The Pilgrims in Leiden: Twelve Years Before the Mayflower

Every American schoolchild learns that the Pilgrims sailed from England to America. Almost none learn what happened in between. The in-between happened here.

By Leiden Secret Stories · September 2026 · 6 min read

The famous voyage gets all the attention: Plymouth Rock, Thanksgiving, the works. But a ship is only the last chapter. Before the ocean came twelve years of ordinary life in a foreign country. Working. Marrying. Raising children in a language their grandparents never spoke. That chapter has an address, and the address is Leiden.

Why Leiden of all places

In 1609 a group of English religious refugees settled here, drawn by the one thing their homeland refused them: tolerance. This was a university city, a printing city, a city that had survived a siege and learned what mattered. For eleven years the congregation lived, worked and worshipped in the streets around the Pieterskerk, led by their pastor, John Robinson, who lived directly opposite the church.

Think about what those years were. Not a stopover. A twelfth of a lifetime, a whole childhood for the children born here. When the Mayflower finally sails in 1620, part of the congregation goes. Part stays. Both halves call Leiden home.

1620: the departure

The leavers go via Delfshaven, aboard a ship whose name you know. The stayers keep Robinson. He dies in 1625 and is buried in the church he faced across the lane. The shepherd who never saw the new world his flock founded. There is a sentence to sit with.

What you find there today

The Pieterskerk still stands at the end of the Kloksteeg, filling the view the way it did when the congregation walked to service. On the wall facing the lane hangs the John Robinson memorial plaque. The square outside is free, any hour; the church keeps its own opening times.

Inside, the church keeps quiet company. The family grave of Rembrandt, unmarked. The tomb of Herman Boerhaave, the physician all of Europe once wrote to. The family grave of Jan Steen, painter of gloriously chaotic households. And every year, an American Thanksgiving service. Still. In this church. The debt never got paid down; it just got commemorated.

Walking the chapter yourself

This ground is stop 8 on the Leiden Secret Stories walk, which puts the Pilgrim years back inside the city that hosted them: the lane where they lived, the prison that watched the square, the market that fed them. The full story of those twelve years, who went and who was left behind, belongs to the book.