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That emigration to Holland in Wren’s time was a great loss of money and men to England, and was an indication of Nonconformist strength which wise Churchmen would have conciliated rather than driven to extremities. ‘In sooth it was,’ wrote Heylin, ‘that the people in many great trading towns which were near the sea, having long been discharged of the bond of ceremonies, no sooner came to hear the least noise of a conformity, but they began to spurn against it; and when they found that all their striving was in vain, that they had lost the comfort of their lecturers and that their ministers began to shrink at the very name of a visitation, it was no hard matter for those ministers and lecturers to persuade them to remove their dwellings and transport their trades.’ ‘The sun of heaven,’ say they, ‘doth shine as comfortably in other places; the Sun of Righteousness much brighter.’ ‘Better to go and dwell in Goshen, find it where we can, than tarry in the midst of such an Egyptian darkness as is now falling on the land.’ One of the preachers who gave that advice and acted in accordance with it was William Bridge, M.A. Against him Wren was so furious that he fled to Holland and settled down as one of the pastors of the church at Rotterdam.
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