persecution, but even when the refugees had obviously committed civil crimes these were officially condoned.[1]
After about a year in Amsterdam, owing to the quarrels that marred the life of the church earlier established, the newcomers decided to remove to Leyden, where they remained until the eventful year 1620.[2]Their life in the old university town, although hard in many ways, seems to have been singularly peaceful, and wholly unmarred by any of those petty bickerings and contentions so curiously characteristic of the ultra-godly of the period. They seem, indeed, to have valued " peace and their spirituall comforte above any other riches whatsoever,', and to have lived together in "love and holiness," as Bradford wrote. Robinson was their minister, and Brewster their elder, the latter eking out his income by teaching English and printing Puritan books. The company generally set to trades and handicrafts, by which "at length they came to raise a competente and comforteable living," and won the deserved respect of their Dutch hosts.[3] They seem, however, to have lived a life apart, and to have been but little influenced by the nation with which they had cast their lot. In spite of extravagant claims to the contrary, direct Dutch influence in New England, as derived through the Pilgrims' sojourn in Holland, can be traced in but one particular, that of marriage by a civil magistrate instead of a clergyman.[4] At that time, Holland was, in almost all respects, far ahead of England intellectually. In the matter of religious toleration she was immeasurably in advance of the rest of Europe. Dutch influence would have been a noble one, indeed, in New England's history, but there is virtually nothing to indicate its presence.[5]
- ↑ Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 13-15; Usher, Pilgrims, pp. 27-31; E. Arber, The Story of the Pilgrim Fathers (London, 1897), p. 93.
- ↑ Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 16 ff.
- ↑ Mid., pp. 17, 19,412; Arber, Pilgrim Fathers, p. 195. Brewster taught in Latin.
- ↑ Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 101, 330.
- ↑ The claims put forward by Douglass Campbell, The Puritan in Holland, England and America, are now generally considered as thoroughly unsound. Cf. the article by the Dutch historian, H. T. Colenbrander, "The Dutch Element in American History," in Annual Report of the American Historical Association, 1909, pp. 191-203. Also, in the same report, Ruth Putnam, "The Dutch Element in the United States," pp. 203-19.
