і

possess. It is not probable that any member of the company, as it existed at Scrooby, was of noble ancestry, unless this may have been true of George Morton. But Clifton, 10 Brewster, and Jessop,

at the least, appear to have belonged to the gentry of the region. Evidently the company included representatives of dif ferent ranks in society. Their subsequent poverty and the humble character of the occupations in which most of them engaged after reaching Holland are easily explained by the facts that in exiling themselves they must have been obliged, as the rule, to sell what property they had in England - so far as this could be done at allat a heavy sacrifice and probably by stealth, and were forced to support themselves by any labor open to strangers ignorant of the Dutch tongue and more familiar with the care of land than with manufacturing or trading. Probably most of them were fairly well educated for the times and moderately well off pecuni

arily, and none but persons of sterling character would have engaged in their undertaking.

The story of their flight from their English homes now must be told. As has been suggested, their young church for a short time probably escaped the hostility of the authorities. But their tranquillity did not endure long. The severities with which other Separatists were treated soon began to be visited upon them. The state of things became so evil that Bradford says:

They could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted & persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flcabitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken & clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly escaped their hands; and ye most were faine to flie & leave their howses & habitations, and the meanes of their livelehood.11

This was intolerable. Evidently it was only the renewal of previous persecutions

of which no specific record remains. There could be but one outcome, and Bradford adds:

Seeing them selves thus molested, and that ther was no hope of ther continuance ther, by a joynte consente they resolved to goe into ye Low-Countries, wher they heard was freedom of Religion for all men; as also how sundrie from London, & other parts of ye land, had been exiled and persecuted for ye same cause, & were gone thither, and lived at Amsterdam, & in other places of ye land. So affter they had continued togeither aboute a year, and kept their meetings every Saboth in one place or other, exercising the worship of God amongst them selves, notwithstanding all ye dilligence & malice of their adverssaries, they seeing they could no longer continue in yt condition, they resolved to get over into Hollad as they could.12

This would have been a serious undertaking indeed, even if they had been permitted to depart freely. Most of them must have known Holland only by report. There is no evidence that any one of them, except Brewster, ever had been in or near to that country or anywhere else out of

England. Its language and customs were strange. It was a costly country in which to live, and how they were to support themselves they did not know. Few among them can have been other than farmers, and they must have been largely unfamiliar with the Dutch methods in agriculture, and, as they specially desired to keep together as a body, it was important for them to make their new homes in some city or town and not to distribute themselves at random wherever employment might be obtainable most readily. Moreover, Holland was peculiarly exposed to the miseries of war, being the object of frequent invasions by the Spaniards. It is easy to imagine how much weight these objections must have had, how long and anxiously they must have reflected and compared convictions as to their duty, and how reluctantly they must have decided at last that they ought to depart.

The providence of God seemed to leave

them no other practicable alternative.

In

Holland, whatever its disadvantages and even perils might prove to be, they were sure of attaining the one privilege for the sake of which they were willing to surrender every other-freedom to worship God in what they believed to be his own ordained way. Bradford says upon this point :

These things did not dismay them (though they did some times trouble them) for their desires were sett on ye ways of God, & to injoye his ordinances; but they rested on his providence, & knew whom they had beleeved. 13

They had no pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night to assure them that the Almighty was watching over and guiding them, but they went forth at last with a reverent faith in him, which, perhaps, was as firm as a direct command from above could have rendered it.