to the name and estates of the
Standishes of Lancashire, from which, by some device not on record, he
was, as he sturdily maintained in his will, "surreptitiously"
defrauded.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century the provinces of the
Netherlands were battling for life against the tyranny of Spain. The
Protestant Elizabeth of England gave help and support to the
Protestant Stadtholder Maurice, and many of her fighting men carried
pike or arquebus at the sack of Cadiz, fought at Nieuport and Ostend,
or served the guns in the great sea-fight off Gibraltar that, in 1607,
broke the power of Spain. Among these fighting-men was young Miles
Standish, and he fought so stoutly and to such good purpose that,
before he was twenty-one he had attained the rank and title of
captain, and was known to Englishmen in the Low Countries as a brave
and gallant soldier. In 1609 came the twelve years' truce between
tired Spain and not less wearied Holland, that gave way in 1621 to the
stubborn and bloody Thirty Years' War. It was, probably, in the early
years of this truce that Captain Miles Standish, a born fighter, went
back to England to battle for his heritage. Not being the match for
the law men in England that he was for Spanish dons in Holland, he was
forced to retire from the unequal contest, defeated but not conquered.
This belief in his rights to the inheritance of the Standishes he
sturdily maintained to the last; for, dying forty years after in the
new land his sword had helped to conquer and his wisdom to found, he
left by his last will and testament unto his son and heir, Alexander:
"Ormistic, Bonsconge, Wrightington, Maudeslay, and the estates in the
Isle of Man"--none of which he nor his descendants were ever to occupy
or hold.

It was after this unsuccessful struggle for his heritage that he
crossed again to Holland and, from some cause not apparent--perhaps
his disgust at English law, perhaps the attractions of one who, later,
became Mistress Rose Standish, may supply the motive--settled among
the self-exiled English folk in Leyden who, because of religious
differences with the established Church, had left their English homes
and, calling themselves Pilgrims because of their wanderings, had made
a settlement in the Dutch city of Leyden, "fair and beautiful and of a
sweet situation."

Although not of the religious faith and following of the Pilgrims of
Leyden--indeed the story runs that the fiery little captain had