Scores And Perhaps Hundreds Of People Have Been Led To
Believe Priscilla Mullens A French Protestant Of The Leyden
Congregation, And Themselves - As Her Descendants - "Of Huguenot
Stock," Because Of These Absolutely Groundless Assertions Of Dr.
Baird.
They lent themselves readily to Mrs. Austin's fertile
imagination and facile pen, and as "welcome lies" acquired a hold on
the public mind, from which even the demonstrated truth will never
wholly dislodge them.
The comment of the intelligent writer in the
"Historic-Genealogical Register" referred to is proof of this. So
fast-rooted had these assertions become in her thought as the truth,
that, confronted with the evidence that Master Mullens and his
family were from Dorking in England, it does not occur to her to
doubt the correctness of the impression which the recklessness of
Baird had created, - that they were of Leyden, - and she hence
amusingly suggests that "they must have moved from Leyden to
Dorking." These careless utterances of one who is especially bound
by his position, both as a writer and as a teacher of morals, to be
jealous for the truth, might be partly condoned as attributable to
mistake or haste, except for the facts that they seem to have been
the fountain-head of an ever-widening stream of serious error, and
that they are preceded on the very page that bears them by others as
to the Pilgrim exodus equally unhappy. It seems proper to suggest
that it is high time that all lovers of reliable history should
stand firmly together against the flood of loose statement which is
deluging the public; brand the false wherever found; and call for
proof from of all new and important historical propositions put
forth.
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