Perth Assembly was a controversial book published by the Pilgrims in

Leiden Leiden ( ; ; in English language, English and Archaism, archaic Dutch language, Dutch also Leyden) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Provinces of the Nethe ...

in 1619. In the same year, before they departed on the ''

Mayflower ''Mayflower'' was an English sailing ship that transported a group of English families, known today as the Pilgrims, from England to the New World in 1620. After 10 weeks at sea, ''Mayflower'', with 102 passengers and a crew of about 30, reac ...

'' for Massachusetts; the book was smuggled into Scotland in wine vats. The book was critical of the

Five Articles of Perth The Five Articles of Perth was an attempt by King James VI of Scotland to impose practices on the Church of Scotland in an attempt to integrate it with those of the Church of England. This move was unpopular with those Scots who held Reformed wor ...

, a church statute which had been ratified by the General Assembly in Perth in 1618. The Five Articles forced the episcopacy form of church governance onto Scotland, a change which King

James I James I may refer to: People *James I of Aragon (1208–1276) * James I of Sicily or James II of Aragon (1267–1327) * James I, Count of La Marche (1319–1362), Count of Ponthieu * James I, Count of Urgell (1321–1347) *James I of Cyprus (1334� ...

strongly supported and the Pilgrims rejected. The King considered the book, and its printers, publishers, and distributors, to be subversive. The printer was Johannes Sol ("Soule") and the primary publishers were Thomas Brewer and William Brewster who went into hiding in 1619 before surreptitiously departing for Plymouth to escape threat of arrest. Other Pilgrims, such as George Soule (presumably the brother of the printer Johannes Sol), were also believed to have been involved in the printing of the book, and the controversy caused them to flee on the ''Mayflower'' and disguise their origins. Johannes Sol's apprentice, Edward Raban, fled to Scotland in 1620 with Sol's pregnant widow after his death in a printing ink accident.Soule Kindred Newsletter Vol. XXXXV, No. 4 Fall 2011 https://soulekindred.org/resources/Documents/Newsletters/PDF-Newsletters/Vol.-45-No.-4-Fall-2011.pdf

References

External links

Full copy of the Perth Assembly online
{{Mayflower passengers and related topics, state=expanded 1619 books 17th-century Christian texts Puritanism in England English emigration English colonization of the Americas History of the Church of England 17th century in the Dutch Republic Reformed Christianity in the Dutch Republic British expatriates in the Dutch Republic Plymouth Colony New England Puritanism