Yet while they seemed to have more spiritual freedom and to have enjoyed the society of their Dutch neighbors and had established a good credit among them, they were confronted with the fear of final absorption in an alien country. They preferred to maintain their language and traditions as English men and women. Moreover, King James was beginning to exercise an unwarrantable influence in the Low Countries. This went to the extreme of confiscating their types[3] and presses and the suppression of the religious matter printed and issued by William Brewster, the Elder of the Leyden congregation. A compelling force seemed to drive them on to seek some place of permanent settlement. And to quote from Bradford: “Although the people generally bore all their difficulties very cheerfully and with a resolute courage, being in the best of their strength, yet old age began to come on some of them; and their great and continual labors, with other crosses and sorrows, hastened it before the time; so as it was not only probably thought, but apparently seen, that within a few years more they were in danger to scatter by necessity pressing them, or sink under their burdens, or both; and therefore, according to the divine proverb, that ‘a wise man seeth the plague when it cometh, and hideth himself,’ so they, like skilful and beaten soldiers, were fearful either to be entrapped or surrounded by their enemies, so as they should neither be able to fight nor fly; and therefore thought it better to dislodge betimes to some place of better advantage and less danger, if any could be found.” “Lastly (and which was not the least,) a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for performing of so great a work.”