Under his inspiring guidance, and with William Brewster as their especial stay and help, they were mercifully enabled to “wade through things.” Some twenty-three years older than Bradford, we learn from that modest chronicler, who wrote “in a plaine stile, with singuler regard unto y^{e} simple trueth in all things,” that Brewster had also a wider experience of the world. “After he had attained some learning, viz., the knowledge of the Latin tongue and some insight into the Greek, and spent some small time at Cambridge, and then being first seasoned with the seeds of grace and virtue, he went to the Court, and served that religious and godly gentleman, Mr. Davison, divers years, when he was Secretary of State, who found him so discreet and faithful, as he trusted him above all others that were about him, and only employed him in matters of greatest trust and secrecy.” After the innocent Davison was committed to the Tower by the treacherous “Good Queen Bess,” Brewster retired to Scrooby, where he greatly promoted and furthered their good cause: “he himself most commonly deepest in the charge, and sometimes above his ability, and in this estate he continued many years, doing the best he could, and walking according to the light he saw, until the Lord revealed further unto him.” But these assemblies, however humble and secret, could not long escape the vigilant eye of the law. They were now “hunted and persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken and clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly escaped their hands; and y^{e} most were faine to flie and leave their howses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood.” “Seeing them selves so molested, and that ther was no hope of their continuance ther, by a joynte consente they resolved to goe into the Low-Countries, wher they heard was freedome of Religion for all men.” This quitting their native soil, their dear friends and their happy homes to earn their living, they knew not how, in a foreign country, was indeed considered by many of them to be “an adventure almost desperate, a case intolerable, & a misserie worse than death.” But after many betrayals, many delays, many hardships by land and sea, they finally weathered all opposing storms. At Amsterdam, that friendly city of the Netherlands Republic, whose Declaration of Independence dates from July 26, 1581, they met together again, with no small rejoicing.