D R A F T N O T F O R P U B L I C A T I O N Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs © 2006 Amsterdam, 1608 - Arrival - The Ancient Brethren - The First Meeting House - Weddings in 1608 and 1609 - Scandals among the Brethren - The English Reformed Church in the Begijnhof - John Smyth’s Further Separation and Self-baptism - Debate between John Smyth and Richard Clyfton - Deciding to Move to Leiden Arrival

Approaching safer waters south from Norway on the last part of the journey to Amsterdam in 1608, exhausted sailors navigated the narrows at the tip of the North Holland peninsula between Den Helder and the island of Texel. Sand banks beneath the surface of the Zuider Zee taxed the skills of helmsman and leadsmen to keep to the meandering channel deep enough for an ocean-going ship to pass along the inner side of Texel away from the Wieringer Island, before heading into wider waters to pass the village of Hinlopen on the eastern edge of the sea opposite the castle of Medemblik, then the small city of Enkhuizen, whose towers punctuated the flat line of Holland’s horizon to the west. A channel led between the fishing islands of Schokland and Urk in the middle of the sea. Then sails could be shifted in the winds of Holland’s huge sky to send the ship curving through choppy waves around for the southeast, keeping off the sandbars near Enkhuizen by heading almost over to the fortified towns of Elburg and Haarderwijk. Turning down past Naarden, the ship held out away from the castle and town of Muiden, crossing the sands and the shallow narrows called the Pampus to the deeper entrance of the Y River. The biggest ships had to be pulled over the Pampus sands, but probably the Zeeland captain who brought the fleeing Pilgrims away from the Humber had a ship small enough to manage without assistance. Once through the natural, sandy barrier, the captain was soon anchored in the roads of Amsterdam’s crowded harbor. The ship’s coming in caught the attention of people on shore. Ships’ arrivals always did, as laborers hoped for work unloading cargoes and the curious hung about for random news. Lighters came up to offer assistance. The news of the safe arrival brought out the captain’s friends, who had feared that the ship, missing for well over a week, had gone down with so many others in the recent storms. Sounds of straining timbers and the snap of taut lines gave way to the creak of blocks and tackle as passengers and cargo were lowered to boats that would take them the short way between the anchorage and the city’s wharves. Amsterdam’s harbor spead out as a crowd of masts on the countless commercial vessels and fishing boats. Grain from the Baltic, ship’s tar and spars from Sweden, timber from Germany, hemp from Riga, salt from Portugal, wine from France,

with, from time to time, spices from the Far East – the trade was endless, as in turn Amsterdam sent out its own products with those of the hinterlands and trans-shipped its imports to places around the globe. The noisy activity of the city’s preoccupied stevedores brought hope of inconspicuous anonymity to the persecuted from England. Amsterdam displayed hundreds of brick houses stretching away from a central waterway called “The Water,” that divided the town into the Old Side on the east and the New Side on the west. Each side had its cathedral-like gothic church emphatically interrupting the skyline above hundreds of lower, clustered house-roofs and chimneys. The Old Church on the Old Side had a tower unlike any the English had ever seen, topped by a lead-covered wooden spire of openwork, and ending with an onion-shaped finial. Between the churches in the distance rose the simpler and lower spire of the medieval town hall. Wooden gable ends between brick sidewalls marked some of the older houses. A few old mansions were constructed entirely with brick and stone. Stone signified wealth, having to be brought here at high cost by ship, from quarries far to the south and east. Next to the water, in the lots behind merchants’ houses, barrels, huge sacks, and lumber were unloaded and stored. Warehouses came right to the water’s edge and tilted out so that pulleys at the point of the roof could be used to unload small boats tied up directly beneath them. Shipyards off to the east held the frames of new boats under construction. In the distance, behind moored ships, new houses were going up in Amsterdam’s recent residential extensions, built to house thousands of refugees driven out of the Southern Netherlands in the war whose shooting was about to cease as negotiations led to a truce. At the edges of town, windmills turned. Even the English city of Lincoln’s huge cathedral and castle on a hill, where some of the refugees had been imprisoned, looked minor in comparison to this endless metropolis.1

Behind the anchorage, looking away from the town a little off to the northwest, those on the ship could see the bodies of criminals hanging on the gallows. Beyond the corpses, cows grazed. Closer to the ship, in the direction of the city, a double row of pilings in the water protected the inner harbor from the wider anchorage. Beyond could be seen a series of high, arched bridges – the new bridge, then the old bridge, and many others on lateral canals, all standing on pilings tall enough to let smaller boats, their sails dropped and masts hinged down, pass beneath on their way to load or unload at warehouses backing on The Water. At the far end of The Water was the Exchange and the Weigh House at the Dam Place, a market square where the Town Hall dominated the west side. Here a dam on the Amstel River was the focus of houses that started the town some time around 1300 – Amstelredam, Amsterdam. The Ancient Brethren Unwashed clothing, unshaven faces, and unforeseen hunger combined with the refugees’ anxious fear for their family members captured in the mud, left behind as the ship had hoisted sails and departed. The refugees who had reached Amsterdam were now even more wretched. (Ironically, William Bradford later commented that the English thought that the Dutch sounded “uncouth.”) To get help from friends, the newly arrived exiles had to find pastor Francis Johnson and his Separatist congregation of around three 1 Bradford mentions that the prisoners taken at Boston were transferred to other jails. In terms of superior jurisdiction, this implies imprisonment at Lincoln.

hundred.2 They had been exiles in Holland since 1593, but they had enjoyed no more than an uneasy tolerance.3 Amsterdam’s Reformed minister Jacobus Arminius played an ongoing and significant role in Dutch contacts with the Brownists. (The Pilgrims’ pastor, John Robinson, would later debate with Simon Episcopius, Arminius’ successor at the University of Leiden.) Arminius’ encounters with Amsterdam’s Brownists have been described best by Carl Bangs, whom I shall quote at length here.4

“Arminius […] reported in the consistory on July 15, 1593, that an English preacher had preached in the house of one Israel Johnson and would preach there again on the following Sunday.5 The consistory thought it ‘an important matter which could not be permitted to continue in silence,’ and they sent Arminius to speak to Johnson and to report to him that the consistory had ordered that there be no more such meetings. The consistory reported the affair to England, both to the Anglicans and to the Presbyterians, and they sent a deputation to the burgomasters. And when they learned that the [same] Brownists had appeared in Kampen, where they were friendly with the burgomasters, they sent Arminius to warn the consistory there.” Referring to a request for help from Amsterdam’s Walloon congregation in 1595, Carl Bangs writes, “The minutes of the consistory for October 12, 1595, report that Arminius had been asked for advice concerning a member of the Walloon church, of which [Jean] Taffin was the pastor. Taffin’s parishioner had gone over to the English church at Naarden [again the same, having moved from Kampen]. It was a new kind of problem. Was it a breach of discipline to attend the English church? Was the English church of sound doctrine? It was a contingent of Independents, followers of Robert Browne. Browne and some of his followers had lived in Middelburg in the 1580’s and not long after, they began to appear in Amsterdam. Their rejection of English episcopacy did not lead them to accept the polity of the Reformed churches in Holland. The Reformed never met as an entire congregation; they did not properly observe the Lord’s Day; they baptized children of parents not in the visible church; they did not follow the

2 William Bradford, writing in 1648, described the Amsterdam Separatists as numbering “about three hundred communicants” (in other words, not counting small children): Bradford’s First Dialogue, in Alexander Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (Boston, Massachusetts: C. C. Little and J. Brown, 1841, second edition 1844), pp. 455-456; reprinted, Baltimore, Maryland: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1974, Clerafield, 1995, 2004) , cited in Edward Arber, The Story of The Pilgrim Fathers, 1606-1623. A.D., as told by Themselves, their Friends, and their Enemies. (London: Ward and Downey; Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 1897; New York: Kraus Reprint, 1969), pp. 172-173. 3 The best overview of the various English congregations in Amsterdam is found in Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, a History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982). 4 Carl Bangs, Arminius, A Study in the Dutch Reformation (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971), pp. 156 – 159. I have placed the discussion in chronological order. See also, Dexter and Dexter, The England and Holland of the Pilgrims, pp. 434-436; R. B. Evenhuis, Ook dat was Amsterdam, De kerk der hervorming in de gouden eeuw (Amsterdam: W. ten Have, 1967), vol. II, pp. 223-232. 5 Israel Johnson was the factor of English cloth merchants in Amsterdam. He is mentioned in a lawsuit that was referred to superior court in The Hague, in 1590. Gemeente Archief Amsterdam (Amsterdam Municipal Archives), Rechterlijk Archief (Judicial Archives), Arch. Nr. 5061, Inv. Nr. 643. Schepenboek 1570-1696 [sic, includes material from ca. 1554], fol. 74 verso - 75: dispute between Lysbeth Pietersdr., broadcloth merchant, and Israel Jansz., Englishman.

command of Christ in Matthew 18:15-176; they worshiped in the ungodly church buildings of the Antichrist; their ministers were not supported according to I Corinthians 9:14; their consistory was not entirely replaced each year; they performed marriages in the church building; they celebrated Christmas, and Easter, and Ascension. All these criticisms of the church of their hosts, and other criticisms too, the Brownists, as they were known, pushed vigorously. The Dutch did not take it kindly. In the case of the man who had gone over in Naarden, the consistory appointed [Jacobus] Arminius, [Petrus] Plancius, and an elder, Arent Boudewijns, to discuss the problem and decide what action to take.” Returning to the topic of the Walloons, Carl Bangs writes, “On June 6 [1596] Arminius reported to the consistory that Taffin had learned that there would be Brownist preaching in the house of Jean de l’Escluse, a member of the Walloon congregation and a schoolmaster. Arminius and again Boudewijns were sent to tell de L’Escluse that he must not permit the preaching to take place and that the burgomasters would be informed of the matter.” “On another occasion Arminius and Taffin met with the Independent leader, Henry Ainsworth, in an attempt to effect an agreement with him. Ainsworth was the young Brownist who had been preaching in the house of Israel Johnson in 1593. A graduate of Cambridge University, he had found it necessary to support himself in Amsterdam by serving as a hired hand in a bookseller’s shop. It was discovered that he had great proficiency in Hebrew (the greatest in Europe, claimed his admirers) and ability as a leader. Among his many translations and writings was a metrical verison of some of the psalms, which was adopted at once by the Separatists in Leiden, later known as the Pilgrim Fathers. His gifts in Hebrew were not matched by his gifts in poetry; the translation has happily fallen into disuse. When many Separatists in Amsterdam were going over to the Mennonites, or to Baptist views, Ainsworth remained firm in his Reformed beliefs. But he remained firm also in those beliefs, mentioned earlier, which contradicted the polity and practice of the Dutch Reformed churches.” “The Brownists were not reticent about pushing their views on the Dutch churches. They had sent a pamplet containing their views ‘to all those who profess Sacred Literature in all Christian Universities,’ a copy of which came to a Leiden theology professor, Franciscus Junius. Junius replied on January 9, 1599, upbraiding them for their attack on ‘a church which is well furnished with servants of God, whose piety, erudition, and fraternal regard to the members of Christ, are fully known to good men.’ Two months later, on March 3, Arminius and Taffin, in the name of all the Amsterdam ministers, jumped into the fray on the side of Junius. They directed a letter to him in support of his attack on the Brownists and added some points of their own. At the same time, however, they avoided a total condemnation, and they denied that the Amsterdam clergy had ever denounced the Brownists as schismatics and heretics, as the Brownists had charged. […] By 1602 it became apparent that no accommodation of the

6 Matt. 18: 15-17. Moreouer, if thy brother trespace against thee, go, and tell him his faute betweene thee & him alone: if he heare thee, thou hast wonne thy brother. But if he heare thee not, take yet with thee one or two, that by ye mouth of two or thre witnesses euerie worde may be co[n]firmed. And if he will not vouchsaue to heare the[e], tell it vnto the Church: & if he refuse to heare the Church also, let him be vnto thee as an heathen man, and a Publicane.

Brownists and the Dutch and Walloon churches could be reached. The Classis of Walcheren had requested information about the matter, and Arminius and Plancius (who also had been active in the affair) gathered their materials together and sent them there.” […] “The Dutch churches were willing to grant that the Brownists were true Reformed Christians, and they did not find fault with Brownist views on the doctrines of salvation. What offended the Dutch was the Brownists’ uncompromising and total rejection of the polity and practice of the Dutch churches. Arminius was foremost among the defenders of the Dutch position.”

Francis Johnson and his colleague Henry Ainsworth could be expected to help the

refugees who reached harbor in 1608. A normal crossing from the Humber to Amsterdam might take a couple of days; they had unexpectedly spent two weeks in stormy seas. Moreover, John Smyth had been a student of Johnson’s at Cambridge, and he wanted to see his old professor.7 The new arrivals may already have heard that Johnson had rented a large house near the Reguliers Poort, a landmark (now called the Munt Toren) on the southside of the town, but recently made redundant when the town’s boundaries were set out farther. They could head there, asking directions in a town where sailors on the waterfront knew enough of many languages to get along with foreigners. Henry Ainsworth had a house on the Singel by the Hei Poort not far away over to the west, in the New Side.8 The Hei Poort was another gate made useless, and it had been torn down. New houses were built on the ruin left by the old fortification. Or the new arrivals might go immediately to the new church building that Johnson’s congregation had built in 1606 and early 1607 with financial aid from friends in England.

The First Meeting House The Separatists’ new building was situated in the Lange Houtstraat (near the

house of their convert Jean de L’Escluse, formerly a member of the Walloon congregation), on land that had scarcely been built up since being incorporated behind the new town walls in 1593. The neighborhood was called Fleaborough (“Vloonburg” or “Vlooienburg”), an allusion to being crowded with poor people.9 Fleaborough was one of

7 That John Smyth and his group from Gainsborough might successfully have fled before 1608 is contradicted by William Bradford’s descriptions of the flight from England. The 1607 attempt at Boston failed, and the leaders then were jailed for a while. Eventually, in the spring of 1608, the successful departure was organized. Confusion at that time resulted in some leaders not getting away until later, but by August, 1608, it is thought that the refugees were reunited in Amsterdam. James R. Coggins points out that Smyth was debating with Richard Bernard as late as November, 1607; Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation, English Separatism, Mennonite Influnece, and the Elect Nation (Waterloo, Ontario; Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 1991), p. 44. 8 On the locations of the houses, see Dexter and Dexter, The England and Holland of the Pilgrims, pp. 428-429; de Hoop Scheffer, History of the Free Churchmen, pp. 98-101. Henry Ainsworth’s residence is identified in the registration of his marriage: Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Puyboeken, 666, fol. [or p.] 62, by date, 31 March 1607. 9 A. J. Bouke considers this seventeenth-century etymology to be speculative: A. J. Bouke, “Tot ook zij vertrokken … Wel en wee op Vlooienburg,” Ons Amsterdam 40 (1988), pp. 213-218, particularly p. 215, where Bouke mentions that (Philip) von Zesen gave this explanation. Such an explanation is consistent with the seventeenth-century name in Leiden for a similarly crowded housing development – the ants' nest ("t' Mierennestje").

five rectangular islands next to each other that formed the new town in the east extension of Amsterdam – Uilenburg, Vlooienburg, Rapenburg, Marken, and another unnamed one a block wide on each side of the Breestraat (Broad Street). Many Jewish immigrants from Spain and Antwerp lived in this area. A kosher butcher was established by 1603. The street soon became known as the Jodenbreestraat (Jews’ Broad Street). Rembrandt later bought a house in this street. Sketches he made show that a jumbled mixture of brick and wooden houses and sheds, some thatched, some tiled, covered Uilenburg.10 Maps show the presence of numerous ship yards and lumber yards on either side of a single street in the middle of the island. Vlooienburg similarly displayed the disorder of small sheds and shops around a spine of new houses on a long street, with a shorter cross street (the Lange Houstraat crossed by the Korte Houtstraat).

The Separatists’ new church collapsed in early 1607, during construction.11 “God’s punishment,” was the opinion of the non-separating English who had recently formed an official English Reformed Church, recognized and subsidized by the Dutch Reformed town government. As one of their members wrote in the margin of a church record-book, “The beforesaid Brownists’ preaching house being half ready, God sent his strong messengers from heaven (Psalm 45)12 and cast the house only, and no other, flat down unto the ground, which I think was a sign and a token that they do not build upon the Rock, the true and right foundation (Mat. 7:24; I Cor. 3:12, etc.).”13 Despite such jeering comments, the members of Johnson’s “Ancient Brethren” (as their Separatist church was known in contrast to English congregations founded later) started over and soon completed the project.

10 Boudewijn Bakker, Maria van Berge-Gerbaud, Erik Schmitz, and Jan Peeters, Het Landschap van Rembrandt, Wandelingen in en om Amsterdam (Bussum: Uitgeverij Thoth; Amsterdam: Gemeentearchief; Paris: Fondation Custodia, 1998), pp. 150-155, 183. Pieter Bast’s maps of 1597 and 1599, for example, show a street and shipyards on Uilenburg. Vloienburg had no houses yet. See George Keyes, Pieter Bast (Alphen aan den Rijn, Canaletto, 1981). By 1625 the area was entirely filled with buildings, but the island was laid out to allow for boatyards around all four sides. See the map by Balthasar Florisz. van Berckenrode, illustrated in its entirety, and with a detail showing the five islands including Vlooienburg, in Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt, his Life, his Paintings (Harmondsworth and New York: Viking, Penguin, 1985), pp. 134-135. The entire island of Vlooienburg is now occupied by a single building – the Amsterdam Opera (called the Stopera). 11 See the discussion of the building and its history, as well as subsequent buildings, in Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, a History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982), pp. 50-51. Previous authors (e.g. de Hoop Scheffer, Dexter and Dexter) have repeated inaccurate information about the meeting places, derived from a poorly informed 18th-century source. 12 Sic. The intent may be to refer to Psalm 48:7. As with an East winde, thou breakest the shippes of Tarshish, so were they destroyed. 13 “The beforesaijde Brunysts praeching howse being half readij God send his strong messeniers from heaven psal 45 and cast the howse onely and no other flat downe unto the ground which . I. meane was a seinge and a toecken that thij doe not buijld opon the Rocke the true and richt foundation Mat 7. 24. 1 Corint. 3.12 etc” Matt. 7:24. Whosoeuer then heareth of me these wordes, and doeth the same, I wil liken him to a wise man, which hath buylded his house on a rocke. [I Cor. 3: 11-12.] For other foundacion can no man lay, then that which is laid, which is Iesus Christ. And if anie man buylde on this foundacion, golde, siluer, precious stones, tymber, haye, or stubble, [13] euerie mans worke shalbe made manifest. [...] Amsterdam Municipal Archives, English Reformed Church Archive (archive nr. 318), inv. 81 [marriages and baptisms, 1607-1625], baptisms, pp. 1-2.

The builder’s contract informs us in detail about the new church.14 It consisted of two brick houses, on a lot that was forty-five feet deep and thirty-two feet wide, next to a vacant lot. One hundred pilings were sunk to support the houses. Each house had a cellar nine and a half feet tall, panelled with sawn (rather than roughly split) boards. In the cellar was a bedstead, a food storage room and a fuel cellar for peat. There were windows, indicating that these basements were partly above ground level. Cellar door- and window-frames were oak, but the joists for the floor above were Norwegan fir, supporting a main floor of tiles set in mortar. The ground floor door- and window-frames were also oak, and the back wall had an oak cross-frame window with three glazed sections, also incorporating a door that gave access to an open “place” behind the house. Each house was to have a privy, with brick walls and a wooden roof. These were probably at the end of the garden or “place,”.where there was a “summer kitchen.” A side room in each house contained a bedstead, and another bedstead was in the rear room by the hearth. The bedsteads were panelled to a height of five and a half feet. Most interesting was the great chamber, lit by four cross-frame windows, two in front and two in back. This room must have extended across the upper story of both houses. Presumably it was the story above the ground floor. The ceiling was sixteen feet high, and the windows, ten. One wall had two window frames incorporating the ends of upper floor joists, with a door between the windows. Two galleries built of pine, five feet wide, extended from end to end in the great chamber, with a small stair to each. The galleries were also accessible from an exterior stair fourteen feet high. There was another story above this room, then an attic four and a half feet high, and finally a small storage attic in the point of each roof. The window frames in the gable tops had beams with pulleys for hoisting peat up to be stored in the attic (as well as in the cellar). Lead gutters were laid between the houses, but the side gutters were wooden. These led to a water reservoir that could contain twenty-four tuns of water. The church was to be completed and delivered two weeks before May Day, 1607. The contract obliged Francis Blackwall (also called Blackwell) and Thomas Bischop (or Bishop), who were acting privately but no doubt considered themselves to be representing the congregation’s interests, to pay 800 Carolus guldens cash as a down-payment, then seven hundred when the frame was roofed over, then three hundred guldens each May Day until full payment had been made of 3400 guldens. They gave their personal guaranty for the payment, mortgaging themselves and their property.15 Not much is known about Bishop. Blackwell, on the other hand, was a wealthy merchant. 14 Gemeente Archief Amsterdam, Rechterlijk Archief, Inv. nr. 261 (notaris Fred. V. Banchem), Nr. 612, 1606 Nov. 17; see also Rechterlijk Archief 2164, fol. 95 verso, cited in Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, p. 64. It is worth noting that Amsterdam’s “voet” and “duim” (foot and inch) were a bit shorter than the English equivalent. The Rijnland measure used in Leiden was practically identical to the English measure. 15 Arber’s version of the ownership arrangements is incorrect. He infers from comments in a book by Henry Ainsworth that “two men and a widow of the Ainsworthians were the chief owners of the building of the Meeting House at Amsterdam; but that the ground on which it stood was held, in trust only, by a man who belonged to Johnson’s Church.” (The congregation split in 1610.) “It was upon these facts, that the Burgomasters awarded the building to the Ainsworthians: who, ousting the Franciscans [i.e. followers of Francis Johnson] therefrom, occasioned their migration to Emden.” Arber, Story of the Pilgrim Fathers, pp. 117-118. I have not seen evidence of a lawsuit (other than indications that money was still owed in 1613). Unfortunately, Amsterdam’s judicial archives are not comprehensively preserved for this period. The somewhat later references to the split that mention lawsuits may be based on litigation whose record is not preserved, or they could be distorted explanations by people not directly involved amd consequently

When the Ancient Brethren split in 1610, Blackwall remained an elder in Johnson’s congregation, while Bishop went with Henry Ainsworth in forming the break-away congregation. Possession of the building was disputed. The burgomasters intervened. Describing the church as the private property of Blackwall (the congregation was not recognized officially as a legal corporation capable of ownership), the burgomasters compelled a sale in January, 1613, to John Beauchamp. Beauchamp was a wealthy member of Ainsworth’s congregation who also became a benefactor of the Pilgrims and a major investor in Plymouth Colony. The price was 5,513 guilders, enough to settle any outstanding debt and clarify the title. (The price included the land as well as the building.) Two years later, on February 21, 1615, Beauchamp transferred the ownership to Jean de l’Écluse, Thomas Bishop Giles Thorpe, Henry May, John Hales, John Peyne, William Shepherd, Abraham Pulbry, John Crawford, and Richard Bennet, for the benefit of (Ainsworth’s) “English congregation.”16

After losing the Lange Houtstraat church building, Francis Johnson’s congregation left Amsterdam for Embden in East Friesland, a German province adjacent to the northeastern border of The Netherlands. Francis Blackwell, a deacon in that group, is accused by Robert Cushman (in a letter dated May, 1618) of having dealt dishonestly with Francis Johnson’s congregation in Embden, but Cushman does not tell us any details. A few years earlier, Blackwell had evidently been a major backer of the publishing activities of Giles Thorpe, the English printer in Amsterdam who put out many of the controversial tracts issued by Separatists. In January, 1609, Blackwell sold an entire print shop with two presses he owned to the Dutch printer Baernt Otenz.; Thorpe is named as the holder of the obligation for the remaining debt.17 A few days later, in an unrelated transaction, Blackwell bought a “haienck” ship (possibly a slip of the pen for “harenck,” i.e. herring ship) for 4,700 guilders.18 His bonds for this debt were an Englishman named Francis Josephson and Amsterdam’s city sculptor and architect Hendrick de Keyser. De Keyser’s friendship with Blackwell emphasizes that the design of the Separatists’ church in the Lange Houtstraat must have been noticed in discussions about the new architecture being developed for Protestants. That De Keyser may have provided the design, or at least advised on it, is an attractive hypothesis, considering that he designed Amsterdam’s Zuiderkerk (built from 1603 to 1611, tower 1614). Serving the new neighborhoods on Amsterdam’s east side, the Zuiderkerk is now considered the city’s first church designed for Protestants, although it was in fact completed after the Separatists’ church (even if

imprecisely informed. Least convincing (and geographically entirely confused) is the version given by De Hoop Scheffer, History of the Free Churchmen, pp. 98-99, 128, 130-133. 16 Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Rechterlijk Archief, inv. Nr. 2164, Register van Kwijtscheldingen van bij Executie verkochte huizen en schepen, fol. 95 verso. Ainsworth’s congregation may have included further only the wives of these men and their children. Perhaps more likely is that the congregation was larger, and that these are the names of the elders and deacons only. 17 Gemeente Archief Amsterdam, Notarieel Archief, inv nr. 265 (Notaris Frederick van Banchem), Fol. 18 (16 January 1609); this is discussed in a wider context by Keith L. Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower, English Puritan Printing in the Netherlands, 1600-1640 (Leiden, New York, Cologne: E. J. Brill for the Sir Thomas Browne Insstitute, University of Leiden, 1994; = Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, vol. 46), pp. 88-90, 191. 18 Gemeente Archief Amsterdam, Notarieel Archief, inv. nr. 265 (Notaris Frederick van Banchem), Fol. 33 verso.

begun earlier). De Keyser also designed the Westerkerk (1620), to serve western extensions, and the Noorderkerk (1620) for the north.

Blackwell left Johnson’s congregation in Embden for England, stopping at least briefly in Amsterdam.19 In 1615 Blackwell, while in England, had an agent in Amsterdam buy him one small ship and charter three others for an open-ended term with a minimum of three months. The intended route was left vague, although first the ships were to go to Cocken Island and then unload and load at the Tees River (between Yorkshire and County Durham).20 Next, Blackwell was arrested at a forbidden conventicle in London, but in exchange for the betrayal of another Separatist, Sabine Staresmore of the Robinson congregation, Blackwell was released to be able to organize an expedition to transport colonists to Virginia in his ships. Archbishop Bancroft praised Blackwell’s return to the Church of England. On the way to Virginia in 1618, of the one hundred eighty passengers, one hundred thirty died, including Blackwell.21 So does God punish those who have the archbishop’s approval, thought Cushman. The Amsterdam church built for the Ancient Brethren in 1606-1607 is the earliest known building specifically designed and constructed as a church for English dissenters. Separatists and Puritans argued about whether using buildings that had previously been Catholic churches was biblically forbidden. The Ancient Brethren jeered at the English Reformed for using the medieval Béguinage Chapel assigned to them by the town’s government. This was a chapel where mass had been said before the Reformation. The English Reformed retorted that the Ancient Brethren had met for a while in a house that Jews had used as a synagogue, not far from the site of the church built in 1606-1607. (This was the Sephardic congregation Bet Jacob.)22 Keith Sprunger has summarized this ongoing dispute, suggesting that the designs of later churches of Puritans and Dissenters in both New England and England are indebted to earlier examples found in The Netherlands among the English Reformed Churches (who were assigned disused Catholic chapels by city governments) and the several Separatist congregations.23 Other dissenters, Mennonites, were facing similar questions of devising appropriate meeting places. Mennonites met in houses and warehouses. Warehouses could be converted to being two-story, or even three-story spaces with balconies simply by removing the loose planks of the center part of the upper floors and erecting a railing around the gap. The Mennonite meeting houses, thus, also had a great chamber with balconies, as well as a place for preaching along one side wall, although not a pulpit.24 The Ancient Brethren were

19 On 27 August, 1613, Blackwall acknowledged that he had borrowed 300 guilders from Edward Bennit: Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Rechterlijk Archief, Schepenkenningboek 17, folio 72. 20 Municipal Archives, Amsterdam, Notarieel Archief 198 (Notaris J. Fr. Bruijningh) Fol. 347 verso – 348: 3 July 1615 (bought ship “de Herck,” 28 lasten); fol. 348 verso – 349; 6 July 1615 (chartered unnamed ship, 20 lasten); fol. 404-405, 23 July 1615 (ship “de Rotgans,” 28 lasten); fol. 407-407verso; 29 July 1615 (ship “de Boer,” 32 lasten). Cocken Island may be a neck of land nearly surrounded by bends in the Wear River near Durham. 21 Bradford’s ‘Of Plimoth Plantation; pp. 47-51. Blackwell is discussed further in chapter 8 below. 22 . See Bouke, “Tot ook zij vertrokken,” p. 216. 23 Keith L. Sprunger, “Puritan Chruch Architecture and Worship in a Dutch Context,” Church History, 66 (1997), pp. 36-53. 24 I think that the Mennonite design, which has no Dutch precedent, could be based on the traditional farmhouse design found in the Dantzig Werder, where Mennonites met in farmhouses. In that region, larger farmhouses had a main chamber (called a “Diele”) that was open to the upper floor and was surrounded by balconies. Such rooms were ideal for congregational use. For photographs of this house-type, see Helene

acquainted with the Mennonites, and it cannot be doubted that they were familiar with Mennonite meeting houses.25 Mennonite practicality in designing a place of worship that was not derived from medieval church buildings must have contributed to the conversations among the Ancient Brethren concerning what design they should build. The New England meeting house, as Sprunger writes, surely owes much of its simple design to the experiments among the English and Mennonites of Amsterdam, whose solutions also were followed later by the Remonstrants when they were allowed to build “clandestine” churches.26 Weddings in 1608 and 1609 Exactly when the refugees from the Gainsborough-Scrooby group began to arrive in Amsterdam is uncertain. Those left behind in England got across on their own as the months passed.27 The first arrivals had settled in at least to some extent by July 5, 1608, when Henry Cullandt registered his marriage with Margariete Grymsdiche.28 Marriage registration took place in an office of the town government located in the former sacristy of the Oude Kerk (Old Church, dedicated to St. Nicholas), where all couples had to pass through a red door with the admonition inscribed above it, “Hastily wedded is long regretted.”29 Both Henry and Margaret were thirty years old. They had been living since Christmas (1607) on Uilenburg, one of Amsterdam’s new islands crowded with small houses for poor laborers. He came from Sutton and she was from Lound, the two villages

Bertram, D. Kloeppel, Wolfgang La Baume, Das Weichsel-Nogat-Delta, Beiträge zur Geschichte seiner landschaftlichen Entwickelung, vorgeschichtlichen Besiedelung und bäuerlichen Haus- und Hofanlage (Dantzig: Danziger Verlag Gesellschaft, 1924). According, however, to C. A. van Swigchem, T. Brouwer, and W. van Os, Een Huis voor het Woord, Het Protestantse kerkinterieur in Nederland tot 1900 (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij, 1984), p. 89, the source of Dutch gallery churches is to be found in French examples, the Huguenot churches of Lyon (built 1564, demolished 1566, octagonal or round), and Charenton (1606, 1623), as well as German castle chapels, naming Schloss Wilhelmsburg, Schmalkalden (1590). Their assertion is not related specifically to any demonstrably derivative Dutch examples. For the Lutheran developments that come from castle chapels, see Peter Poscharsky, Die Kanzel, Erscheinungsform im Protestantismus bi zum Ende des Barocks (Gütersloh, 1963). 25 Jan Munter, a Mennonite, allowed John Smyth’s congregation to meet in a warehouse he owned. See Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation, pp. 60, 71-72. 26 Post-Reformation Dutch Reformed church buildings contrast with the elaborate baroque buildings of Counter-Reformation Catholic churches in present-day Belgium and elsewhere. The Dutch Reformed, although taking Italian architecture as an example, returned to the relative simplicity of early fifteenth-century Florence in contrast to later Mannerist and Baroque developments. 27 John Cotton wrote much later that William Bradford was among those who missed the boat. Cotton states that Bradford on his own got over to Middelburg then made his way north to Amsterdam. 28 Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Puyboeken, 666, fol. 68/p.135 (5 July 1608). De Hoop Scheffer, History of the Free Churchmen, p. 190, incorrectly gives Cullandt’s age as 20. There are numerous errors of spelling and dating in De Hoop Scheffer’s extracts. The Cullandt-Grymsdiche marriage record is photographically reproduced in Daniel Plooij and J. Rendel Harris, Leyden Documents relating to the Pilgrim Fathers, Permission to Reside at Leyden and Betrothal Records; together with Parallel Documents from the Amsterdam Archives (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1920), fol. LXXII verso - LXXIII. 29 See C. O. Bangs, Arminius, p. 133, referring to Leonie van Nierop, “De Bruidegoms van Amsterdam van 1578 tot 1601,” Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis, 48 (1933), pp. 337-359 (particularly p. 347); 39 (1934) 136-160. The rhyme in Dutch is: ’T is haest Getrout, dat Lange Rouwt. On the Oude Kerk, see H. Janse, De Oude Kerk te Amsterdam, Bouwgeschiedenis en Restauratie (Zeist: Rijksdienst voor de Monumentenzorg; Zwolle: Waanders, 2004).

that shared a parish church whose vicar was James Brewster. Cullandt presented written certification from Richard Clyfton, who was still acting as curate in Sutton at this time, that the bans had been proclaimed there. Margaret produced a letter from her grandfather, granting consent. (Her parents must have been dead, but it still seems odd that consent was required for the marriage of a woman aged thirty.) Marriage usually took place about three weeks after the first reading of the banns. In this situation it seems that the flight from England intervened and resulted in an unusual delay. Cullandt needed to re-establish himself with employment before he could start a family. His pastor, Richard Clyfton, managed to get to Amsterdam himself by August, 1608.30 The Ancient Brethren probably provided housing at first – some of the first shipload of refugees from the Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire group had no money with them, after all. But we see in the record of the marriage on April 11, 1609, of William Jepson, age 26, and Rosamund Horsefield, age 28, both from Worksop, that he had been living on the Breedstraet (Broad Street, now called the Jodenbreestraat, or “Jews’ Broad Street”) for six months. She, on the other hand, had been living for nine months in the Jan Hanssen Pad (Jan Hannsen Path).31 They were married on April 11, 1609. Rosamund had found her place to live by July, 1608. This detail from the Jepson-Horsefield marriage is enough to suggest that the dramatic escape from England in 1608 occurred in May or June. Archbishop Toby Matthew’s sermon at Bawtry in May, 1608, may have been an angry response to the recent escape, intended to warn anyone remaining against leaving. William Jepson was identified in the marriage record as a house carpenter. He could find construction work around the edges of Amsterdam, where new houses were filling empty spaces brought within the city walls over a decade earlier with an expectation of population growth. Whether Jepson had been a house carpenter full-time before is unknown. He might have been a farmer, choosing to emphasize in Amsterdam just one of the many skills that farmers had to develop. (Every competent farmer had the carpentry skills to build or repair a shed or even a barn.) The other immigrants needed to find work, too, but Amsterdam’s guild rules were protective and exclusive.32 Day jobs were available, albeit unpredictable and poorly paid. One of Rosamund Horsefield’s neighbors in the Jan Hannsen Path, Francis Pigett, a member of the Ancient Brethren, was a hodcarrier – a laborer who spent the day carrying bricks from stacks directly unloaded from barges over to where a brick-layer needed them. Few jobs paid less. Pigett, from “Axon” (probably Oxton near Bilsthorp and Southwell) married Margriet Struts from Bedford on August 30, 1608.33 He was 32 and she, 30.

For many of the refugees, finding work was very difficult. Loading and unloading ships offered irregular jobs, as did construction work, but it was not easy for foreigners to

30 His arrival in Amsterdam in August, 1608, is recorded in the Clifton family Bible, in the library of the Taylorean Institution, Oxford. See Edward Arber, The Story of The Pilgrim Fathers, pp. 95-97. 31 Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Puyboeken, 666, fol. 85/ p. 169 (11 April 1609); illustrated in Plooij and Harris, Leyden Documents, fol. LXXIII verso – LXXIV. 32 See Johannes Gerard van Dillen, Bronnen tot de Geschiedenis van het Bedrijfsleven en het Gildewezen van Amsterdam (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 3 vols., 1929, 1929-1974; = Rijks Geschiedkundige Publicatiën, Grote Serie, 69, 78, 144). 33 Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Puyboeken, 666, fol. 72/p.145 (30 August 1608). Francis Pigett (or Pigot) might be Thomas Helwys’ servant named Pigot, cited with Helwys and his wife in April, 1608, for not attending church.

get a chance among the informally organized gangs of locals speaking an incomprehensible language. A few of the English worked in the textile industry. James Hurstie, from Retford, was a “bombazijne worker” according to the record of his marriage on October 4, 1608, to Gertrude Benniser, also from Retford.34 He was 26 and she was 23; they both lived in an alley called the Treefts Steech. Bombazijne was cloth mixing cotton and linen as warp and weft. It was used for lining material in clothing, and for coarse underwear. Borat was another mixed-weave cloth that combined silk and wool, used for stockings and some other soft clothing, including light over-mantels. John Murton from Gainsborough, who married Jenne Hodgkin from “Worchen” on August 23, 1608, was listed as a borat worker.35 Because these new immigrants could not have joined guilds (for which local residence of a year and a day was a prerequisite), they must have been employed by Englishmen who had already been in Amsterdam for some time and who either had developed businesses unregulated by guilds or had assimilated to the point of being accepted as guild members. Theology, however, got in the way of employment. The principle of Separation meant that the truly godly should not associate at all with the not quite so truly godly. Even accepting charity could pose an ethical dilemma, let alone taking employment.36 Deciding the character and biblical orthodoxy of the Ancient Brethren required alert scrutiny. Scandals among the Brethren The Ancient Brethren had a reputation for contentiousness, although by 1608 a leading trouble-maker had died and calm had temporarily returned to the congregation. Peace lasted until the split of Johnsonians and Ainsworthians in 1610. Rumors of unrest persisted. Sharp-eyed care for each other’s souls was essential to the covenanted life. Each member of the congregation expected to contribute to the social control that constituted “Christian discipline” within the godly group. Francis Johnson had scandalized friends and foes not too long ago, however, when he had ex-communicated his brother George, and then even ex-communicated his own father, who had come over to Amsterdam to reconcile the brothers.37 Evidently most of the congregation supported their minister’s decision to exclude George, whom they described as suffering from

34 Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Puyboeken, 666, p. 148 (4 October 1608). The record gives the Latin form, Jacobus, but his later signature is James. 35 Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Puyboeken, 666, fol. 71/p. 141 (23 August 1608). “Borat” was a cloth now usually called “bombazine” in English, combining silk and worsted wool. Murton later wrote an early tract urging religious toleration. He was killed for his opinions when he returned to England. “Worchen” is unidentified. 36 Some Swiss Mennonites were cautious about accepting aid from Dutch Mennonites they considered too liberal. See Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, Letters on Toleration: Dutch Aid to Persecuted Swiss and Palatine Mennonites, 1615-1699 (Rockport: Picton Press, 2004), p. 43 and related documents. 37 The story of the dissensions within the Amsterdam Separatist congregation(s) are well documented in Champlin Burrage, The Early English Dissenters, in the Light of Recent Research (1550-1641), 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912). See also De Hoop Scheffer, History of the Free Churchmen, pp. 64-72. The complex material is clearly summarized by Keith L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism.

“crackbrainednes.”38 But to outsiders, the excommunication of their father was an unprecedented example of harsh disregard for filial piety.

The friction arose as an expression of George’s envy regarding the wealth inherited by Thomasine Boyes, the tailor’s widow who married his brother Francis in 1594, while Francis was imprisoned in London. George, irked by his new sister-in-law’s fortune of £ 300/-/-, decided that he was called upon to let her know that the fine clothing and jewelry she had worn in her first marriage were not fitting for the wife of an imprisoned minister. Sanctimoniously he wrote to her directly, not wanting to trouble his brother with the matter, he said, but offering her the chance to repent and mend her ways.39 Mrs. Johnson passed the letter on to her husband, who was, expectably, infuriated at George’s meddling. An uneasy reconciliation smoothed matters for several years, but George, his feelings still rankling, raised his objections again in Amsterdam. This time, having met with rebukes and then ex-communication, he took to the press to publish his complaints (1603). Having only the highest of moral motivations, and thoughtfully following the Bible’s injunction to take care that one’s brother’s possessions not be exposed to harm (the possession in this case being Francis’s wife!), George Johnson painted a vivid picture of what it was that caught his attention, particularly, tightly laced bodices and, especially, exposed white breasts. “First, the wearing of a long busk after the fashion of the world contrary to Rom. 12. 2, I Tim. 2. 9. 10.40 2. Wearing of the long white brest after the fashion of yong dames, and so low she wore it, as the vvorld call them kodpeece brests. Contrary to the former places, and also to I. Pet. 3. 3 [.] 4. 5.41 3. Whalebones in the bodies of peticotes Contrary to the former rules, as also against nature, being as the Phisitians affirme hinderers of conceiving or procreating children. 4. Great sleeves sett out with whalebones which the world cal […] Contrary to the former rules of modesty, and shamefastnes. 5. Excesse of lace vpon them after the fashion of yong Marchants vvives. Contrary to the rules of modesty. 6. Foure or five gould Rings on at once. Contrary to the former rules in a Pastors vvife. 7. A copple crowned hatt with a tvvined band, as yong Marchants vvives, and yong Dames vse. Immodest and toyish in a Pastors vvife. Contrary also to the former rules. 8. Tucked aprons, like round hose: contrary likewise to the former rules. 9. Excesse in rufs, laune coives, muske, and such like things: contrary to I. Tim. 2. 9, I. Peter. 3. 3, forbidding costly apparel. 10. The painted Hipocritical brest, shewing as if there were some special workes, and in truth nothing but a shadow. Contrary to modesty, and sobriety. 11. Bodies tied to the peticote with points, as men do their dublets to their hose. Contrary to I. Thes. 5. 22. conferred with 38 Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, p. 64. 39 Burrage comments on Francis Johnson’s patience regarding the attacks on him by his brother, “whose excommunication we cannot feel was entirely unmerited” (says Burrage, Early English Dissenters, I, p. 161. 40 Rom. 12: 2. And facion not your selues like vnto this worlde, but be ye changed by he renuing of your minde, yt ye may proue what is the good wil of God, & acceptable, & perfite. I. Tim. 2: 9, 10. Likewise also the women, that they arraye them selues in comelie apparel, with shamefastnes & modestie, not with broyded heare, or gold, or pearles, or costlie apparel, but (as becometh women that professe the feare of God) with good workes. 41 I Pet. 3: 3-5. Whose apparelling let it not be outwarde, as with broyded heere, and golde put about, or in putting on of apparel. But let the hid man of the heart be vncorrupt, with a meke & quiet spirit, which is before God a thing muche set by. For euen after this maner in time past did the holie women, which trusted in God, tier them selues, and were subiect to their housbands.

Deut. 22 [. 5], I. Iohn 2. 16.42 12. Some also reporte that she laid forth her heare also Contrary to I. Tim. 2. 9, I. Pet. 3.3.”43

Excommunicated, George Johnson appealed for redress to ministers of the Dutch and Walloon Reformed Churches of Amsterdam. The four ministers who thus became acquainted with the details of this friction within the English Separatist community were Jean de Vigne, Petrus Plancius, Jacobus Arminius, and Simon Goulart. None was well impressed, especially after their previous antagonistic experiences with these “Brownists,” but they pointed out that they had no jurisdiction in the matter and that this sect was not recognized by them as a church.44 George Johnson then returned to England, where he was arrested for sedition and died in prison at Durham before 1606. The scandal was not easily forgotten. Christopher Lawne and other former members of the congregation, writing about it in 1612, expressed horror regarding Francis Johnson’s act of excommunicating his own father – “done against such a father as had bin at so great cost in bringing vp his son to learning, & he to vse his Sophistrie, euen against his Father: how vile! Thus to iudge and condemne his father, who also with so much labor, cost and griefe had sued to sundry Iudges and nobles in England for releasing of that son; as may appear by the generall copies of those humble petitions and supplications which Iohn Iohnson made for his sons Francis and George vnto the high Commissioners; and to others.”45 Francis Johnson was a rigidly self-righteous ingrate. But this was not all. In 1606, some church members accused one of their deacons, Daniel Studley, of molesting his wife’s daughter by a previous marriage. Studley was said to have given his wife a “blew eye” and to have beaten her when she protested. Moreover, Studley had a reputation as a philanderer. When found hidden behind a basket at the house of a woman in the congregation, Judith Holder, he claimed he was waiting to spy on the man who discovered him, who, Studley insinuated, must have come to her house with unholy intentions. His opponents found it telling that Studley would “never so much as denie the matter of Incest with his wiues daughter.” Francis Johnson, Jacob Johnson, Henry Ainsworth, Francis Blackwell, Daniel Studley, Christopher Bowman (like Blackwell, a deacon), John Nicholas, Judith Holder, William Barbons, and Thomas Bishop sued Thomas White, a former Church of England clergyman who had briefly joined the Ancient Brethren and, appalled, had become Studley’s most vocal accuser. They charged White and his wife Rose with slander, and had the Whites’ possessions put under arrest. But when the accusers did not appear for the hearing, Amsterdam’s court found in White’s favor. White and his wife considered this to be proof that their accusations against Studley were upheld. They counter-sued. The court cleared them and 42 I Thes. 5: 22. Absteine from all appearance of euil. Deut. 22: 5. The woman shal not weare that which perteineth unto the man, nether shal a man put on womans raiment, for all that do so, are abominacion unto the Lord thy God. I John. 2: 16. For all that is in the worlde (as the luste of the flesh, the luste of the eyes, & the pride of life) is not of ye Father, but is of the worlde. 43 The quoted material is from Geroge Johnson’s book, A discourse of some troubles and excommunications in the banished English Church at Amsterdam … (Amsterdam, 1603), given in Burrage, Early English Dissenters, II, pp. 160-161. For the title page of Johnson’s book, see the illustration between pp. 360 and 361. I have not seen the original. If people referred to a low neck-line as codpiece breasts, I wonder what the word was that Burrage omitted, in reference to great sleeves set out with whalebone stays. 44 Christopher Lawne, John Fowler, Clement Sanders, Robert Bulward, The Prophane Schisme of the Brownists or Separatists, with the Impietie, Dissensions, Lewd, and Abhominable Vices of that impure Sect ([Amsterdam?], 1612), p. 60. 45 Lawne, Fowler, Sanders, and Bulward, The Prophane Schisme of the Brownists, pp. 61.

rescinded the arrest, because of the non-appearance of the accusers, and condemned the Ancient Brethren to pay the court costs. As White put it, “There is no Sect in Amsterdam (though manie) in such contempt for filthie life, as the English (viz., the Brownists) are.”46 White was obviously unsympathetically biased.

Francis Johnson and his associates accepted Studley’s extenuations of his behavior, and clearly it is possible that the reason he did not deny the incest of which he was accused is that he was innocent and believed his innocence should be a sufficient answer. Whether he ever answered the question, “have you stopped beating your wife?” is unrecorded. Reading about it solely from the viewpoint of his detractors, it seems likely that Studley was a sanctimonious, hypocritical, violent sexual molester. Certain about Studley it is, that on March 23, 1593, he had been imprisoned in London for his Separatist beliefs and on that date was condemned to death. Instead of being killed, however, he was sent with his fellow condemned prisoner Francis Johnson to help found a colony on an island in the St. Lawrence River. When one of the expedition’s ships foundered, the other turned back to London. Johnson and Studley managed to escape by going into exile in Amsterdam. Johnson’s friendship dated back to shared dangers. Some of the Amsterdam congregation also held Studley in esteem, perhaps excusing crimes because of the oppression he had survived for the cause of Separatism. The English Reformed Church in the Begijnhof Amsterdam was home to many non-refugee Englishmen who did not want to be associated in any way with the notoriously unregulated, legalistic antics of the Ancient Brethren. Largely to ensure that they not be confused with such goings-on, an alternative, officially recognized congregation was inaugurated in January, 1607 – the English Reformed Church.47 The church was organized like the other foreigh-language Reformed churches – the Walloon (French Reformed, Huguenot) Church, and the German Reformed Church. Amsterdam’s town government subsidized the minister’s salary and assigned to the congregation the use of a church building, in this case the former Béguinage Chapel. In such Reformed churches, the magistrates had final choice from the congregation’s nominees for its officers, from pastor to deacon. Usually the magistrates confirmed the congregation’s preferred candidates. Such government involvement was, obviously, the direct opposite of the congregational organization, independence, and separation that the refugees held to be essential to a true church. In the first years, however, this system was not applied in the English Reformed Church, whose congregation elected its elders and deacons without apparently having to submit

46 Lawne, Fowler, Sanders, and Bulward, The Prophane Schisme of the Brownists, pp. 21-32. 47 Municipal Archives Amsterdam, Archive 318, inv. 81 [marriages and baptisms, 1607-1625]; inv. nr. 1, consistory minutes, 1607-1621. Matthew Slade, formerly a member of the Ancient Brethren, married Petrus Plancius’s step-daughter (Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, p. 63). Turning away from Separatism, he approached Amsterdam’s burgomasters as early as 1605 with the proposal that an English Reformed congregation be constituted under government supervision. On the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam, see Alice Clare Carter, The English Reformed Church in Amsterdam in the Seventeenth Century (Amsterdam: Scheltema & Holkema, 1964); Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism; Sprunger, Trumpets from the Tower.

candidates to the civil government. The congregation was about as independent as could be imagined, but they did not consider themselves separated from or outside the Church of England in general. For this the Separatists considered them not a true church. Amsterdam’s English Church still exists, affiliated with the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. Its services are still held in the chapel granted by the city in 1607.48

The first sermon was preached on February 3, 1607, by John Paget, in the presence of Petrus Plancius, a leading strict Calvinist among Amsterdam’s Reformed clergy (who was, besides, a famous cartographer), and also in the presence of Amsterdam’s “Schout” (sheriff, chief prosecutor, and president of the court).49 Official approval of this church was re-emphasized a month and a half later when, on March 16, Paget was consecrated pastor by laying on of hands by John Douglas, “a Lawful preacher” and by “D[ominee] Petrus Plancius and some of the Elders of the Reformed Dutch Church in the name of all the whole Church and congregation of this City.”50 This induction occurred “with prayer and thanks unto God and also according to the word of God.” Paget was “confirmed and fastened in his place and calling in will, consent, and presence of the whole congregation, and many Dutch Citizens understanding the English tongue.” The laying-on of hands by Plancius and Dutch Reformed elders meant that this English Reformed Church was within the Reformed community, not separate and outside the national church.

John Smyth’s Further Separation and Self-baptism Despite their reputation, in 1608, the Separatist congregation that the recent

arrivals from England encountered was a group living in increasing strength and apparent harmony. Almost certainly the Ancient Brethren helped the newcomers survive. The refugees, however, were alert to the possibility that Francis Johnson’s congregation might not have achieved perfection. Whether the arrival of the ministers – Smyth, Clyfton, and Robinson – led immediately to the re-grouping of a congregation (or congregations) separate from the Ancient Brethren is unknown. These people may have considered their original covenant(s) to define them congregationally in a way that required that they exist independently of that already in Amsterdam. For their early months in Amsterdam, however, clear indications are lacking. Independent congregational identity developed quite soon, whatever the details. Bradford wrote (ca. 1630) that, “when Mr. Robinson, Mr. Brewster, & other principall members were come over, (for they were of ye last, & stayed to help ye weakest over before them,) such things were thought on as were necessarie for their setling and best ordering of ye church affairs.”51

48 Ironically, the English Reformed Church has a stained-glass window commemorating the Pilgrims. 49 Amsterdam Municipal Archives, English Church Archives (archive nr. 318), inv. 81 (marriages and baptisms, 1607-1625), p. 1. 50 Amsterdam Municipal Archives, English Church Archives (archive nr. 318), nr. 81, p. 2. The spelling is modernized in the quotation. 51 Bradford’s ‘Of Plimoth Plantation’, pp. 22-23.

Fairly soon, John Smyth became convinced that Separation was not enough.52 By the end of 1608, he had published a tract, The Differences of the Churches of the seperation [sic], in which he indicated how his opinions diverged from what he found among the Ancient Brethren, and in which he justified his as being exclusively the biblically correct view.53 One objection was that churches should be supported only by their own members, whereas the Ancient Brethren had accepted donations from sympathizers in England when news got abroad of the collapse of the church going up in 1606-7.54 Smyth’s rigidity on this point doomed his congregation to poverty unless they could rely on the generosity of the few wealthy members in the group, such as Thomas Helwys. Consequently, William Bradford’s memory (not restricted to Smyth’s followers, but also expressing the feelings of those who removed to Leiden) was that “it was not longe before they saw the grim[m]e & grisly face of povertie coming upon them like an armed man, with whom they must bukle & incounter, and from whom they could not flye.” Bradford’s was the recollection of circumstances resulting partly from theological principle.55

Smyth also felt that true worship should not depend on human and therefore imperfect printed devotional material. In this regard, Smyth was taking the Separatists’ general rejection of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer and extending that rejectionist logic to its most extreme. All translations were imperfect and consequently inadequate. This did not mean that Smyth wanted to allow only unmitigated expression of ineffable spiritual experiences during religious exercises. On the contrary, Smyth seems to have meant that the preacher should read his biblical texts first in Hebrew or Greek and then immediately himself translate and explain the words. Rather than proclaiming a nonsensical and incomprehensible gospel (no Pentacostalist, he), Smyth insisted that whoever preached should be capable of understanding the Bible in its original languages and clearly explain the texts, word by word, to the congregation. Not to do so was to rely on the inevitable mistakes of others, although it was necessary at the same time to acknowledge one’s own imperfection in translating or explaining the meaning. But the tract is obscure, and Smyth might have been arguing in favor of fervor without printed 52 The idea that Smyth immediately formed (or continued) a congregation independent of the Ancient Brethren is based on his own description in 1609 of himself as pastor of the second church in Amsterdam. That self-description, however, does not tell us when his congregation in Amsterdam was formed. See: Dexter and Dexter, The England and Holland of the Pilgrims, p. 442. That Smyth did not arrive in 1606 (contradicting the Dexters) has been mentioned above in note 7. Coggins’ tendentious inclination to consider Smyth the leader of the entire Separatist movement in the area extending from Gainsborough to Scrooby ignores Bradford’s statement that for convenience the Separatists formed two congregations. Coggins views the group that went to Leiden as having separated from “John Smyth’s congregation.” See: Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation, pp. 48-65. Coggins’ thereby repeatedly claims that it was not Smyth who separated from Clyfton and Robinson, but the other way round. He has not, however, proven that this is correct. 53 De Hoop Scheffer publishes the tract’s text as Appendix B in History of the Free Churchmen, pp. 197-207. 54 My discussion here is dependent on Coggins’ explanation: Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation, pp. 50-56. Coggins’ opinion that “it is likely that [Smyth] knew at least some Greek,” and that “Some of the other clergy in the congregation may also have known Greek” overlooks the fact that Greek and Latin were prerequisites for university study. At the King’s School in Worcester, when Edward Winslow studied there, for example, students were forbidden to speak to each other except in Greek or Latin. Coggins’ reserve is uncalled for. 55 Bradford’s ‘Of Plimoth Plantation’, p. 22.

guidance as being better than reliance on stultifying standard texts. Using other people’s books was relegated to discussion time outside that of “spiritual worship” (a term that evidently meant Sunday morning services, at least). Smyth also objected to the ministerial structure that the Ancient Brethren had learned from Calvin, consisting of pastor, teacher, and two elders (or deacons), besides deaconesses. Smyth argued for equality among the clergy, and that the number should not be so restricted within the congregation. How to reconcile the requirement that preachers be able to expound, working directly from the Hebrew or Greek, with the idea that elders should be equal in preaching capability, appears to be difficult, but it should be remembered that William Brewster, the Pilgrims’ Elder in Leiden and in Plymouth Colony, was a layman who was quite capable of the task of working from Hebrew and Greek. Perhaps the other Separatist deacons whom Smyth had in mind could handle this equally well. Smyth’s analytic mind was not satisfied by these observations, and he continued to ponder the logical implications of biblical texts. On consideration, he decided that the sacraments of the Church of England were not only present shams, but that they had always been ineffectual, including the baptism he had received as a child. Only the actions of a true church could have sacramental validity. Looking around him, he found no true church anywhere in the world. This realization must have been both disappointing and at the same time exciting. Baptism was necessary to salvation, he thought, and that belief inspired him to a creative solution that made him notorious. He baptized himself, then baptized those of his followers whom he had convinced with his new insights. With unchecked enthusiasm, Smyth offered re-baptism (anabaptism) to all who would join, while declaring those to be impure, who would not renounce the baptism they had received as infants. Smyth’s spectacular defection with some of the congregation split the émigré group just when it was getting reconsolidated in Amsterdam.56 This disintegration inspired most of the newcomers to make arrangements to leave Amsterdam and move to Leiden. Debate between John Smyth and Richard Clyfton

Early in 1609, soon after Smyth’s re-baptism, Smyth engaged Richard Clyfton in an extensive written debate.57 Smyth proposed two theses to be debated: (1) “That children should not be baptized”; (2) “that antichristians, having converted, should be admitted into the true church through baptism.” Clyfton began his response by expressing regret that he has been forced to write against someone who “was so dear to him” but that he was provoked to action by Smyth’s having sent him the two positions or theses in his own handwriting. Describing himself as the least qualified among many, Clyfton still agreed to defend what he took to be the truth. The exchange fills forty-five closely written large folio pages, in which each author supports his position by alleging that

56 Peculiarly biased is Coggins’ opinion that Smyth and those who joined him in the anabaptist adventure represent continuity, and that those who did not become anabaptists but kept the Separatist principles and theological opinions they had developed in England were the ones who seceded. 57 The text in Dutch (probably written by Hans de Ries): Amsterdam Municipal Archives, Mennonite Church Archives, inv. nr. B. 1355. The debate fills 45 large folio pages, written in a small script.

particular Bible verses must be interpreted in that person’s particular direction.58 Often the statements are met by simple denials or contra-assertions, when one or the other did not think that a verse’s meaning had been correctly explicated. Much hinges on the correct identification of the spiritual descendants of Abraham, and whether the circumcision of infants in the Old Testament, as a sign of belonging to the Covenant between God and the Hebrews as descendants of Abraham, can be simply interpreted as having been replaced in the New Testament by baptism. If so, then baptism, like circumcision, should be available to infants. Smyth, however, drew a distinction between spiritual descendants and physical descendants. Children of Christians were not capable, as infants, of being spiritual descendants, said Smyth, just as children could not be expected to understand the preaching of the Word; consequently, the analogy of baptism with circumcision logically failed. (Clyfton, of course, objected precisely at the point where the concept “consequently” occurred, and then he denied Smyth’s distinction.) Many pages are filled with the syllogistic dissection of the implications that could be drawn from verses to prove opposite opinions, and often the reasoning revolves around the acceptance or rejection of analogies, from which conclusions are derived. Name-calling started early in the exchange. Clyfton commented that he had read that the position that children should not be baptized had first been defended by Auxentius, who belonged to the Arian sect, and then was supported “by the heretic Pelagius.” Augustine and other “Ancient Fathers” had opposed their idea, and had judged it to be unscriptural heresy. “Their justification of infant baptism,” said Clyfton, “with God’s mercy we shall together with them thus further reveal and test with well-grounded reason from the Word.” Clyfton’s first well-grounded reason took this form: “1) Gen. 17:20. God makes his covenant with Abraham and with his seed, which I explicate thus: 2) The covenant that God made with Abraham, he commanded should be sealed to him and all his seed forever to his children, [3] But the covenant that we receive under the gospel is one and the same that was made with Abraham &c. [4] Therefore, it is commanded to be sealed to us and our seed forever, so thus to our children as it was to Abraham’s.” To each of these points Clyfton adduced supportive Bible verses as proof texts, so that each element of his syllogism appeared firmly established and the conclusion irrefutable.

Smyth, however, was undaunted. “You make a special preface about the first point, describing how infant baptism was contradicted by Auxentius the Arian and by

58 Smyth had his report translated into Dutch as part of his application later for the assimilation of his congregation into that of the Waterlander Mennonites. My quotations from the debate are my own translations back into English, from the ms. in Amsterdam. Smyth and Clyfton each edited their versions for publication in English. See: The Character of the Beast, or, the False Constitution of the Church discovered in certayne passages betwixt Mr. R. Clifton & Iohn Smyth, concerning true Christian baptisme of New Creatu[r]es, or New borne Babes in Christ; & false Baptisme of infants borne after the Flesh, etc. (Middelburg: Richard Schilders, 1609); The Plea for Infants and Elder People, concerning their Baptisme, Or a Processe of the passages between m. Iohn Smyth and Richard Clyfton, etc. (Amsterdam: Giles Thorpe, 1610). I have read Smyth’s version (the copy in the library of Lincoln Cathedral) but have not seen Clyfton’s.

Pelagius, whom Augustine and others refuted and condemned as heresy, and that [they accomplished this refuation] according to Scripture. I answer, that then one heretic condemned another, against Scripture according to truth. And if you introduce the Fathers in this point […] I answer, (if to be a heretic is to propound some heresy) I can prove that Augustine, Cyril, Cyprian, Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, and many others are mostly just as gross heretics as Auxentius and Pelagius – and you yourself – , because they are all antichristians, and therefore the old exercise of infant baptism in the old antichristian church is not to be valued any more highly than the old episcopacy and read-prayers. But this is just name-calling; let us see your arguments with scriptural proofs.”

Smyth repeats Clyfton’s syllogism, then pedantically comments, “I answer thus, first, distinguishing the two covenants or testaments (because a covenant and a testament is one and the same thing in the original, but in the English language they are two words), a covenant was made with Abraham and his carnal seed; and the seal of that covenant was circumcision. Another covenant was made with his spiritual seed, and the seal of that covenant was the Holy Ghost who promised a seal. The spritual covenant had a spiritual promise for the spiritual seed, but the carnal covenant had a carnal seal for the carnal seed, because all things most be made by proportion; and circumcision, which was a carnal seal, could not seal the spiritual covenant, and be for the spiritual seed, because, as, so to speak, [it would be] jumping over the hedge, and a disproportion [would be] made between the sign and the truth. […]”

Thus we see that true understanding of the Bible depended on the proper construction of syllogisms; and the proper construction of syllogistic analogies required an understanding of the structure of reality according to such axioms as that the elements of an analogy were required to be “proportional.” (God could not have been guilty of a disproportional analogy, according to Smyth.) And when it came down to it, Smyth thought that Augustine, Cyril, Cyprian, Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, Ambrose, and many others were mostly just as gross heretics as Clyfton, but that Smyth himself had finally gotten it right.

Deciding to Move to Leiden As Bradford remembered it years later, “Mr. Robinson, their pastor, and some others of best discerning, seeing how Mr. John Smith and his companie was allready fallen in to contention with ye church yt was ther before them, & no means they could use would doe any good to cure ye same, and also that ye flames of contention were like to breake out in yt anciente church it selfe (as affterwards lamentably came to pass); which things they prudently foreseeing, thought it was best to remove, before they were any way engaged with ye same; though they well knew it would be much to ye prejudice of their outward estats, both at presente & in licklyhood in ye future; as indeed it proved to be. For these & some other reasons they removed to Leyden, a fair & bewtifull citie, and of a sweete situation, but made more famous by ye universitie wherwith it is adorned, in which of late had been so many learned men.”59

Bradford’s memory simplified the unstable situation. As far as we can tell, the refugees from the Scrooby area had Richard Clyfton as the pastor and Robinson as his

59 Bradford’s ‘Of Plimoth Plantation’, p. 23.

assistant (the “teacher”) until the move to Leiden. But Smyth had evidently also preached and perhaps administereed the sacraments as an equal to Clyfton. The congregation had not existed in circumstances that allowed it to accomplish more than contemplate fulfilling an ideal, New Testament organizational model. The three ministers, Clyfton, Smyth, and Robinson in England served an oppressed group that shifted from place to place, even if Brewster’s house was one of the major places for meetings. When he composed his statement of differences from the practice of the Ancient Brethren, Smyth said that one was that ministers should be equal and not restricted to the limited number and ranks found in Johnson’s group. In Amsterdam, Smyth’s defection caused the others to decide to leave and move, becoming the Leiden Separatist congregation. Clyfton was considered to belong to that congregation, but he stayed in Amsterdam (perhaps having briefly gone to Leiden), where in 1610 he became Francis Johnson’s assistant, at the point where Henry Ainsworth and Francis Johnson diverged and formed two rival congregations.

The decision to move to Leiden must have been made in January, 1609, and that is probably when the argumentative exchange between Smyth and Clyfton should be placed. Preparations for the move to Leiden required visits there, probably by John Robinson and William Brewster. Brewster had been to Leiden before, in 1585 -1586, and then he had met at least one of the Leiden officials, the town secretary Jan van Hout, who could be important to the group in 1609. Judging from the documents related to the Pilgrims’ permission to move to Leiden, Van Hout was responsible for the wording. In any case, both the application and the answer to it are preserved in the records he kept.

On February 12, Leiden’s mayors and magistrates responded to the Pilgrims’ written request (submitted previously, in Dutch) by granting permission for the Pilgrims to come to Leiden.60

“To the honorable Gentlemen, Mayors and Court of the City of Leiden With due respect and submission, John Robinson, Minister of God’s Word, together with some members of the Christian Reformed Religion, born in the Kingdom of Great Britain, and numbering one hundred persons or thereabouts, men and women, inform you that they desire to come to live in this city by the first day of May next, and to receive the city’s permission to earn their living by carrying on their various trades, without in the least being a burden to anyone. The petitioners, therefore, address themselves to Your Honors, earnestly praying that Your Honors will be pleased to grant them free and unrestrained permission to betake themselves, as aforesaid. This doing, etc. “In the margin was noted the resolution: This Court, in making a disposition of the present Request, declare that they do not refuse honest persons permission to come and take up residence in this city, provided that such persons behave themselves honestly, and submit to all the laws and ordinances here, and that, therefore, the coming of the petitioners will be agreeable and welcome to them.” “Thus was resolved (by the Burgomasters) in their session at the Town Hall this 12th of February, 1609. “In my presence and signed J. van Hout.”

60 The court journal entry is headed, “Request in the name of 100 persons born in England, to be allowed to come reside here in the city.”

Permission had been granted. The Pilgrims could move to Leiden. The next two

and a half months would be a mix of ongoing labor with planning and then packing for the move, which they intended to make by the beginning of May, when rent periods terminated and new terms could begin.