ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author outlines the roles of Henry Compton and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) as active promoters of relief activities for continental Protestants. However, the author concluded then that in the course of the first half of the eighteenth century, English attitudes became more latitudinarian and that this translated into indifference to religious zeal and to the cause of Protestant solidarity in Europe. It is still difficult to deny that the religious and political climate gradually changed once the wars against Louis XIV were over, or that this shift subsequently affected those European-wide confessional networks, serving to weaken the sense of Protestant solidarity across Europe. Later, some of his proteges, the leading members of the SPCK, which was founded in 1699 as a Protestant version of the Catholic Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, launched relief activities for the persecuted continental Protestants during the wars against Louis XIV's France.