Note 447 — CCCIX.—For the Right Honourable, my Lady Boyd.

The sect of the Familists or Family of Love, have been associated with one David George of Delft, who, in 1544, fled out of Holland to Basle, giving it out that he was banished from the Low Countries, and changed his name, calling himself John of Brugg. He affirmed that he was the true David whom God had promised to send to restore again the kingdom of Israel, and wrote various books in support of his pretensions. He died on the 16th of September 1556. After him rose up one Henry Nicholas, born in Amsterdam, who maintained the same doctrine, but applied it to himself and not to David George. (See Works of Greenham, p. 219, H. N.) One Christopher Vivet, a joiner dwelling in Southwark, who had been in Queen Mary's days an Arian, translated out of Dutch into English several of the books of Henry Nicholas, among which was his "Evangelium Regni." The claims of Nicholas were those of a fanatic, and his system was a lie. (Pagitt's "Heresiography," pp. 81-91.)