、 for which we are bound to be thankful and our children after us, and shall never forget the same, but shall heartily desire your good and prosperity as our own for ever."* When, a few months later, Isaac de Razier, the chief merchant and second of the governors of the New Netherlands, arrived at Plymouth, he was received, as the marginal notes of Bradford state, with all possible honor, ——— a boat being sent for him, in which he "came honorably attended with a noise of trumpeters." They seem to have understood one another very well, neither having been deceived by the kind expressions of the other. Of the Dutch offers of assistance Bradford says, "The which, though we know it was with an eye to their own profit, yet we had reason both kindly to accept it and make use of it." But although his reply was couched in even more than friendly terms, this movement of the Dutch was watched with great jealousy. Their friendship was not to be rejected, yet there was danger in too great an intimacy, and it was to be feared by the colonists that their advantages of trade with the natives might be soon usurped by their enterprising neighbours. That Bradford was not quite at ease, notwithstanding the tone of their mutual compliments and the "noise of trumpeters," may be inferred from the letter which a short time after (June 15, 1627) he wrote to "The Council of New England" in England. After expressing an opinion as to the rising influence of the Dutch colony, and the importance of guarding against them, he says, "For strength of men and fortification, they far exceed us, and all in this land. . . . . . The effect of their letters being friendly and congratulatory, we answered them in like sort."† The value of an inference drawn from compliments passed under such circumstances is, perhaps, not very great. One evidence of the poverty of the Pilgrims while in Holland may be found in the fact of the hard terms to which they were compelled to submit in their contract with the "merchant adventurers" in England, who supplied them * See Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol. III., p. 51. + Ibid., p. 56. with the means to emigrate to America and lay the foundation of their colony. Every person above sixteen was to be counted as ten pounds in the capital stock; and the "merchant adventurer," who advanced one hundred pounds in England, was to receive, at the end of seven years, as much of the profits of the colony as did ten of its hard-toiling founders; and this in addition to a share of the land they had brought under cultivation, and the buildings they had raised. The colonists were not even allowed the liberty, possessed at the present day by a Valachian serf or a Spanish slave, to work two days in the week for themselves individually; but were compelled by their agreement to toil untiringly for seven years, and always for the benefit of the Company.* -- Taking into view, then, the care and suffering that they endured in Holland, as shown by their own early writings, the absence in these writings of all notice of any attentions from the magistrates, viewing also the fact, that no traces can now be found of their having enjoyed any public place of worship, and also that the honor of admission to University privileges was not accorded to their pastor until after many years,† - viewing, further, the hard terms to which they were forced to submit in order to raise the means for their emigration to America, may we not justly infer that the condition of the Pilgrims while in Holland was one of poverty and obscurity? I must confess I cannot sympathize with those who * The conditions of this agreement are to be found in Hubbard's History. He does not give the source from which he derived them. Mr. Young supposes them to have been taken from Bradford's journal, and to that he has restored them, placing them within brackets. See Young's Pilgrims, pp. 81-85. Hard as these conditions certainly were for persons possessing the character and intelligence of the Pilgrims, they are not unlike such as are sometimes made at the present day by emigrants from the Old World. I remember, when at the island of Elba, seeing in the harbour of Porto Ferrajo a vessel just ready to sail for Pernambuco, having on board two hundred natives of the island. The contract made with each of them, and which was shown to me by the single "merchant adventurer," who, in this case, accompanied them, was, that the expenses of their passage to America, and of their maintenance for five years, were to be paid by him, they to work constantly during that time, at their several trades, for his benefit (excepting only the usual Church festas), and, during other five years, to pay to him a part of their earnings. I omit, in this connection, the fact, that their former presence in Leyden is now quite unknown to most of the learned men of the University; for that only proves that the memory of good men will not always survive them for two hundred years. I shall give in a note (E.) some of the earliest notices of Robinson with which I met in different works published in Holland and in Germany. would wish to make it appear otherwise. For to do so would be, to my mind, not only to violate historic truth, but also to dim one of the brightest traits in the Pilgrims' character; I mean their union, and firm, unbending resolution, displayed under circumstances far less likely to call those qualities into action, than when as colonists they had emigrated to America. Once at Plymouth, they had no alternative. Their ship had not, it is true, been burned upon the strand; yet few could have any hope of return. The forest was before them, the ocean behind. Placed in such a position, the weak become strong, and men of small courage display an energy, of the possession of which they were themselves before all unconscious. But in Holland, they had before their eyes the temptation of their own English homes; they had a land "less hard" within reach, and nothing to restrain them from enjoying it but a principle. Had magisterial favors and physical comfort attended them in Leyden, then there were no self-denial in their position. But this was not the case; the hardness of the country was such that few would come to them, and fewer would bide it out and continue with them, — and many that wished to join them admitted of bondage, with danger of conscience, rather than to endure these hardships in Holland.* And why not give the Pilgrims credit for having endured, unflinchingly, for eleven years, those hardships? Why is it that some writers have found delight in keeping back the fact of their poverty, and in dwelling complacently upon the assumed attentions of the Dutch magistrates? Is it that honest, industrious, independent poverty is a crime? Is it that the attentions of the Schepens and Burgermeesters of a provincial town in Holland can add to the fame of men who, not shrinking from poverty or from danger, left their homes rather than to sacrifice a principle, and became, in a foreign land, the fathers of a nation, millions of which now rise up and call them blessed? By their works let them be judged. LONDON, Dec. 22d, 1842. * See Bradford's journal, Young, p. 45. NOTES. NOTE A.- Page 49. ENGLISH CHURCH AT LEYDEN. THE Occupation, by Leicester, of some parts of Holland, during the reign of Elizabeth, had brought numbers of English to that country, many of whom took up their abodes there. Previously to this, however, commercial factories had been established at different points, many of which were created by Scottish merchants, who had for a long time enjoyed the benefit of favorable treaties between their own sovereigns and the rulers of the Netherlands. By a treaty made December 15, 1550, between Mary, the queen, and Charles the Fifth of Germany, the Scotch were allowed to hold their own boards of commerce, and to enjoy, while in the Netherlands, all the rights and privileges of the Dutch themselves; and, in 1594, an act in confirmation of this was agreed to by James the Sixth and the Dutch States.* When, in 1585, the treaty was made between Elizabeth and the Seigniors of the Netherlands, by which English troops were to be sent to that country to take part in the war with Spain, it was provided by the fourteenth article of that treaty, that "They [the Dutch] will permit to the governor and the garrison the free exercise of religion, as in England; and to this end, a church will be provided for them in each town." The churches, thus opened, were frequented by others than the soldiers; and in a few years, there was scarcely a town in Holland, of much importance, that had not its English congregation. That at Leyden was formed in 1609, in which year it received, by order of the magistrates, a grant of a church, and a subsidy for its pastor, Robert Durie. Their meetings were at first held in the chapel of the Saint Catherine's Almshouse, where they continued until 1622, when another chapel was granted them attached to the Jerusalems Hof. Here they remained until 1644, when they removed to the Falyde Bagyn Hof, a part of the church of which they occupied until 1807. The historian of Leyden, Van Mieris, to whom I have before referred, records the opening of the English church in the following terms "So many English were coming here, that they petitioned (1609) for a church, and also for a salary for their preacher. They received permission to worship in Saint Katherine's Gasthuis. In 1616, their preacher died, and they petitioned the town that the salary might be continued, and paid to such neighbouring preachers as they might employ. Permission to do this was granted, and an order was given * See Historie van de Oorlogen en Geschiedenissen der Nederlanderen, door Van Meteren, Vol. VI., p. 121; also, Wagenaar's Vaderlandsche Historie, Vol. VIII., + See Dumont, Corps Universel du Droit des Gens, Tome V., Parte I., p. 454. P. 400. to the Rentmeester of the church capital to pay a proper proportion of the subsidy to such preachers as might come from neighbouring towns, until a new preacher was chosen, and approved by the magistrates. Order dated 20th February, 1617.”* Van Mieris then continues with an act extracted from the Burgermeesteren en Gerechts Dagboek of 12th January, 1622, which states, that, owing to the number of different services performed in the Katherine's Gasthuis, it was well to make some change, and the magistrates therefore give to the English the little chapel of Jerusalems Hof.† (The chapel of Saint Catherine was, in 1609, used by the French Protestants in Leyden, and so it still continues to be, in 1842.) The congregation became, however, too large for this chapel, and on the 11th of March, 1644, the following order was issued by the magistrates, the record of which is by Van Mieris copied from the Dagboek:-"The magistrates, hearing that the chapel in the Almshouse of Jerusalem, appropriated as a church or temple for the use of the English community of the Reformed Religion living in this city, was too small to accommodate all their number, ordered the town architect to make an examination of the room in the church of the Bagyn Hof (Beguine Cloister), formerly used as a fencing-school; and having heard his report of the length, the breadth, and the height of this room, they find from the forenamed fabricant that this room is larger than the chapel. Wherefore they order and authorize that this room be used by and appropriated to the above-named congregation, and that the preacher's stool, the chairs, benches, seats, &c., be carried there from the Jerusalems Hof chapel; and further, that this room in the Kerk in the Bagyn Hof be in future the church of the English Reformed Community." Burgermeesteren en Gerechts Dagboek, xi. March, 1644. It will thus be seen that three distinct chapels were allowed them at different times, neither of which has, as I can find, been used at any time by any other English congregation. The little chapel in the Jerusalems Hof appeared to me the most probable one to have been granted to the Pilgrims, and I thought at first that it must have been their place of worship. But it was given, in 1622, to the English church, three years before the death of Robinson, who, we may safely say, once in possession of a church, would not have been driven out of it to make room for another. In the histories of Leyden there is no notice of the use to which it was devoted immediately prior to 1622, although in the books of the Jerusalem Almshouse, now in the hands of Mr. Putkammer, one of the trustees, there is no notice of its having been used by English prior to 1622. In a small room attached to it, there is a large emblazoned copy of the will of its founder, Walter Cooman, 1467,- which was painted and fastened to the wall in 1618. This would not, I believe, have been done, had the chapel been then in the hands of strangers. * Immediately after 1644, this chapel was used as the assembly-room Beschrijving der Stad Leyden, Vol. I., p. 99. t Orlers, in his Beschrijving der Stadt Leyden, p. 143, says of the Jerusalems Gasthuis in 1641: "Dit Cappelletzen wert tegenwoordeele ghebrupekt by de Engelsche Ghemeente doende Professie van de Gereformeende Relijie," - This chapel is at present used by the English sect professing the Reformed Religion. 1 |