University of Leeds historian Dr John Gallagher on how the state monitored 16th century migrants

“That wouldn't make any sense to an early modern person – an early modern person would understand absolutely that words could hurt you, and they could hurt you in ways that actually matter. Not only emotionally but also financially and socially,” says Dr John Gallagher, Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds.

Reputation, at that time, was everything and even words that seem silly now could have dire consequences because people in these cash-poor societies relied on credit, extended to those with a good name.

“So when someone comes in the streets and says you're a liar or you're untrustworthy, or you're a rogue or a knave, that's hurtful, but it's also meaningful for your ability to get the credit that allows you to pay your rent and get your shopping.”

Dr Gallagher, from Dublin, has been preoccupied with such matters, but more specifically in the context of migration.

His latest research findings, have been revealed in a new paper, Migrant Voices in Multilingual London, 1560–1600, which were published in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society.

He writes how there were large numbers of migrants coming to England in the Elizabethan era, many of whom were protestants fleeing religious persecution and violence from countries that spoke French, Dutch, Flemish, Italian and Spanish.

And Dr Gallagher, who grew up speaking Irish and English, has found evidence that the state was actually monitoring gossip about them in multiple languages – keeping tabs on their reputation. Known at the time as ‘strangers’, migrants joined a mostly illiterate but multilingual community.

‘Stranger churches’ were formed with the first Dutch church in London in 1550 and provided services in French, Dutch and Italian. However, church elders recognised that this arrangement was precarious and began to monitor scandal across languages to avoid bringing their communities into disrepute.

The archives of consistories – the stranger churches’ all-male governing bodies – show that churches aimed to ‘have eyes everywhere’, as a minister of the French church in London wrote in 1561.

“They are Calvinist,” Dr Gallagher explains. “These are communities that police their members really strictly in terms of their behaviour,” he says.

"The other reason is that the stranger churches are kind of acting to police their members on behalf of the state. So they take on a role of making sure that everyone stays in line and that's really important because they are not guaranteed the rights that they have in England. They're given the right to worship in their own way.

“They're given the right to have this presence there. But there's nobody saying that that’s in perpetuity, so there's an understanding that they have a job to police the behaviour and the language of migrants – and that's one of the reasons, I think, that they react very strongly in these records when they hear particularly about any kind of speech that looks like it's going to reach or offend the English or the English authority.”

An example of this monitoring includes suspicions which arose over a child’s parentage in the Dutch church, as records showed the elders consulted a woman ‘from overseas’, an ‘Englishman’ and a woman present at the birth of the child, to understand the extent of the rumours.

Consistories also did background checks on migrants at church who could have left behind a secret spouse and family at home.

It is “very important to think about the multilingual history of England, because English is so powerful today,” says Dr Gallagher, adding that in the past, for English speakers it was “was really important to learn languages if they wanted to engage with the wider world.

“It's easy sometimes to look back at 16th and 17th century England and imagine that it was relatively undiverse”.

He says there was “a lot of national diversity, a lot of migrants, and we know that it's a racially diverse place, but it's also linguistically diverse.”

Dr Gallagher’s findings will form part of his upcoming book Strangers: Migration and Multilingualism in Early Modern London, supported by funding from the Philip Leverhulme Prize.

He is using sources ranging from records of insults in the streets to the last words of migrant women making their wills.

Although the project’s focus is on London, it argues that linguistic diversity shaped the modern city at a crucial phase in its development.

The work is also a reminder that migration is nothing new. Dr Gallagher says: “There is a long history of migration to Britain, of people coming across the Channel, making their home here, having to learn English, having to find work, and there's also long histories of a xenophobia challenge as well.

“So I think having some historical perspectives can really help there, to say that what's happening now is not something that's come from nowhere – it’s part of a much longer history.”

And it would be helpful for future historians if language learning was more widely available, believes Dr Gallagher, who has presented a number of BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking episodes.

“It's a tough time politically for language teaching in the UK. Fewer and fewer people are taking languages at school and universities are, in many cases, offering fewer language classes.

“If we want to have historians trained in the UK doing work that isn't just about sources in English, it's really important to offer that training and to support people in learning languages and applying them in their work.”