clinging about them, crying for fear and quaking with cold.

The arresting party, coming with bills and guns and other weapons, soon found this defenceless company entirely at their mercy. But then came the question, what were they to do with weeping women and children, now they were in their power? Hurrying them from one place to another, and from one justice to another, they were at length almost as weary of the enterprise as the prisoners themselves. For no magistrate was eager to incur the public odium of sending women to prison for no other crime than that of wanting to go with their husbands, and they could not be sent back to their homes, for homes they had none to go to, having either sold or otherwise disposed of their houses and livings. Their very necessity was the defence of these hapless prisoners, and at last those who had seized them were only too glad to be rid of them. What became of them in the interval between their arrest and their final departure we are not told. Probably they took divers ways, and were received to various homes by kind-hearted country-folk. The poor are often wonderfully kind to each other in times of trouble. They would not inquire too curiously into the nature of the offence committed against the laws of the realm, and they could not be made to see that the claims of ecclesiastical uniformity are paramount to the claims of humanity.

The later and detailed story of the wanderings and travels of these exiles, both by land and sea, has not been told. We only know that they rallied together somewhere, that John Robinson and William Brewster, and other principal members, including, of course, the venerable pastor, Richard Clyfton, 'were of the last, and stayed to help the weakest over before them,' that, 'notwithstanding all these storms of opposition they all got over at length, some at one time and some at

another, some in one place and some in another,' and that on a happier shore they 'met together again according to their desires with no small rejoicing.'

After all there is a soul of good in things evil. The historian of this simple seventeenth-century epic has left it on record that not merely in after generations, but even then, the sufferings of these resolute people were fruitful of good. Through their so-public troubles in so many eminent places their cause became famous. Men began to inquire into the nature of the principles for which they were willing to suffer so much. Their very enemies dragged them into fame, and 'their godly carriage and Christian behaviour was such as left a deep impression on the minds of many.' It was the old story repeated of the blood of the martyrs becoming the seed of the Church. 'Though some few shrank at these first conflicts and sharp beginnings (as it was no marvel), yet many more came on with fresh courage, and greatly animated others.' Thus ever, the generations one after another pass on the torch of truth, win for themselves and their children the realm of a larger, nobler freedom, and prove by victorious suffering how

Unbounded is the might

Of martyrdom, and fortitude and right.

IV.

THE EXILES IN HOLLAND.

THROUGH storms o'er land and sea these wanderers in search of freedom had reached a resting-place at last. They arrived in Holland at a time of pause and expectancy. An armistice had just been concluded for the purpose of negotiating a truce with Spain after a war which had lasted for five-and-twenty years. A few months before their arrival, and in the midst of the severest winter that had been known for many years, Prince Maurice, attended by a distinguished retinue, had left the Hague on the last day of January to meet the Marquis Spinola, who had travelled from Spain with a long train of carriages, horses, lackeys, cooks, and secretaries, for the purpose of negotiating terms of peace. Meantime armed men were still marching and counter-marching, and all the paraphernalia of war met the view of the English exiles on their arrival. There was the usual diplomacy, involving the usual delays, and it was not till April 9, 1609, that the States General signed that truce with the Spanish king which was to last for twelve years to come. Thus the fugitives from Scrooby arrived in Holland just as the Fiveand-Twenty Years' War had spent itself; they departed in 1620, when the Thirty Years' War was bursting into flame.

The city of Amsterdam was the place they made for at first, and that for obvious reasons. It was the city which

THE STABLE OF SCROOBY MANOR HOUSE (PROBABLE PLACE OF MEETING IN 1607). (From sketches by CHARLES WHYMPER.)