On reaching Holland, an envious passenger accused him as having fled from England as a culprit, and he was taken before the magistrates, who, however, willingly released him when the truth was known. Leyden was the Pilgrims' rendezvous. The place was congenial to the ardent spirit of this youth, and he became a student at the University there. He must have heard in England as a boy, how the martyr John Bradford, chaplain to Edward VI and one of the most acceptable preachers in the realm, because of his religious principles had been burned to death, in the reign of Bloody Mary. And the people of Leyden could recite for sympathetic ears, the tales of heroic and successful resistance against King Philip of Spain only thirty years before these Puritan refugees from intolerance arrived. William now went about to earn a living. As an apprentice to a French Protestant, he learned the trade of dying silk, and doubtless, beside his Dutch, acquired here his thorough familiarity with the French language so widely used even in those days. II THE PILGRIM _The best inheritance they have left us is the New England conscience. The Puritan's habit of self-examination and prayer has left its impress on the habit of thought of the great nation that has risen where he showed the way._ Governor Guild of Massachusetts, at the four hundredth anniversary of the birth of Calvin, in Geneva, Switzerland, July 9, 1909. _Religious faith must ever be the motive power of humanity, and whatever might become of despotism, with or without, it is absolutely essential to democracy._ Governor Hughes of New York, at the Champlain Tercentenary, Vermont, July 9, 1909. _Religion is the only thing upon which to rest our salvation in these times. It is religious principles to which our Commonwealth owes its greatness._ Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts, at the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Lord's Day League, Boston, 1920. On reaching the age of twenty-one, our Bradford became the possessor of his native estate in England, which he sold, as then useless for him to hold. But well he knew, that the recantation of his faith would restore him to independence and presumably to the favor of the Austerfield community. What lay in the future for him he could not conceive. He took the sale money and ventured in some commercial enterprise, but did not prosper in it. His career was to be of more importance than the business of a merchant.