ABSTRACT
Long before the French Revolution, there had been a tradition of travelling across the Channel, both to and from England. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Grand Tour saw hundreds of English men and women visiting the Continent. In the other direction, the wave of Huguenots into England in the late seventeenth century is well known. But throughout the early modern period, other categories of passengers who travelled for economic reasons also crossed the Channel: ‘common people’, manufacturers, peddlers and vagrants. While some of these migrants attracted the particular attention of the authorities, in practice, crossing the Channel was very easy.
