The testimony of Bradford must, indeed, command our earnest attention, though in the matter of dates he is apparently misled by his authority. For, as already seen,[368] two of the Netherland provinces had established civil marriage as early as 1580; while it was not extended to them all until seventy-six years later. Nor is the mere fact that, seemingly without discussion, civil marriage was adopted by Massachusetts and her daughter-colonies, as well as by Plymouth, necessarily a fatal objection to this theory of origin, though it has a bearing upon the question which must be carefully considered. For the New England Pilgrim and Puritan alike were simply doing what their brethren did a few years after when they found their opportunity in the days of the Commonwealth. If America owes the institution of civil marriage to Holland, it is so not merely because of the residence of the Scrooby congregation at Leyden, but because of the profound influence which Dutch Puritanism exerted upon the Puritanism of England for a hundred years after the Spanish and Tudor persecutions began. It can scarcely be doubted that in various ways Dutch ideas made themselves felt in the remarkable legislative and constitutional experimentation of Cromwell's reign.[369] Moreover, the argument is strengthened by the fact that the Fathers of the English Reformation, unlike Luther and his followers, do not seem to have raised a single voice in favor of the lay ceremony. [Footnote 368: See chap. x, sec. i.] [Footnote 369: The evidence for the influence of Holland upon English and American institutions is presented in CAMPBELL, _The Puritan in Holland, England, and America_ (New York, 1892), an able and timely work, calling attention to many facts strangely neglected by previous writers, but too sweeping in its general conclusion that American law and institutions, in their essential characteristics, are not Anglo-Saxon, but Dutch. For the interrelations of the Puritans in England and Holland see especially _op. cit._, I, 485 ff.; II, 44 ff.]