mayor of the borough in 1628, and Thomas Leverett, an alderman; Thomas Dudley, Richard Bellingham, and John Leverett were afterwards governors of Massachusetts, and William Coddington, father and governor of Rhode Island; while John Cotton, the Puritan preacher of Boston Church for twenty years, became one of the leading religious forces of New England life. It was because this Lincolnshire town sent so large a contingent of Puritan townsmen to America between 1620 and 1630 that at a Court of Assistants held at Charlestown, September 7, 1630, it was ordered that Trimountain shall be called Boston.' Thus from the Eastern Lincolnshire town in which Brewster's company were prisoners in 1607, came the name of the greater Boston of the Far West.'

The seeds of all this movement were therefore in the town at the time these prisoners were there. This was probably why that, as Bradford tells us, 'the magistrates used them courteously and showed them what favour they could, though they could not deliver them till order came from the Council Table.' What was done in the matter by the Lords of the Council we do not know. Unfortunately the Privy Council Register for that year happened to be one of the volumes carried over to Whitehall for reference, and consumed in the fire which wrought such havoc in the palace in 1618. Nor are there any local references in the town records of Boston itself; again unfortunately the leaves for that year, happening to come at the beginning of a volume, are missing. After detaining them for a month, and possibly receiving instructions to that effect from the Privy Council, the magistrates dismissed the main body of the prisoners, sending them back to their homes at Scrooby or elsewhere, and keeping seven of the leaders still in prison. These, after a further period of detention, they bound over to appear at the Assizes. One of these seven, 1 Young's Chronicles, Massachusetts, pp. 48, 49.

Bradford tells us, was William Brewster, who was chief of those that were taken at Boston, and suffered the greatest loss.'

What happened at the Assizes there are no records to show, but the failure of this attempt in the autumn of 1608 did not prevent the making of other endeavours to get away in the course of the following spring. This time they resolved to try the port of Hull as the point of departure, and meeting with a Dutchman who had a ship of his own, belonging to Zealand, they made a bargain with him to carry them over, hoping to find him more reliable than they had found their own countryman on the former occasion. He assured them there was no fear of him, and that all would go well. The agreement was that he was to take them on board at a lonely point on the coast between Grimsby and Hull, where was a large common, a good way distant from any town. The women and children, with what goods they were taking with them, went by boat by way of Gainsborough and the Trent, while the men travelled across country, a journey of some forty miles from Scrooby. It so happened that both parties arrived at the place appointed before the ship appeared, and had to wait. Meantime, the sea being rough and the women suffering, they prevailed upon the men in charge of the boat to run it into a creek, where it might lie aground at low water. So that next morning, when the Dutchman came with his ship, they were fast, and could not stir till high water, which would not be till about noon. The captain therefore thought the best thing to do under the circumstances was to take the men into the ship, whom he saw ready, walking to and fro on the shore. He had already brought one boat-full on board, and was starting for a second, when, to his dismay, he saw in the distance, in full pursuit, 'a great company, both horse and foot, with bills and guns and other weapons;

for the country was raised to take them.' The Dutchman, feeling that his first duty was to take care of himself, 'swore his country's oath-sacramente, and having the wind fair, weighed anchor, hoisted sail, and away. Thus that first boat-load received on board found themselves in evil case indeed. True, they had escaped the soldiers sent in pursuit, but they had nothing with them but the clothes upon their backs; their wives and children, their money and their goods, were all in the boat stuck fast in the creek, and therefore at the mercy of men who had no mercy for them. The tears, we are told, came to their eyes, and they wished themselves back on shore again, that they might share the fortunes of those they were leaving behind. To make their evil case worse, no sooner were they out upon the North Sea than a terrific storm swept down upon them, driving them out of their course, till they found themselves not far from the coast of Norway. Fourteen long days they were tossed hither and thither, during seven of the fourteen seeing neither sun, nor moon, nor stars. The sailors themselves abandoned all hope, and once even sent up shricks and cries, thinking their ship to be foundering. They did, however, reach land at last, the captain and crew being welcomed ashore by eager friends, who at one time never expected to see them again.

Scarcely less pitiful was the plight of those who had been left behind on the English coast. Some of the men tarried with the women and children at the boat, for their assistance, the rest made good their escape before the troops arrived. As we may well suppose, the women were broken-hearted; some of them weeping and crying for their husbands carried away in the Dutchman's ship; others distracted as to what would become of themselves and their little ones; and yet others again, looking with tearful eyes into the faces of helpless children, who were