Samuel Pepys records five visits to the French Church on Threadneedle Street in his famous diaries, dating from 1662 to 1664. The Pepys's closest church was St Olave's, and it it where both he and his wife Elizabeth are buried, but he seemed to have had a fondness for the French Church and his snippets of information give a valuable insight into the nature of worship there. As a rule, I don't dwell on the Huguenot's status as religious refugees, but in investigating the reasons behind their motivation, it's necessary to get an understanding of the value of their church in providing a structure for the community.
The Threadneedle Street Church had undergone a split during the Civil War, declaring for Cromwell and causing the Royalist members to leave. By 1660, the Royalists were established in their own church in the Savoy Chapel (any mention of this is curiously absent from the Chapel's website) and worshipping to an Anglican liturgy, although it was delivered in French. Those that remained in the Threadneedle Street church were traditionalists, and rich. They were not the refugees who would arrive after 1681, but men who had come to London to worship in peace, and too make money. Members of the congregation included future founding members of Bank of England, and some of the wealthiest merchants and brokers in the City. The nature of strict Huguenot worship is lost, but Pepys's diary gives a nice picture of what it was like to attend a service.
In the afternoon I to the French Church here in the city, and stood in the aisle all the sermon, with great delight hearing a very admirable sermon, from a very young man, upon the article in our creed, in order of catechism, upon the Resurrection.
30th November, 1662
Huguenot churches were famously relaxed in the way they conducted their services. In a 16thC picture of the Lyons temple, there is even a dog sitting in the aisle, appearing to listen to the sermon (could be symbolic, but the tone of the work is vernacular so no reason to suppose it isn't a real dog). The congregation at St James's Square was warned, at the end of the 17thC not to injure English sensibilities by sitting on the altar railings (I doubt this would have happened in Threadneedle Street). The sermon was the central part of the Sunday service and was given without notes. Some speakers, like the young man above, were interesting. Jean Le Marche, an Church elder at the Threadneedle Street Church, was pretty dull, and famed for going on for three hours, until he was left 'preaching to blank walls'. He wasn't the only one, Louis Herault preached the 'tedious, long sermon' Pepys records in his diary for 28th of December 1668.
Something about the French Church appealed to Pepys, although he doesn't state in any detail what that might have been. It is clear that there was no problem with attending the services, even if you weren't a Huguenot (although also worth noting that Elizabeth was of Huguenot descent and Sam understood French, so the service would not have presented any great problem for him). What you couldn't do at a Huguenot church was take communion without a mereaux, or communion token, which recognized you as a Huguenot and member of a particular congregation. Communion could be taken as any Huguenot church as long as you had one. There is a picture of a French one from the 16thC in the gallery. Communion was only taken four times a year, as Huguenots weren't keen on the importance placed upon it by the Catholic church.
Pepys makes a note in 1663 of attending the French Church after a Sunday lunch and finding the Dutch congregation there. This is likely to have been Dutch Walloons, presumably without somewhere convenient of their own to worship at that time. Most importantly, the service was in Dutch, so Sam left. Another time he arrived too late to get in. Both times, he resorted to his own church of St Olave's.
Without getting too dull, the Huguenot service relied on the Genevan psalter from the mid 16thC. The singing of psalms was central to the Huguenot expression of faith as defined by Calvin and the music was a great attraction for those who came to Huguenot churches. It is commonly believed that the Huguenot congregation did not sing themselves, but relied upon a choir. I'm not so sure: in 1664 Pepys goes twice to the French church and mentions three sisters, whom he sits next to in the earlier entry. They are the three sisters of the French pastor, and he notes they 'sing prettily'. It is interesting to note that the polymath and all-round big hitter Sir Samuel Morland also attended this service, so the church was clearly not without its supporters, or perhaps he just liked the music too. Either way, the psalms used by the Huguenots are beautiful, and if this link works, you can listen one
here.
The Threadneedle Street Church remained in use until 1841, when it was moved to Soho during the rebuilding of Threadneedle Street.
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