60 



TJie West India Company and the Walloons. 



habitants of the Walloon country to emigrate to England and Holland. 

 The Walloon country was at that time the Southern Belgic provinces 

 of Hainault, Namur, Luxemburg, Limburg and part of the ancient 

 Bishopric of Liege, and is now comprised by the French department 

 da Nord and the southwestern provinces of Belgium. The people spoke 

 the old French language and they were called in that tongue Gallois, 

 which was changed in Low Dutch into Waalsche and in English into 

 Walloon* 



When the northern provinces of the Netherlands formed the union 

 at Utrecht in 1579, to which I have before referred, the southern prov- 

 inces refused to join them, preferring a reconciliation with Spain and 

 the enjoyment of the Catholic religion, to which they were greatly 

 attached. Against the Walloons, professing the Protestant faith, the 

 Spanish government instituted a most rigorous persecution and multi- 

 tudes of them fled to Holland. There they were received with open 

 arms, and admitted to all rights, civil, political, and religious; and Wal- 

 loon colonies and Walloon churches were formed in all the principal 

 cities of Holland. 



Although they adhered to their own language, they acquired the 

 Dutch language as well, and retained their national characteristics for 

 several generations, although allied by marriage to many of the principal 

 Dutch families. There was no city of Holland that drew to itself 

 more of the persecuted among this people and the Huguenots of France, 

 than the city of Leyden; and they had grown to be quite a colony when 

 they saw a company of English refugees arrive in the city. They were . 

 plain English farmers who could speak neither the French nor the 

 Dutch language, and had nothing in common with the Huguenot or 

 Walloon, excepting the controlling desire for freedom in religious mat- 

 ters. For these Englishmen were a peculiar people — honest in pur- 

 pose, virtuous in life, but at the same time so tenacious in their per- 

 sonal opinions that they could scarcely agree with each other, much 

 less with any one not of their peculiar views. Their path in life was. 

 not only narrow, but it was walled up on each side; so that they were 

 restrained from fraternizing with any one who did not walk right be- 

 side them or exactly in their footsteps. They never comprehended the 

 full scope and import of the motto of the great reformer, "in essen- 

 tials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity; " but they 

 laid down a law for living, without an equity side to it, and inflicted 

 penalties for its enforcement with a justice that was never tempered 



mercy. 



* Dr. De Witt's paper before the X. T. His. Soc. Proceedings 1848, p. 73. 



