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wie er vertrok en wie bleef

Leiden was not a stopover but their home for nearly twelve years. In 1620 fewer than half the community left: they sailed from Delfshaven on the Speedwell to Southampton and there transferred to the Mayflower. Of the 102 people aboard the Mayflower, 41 were Pilgrims. The rest followed later or never — on the Fortune (1621), the Anne and the Little James (1623), and a second Mayflower (1629).

John Robinson

Their spiritual leader John Robinson did not go. He stayed behind in Leiden to care for the Pilgrims who could not yet make the crossing, and died here in 1625. He is buried in the Pieterskerk.

de collectie die wegging

Erpenius died of the plague on 13 November 1624, forty years old. His manuscripts did not stay in Leiden: in 1625 George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, bought the collection; Buckingham's widow bequeathed it to the University of Cambridge, and after long negotiations with the librarian Abraham Whelock it arrived there in 1632. Scaliger's books stayed; Erpenius's crossed the sea.

rond 1990

Around 1990 Brill decided to confine itself to its core activity, scholarly publishing. In 1989 the printing works were divested and shortly afterwards the antiquarian shop as well, sold to Rijk Smitskamp. So the shop did not close and did not become a museum: it left the company and carried on under another name.

het legaat

Scaliger died in Leiden on 21 January 1609, after sixteen years in the city. In his will he left the University Library 'tous mes livres de langues estrangeres, Hebraiques, Syriens, Arabiques, Ethiopiens' — all my books in foreign tongues. By the library catalogue of 1612 that came to 210 manuscripts and printed works, besides 48 Greek and Latin manuscripts. On that bequest Leiden grew into a centre for the study of the Middle East; its Oriental manuscript collection now holds more than 27,000.