Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 25 - Collette
Collette. — The Huguenot family of Collette took refuge in England after the Edict of Revocation. They had been for a long time naturalized British subjects, when they emigrated to the American colonies. There by industry they made a fortune, and became extensive proprietors of land. After the American war, the Republican Government confiscated their estates. The present representative is an English barrister, Charles Hastings Collette, Esq., who is one of the Directors of the French Hospital. Mr Collette is celebrated as a historical and polemic writer against Romanism. He has been very successful in exposing the pious frauds of the Right Rev. John Milner, Bishop of Castabala and Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District of England, also of Cardinal Wiseman and several other Popish ecclesiastics. Mr Collette’s books and pamphlets are numerous, and prove him to be an honourable disputant, an acute reasoner, and a learned Church historian. His most important works are (1) “The Novelties of Romanism,” 2d edition revised and enlarged, a collection of historical facts, exhibiting the antiquity o f Gospel faith and precepts, and the subsequent accumulation of Romish dogmata and idolatries. (2) “Henry VIII. — an Historical Sketch as affecting the Reformation in England” (there is a library edition, dated 1864, and a revised and cheap edition, dated 1868); the first draft was a lecture prepared in 1862, founded upon researches among our State Papers, and to some extent anticipating the conclusions promulgated by Mr Froude in his History of England. (3) A Reply to Cobbett’s History of the Protestant Reformation in England and Ireland. The late William Cobbett vilified the Reformers and apologised for the cruelties of their persecutors, and therefore his book is kept in constant circulation among the Roman Catholics in the English and Italian languages. Cobbett had been answered by older writers; but the peculiarity of Mr Collette’s work is, that it examines and criticises alleged facts in history only, and does not discourse upon the creeds of the Protestant and Popish parties. This seasonable Reply was published in 1869.