JACOB LEISLER                     227

fear of their lives, fled to Germany and Holland,
but Louis sent his armies to ravage the Palatinate,
or Rhine region, and in person invaded the Neth¬
erlands. The Dutch put their country under water
and forced the French to retreat. William III of
Holland gave his life to checkmate the plans of
Louis, who in 1685 revoked the Edict of Nantes,
which had given freedom of conscience to the
Huguenots. Thousands of these French Bible-
readers came to America. Among them was Jacob
Leisler, the son of a French exiled minister and
born at Frankfort. He had enlisted as a soldier
in the Dutch West India Company. After this
military service, he rose, by his diligence and
character, to be a church officer, one of the rich¬
est merchants in New Netherland, and a judge.
Naturally he was an intense Protestant, for he
knew what persecution meant. As a deacon in the
Dutch Reformed Church and a man of wide expe¬
rience, he loved the people, and generously helped
the French immigrants. He was just the man to
voice the feeling and act the will of the "Common¬
ality," or, in American English, the people.

Unfortunately, the Domines then in the prov¬
ince did what the clergy so often do to-day,—
they allowed their sympathies to go with their
tastes. At the crisis, they turned their backs on
the " Commonality," and sided with the men of
wealth and office, many of whom were Anglo-
maniacs of an acute type.