The baroque tower of the St. Catherine's Hospital chapel on the Breestraat was added in 1739 to a chapel that dates originally from as early as 1276. Although it is now the church of the French Reformed (called Walloons or Huguenots), in the 17th century the German Reformed and the English Reformed congregations used this chapel, which also continued to serve the hospital. The English Reformed church was composed of merchants, scholars, and soldiers garrisoned in Leiden as part of the hundreds of English troops fighting with the Dutch against Spain. Now the most famous of them is Myles Standish, who became the Pilgrims' military leader in America. Most of the English churches on the Continent were staffed by clergy from the Puritan wing of the Church of England, some of them seeking safe haven from opponents in England. Organized in 1607, the English congregation did not have its own minister until 1609 when the arrival of the more radical Pilgrims led the English Reformed congregation to petition the city for subsidies to pay for their own minister. Despite this initial fear of the Separatist Pilgrims, in time the Pilgrims' pastor John Robinson and his followers were on good terms with Hugh Goodyear, minister of the Reformed church since 1617. The loose connection of this English congregation with the Church of England is indicated by the fact that Goodyear's ordination came at the hands of two Reformed friends in Leiden rather than from an Anglican bishop. Leiden's English church later moved to the Jerusalem's Chapel (no longer standing) and then to the front ground-floor room of the Leiden University Library, occupying another medieval chapel. It did not survive beyond the 18th century.

In 1818 the Walloon congregation that had formerly used the Vrouwekerk had shrunk in numbers and removed to this church, bringing their 18th-century organ with them.

More on English churches in The Netherlands:

K. L. Sprunger, Dutch Puritanism, A History of English and Scottish Churches of the Netherlands in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1982).

J. D. Bangs, The Auction Catalogue of the Library of Hugh Goodyear (Utrecht: H&S Hes Publishers, 1985). More on Leiden's church organs: T. Brouwer, Sleutelstad-Orgelstad, Vijf eeuwen orgelgeschiedenis van Leiden (Zutphen: De Walburg Pers, 1979).