As the child came to an age of sufficient understanding, how strongly must this humble shrine have appealed to him, with the development of his proclivities guided by one circumstance after another! It was erected during the twelfth century, in the centre of the village, when the rustic parish was presented by a person of rank for the support of a chaplain. Doubtless the lad's eyes often scrutinized the zigzag Norse symbol of lightning, and other ornamentation, carved upon the double arch under which he was wont to enter. The whole region was rich in historic interest to any reflective mind. It was the battle ground of Briton, Roman and Anglo-Saxon. It formed the heart of the Danish territory, opposite their native continental shores. The Robin Hood marauders operated through this sparsely settled North of England, where the last of several uprisings against the South was attempted only about a score of years before Bradford's birth. The people were comparatively rude and uneducated, with few schools; and papal influence yielded more slowly away from the governmental headquarters. If Mary Queen of Scots had not been executed shortly before the Puritan churches arose, it is difficult to see how or when they could have lived so near her seat of power. But Elizabeth, in her laudable aim to uplift the nation by improving the people and repressing the nobles, encouraged the incoming of tens of thousands of Dutch, of whom many flocked to the fair lowlands east and north, imparting their tolerant ideas, bestowing names upon numerous localities, and producing a marked effect in the speech and blood of the inhabitants. The Queen required every family of Hollanders to take an English apprentice in their imported arts and crafts. Thus England changed rapidly from a country merely agricultural to one also manufacturing, where industry was pursued in weaving cloth and in glass, pottery, iron and various metals, wrought not in factories at first but in private houses as once was commonly done in New England. The religious effect of this immigration was not in the royal reckoning; for much as Elizabeth hated the papacy, she despised its counterpart, as quite too good for her liking, namely, the body of her subjects which represented an intelligent faith, and holy practice according to the accepted dictates of a revered, studied and intensely cherished Sacred Scripture. Though she could do no more than patronize, from political motives, any order of spiritual devotion as long as she herself would not learn to love devoutly, she failed to realize that the infusion of the virile Puritan element, regardless of racial strain, in the field of religion saved her authorized church from relapsing into Romanism. Her successor, James, was a fit son of Mary of Scotland, in his intolerance towards Puritans, Protestants though they were.