Starting in the mid-sixteenth century, widespread persecution and war forced tens of thousands of Reformed Protestants in the Netherlands to flee their homes for new communities in England and the Holy Roman Empire. This book follows these refugees who escaped to large cities and small towns up the Rhine River watershed. The comprehensive approach taken here examines these forced migrations from political, intellectual, social, cultural, religious and linguistic perspectives, including using a large prosopographical database to track refugees' movements and experiences. It challenges scholars' claims that Reformed Protestants developed more doctrinal, volunteeristic, and well-organized churches particularly capable of surviving the challenges of persecution and exile, Instead, the authors show, refugees proved remarkably willing to compromise and adapt, even as they built new relationships with unfamiliar people they met abroad.