Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8): English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
History
Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8): English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689
America -- Discovery and exploration; America -- History; United States -- History
In Leyden they were forced to adapt themselves, as they had begun to
do hitherto, to conditions of life very unlike those to which they had
been trained in their own country; and so far as we can trace them, a
majority of the flock seem to have found employment in the manufacture
of the woollen goods for which the city was famous. Upon the public
records the church appears as an organized body early in 1611, when
Robinson with three others purchased for 8,000 guilders (corresponding
in our currency to perhaps $10,000 or $12,000) a valuable estate in the
centre of the city, including a spacious house for the pastor, used
also for Sunday worship, and at the back of the garden an area large
enough for the subsequent erection of twenty-one small residences for
church members.
Among additional reasons which had led the studious Robinson to favor
the removal to Leyden, may be counted the fact that it was the site
of a university already famous, and so furnished ample opportunities
of intercourse with learned men and of access to valuable libraries.
The sharp controversy between the occupants of the chair of
theology, Gomarus and Arminius, involving no personal risk to the
English spectators, was an added attraction; and before long Robinson
himself appeared as a disputant on the Calvinist side in the public
discussions, and so successfully that by Bradford’s testimony “the
Arminians stood more in fear of him than [of] any of the University.”
This perhaps opened the way for his admission to membership of the
University, which took place in September, 1615, and secured him
valuable civil as well as literary privileges. Such an honor was
justified also by the activity of his pen while in exile. Between
1610 and 1615 he published four controversial pieces, of nearly seven
hundred quarto pages, the most important being a popularly written
Justification of Separation from the Church of England. In the same
field of argument were the other treatises; while in 1619, when public
attention was absorbed with the Synod of Dort, he brought out in
Latin a brief but telling _Apologia_, or Defence of the views of the
Separatists, in distinction from those of the Dutch churches.
[Illustration: PLAN OF LEYDEN.
[This follows a plan given by Bartlett in his _Pilgrim Fathers_, p.
79. No. 1 is Saint Peter’s Church, where Robinson was buried in 1625.
Bartlett also gives, p. 88, a view of the interior. No. 2 is Saint
Pancras church. No. 3 is the Town Hall. Bartlett also gives a view, p.
83. from the tower of this building.—ED.]]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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