[f. Waterland, a district in North Holland + -ER.] (See quots.)
1860. Chamb. Encycl., I. 219/1. This cause divided the body, as early as 1554, into the Mild and the Strict Mennonites. The first are known by the title of Waterländers.
1883. Encycl. Brit., XVI. 12/2. The Waterlanders in North Holland, who held the least strict doctrine of excommunication.
So Waterlandian. [-IAN.]
1765. A. Maclaine, Mosheim’s Eccl. Hist. (1768), V. 49. The more moderate … Anabaptists are composed of certain inhabitants of Waterland, Flanders, Friesland, and Germany, who … commonly pass under the denomination of Waterlandians.
1839. Penny Cycl., XV. 96/2. The followers of Menno very soon split into two sects, the Flemings and the Waterlandians, so called from the countries in which they arose.
attrib. 1765. A. Maclaine, Mosheim’s Eccl. Hist. (1768), V. 50. One of these Waterlandian sects was divided, in the year 1664, into two factions.
