permanent abode; and they found themselves exposed to the inclemency of
a North climate, with no other shelter than a few tents, besides that
which the vessel continued to afford. In haste they felled the trees of
the neighboring forests; and in haste they constructed the village of
log huts which was to be their present abode, and which, ultimately,
grew into the flourishing and wealthy city of New Plymouth. In the
erection of this hamlet, no head was so fertile in plans and
expedients, and no arms were so strong to execute them, as those of
Rodolph Maitland, the head of the family in whom we are specially
interested. He was a younger member of a very respectable family in
the North of England, and had passed his youth and early manhood in the
service of his country as a soldier. This profession, however, became
distasteful to him when the religious dissensions which troubled the
land called on him, at times, to obey his commander in carrying out
schemes of oppression which were contrary both to his feelings and his
principles. His marriage with Helen Seatown, the daughter of a
nonconforming minister, increased his repugnance to bearing arms, which
might be turned against the party to which he was now so closely
connected; and he threw up his commission, and soon afterwards
accompanied his father-in-law to Holland, and joined the congregation
of the respected Robinson at Leyden.

Here he continued to reside until the resolution to emigrate was formed
by the Puritan refugees, when he was among the first to embrace the
proposition of the pastor, and to lend all the aid which his
comparative wealth, and the influence of his connections in England,
enabled him to offer in furtherance of the enterprise. His father-in-
law had died soon after his arrival at Leyden; but his amiable and
devoted wife was most willing to follow him in his voluntary exile, and
to take her children to the New World, where she hoped to bring them up