CHAPTER 5

PURITAN PRINTING AT

Leiden, like , excelled as a center of English-language printing in the seventeenth century. The city of more than 50,000 population had a sizeable English-Scottish community, some drawn by the university, the oldest and foremost in the Netherlands, others for commerce and for jobs in the textile workshops. The printing trade was an important economic boon to the city; and with its ties to university scholarship, it provided an intellectual stimulus which flavored the life of the city. In fine printing Leiden gained a world reputation. "There is no city in the entire world where so many people live off of the book trade. Whole streets are full of book• stores."1

The English-Scottish community: churches, university, and the book trade

The printing of English and Scottish books at Leiden grew steadily alongside the growth of the British churches. Several hundred English and Scots lived in seventeenth-century Leiden. Although economic motives were a large cause of settlement, religion also powerfully motivated many immigrants. The Separatists as a group sought relig• ious sanctuary. Leiden had two seventeenth-century British churches, both with strong Puritan leadership but split over the theological issue of separation or non-separation from the . The first was the English Reformed Church, established in 1607, the other the Separatist church, which moved to Leiden in 1609. The non-Separatist English Reformed people were a group of 200 families (1609), served by pastors Robert Dury (1610-16) and Hugh Goodyear (1617-61). The Dury-Goodyear church, a gereformeerde kerk in communion with the , was supported by the Dutch govern-

1 Leids Jaarboekje (1915), p. 73, from an account of the 1720s; PJ. Blok, Geschie• denis eener Hollandsche stad (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1910-18), III, 6-7, 210-11. 126 CHAPTER FIVE ment. The Separatists were headed by the Reverend John Robinson, and by 1620 the congregation of "Pilgrim Fathers" grew to about 300 persons. In 1620 a part of the group led by elder William Brewster emigrated to New England, but the larger part, including pastor Robertson himself, remained behind. After Robinson's death in 1625, the church had a downhill existence and faded out in the 1640s. The English Reformed Church was more durable, existing until 1807.2 For several decades of the seventeenth century, the two churches co• existed without public controversy and vigorously served the English and Scottish settlers. The Puritan leadership, through friendship and correspondence, linked up to the widespread network of English dissenters in the Netherlands, England, and America. Goodyear's Puritan contacts were well illustrated by his correspondence and personal papers (the "Good• year Papers") preserved in the Leiden archives.3 He corresponded on both sides of the Atlantic with such Puritan giants as John Cotton, John Paget, and Hugh Peter. From Goodyear's strategic position at Leiden, he could serve as a go-between for business and university affairs of friends in the New World and the Old. Goodyear enter• tained many travelling British preachers passing through Leiden, a situation which he found burdensome enough that he pleaded for a raise in salary in 1627, because of so many "foreign preachers and church members who ordinarily come addressed to him from other kingdoms, provinces, and towns, by virtue of his office".4 He had long-standing university connections, having once been theologiae studiosus. Among Separatists, Robinson had even more prominent standing. Through his many publications he became one of the most- quoted Separatist theologians, and the church was a model of excellent Separatist practice. The Separatist churches of Amsterdam and Leiden, although differing somewhat on the nature of strict Separation, pro• duced one large brotherhood of religion. Ainsworth of Amsterdam would consult with Robinson "in all matters of waight".5

2 For the history of the English churches of Leiden, see K.L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism (Leiden: EJ. Brill, 1982), chap. 5. 3 Goodyear Papers, Weeskamer archief 1355, GA Leiden. On Goodyear, see Greaves and Zaller, BD, II, 21-22. 4 Reg. kerk. zaken, no. 2150, fol. 114v. 5 William Bradford, "A Dialogue or the sume of a Conference... 1648", Publications of the Colonial Society of , 22 (1920), p. 136; Walter H. Burgess, John Robinson (London: Williams and Norgate, 1920), pp. 192-200.