Further to Hadrian Cassar Torreggiani’s letter (‘French connection’, April 4), many English families with “upper-class sounding” French surnames have nothing whatsoever to do with the Norman conquest of 1066 and the subsequent influx of Norman nobility. They descend from the humble Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants), who were forced to flee Catholic persecution in 16th and 17th century- France, which reached its apotheosis with the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (Edict of Fontainebleau) promulgated by Louis XIV in 1685.

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