Pilgrims in Leiden

My son-in-laws ancestors were part of the Pilgrim movement, and several of his ancestors spent time in the town of Leiden in the Netherlands before 1620-23 when they actually sailed for the new world. Among these were Francis Cooke and Hester Mahieu, who married in Leiden in 1603, both being from England at that time. Her witnesses are her mother and her sister, both named Jenne or Jeanne Mahieu.

Jeremy Bangs has made a lifetime study of the Pilgrims lives in Leiden, and he is the expert on this topic, and I won’t presume to know better. But recently I was reading “Pilgrims and other English”⁽¹⁾ and I was wondering, how he had concluded some of the relationships between the Mahieus. The marriage and baptismal records of Leiden are online. In his article he lists several marriages of Hester’s sisters; the online records has other marriages as well of Mahieu women with the same names, but married to different men. All come from around Lille (Rijsel, now in France). How did he decide who was whom? The witnesses give some indication, but I am still wondering. Sometimes, even if you have to admit, that the author knows what he is talking about, you can wonder about his conclusions. Hubris on my part?

(1) Jeremy D. Bangs, “The Pilgrims and other English in Leiden Records: Some New Pilgrim Documents,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 143 (Jul 1989): 196-206.
(2) Jeremy D. Bangs, “Pilgrim Homes in Leiden,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register 154, #4 (Issue 616) (2000): 413-445.
(3) Bibliography