Short answer: officially they were welcomed, publicly less so.

Long answer: Huguenot refugees flocked to England most famously after the infamous St Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, where Catholics murdered Huguenots in Paris en masse across a period of three days, as sanctioned by the King himself, leaving thousands dead. Kristen Elizabeth Poole summarises accounts of the slaughter thus;

'Catholics gather Protestant infants in a large basket and throw them into a Seine overflowing with corpses. A renowned Protestant beauty, already wounded and struggling amidst the same bodies, desperately clings for safety to the pillars of a bridge, only to be stoned to death by the mob overhead; her hair becomes entangled in the bridge's foundations and her body floats there, rotting, for days [...] This slaughter differed significantly from the spectacle of burning heretics, the bone-crushing terrors of the Inquisition, and even the illegal execution of prisoners of war. Here, a king sanctioned the mass execution of the nobles who [...] had been his boon companions and confidants; here, individuals took up instruments of everyday domestic life to bludgeon, stab and drown their neighbours; here Protestant lawyers, doctors, merchants, city officials - men of wealth and power - were herded by the hundreds into halls where they watched bands of local butchers kills their friends and families with the same aces that had long prepared their daily meat. Here, so it was reported, Catholic children gleefully slaughtered Protestant babies.'

Poole, Kristen Elizabeth. “Garbled Martyrdom in Christopher Marlowe's ‘The Massacre at Paris.’” Comparative Drama, vol. 32, no. 1, 1998, pp. 1–25. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41153901.

 

Even accounting for some exaggeration, many of these reports are eerily consistent and there is no doubt that Parisian streets saw witness to a barbaric slaughter of thousands of Protestants. Huguenot refugees flowed through Canterbury (with many staying there as artisan weavers - the Huguenot Weaver's House is one of the most stunning half timbered buildings in Canterbury) and on into London in their thousands.

 

As for public attitudes to Protestant refugees, the pressure-cooker of the summer of 1593 is probably the most concise way to answer this question, since it brings together public opposition to, and governmental support for the presence of the Protestant refugees (not just French Huguenots, mind, but a good number of Flemish Protestants too).

 

B.J. Cottret's The Huguenots in England: Immigation and Settlement c.1550-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 1991) describes how tensions arise when the rights of 'strangers' or foreigners was brought before parliament. The parliamentary debate was raised by request of the City of London, 'represented by Francis Moore, a well-known lawter who compained of unfair competition on the part of aliens, whom he held responsible for unemployment', a term which included 'idleness, indigence, impoverishment, and their outcome, poor relief'. (p.75). Moore argued that foreign commodities were of better quality and produced at a lower price than English goods, and the inability to compete was a source of tension and strife. The parliamentary debate focused on whether foreigners should be debarred from 'selling by way of retail any foreign commodities' (p.74). The bill passed through the House of Commons, but was defeated in the House of Lords, and the economic freedoms and rights of the refugees was officially upheld.

 

As is clear from the terms of the debate though, this was not publicly supported and tensions began to brew. Arthur Freeman describes the public resistance to refugees across the summer of 1593;

'An early expression of the always latent xenophobia among commoners, directed in particular against supposed cosseting of "Flemings and Strangers" resident in London, had been noticed by the Privy Council on April 16, and one written "libel," calling for a general expulsion of aliens by July 9, was read into the minutes a week later. On May 4 the Council considered anew the complaints of London shopkeepers that aliens (approximately 4200 in the city, by official count) were illegally trading in the retail of foreign goods, and the very next day, before midnight a most insolent rhymed ultimatum was disccovered and removed from the wall of the Dutch Churchyard, Broadstreet Ward.'

FREEMAN, ARTHUR. “Marlowe, Kyd, and the Dutch Church Libel.” English Literary Renaissance, vol. 3, no. 1, 1973, pp. 44–52. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43446737.

Clearly, by this time there was open hostility amongst the commoners that had both appeared in Privy Council meetings and scheduled Parliamentary debates, as well as public invective against the refugees in civic spaces.

 

I think that this probably answers the meat of your question, but the libel in the Dutch Churchyard (imaginatively known as the 'Dutch Church Libel') merits its own little moment in this answer, because the circumstances surrounding it do something to demonstrate the difficulty in totally understanding the common feeling towards refugees, and some of the subtler ways in which it is not a cut-and-dried matter as the answer above may make it appear.

 

The Dutch Church Libel is written in a passable imitation of the style of the playwright Christopher Marlowe, mentions several of his plays in the body of the text and is signed by 'Tamberlaine', one of Marlowe's famous characters. The text specifically targets the hostile situation in 'France and Belgia' where English soldiers were sent to 'dy like dogges as sacrifice for you', and claims that 'Weele cutte yoru throtes, in your temples praying / Not paris massacre so much blood did spill / As we will doe iust vengeance on you all' (full text here). The Privy Council took this violent libel very seriously, and permission was given to search the rooms of anyone held responsible, and subject them to torture if they did not confess the truth. (Freeman, 45). By the following day, Christopher Marlowe's associate and lodging-mate Thomas Kyd was brought in for questioning, and most likely tortured after heretical papers were discovered in his room (he died within the year). He is recorded as having got these papers from Marlowe, who was dead by 30th May, and under suspicious circumstances at that. Libels like the Dutch Church Libel were really dangerous.

 

Whoever wrote the Dutch Church Libel clearly felt that Marlowe's characters made a valuable mouthpiece for their views, which is what makes the last piece of the puzzle that I want to describe in this post all the more interesting. Marlowe had already written a play called 'The Massacre at Paris' which was first performed in 1593. It was the most popular play of the season for theatre owner Philip Henslowe, earning almost three times the average takings for a performance. Plague closed the theatres part way through the run, but it had a successful second outing in 1594 (Poole, p.4). The text still extant is terrible - it is repetitive, lacks Marlowe's usual linguistic flair and is unusually short. What we do know is that it does not shy away from brutal on-stage depictions of the murders of Protestants - seventeen victims are killed across 12 occasions for violence. It's a bloodbath where Catholics casually cut down Protestants the same way we might cut grass.

 

So why does the popularity of this play demonstrate anything other than public hatred for the Huguenots? The representation of the Protestants in other narratives tie in closely with popular narratives of martyrdom like Foxe's Acts and Monuments, which place sympathy with the Protestants. Most of these martyr narratives emphasise the pious dying speech of the martyr, which Marlowe never really allows time for. Poole argues that this represents the Catholic perpetrators as somehow even worse than the famous accounts of state-sponsored violence, as victims have no opportunity to pray before death. Julia Briggs regards the massacre as potentially a 'black comedy that paradoxically invites its audience to laugh at helpless Protestant victims', a view that Poole regards as akin to 'imagining a Jewish audience of Schindler's List guffawing wildly and imagining themselves as excited participants in Kristallnacht' (Poole, p.18).

 

Supporting Poole's view is the way in which Marlowe represents ambassadors moving back and forth between England and France, directly involving the Queen in the efforts to resolve the hostilities. At the end of the play, the dying King sends word to England that a Jacobin monk has stabbed him, and swears to 'ruinate that wicked church of Rome [...] And here protest eternall love to thee, / And to the Queen of England specially, / Whom God hath blessed for hating papistry' (scene 24, ll.64-9). England is presented as an honourable ally in handling the Catholic church and protecting Protestant faith, suggesting a pro-Huguenot rather than a 'kill all the refugees' type of stance. Ambiguity still exists though, as to whether the popularity of this play came at the release of tensions around the waves of Protestant immigration, laughing at the helpless Protestants, or whether its popularity comes as a result of affirmation of English Protestant identity, and sympathy with the refugees' plight.

 

Then as now, issues over attitudes to foreigners and refugees are rarely straightforward and homogenous, even if it is possible to map out broad areas of discontent and support. I hope this answers your question!