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although, like Britain, the Netherlands has lately been Europe and the services of the cloth manufacturers of
ensnared in the Common Market, the resurgent Beast the Netherlands were urgently required. Again, thou-
system referred to in Revelation 12 -- our Lord's final sands of weavers came over as instructors and assis-
warning to His people. tants to the English. England at this time was still a
farming country and the capital and enterprise of the
The close ties between the two peoples were noticed Dutch were also courted, with the result that artisans
during the last war by the Dutch writer H. Postumus like linen-weavers, felt-makers and clock-makers were
who, in the Voice of the Netherlands, pointed out that introduced. Dutch printing presses became famous at
"few people in either Britain or the Netherlands realize an early date. The first complete English Bible came
the age and intimacy of Anglo-Dutch relations. from Holland and Caxton learned his trade in the Neth-
erlands. Many English writers like Wyclif, Chaucer
A large proportion of the British and Dutch peoples and Thomas More spent some time in Holland and
have a common ancestry from which they have inher- many of their countrymen took refuge in the Nether-
ited similar qualities. Their passionate love of liberty lands during the Wars of the Roses. The closest rela-
has made them the pioneers of modern democracy and tions between England and the Dutch existed in the
religious toleration. "Nations of shopkeepers" both, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
their genius for commerce built up the solid wealth
and strength which finally broke the power of Louis Intense Dutch immigration prepared the way for a
XIV and Napoleon and stimulated the love of enter- Dutch prince on the British throne and, for a large part,
prise which has made them the foremost explorers and England owes its subsequent prosperity to the effect of
colonists in the world. religious persecutions in the Netherlands. In 1527,
when England's population numbered 5,000,000, Lon-
Before Caesar's conquest of Britain [55 BC], there don alone had 15,000 Flemings. On the other hand,
were Low-Dutch people in Britain who had immigrated Wolsey's action against the Plymouth Brethren drove
from Flanders because of floods. These Frisians con- English Protestants to Holland; but Cromwell again
ducted most of the import and export trade before the sent for Dutch divines as teachers. Thousands of Eng-
invasions of the Anglo-Saxons in the fifth and sixth lish Protestants were to help the Dutch in their fight
centuries. In the eighth century, England was a centre with the Spaniards. English religious separatists went
of learning. Irish missionaries, like Willibrod and to Leyden and some sailed from there with the May-
Boniface, worked among the Frisians. Then, in the flower to found New York. The Quakers, like many
ninth and tenth centuries, the learned men of England other sects, were products of Dutch sectarianism --
-- Aleuin among them -- were driven by the attacks of William Penn's wife and mother were Dutch.
the Danes to the Continent. In the latter half of the
tenth century, the foreign trade of London laid the Dutch gunsmiths, tapestry-makers, glaziers, printers
foundations of its future commercial greatness. Be- and especially skilled drainage workers brought many
cause of its relations with the merchants of the Dutch new arts. Dutch engineers assisted to drain the fens of
towns of Tiel and Dordrecht -- the greatest commer- Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and many other
cial centres of that time -- England's prosperity counties. One Dutch engineer alone reclaimed about
increased. 400,000 acres.

Following the Norman Conquest [AD 1066] , there How the Dutch were influenced by English culture we
came many Flemish weavers. Dutch immigrants started can understand when we know that among English writ-
sheep-farming, which was to contribute so much to ers who lived in Holland we can mention such men as
England's early greatness. A kind of Flemish industrial Thomas Eliot, Thomas Wyatt, John Foxe, Marlowe,
organisation contributed to the formation of the Eng- Raleigh, Cartwright and Ben Johnson.
lish guilds of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At
the time of the Norman Conquest, many Anglo-Saxon In 1688, William of Orange was invited to England "to
refugees settled in the Dutch countries -- in 1165, for restore English liberty and to protect the Protestant re-
example, Thomas a Becket escaped to Holland. ligion." And after the death of William, close literary
relations existed between the two countries. Bearing in
With Dutch help England had, soon after the period of mind this long cultural interaction between England
Edward I, become the chief wool-growing country in and the Netherlands, there is no doubt that the Dutch,
of all the Continental nations, feel themselves to be

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