It is unnecessary here to discuss the rise of the Puritans as an important sect in English history. They were those "whose minds had derived a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests."[97] They differed in nearly every respect from the ordinary Englishman of the Elizabethan period, and yet they were in many instances intellectual and well-bred. They saw, however, that "they could not have the Word freely preached and the sacraments administered without idolatrous gear," and so they concluded to break away from the Church. It was this separation that gained for them the name of Separatists, and brought upon them the punishment of the State. To avoid this some sought leave from Elizabeth to settle in the land "which lieth to the west," their object being to "settle in Canada and greatly annoy the bloody and persecuting Spaniard in the Bay of Mexico."[98] Such was the knowledge of geography about 1591, and it was very fortunate for the would-be-colonists that nothing came of the scheme. Two years later some Independents of London fled to Amsterdam, where they hoped to exercise their religion unmolested. Soon after the beginning of the seventeenth century the Nonconformists of Gainsborough took refuge in the Low Countries, to be followed in 1606 by the Congregationalists from Scrooby. They first found shelter in Amsterdam, and later, some, choosing John Robinson as their minister, moved to Leyden. The laws of England had driven these men abroad, but they never forgot the fact that they were Englishmen. They found their families growing up around them and naturally imbibing foreign ideas. This fact deeply pained the parents, who looked back upon their own happy youths in Tudor England. They determined, therefore, to leave the Netherlands, and William Bradford, their faithful chronicler, tells in quaint but honest words why they were driven to this decision. "In y^e agitation of their thoughts, and much discours of things hear aboute; at length they began to incline to this new conclusion, of remooual to some other place. Not out of any new fanglednes, or other such like giddie humor, by which men are oftentimes transported to their great hurt & danger. But for sundrie weightie & solid reasons."[99] The most serious of these reasons "and of all sorowes most heauie to be borne; was that many of their children, by these occasions (and y^e great licentiousnes of youth in y^t countrie) and y^e manifold Temptations of the place, were drawne away by euill examples into extrauagante & dangerous courses, getting y^e raines off their neks & departing from their parents. Some became souldjers, others took vpon them farr viages by Sea; and other some worse courses ... so that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to degenerate & be corrupted."[100] It was for this reason, then, in particular, that the people of the congregation of Leyden turned their thoughts to the