THE VAUDOIS:

COMPRISING

OBSERVATIONS MADE DURING A TOUR

TO THE

VALLEYS OF PIEDMONT,

IN THE SUMMER OF 1844:

TOGETHER WITH

REMARKS, INTRODUCTORY AND INTERSPERSED,

RESPECTING

THE ORIGIN, HISTORY, AND PRESENT CONDITION

OF THAT INTERESTING PEOPLE.

BY

E. HENDERSON, D.D.

-"a longè potentissimo hoste invasus, præter opinionem victor, aut
omnino invictus, evasit."-CLAUD. SEYSSEL. ADVER. VALDENS.

LONDON:

JOHN SNOW, PATERNOSTER ROW.

MDCCCXLV.

TYLER & REED,

PRINTERS,

BOLT-COURT, FLEET-STREET.

PREFACE.

THE object of the following publication is to excite a more general attention and sympathy in behalf of the people of whom it treats.

Shut up within the secluded valleys they inhabit in the north-west corner of Italy, the Vaudois might still have remained, as they had done for ages, unknown to the world, if it had not been for a long series of cruel persecutions to which they have been subject on the part of Rome. The barbarities inflicted on them about the middle of the seventeenth century roused the several Protestant states of Europe to interfere for their protection; on which occasion two folio volumes appeared, setting forth their history, polity, and sufferings: the one by Sir Samuel Morland, Commissioner Extraordinary of Oliver Cromwell at the court of Turin, and the other by Jean Leger, one of their pastors and moderators. Their history was subsequently taken up by Dr. Allix, and other writers of less note; but they seem almost to have