an appellation given by way of contempt to the reformed or Protestant Calvinists of France.

The name had its first rise in 1560; but authors are not agreed as to the origin and occasion thereof: but one of the two following seems to be the least forced derivation.

One of the gates of the city of Tours is called the gate Fourgon, by corruption from feu Hugon, i.e. the late Hugon. This Hugon was once count of Tours according to Eginoardus in his life of Charles the Great, and to some other historians. He was it seems a very wicked man, who by his fierce and cruel temper made himself dreadful; so that after his death he was supposed to walk about in the night-time, beating all those he met with: this tradition the judicious Thuanus has not scrupled to mention in his history. Davila and other historians pretend, that the nickname of Huguenots was first given to the French Protestants, because they used to meet in the night-time in subterranean vaults near this gate of Hugon; and what seems to countenance this opinion is, that they were first called by the name of Huguenots at this city of Tours.

Others assign a more illustrious origin to that name; and say that the leaguers gave it to the reformed, because they were for keeping the crown upon the head of the line descended from Hugh Capet; whereas they were for giving it to the house of Guife, as descended from Charles the Great.

Others again derive it from a French and faulty pronunciation of the German word edignoffen, signifying confederates, and originally applied to that valiant part of the city of Geneva, which entered into an alliance with the Swiss cantons, in order to maintain their liberties against the tyrannical attempts of Charles III. duke of Savoy.

These confederates were called Eignote, whence Huguenots.

The persecution which they underwent has scarce its parallel in the history of religion: though they obtained a peace from Henry III. in 1576, it was only of short continuance; and their sufferings, mitigated by the famous edict of Nantes, granted to them in 1598 by Henry IV., were again renewed, after the revocation of that edict, by Louis XIV. in 1685.