Between the Hollanders and the French Refugees, there existed an old and intimate friendship. Holland, from the beginning of the Middle Ages, had been the asylum for all the religious out-laws from all parts of Europe. But especially the persecuting wars and troubles of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, brought hither crowds of exiles. Not less than thirty thousand English, who had embraced the Reformed faith, found here a shelter during the reign of Mary Tudor. Hosts of Germans, during the 'Thirty Years' War,' obtained on the banks of the Amstel and the Rhine, that religious liberty, which they had in vain claimed in their own country. But the greatest emigration was that of the _Walloons_, from the bloody tyranny of the Duke of Alba, and the Count of Parma. For a long period the Reformed faith had found adherents in the Provinces of the Low Countries. Here the first churches were _under the Cross_, or _in the Secret_, as it was styled, and they concealed themselves from the raging persecution, by hiding, as it were, their faith, under mystic names, the sense of which believers only knew. We will mention only a few. That of Tournay, '_The Palm-Tree_;' Antwerp, '_The Vine_;' Mons, '_The Olive_;' Lille, '_The Rose_;' Douay, '_The Wheat-Sheaf_;' and the Church of Arras had for its symbol '_The Hearts-Ease_.' In 1561, they published in French, their Confession of Faith, and in 1563, their Deputies, from the Reformed Communities of Flanders, Brabant, Artois, and Hainault, united in a single body, holding the first Synod of which we have any account. These regions were an old part of the French Netherlands, or Low Countries; and a small section of Brabant was called _Walloon_; and here were found innumerable advocates of the Reformed faith. The whole country would probably have become the most Protestant of all Europe, were it not for the torrents of blood poured out for the maintenance of the Roman religion by the Duke of Alba.