At that time, Leiden was a significant industrial community of around 15,000 and growing. Within 30 years after the Pilgrims left for North America, in 1650, Leiden was a city of 55,000. Leiden, also spelled Leyden, is about 10 miles northeast of the Hague, 30 miles southwest of Amsterdam, and 200 miles across the North Sea from London, England. The city is laced with nearly 17 miles of canals, second in number only to Amsterdam. Eighty-eight bridges cross the canals, many of them suitable only for pedestrians.

Immigrant Refugees

Leiden, in the 1600s, was a major industrial center for the textile industry. Many of the English Separatist refugees worked in textile mills or at home weaving for one of the mills. Children sorted and combed wool and did other textile-related menial jobs.

The Separatist immigrants came to Leiden a few decades after England had befriended the area against Spanish efforts to assimilate the region. England aided the Dutch, soundly defeating the Spanish Armada in the naval showdown of 1588. A decade earlier, the Spaniards laid siege to Leiden. For a terrifying period of several months (October 31, 1573 through March 21, 1574) the Dutch made heroic efforts to keep the Spaniards at bay. When the siege finally ended, William, the Prince of Orange, allegedly offered the people a choice. He would either exempt them from taxes for several years or establish a university. They chose the university, and the University of Leiden was established in 1574.

University of Leiden

The University provided William Brewster with a means of income. He taught English to university students through their mutual familiarity with Latin. Separatist Pastor John Robinson took classes there, making friends among the university faculty. Brewster was familiar with Leiden from his earlier trip there in 1584 as a staff assistant to William Davison, the former Secretary of State and Ambassador for Queen Elizabeth I.

The Dutch, grateful for England’s support, hosted Davison and Brewster at a variety of special events.  England befriended the Dutch in a typical European monarch game of chess, with each monarch trying to gain and maintain power and stability by absorbing neighboring nations. England wanted to secure the loyalty of the Dutch to keep Spain away from England.

Thanks to the University, Leiden became one of Europe’s most prominent scientific centers, a position is has held for over four centuries. Students from all over the world come to study there. One of them,  Dr. Jeremy Bangs, has devoted his life to researching the influence of Leiden on the American Pilgrims.  He founded the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum in a small 14th-century house near the city center. There he collects and displays manuscripts and other memorabilia germane to the Pilgrim story.

Life in Leiden

As is the case for many modern immigrants, the plight of the Scrooby area Separatist immigrants was desperate. They arrived with few resources, most unable to communicate in Dutch, and were unfamiliar with city life. They banned together, doubling up families, taking whatever menial work they could find, and banning together to worship and encourage one another.

Eventually, they were able to purchase a home with sufficient land to build a series of small homes for their members. The community was so congenial that when Brewster had another child, they named their son Love. Though life was safer in Leiden than in England, it was also hard. Children were picking up ideas and practices from their Dutch peers that bothered their parents.

William Brewster’s decision to start publishing and distributing documents critical of King James stirred the anger of the king. Though the Dutch were tolerant, they were in no position to go against the wishes of the King of England. So when King James sent his men to find and arrest Brewster, William went into hiding, and their Separatist community more seriously considered setting up their own colony in the New World.

Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic

Leiden made extensive plans to participate in the 2020 400th anniversary, plans which were scuttled because of the pandemic. However, forward-thinking planners put together a virtual four-hour Leiden tour with stops at places significant to the Pilgrim story.

This month is the second anniversary of the release of my historical novel about the story behind the Mayflower voyage. I’d be happy to speak to your book club or organization about this fascinating history. Contact me at HowWiseThen to make arrangements. You can sign up to receive weekly blogs and/or a monthly newsletter there as well. If you’ve enjoyed this article, share it with a friend.

Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures covers the Pilgrim’s escape from England and their interactions with the Pokanoket people. Available wherever books are sold in paperback, eBook, and audio.
Bookshop.org (Supporting local Indie Bookshops)
Amazon.com/Mayflower-Chronicles-Tale-Two-Cultures/
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Autographed copies are available from my website or BlueWillowBookShop.com/book/

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New research by genealogists Sue Allan and Caleb Johnson indicate that Dorothy moved to Amsterdam around 1608 from Eastern England, near Boston, with her mother Katherine and father Henry May. Henry served as a leading church elder in the Henry Ainsworth Amsterdam congregation of the Ancient Church of the Brethren. William Bradford moved there from Northern England that same year with other Separatists from Northern England.

Seeds of Religious Rebellion

The couple probably met in 1608, during the one year the Northern England Separatists lived in Amsterdam. That group first emigrated to Amsterdam where other English Separatists had already established English-speaking congregations. When conflicts broke out between and among these congregtions, the Northern English group established their own congregation in nearby Leiden, with John Robinson as their pastor.

Dorothy’s grandfather, John May had been part of the English Familia Caritatis (The Family of Love) movement. This Protestant group opposed several Established Church of England policies and practices. Members spread their beliefs primarily through family members, encouraging marriages within the faith community. They rejected infant baptisms; an unconventional view considered heretical by some church authorities.

Religious Refugees on the Move

Rising pressure against their unconventional beliefs prompted several English groups to relocate to the more religiously liberal Lowlands. Henry May and his family, including Dorothy, were among those who resettled in Amsterdam. When the conflicts erupted the church leaders prevailed upon Pastor John Robinson, down the road in Leiden, to help calm the turmoil.

Pastor Robinson probably visited the Amsterdam congregation on occasion, perhaps taking William Bradford and others from his Leiden congregation with him. There is some speculation Pastor Robinson may have encouraged the union between Henry May’s daughter, Dorothy, and William, in keeping with the groups preference that membes marry within the community.

Dorothy May was sixteen on December 10, 1613 when she married William Bradford in Amsterdam. Her age and the laws at that time dictated she must have her father’s permission to marry. Henry May gave permission and attended the civil ceremony since the Separatists did not consider weddings a function of the church.

William Bradford, twenty-three when they married, had been orphaned in childhood. In the seventeenth century, men not yet twenty-five years old usually didn’t marry without parental consent. Considering how active Bradford was in the Leiden Separatist congregation, perhaps someone from the congregation stood in as a surrogate father. The Bradford engagement and banns were recorded in both Amsterdam and Leiden.

Rough Start for William Bradford

When William was orphaned his uncles took him. They did the basics for him, but little more. From a very young age William was interested theology and scripture. He was often confined to bed due to some childhood illnesses. When he was well enough, walked seven or eight miles to a church where future Separatist pastor Richard Clifton mentored the boy. That is where he met Elder William Brewster. Bradford was a frequent guest in the Brewster home, and lived with the family a couple of times in both Leiden and Plymouth.

The Bradfords had one child they named John, born in Leiden, probably in 1617. The Bradford’s left the boy behind when they sailed for North America – presumably with the intention of sending for him when Plymouth Colony was established and more suitable for a young child. Dorothy’s parents remained in Leiden and probably assumed care for little John. The child may have been named for Pastor John Robinson, or more likely, his grandfather, John May. John did eventually join his father in Plymouth.

The Grand Plan to Relocate

The Bradfords were among those in Robinson’s congregation who volunteered to go with the first group to establish a new religious colony. The congregation decided to initially send a small group of thirty-seven settlers to establish a new religious community in the New (to them) World. Some of these settlers left family behind with rest of the community, intending to reunite once the settlement was firmly established. This plan enabled the settlers to return to Leiden if efforts to establish a colony failed.

The voyage was both tedious and treacherous. After ten weeks at sea, the Mayflower anchored off Provincetown Harbor on November 11, 1620. Using the shallop they’d brought with them, several men, including Bradford, set out to locate the best place to build their new colony. William was away on one of these expeditions when Dorothy died. She fell overboard and drowned in the frigid water. Bradford rarely referenced her death in his accounts of the colony.

An 1869 fictional magazine story suggested the twenty-three-year-old woman jumped overboard to avoid the bleak future ahead of her. More likely she  leaned too far out, perhaps searching the horizon for signs that the men were returning, and slipped overboard. Women in that era wore multiple layers of clothing. Once her clothes got wet it would have been nearly impossible for her to fight long enough to be discovered and rescued from the frigid November sea. It is unlikely Dorothy knew how to swim. It seems most probable she lost her balance, fell overboard, and drowned before anyone missed her.

A Life of Challenges and Leadership

William Bradford struggled against a series of tragedies. The relatives that raised him when his parents died took no interest in his thirst for religious education and spiritual nourishment. Even as a young boy Bradford engaged in intensive Bible study, perhaps because illness prevented him participating in more rigorous pastimes.

Like many of the Mayflower passengers, William became quite ill the first winter in the new colony, but survived. Governor John Carver did not. When Carver died the first spring in the new land, Bradford assumed duties of Governor. The Colony elected him to serve in that position a total of thirty-one years. He married the widow Alice (Carpenter) Southworth on August 14, 1623. Their marriage included a feast attended by the Pokanoket leader Massasoit Ousa Mequin and many other Natives. William and Alice had three sons who all lived to adulthood, married, and had children.

A portion of this articles comes from the Mayflower400 Website.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy reading about Plymouth Plantation William Bradford. Share it with a friend, or if you got it from a friend, sign up receive your own blogs at HowWiseThen.

Read more about the Bradfords in my historical novel, Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale or Two Cultures.  It is now available in electronic, print, and audio format at these places:

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Elizabeth, acting on her own accord, was apparently deeply involved in non-conformist activities near Ipswich, England. Ipswich is about 50 miles southeast of Cambridge and 85 miles northeast of London. Shortly after she married Edward, the couple returned to England to tend to details regarding her inheritance and liquidate the assets she’d inherited. English law stipulated that once a woman married all of her property became her husband’s property.

Elizabeth’s Will Recorded in Leiden

Laws in Holland were more liberal than in England. The couple returned to Leiden where Elizabeth wrote a will in 1619. By then members of Separatist Pastor John Robinson’s congregation were making arrangements for several families to establish an extension of the Leiden church in North America. The Winslows were among that group. Others planned to join them once the colony was established.

Elizabeth may have emigrated on her own as a young single woman. That would have been highly unusual for the times, however, her family had numerous friends and relatives engaged in non-conformist activities. Other English non-conformists had already established a congregation in Amsterdam. Elizabeth would have been warmly embraced at the Church of the Ancient Separatist Brethren in Amsterdam. We don’t know if she went there first or not. We do know she ended up in the Leiden congregation led by Pastor John Robinson.

Impact of Religious Turmoil

She was born in Chattisham around 1593 to Samuel and Sarah Barker. Groups of non-conformists challenging the Established Church of England influenced the Barker family. During the political and religious turmoil of the 1500s hundreds of people were tortured and burned at the stake. Which religious group dominated vacillated according to who was the reigning monarch. I’m working on a resource of the monarchs and time line that influenced the Separatists’ decision to emigrate.

When the Pope denied King Henry VIII’s request for an annulment from his first wife Catherine of Aragon, he dismissed her anyway and established the Church of England in 1634. The new church body turned England Protestant, but it remained similar to the Roman Catholic Church. He implemented the doctrine of a Supreme Governor as the head of the church, replacing the papacy with the reigning monarch. Catherine had six children, but only daughter Mary survived.

All in the Royal Family

Wife number two, Anne Boleyn gave birth to Elizabeth and later delivered a baby boy, but the infant was still born. Henry expressed his disappointment by beheading Anne. Wife number three, Jane Seymour, gave Henry what he wanted, a male heir. King Edward VI was crowned in 1547 when King Henry VIII died. The boy was nine-years-old and only lived five years, not long enough to change England’s official religion as the Established Church.

Henry’s daughter, Mary, succeeded her half-brother in 1553. A devoted Catholic, she fought to return England to the Catholicism. From 1553, until she died in 1558, she added some three hundred new Christians to the list of martyrs. Thus, she earned the label ‘Bloody Mary.’ Her half-sister, Elizabeth was then crowned Monarch. She retained the Established Church of England as the state religion.

Family Religious Feud

That would have settled the matter except for Mary Queen of Scots, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin. Mary had briefly been the Queen of France, a staunchly Catholic country. When the French king died a year after they were married, this Mary returned to Scotland, but maintained her Catholic French connections. Until Queen Elizabeth signed the warrant for her execution in 1587, Mary Queen of Scots tried valiantly to deliver England back to the Catholic Church.

The Separatists had had enough and wanted to completely sever ties with both the Catholics and Established Church to live in a simpler, first-century style faith community. They moved to Holland, and from there across the ocean. Edward and Elizabeth no doubt shared many of the same religious beliefs and possessed equal quantities of determination, courage, and hope.

Diplomat Edward Winslow

Edward hailed from the Worcester area England, about 130 miles northwest of England. He was a printer, working in London, but traveling to Leiden. He moved to Leiden in 1617 and helped William Brewster publish and smuggle religious books back to England. These publications criticized the Established Church of England. King James succeeded Queen Elizabeth in 1603. He knew about the anti-Established Church publications coming out of Leiden and wanted them stopped.

By 1619 it appeared Leiden was not far enough removed from England. It was time to move on. Edward quickly earned a reputation as a diplomat. He led a number of expeditions to meet, trade, and negotiate with the area Pokanoket. He wrote several first-hand accounts of the early Plymouth years and served as assistant to Governor Bradford on several occasions. He returned to England several times to address their investors’ concerns about slow and low rates of return on their investment in the new colony.

A Short Life Well Lived

Elizabeth died the first spring in the new colony, on March 24. She never had children. Widowed Edward married Widow Susanna White in May. I’ll write about her and her first husband in another blog.

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A couple of years ago my husband and I signed up for an Ancestry.com sponsored genealogy cruise from England to New York City. If we were going to England, I also wanted to visit to Cambridge where William Brewster studied briefly, and Leiden where the Brewster family lived with the other Pilgrims before sailing on the famous Mayflower.

Travel Adventures

The travel agent I consulted to make these arrangements assured me we couldn’t get to Leiden from England and back before our ship sailed in the amount of time we had available. All train routes involved transfers and layovers. Not to be dissuaded, we rented a car at the Amsterdam train station. Driving a five-speed manual, in the rain, in a large city with signs in a language I do not speak, proved one of the more daunting aspects of researching the Pilgrim path for Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures.

None-the-less, I am glad we made the effort. The freeway from Amsterdam toward The Hague is well marked, as is the exit for Leiden. All went well until our GPS system took us to the Leiden town center. Leiden evolved into a city several centuries before cars. The city is laced with nearly 17 miles of canals, more canals than any other city other than Amsterdam. It has 88 bridges crossing the canals, many suitable only for pedestrians. The town center is best traveled on foot or bike.  I’m guessing bicycles outnumber cars about 100 to 1. We found our hotel without running over any cyclists. For the duration of our visit I used taxis and buses and spent hours wandering along the canals, streets and alleys the Pilgrims walked four hundred years ago.

Leiden in the Pilgrim Era

Leiden in the 1600s was a major industrial center for the textile industry. Many of the Scrooby refugees found work in the textile mills or worked weaving in their homes. Children sorted and combed wool and did other related menial jobs.

The Pilgrims arrived in Leiden a few decades after England had befriended the Lowlands against Spanish efforts to assimilate the region. England came to the aid of the Dutch and soundly defeated the Spanish Armada in the naval show down of 1588. A decade earlier the Spaniards laid siege to Leiden. For a terrifying period of several months (October 31, 1573 through March 21, 1574) the Dutch made heroic efforts to keep the Spaniards at bay. When the siege finally ended, William, the Prince of Orange, allegedly offered the people a choice. He would either exempt them from taxes for several years or establish a university. They chose the university. The University of Leiden was established in 1574.

University of Leiden

The University provided William Brewster a means of income. He taught English to university students through their mutual familiarity with Latin. Their pastor, John Robinson, took classes there and made friends among the university faculty. Brewster was familiar with Leiden from his earlier trip there in 1584. The year he accompanied his mentor and employer, Ambassador William Davison to the Netherlands on an assignment on behalf of Queen Elizabeth. The Dutch were exceedingly grateful for England’s support and hosted Davison and Brewster at a variety of special events.  England befriended the Dutch in a typical European monarchic game of chess, with each monarch trying to gain and maintain power and stability by absorbing a neighboring nation. In this case, England wanted to secure the loyalty of the Dutch to keep Spain away from England.

Thanks to the University, Leiden became one of Europe’s most prominent scientific centers, a position held now for over four centuries. Students from all over the world come to study there. One of them, Dr. Jeremy D. Bangs, came and never left. He’s devoted his life to researching the influence of Leiden on the American Pilgrims.  He founded the Leiden American Pilgrim Museum in a small 14^th century house near the city center. There he collects and displays manuscripts and other memorabilia germane to the Pilgrim story.

Leiden Today

Today the University of Leiden spreads out over several sections of the city. It has been the source of numerous scientific discoveries and claims thirteen Nobel Prize winners among its alumnae. In honor of the 400^th Anniversary of the Mayflower voyage, Leiden joined with several other places along the Pilgrim path to host a series of special events.

When these cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, forward-thinking planners put together a virtual tour. This four-hour tour includes stops at places significant to the Pilgrim story. It also includes interviews with people who know the story well. Fortunately for us, this Leiden tour is available on YouTube. It is well worth the time and, since it is a recorded tour, you can pause as often as you like.

For now, I’ll leave you in the capable hands of these Leiden tour guides. Next week I have a special guest blog tribute to fathers. We’ll return to Leiden after that and I’ll tell you more about the Pilgrim years in Leiden.  It turns out Martin Luther wasn’t the only one to get in trouble with a printing press.

Thank you for taking time to read more about the Pilgrim path. Why not share the journey with a friend? Got this from a friend? Sign up for your own free subscription at HowWiseThen. My historical fiction Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures will be available soon. You can sign up to be notified when it’s available at my website or e-mail me at kathrynhaueisen@gmail.com.

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