The story of the attempted departure of the Pilgrim church in the autumn of 1607, the treachery of the captain who was to take them on board his vessel at Boston, their detention and imprisonment, and their final arrival at Amsterdam, is a familiar one. Why their departure should have been interfered with, when the penalty of the offense of Separatism was banishment, many are unable to understand. But the King had issued a proclamation against emigration to the English colony of Virginia without a royal license, and a suspicion was entertained, either real or feigned, that such was the destination of the Scrooby band. It was intended at first to make Amsterdam their home, but the dissensions in the congregation of Smith, which they feared might become contagious, induced them to remove in 1609 to Leyden, and that place for eleven years they made their residence. In Leyden, then, from 1609 to 1620, the Pilgrims lived, joined at various times by William White, Isaac Allerton, Samuel Fuller, Degory Priest, and Edward Winslow, from London, Robert Cushman from Canterbury, George Morton from York, and John Carver and other exiles from various parts of England. Of these, Winslow, a man probably of university education, or at least of liberal culture, the son of Edward Winslow, of Droitwich, in Worcester, joined the Pilgrims not many years before their embarkation for America. He married in Leyden, in 1618, Elizabeth Barker, of Chester, England, and became, as is well known, one of the staffs and supports of the Plymouth Colony. At a subsequent period he was appointed by Cromwell one of the three commissioners to determine the value of English ships destroyed by the King of Denmark, and afterward a member of the commission to accompany Admiral Penn and General Venable on the expedition against Hispaniola. While engaged in this enterprise he died, and was buried at sea. Miles Standish also joined the Pilgrims at Leyden, probably not on account of any religious affinity, but because his bold and adventurous nature was tempted by the enterprise on which they were about to embark. His great-grandfather was a younger brother of the house of Standish of Dokesbury Hall, of which it is believed John Standish, knighted by Richard the Second, was the founder. Compelled to seek his fortune, he chose the profession of arms, and served with the troops sent by Elizabeth to assist the Dutch against the arms of Spain. During the armistice, which began the year of the arrival of the Pilgrims in Leyden, he fell in with some of their number, and finally cast in his lot with them.