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SEPTEMBER

2, 1565 --Georgia. In 1555, Admiral Gaspard de Coligny encouraged colonization in Brazil, and later in 1562, the colonization of Florida. Such colonies were designed to provide refuge for persecuted Huguenots.
     A body of four hundred persecuted Huguenots took refuge near the Florida border under the command of Jean de Ribaut. They emigrated and for several years have been a quiet, inoffensive people living in peace with the Indians. They have cultivated the soil, built villages, etc.
     But a powerful Spanish fleet has come in sight of the Spanish coast on the 28th of July. On the 8th of August they set ashore and begin laying the foundation of a town that they name St. Augustine. When it is sufficiently under way, Menendez turns his attention to the Huguenots.
     He directs a fleet of ships carrying some twenty-five hundred Spanish soldiers and aims for the Huguenot settlements. The French make no resistance today as two hundred are seized and flayed alive. Under promises for clemency, the French surrender and the Spanish slaughter seven hundred more of their number hanging their bodies upon the nearby trees with this inscription:  "Not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans." They then take possession of the French settlement. Mass is said; then a cross is raised, and the site for a church is selected on ground still wet with the blood of the Huguenots.
     A Privateer named Dominque de Gourges secretly arms and equips a vessel at La Rochelle. His adventurous life was employed in the army against Spain until his capture, at which time he was sentenced to be a galley slave for his enemies. The Turks captured the ship, in which he rowed, and the Commander of the Knights of Malta at last redeemed him. With one hundred fifty men he embarks for the coast of Florida to take revenge. He collects a strong party of Indians in two days. Coming down suddenly upon the forts of the Spaniards he takes them by storm and slays and afterwards hangs every man he finds there, leaving their bodies on the same trees on which they had hanged the Huguenots. But de Gourges leaves a different inscription: “Not as Spaniards, but as murderers."
     The colony in Brazil will also be soon destroyed.

2, 1566 --Netherlands. The Prince of Orange sanctions public preaching.

2, 1684 --England. John Flavel and William Jenkyn are conducting a worship service when it is suddenly disrupted by the authorities. Mr. Flavel escapes, but Mr. Jenkyn is impeded by the crowd and is arrested. He offers to pay the customary fine of ten pounds, but he is refused. He will be committed to the Newgate Jail. Mr. Jenkyn is now seventy-one years of age, and will die in prison.

2, 1784 --England. Mr. John Wesley ordains Mr. Thomas Coke as "Superintendent" of the Methodist societies in the New World.

2, 1789 --Maryland. This Wednesday, Mr. Francis Asbury writes, "I came to brother Philip's in Maryland, and had a quickening time. God has preached to the whole family by the death of his daughter, and the fire spreads throughout the whole neighborhood.
     "We must needs go through Samaria. I called at Fredericktown, and had a number of wild, unfeeling hearers. Thence to Liberty, where the Almighty is working among the people. I preached in the day, and again at night --I hope not in vain."

2, 1792 --France, The Roman Catholic Church of France has expelled or "converted" all within the realm after decades of persecution. "Surely never," says Michelet, "had man's dearest treasure, Liberty, been more lavishly squandered." It effected upon the French people a feeling of utter emptiness, or to use the words of Carlyle, "emptiness of pocket, of stomach, of head, and of heart." "The Church", says Samuel Smiles, "which had claimed and obtained the sole control of the religious education of France saw itself assailed by its own offspring --desperate, ignorant, and so ferocious that in some places they even seized the priests and indecently scourged them in front of their own altars.

    
 

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