Between 1550 and 1750 tens of thousands of immigrants, many of them religious refugees escaping persecution on the Continent, settled in Britain and its colonies, and in Ireland. They brought with them their formidable energies and talents and quickly assimilated themselves into the host society. The essays range from general considerations of trends towards integration in the immigrant communities to detailed case-studies of the movement into British society of individual immigrants; from studies of popular attitudes and government policy towards the newcomers to examinations of relations within the immigrant communities themselves and their structures for self-sufficiency. The immigrants’ contributions to art, scholarship, manufacturing, theology and politics are also explored.

Randolph Vigne is the author of Liberals Against Apartheid and Thomas Pringle: South African Pioneer, Poet and Abolitionist. Charles Littleton is a senior research fellow at the History of Parliament.