is a very sensible idea, my dear ****, to begin at the beginning, and most people do so, except those who like to begin at the end of the story, and that takes away all the fun. If you read a fairy tale, and know how it ended, you will miss a great deal of pleasure and wonder, and when it come to the end, and when the Prince was married to the beautiful Princess and they lived happily ever afterwards, you would say, "Oh. I knew all that", just because you did not begin at the beginning.
So, let me begin my story at the right end, which is the beginning, and not at the wrong end, which is the end. It sounds a bit queer, but it really isn't so. If you look at the last Chapter, you will see it is all about some man of whom you have never heard, because you have not met him before in the part of my story where he nearly ruined the life of poor Samuel Gilbert.
You are now about to learn your history. What made Britain Great ? Your teacher will be telling you about the Romans from Italy coming over to England before the birth of Christ, and their staying there as conquerors for 400 years. Then you have the Normans from Normandy in France landing in England in 1066 and killing our King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. The Vikings from Denmark and Norway were attacking the east coast. Then the Spaniards in Spain even sent their Great Armada of 130 big ships full of soldiers to conquer England, and they were driven off by Sir Francis Drake and other famous seamen in 1588, and they were forced to sail right around the British Isles, and few of them ever got back to Spain. And there was the great sea battle at Trafalgar in 1805, where Lord Nelson and his Royal Navy defeated the combined French and Spanish ships. And finally there was the great battle of Waterloo in Belgium in 1815, when the British Army under the Duke of Wellington, with the help of the Prussians, finally defeated the French under Napoleon.
But that is not my task. I hope to tell you more about your own history, that of Samuel Gilbert and his wife, Mary Amanet, after whom your school was named. Were they important people ? Let us find out.
Now GILBERT was a French name, and it is really pronounced "Jillbear". Yes, they were both of French descent, and their ancestors were over in England three hundred years ago. So we have to go back to France at that time to find their story. And it all starts with the Christian religion, of which the Pope in Rome was the head. Most of the people in Europe had become Christians after being met by priests and missionaries sent out by the Roman Church, and they were called Catholics. The Roman Catholics made all the rules, and even the Kings and Princes of Europe, who were Catholics, were required to obey them.
In England, King Henry V111 wanted to divorce his first wife, Princess Katherine of Aragon from Spain, to marry a lady of his court, Anne Boleyn, but the Pope would not agree, because King Henry was a Catholic, and he had had trouble with King Henry before. So the King made up his own mind and made Anne his second Queen and set up his own Church of England, giving all of his subjects freedom to worship in whatever Church they wished. Those who left the Roman Catholic Church were called Protestants.
And things were not the best over in France, either. There were many people who had left the Roman Catholic Church as well, and they were called Huguenots, a French word which is pronounced "Hewgernose". Most of the people of Europe had become Christian Catholics under the Roman Church over the centuries, but many French Huguenots had become Protestants. They had been very badly treated by the Catholics for several hundred years, and they were looking at the freedom which the Protestants had in England.
The Huguenots lived mostly in Northern France, near Paris, where they were making cloth, in which they had been experts for years. People had been making cloth for clothes for thousands of years after they had changed from wearing the skins of animals. They were called "Weavers". You can make cloth yourself, if you try.
First of all, you need a wooden frame of four sides. You put a row of nails sticking out at the top side, and a matching set on the bottom side, about ¼ inch apart. Then you have two balls of wool. You stretch one strand from the nail on the top left corner down to its mate on the bottom left, then back up to number 2 nail on the top and back to number 2 nail on the bottom, and you continue doing that until you have covered the whole frame.
Then you take the second ball of wool to use across the frame, Fasten the left end and then take the ball through the up and down strands, under one and over the next, under the next, over the next, and so on. When you reach the right edge, you start coming back, but this time you take the strand to the different position to which it was before, until you reach the left side again. If you continue doing this, moving the cross strands up against each other, you will soon have a piece of cloth wide enough for a scarf.
The Huguenots had become the best weavers in the world. They could use wool, cotton from Egypt or India, linen from local flax, or silk from their own silkworms which they fed on mulberry leaves or which had been brought back from China by the ships, or by the camels who came across on the silk road. Their industry in Northern France employed many thousands. Of course, they already had their own spinning wheels, for they had to spin the wool or cotton first to make the threads.
There were many big riots in France, where the King was on the side of the Huguenots, at one time, and let them be attacked and killed by the Roman Catholics, and, before Samuel Gilbert was born in about 1788, there were about 30,000 or more Huguenots settled around Northern London at places like Bethnal Green, Spitalfields, and Shoreditch. Thousands of others went over to the the English Colonies in North America, where there was freedom for all.