English refugees and the Dutch Mennonites

John Smyth and John Robinson led English religious refugees to the Netherlands in 1607–1608. The supplied overview follows their communities to Amsterdam and, in Robinson’s case, to Leiden in 1609.

It also recounts the association of Smyth’s followers with an Amsterdam Mennonite congregation and Thomas Helwys’s return to England in 1612. This is a meeting of distinct histories, with connections to the later General Baptist story, rather than a single change of name for the Mennonite churches.