In the Company of Strangers: English Separatists in Holland and New England

John J. Navin

In 1609, separatist leader John Robinson and one hundred other British members of the "Christian Reformed Religion" sought refuge in the Dutch town of Leyden. Their tenure in bustling Leyden and then in humble Plymouth Plantation exposed the respective strengths and limitations of neighborhood, kinship, association, and covenant theology as the building blocks of community. This paper explores the social dynamics of community formation, the challenges of assimilation, and the tensions arising from conflicting goals and beliefs by examining the experiences of those English separatists who emigrated to Holland and then, in the company of strangers, established Plymouth Plantation, the first permanent English settlement north of the Chesapeake.

[WP #96030]