But it proved as difficult for them to quit the country as to remain in it.  Watched and hunted like gangs of coiners, forgers, or other felons attempting to flee from justice, set upon by troopers armed with “bills and guns and other weapons,” seized when about to embark, pillaged and stripped by catchpoles, exhibited as a show to grinning country folk, the women and children dealt with like drunken tramps, led before magistrates, committed to jail; Mr. Brewster and six other of the principal ones being kept in prison and bound over to the assizes; they were only able after attempts lasting through two years’ time to effect their escape to Amsterdam.  After remaining there a year they had removed to Leyden, which they thought “a fair and beautiful city, and of a sweet situation.”

They settled in Leyden in the very year in which Arminius was buried beneath the pavement of St. Peter’s Church in that town.  It was the year too in which the Truce was signed.  They were a singularly tranquil and brotherly community.  Their pastor, who was endowed with remarkable gentleness and tact in dealing with his congregation, settled amicably all their occasional disputes.  The authorities of the place held them up as a model.  To a Walloon congregation in which there were many troublesome and litigious members they said:  “These English have lived among us ten years, and yet we never had any suit or accusation against any of them, but your quarrels are continual.”

Although many of them were poor, finding it difficult to earn their living in a foreign land among people speaking a strange tongue, and with manners and habits differing from their own, and where they were obliged to learn new trades, having most of them come out of an agricultural population, yet they enjoyed a singular reputation for probity.  Bakers and butchers and the like willingly gave credit to the poorest of these English, and sought their custom if known to be of the congregation.  Mr. Brewster, who had been reduced almost to poverty by his charities and munificent aid to his struggling brethren, earned his living by giving lessons in English, having first composed a grammar according to the Latin model for the use of his pupils.  He also set up a printing establishment, publishing many controversial works prohibited in England, a proceeding which roused the wrath of Carleton, impelling him to do his best to have him thrown into prison.

It was not the first time that this plain, mechanical, devout Englishman, now past middle age, had visited the Netherlands.  More than twenty-five years before he had accompanied William Davison on his famous embassy to the States, as private secretary.