page_title: William Brewster (Mayflower passenger)
section_title: Life in Holland
hierarchical_section_title: William Brewster (Mayflower passenger) / Life in Holland
context_page_description: William Brewster was an English official and Mayflower passenger in 1620. In Plymouth Colony, by virtue of his education and existing stature with those immigrating from the Netherlands, Brewster, a Brownist, became senior elder and the leader of the community.
context_section_description: Robinson's church lived for a year in Amsterdam, but in 1609 one of their fellow Brownist churches there, led by John Smyth, became the first Baptist church. In the controversy that followed, Robinson and Brewster decided to take their church to Leiden.
  William lived near St. Peter's church (Dutch: Pieterskerk) in Leiden with his wife and children.  His son, Jonathan, was a ribbonweaver. William was chosen as assistant and later as an elder to Pastor John Robinson. He was still an elder when he traveled to Plymouth Colony in 1620.
  In Leiden, the group managed to make a living. Brewster had struggled for money in Amsterdam, but in Leiden he taught English to University students. In 1610–11, Robinson and Brewster acted as mediators when the Ancient Church, the oldest Brownist congregation in Amsterdam, split into two factions following Francis Johnson and Henry Ainsworth, but they failed to reconcile them.
  In 1616, partnered by Thomas Brewer and assisted at first by John Reynolds and then by Edward Winslow in late 1617, Brewster printed and published religious books for sale in England which were proscribed there. The press was prolific, printing "seven books against the regime of the Church of England in 1618 alone." In 1618, Brewster's press published De regimine Ecclesianae Scoticanae, by the Scottish minister David Calderwood, which was highly critical of James VI and his government of the Kirk. They followed it up in April 1619 with Perth Assembly. King James ordered an international manhunt for the writer and printer, but when his men eventually discovered the culprits, Brewer was protected by Leiden University while Brewster and Calderwood both went underground. According to the historian Stephen Tomkins, Brewster handed himself over to the Dutch authorities, who refused to send him to his death in England and so told James that they had arrested the wrong person and let him go. He judges that Brewster's printing operation 'came close to ruining his church's plans for America'.
  Brewster, along with Robinson, was a prime mover in the decision to sail for North America, and a principal organiser, but once he was in hiding, the Separatists looked to their deacon John Carver and to Robert Cushman to carry on negotiations with the appropriate officials in London.
  In 1620 when it came time for the Mayflower departure, Brewster returned to the Leiden congregation. He had been hiding out in Holland and perhaps even England for the last year. At the time of his return, Brewster was the highest-ranking layperson of the congregation and would be their designated spiritual leader in the New World.
  Brewster joined the first group of Separatists aboard the Mayflower on the voyage to North America. Brewster was accompanied by his wife, Mary Brewster, and his sons: Love Brewster and Wrestling Brewster.
caption: A rare 17th-century "Brewster Chair," named after William Brewster[7]
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