tern
part of England, in some towns and villages in Nottinghamshire,
Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. One held meetings, under Rev. John Smith,
a Cambridge graduate, at Gainsborough, and another, under Richard
Clifton as pastor and John Robinson as teacher, at the small village
of Scrooby. Persecuted by the king's officers, these congregations
began to consider the advisability of joining their brethren in
Holland. That of Gainsborough was the first to emigrate, and,
following the example of the London church, it settled at Amsterdam.

In the second, or Scrooby, congregation, destined to furnish the
"Pilgrim Fathers" of New England,[8] three men were conspicuous as
leaders. The first was John Robinson, a man, according to the
testimony of an opponent, of "excellent parts, and the most learned,
polished, and modest spirit" that ever separated from the church of
England. The second was the elder, William Brewster, like Robinson,
educated at Cambridge, who had served as one of the under-secretaries
of state for many years. After the downfall of his patron, Secretary
Davison, he accepted the position of postmaster and went to live at
Scrooby in an old manor house of Sir Samuel Sandys, the elder brother
of Sir Edwin Sandys, where, in the great hall, the Separatists held
their meetings.[9] The third character was William Bradford, born at
Austerfield, a village neighboring to Scrooby, and at the time of the
flight from England seventeen years of age, afterwards noted for his
ability and loftiness of character.

In 1607 the Scrooby congregation made their first attempt to escape
into Holland. A large party of them hired a ship at Boston, in
Lincolnshire, but the captain betrayed them to the officers of the
law, who rifled them of their money and goods and confined them for
about a month in jail. The next year another party made an attempt to
leave. The captain, who was a Dutchman, started to take the men
aboard, but after the first boat-load he saw a party of soldiers
approaching, and, "swearing his countries oath Sacramente, and having
the wind faire, weighed anchor, hoysted sayles & away." The little
band was thus miserably separated, and men and women suffered many
misfortunes; but in the end, by one means or another, all made good
their escape from England and met together in the city of Amsterdam.

They found there both the church of the London Separatists and that of
the Gainsborough people stirred up over theological que