1. "There is no evidence that the Pilgrims worshipped at the Vrouwekerk." ("the small number of Pilgrims associated with the Vrouwekerk isn't enough to justify saving any monument" --Ariela Netiv, Leiden City Archivist)

ANSWER: Several of the Huguenots who worshipped in the Vrouwekerk regularly over a period of many years joined the Pilgrim in Leiden and emigrated to New England where they are among the founders of Plymouth Colony, the first colony in New England. The most famous now are those who eventually became ancestors of American presidents: Franchoys Cooke & Esther Mahieu (now better known as Francis Cooke and Hester Mayhew), and their nephew Phillipe de la Noye (Philip Delano),. They are the ancestors of Ulysses Grant, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and George Bush Sr. and Jr. (who incidentally are also descended from other Pilgrims). But lesser known Pilgrim families come out of this Huguenot contingent, such as Bumpus, which in French was Bonpas. There are several of these families but no way to be certain of an exact number. For one thing, we have communion lists, but not everyone in the congregation in fact took communion. Besides that, there are a couple of ships to Plymouth that contained numerous families from Leiden (I think the number given is sixty, but I have not rechecked that) but without listing the passengers by name. The study of names that show up in the colony in English form but have to be French or Dutch in origin is something I am doing, but it will take several more years, because it is part of the publication of 12 vols. of colony records that had never been published. In addition to this situation where Huguenots became Anglicized, we have the statement of Edward Winslow, who was a member of John Robinson's congregation in Leiden and became the third governor of Plymouth colony. In his book published in 1646 in London, Hypocrisie Unmasked, A True Relation...(reprinted, Providence, Rhode Island: the Club for Colonial Reprints, 1916), p. 93-96, he writes, "And for the French Churches that we held, and do hold communion with them, take notice of our practise at Leyden, ..." naming specifically Samuel Terry and Francis Cooke's wife (Pilgrims then in 1646 in Plymouth, of Leiden Huguenot origin), and "Philip Delanoy born of French parents, came to us from Leyden to New-Plymouth, who comming to age of discerning, demanded also communion with us, & proving himself to be come of such parents as were in ful communion with the French Churches, was here upon admitted by the Church of Plymouth..." [etc.] Beyond that, we have Winslow and Bradford reporting on Robinson's openness towards other Reformed churches, as well as Robinson's own writings. From these remarks, we know that a few Pilgrim leaders who knew either French or Dutch went to listen to sermons in those churches. From library lists we can figure out some of the English Pilgrims who knew French: - besides Robinson himself, also William and Jonathan Brewster, and I think a few more, but I don't have time to re-read all the lists right now. I believe Myles Standish also knew French (incidentally he was personally acquainted with Robinson and had Calvinist theology among the volumes in his library, - contrary to myth that he was either secular or Catholic). The linguistic abilities were surprising. Professor Franciscus Gomarus, himself a Walloon refugee, was proposed to preach in English when the English Reformed Church of Leiden was first being organized in 1607. (see my book, The Auction Catalogue of the Library of Hugh Goodyear (Utrecht: Hes Publishers, 1985), p. 5.

The name-list of communicants of the Vrouwekerk is preserved, and one can find several Pilgrim names in it. I have complete photocopies (1600-1630) of this source, which is in the Leiden Municpal Archives (Archives de L'Eglise Wallonne de Leyde, nr. 16: Catalogue des membres de l'Eglise Walonne revueillie a Leyde, receus par tesmoignage ou confession depuis la Cene de Pasque en l'an 1600.) Further information is found in the lists of baptisms, where Huguenot baptisms are recorded separately. Some of the detailed information from these sources is reported in my 1989 article, "The Pilgrims and Other English in Leiden Records: Some New Pilgrim Documents," New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 143 (1989), pp. 195-212. Additional evidence of the close association of the Pilgrims with the Huguenots is seen in my article about Pilgrim property, although that is supportive or suggestive of their religious mutuality, rather than any sort of proof of it: "Pilgrim Homes in Leiden, New England Histoical and Genealogical Register, vol. 154 (2000), pp. 413-445. It is one of several converging sorts of information that will eventually lead to identification of Huguenots who became acquainted with the Pilgrims and then migrated to Plymouth in New England.

The close connection of the Pilgrims and the Huguenots is seen additionally in the fact that the Pilgrim migration of 1620, 1621, and 1623, to Plymouth, was an inspiration to 55 families from the Vrouwekerk who organized their own migration in 1622 and by 1624 had become the first families to colonize Manhattan Island in what became New Netherlands (later New York). (Some of those 55 families went to Guyana instead, after the ships taking them diverged half way across the Atlantic. The Guyana experiment failed, with survivors eventually making it to New York.) So the Vrouwekerk is by no means only important because of a small number of Pilgrims; it is also a symbol of the beginning of European colonization (as opposed to brief fishing and fur-trading visits) in New York. I have the list of these families and I am preparing archival study of them here, something that has never been done. People apparently lost interest after it was discovered that their leader, Jesse de Forest, died in Guyana, not in New York. But that, I think, is incidental to the whole story.

Although Leiden officials first claimed there was no Pilgrim connection with the Vrouwekerk, they had to acknowledge the facts when I presented them in a response to an attack on my claims that appeared in the Leidsch Dagblad (Leiden Daily News). Now Leiden officials are saying that the small number of Huguenots who joined the Pilgrims "isn't enough to justify saving the monument." They ignore the connection with New York. I believe that the monument, as I have said over and over, is a uniquely worthy symbol of the ecumenical confluence of refugees of the Reformed tradition who came to Leiden and some of whom went forth again to found New England and New York. In its present form, if the doorway in it were reopened, it presents an emotive image of a portal to the heavens.

For general background information about the Leiden Huguenot congregation, there is my introduction to Ralph V. Wood's book, Francis Cooke of the Mayflower (Camden, Maine: Picton Press, 1996).