ps. This is a ruddy cottage from
fluted tiling down to the grass, and sufficiently large to comprise two
tenements now.

The boy's grandfather William and maternal grandfather John Hanson were
the only mentioned owners of property in their small town in 1575, and
he inherited in time a good patrimony. His father William died in 1591,
his mother Alice soon after, and the paternal grandfather, in whose care
he was left, expired not until January of 1596, the only ancestor the
third William would be likely to remember. Then the simple life and talk
of the farm ceased, on the part of those who would converse with the lad
on their common interests and show the most of natural affection toward
him. The charge over his life by his uncles Thomas and Robert was one of
legal imposition rather than a matter of love. Robert naturally wished
him to be a farmer, but permitted him to study when he proved not very
rugged at first.

Before he was twelve, an illness of long continuance coming upon him,
youthful intelligence and spiritual sensitiveness were developed in him
untroubled by temptations more liable in physical vigor. Denied the
warmth of family affection, and for a season the wholesome sports of
youth, while naturally made more serious also as an orphan, the boy
delighted in the contemplation of religious truth, particularly in Bible
study; and this became with him a lifelong habit.

Over the line in Nottinghamshire a few miles away, lay another small
town, Scrooby, where one William Brewster was postmaster, well qualified
as a collegiate and public official, to teach history and civil
government. He occupied an ancient manor and commodious hostelry which
royalty had twice coveted. Within its spacious halls were wont to gather
a few earnest souls who were discontented with the empty formalism so
common in religious profession at that time, and they were restive under
the super-abundant authority of the state in church matters. They
insisted on freedom of the individual conscience, from either civil or
ecclesiastical domination, and were also convinced that genuine
Christianity called for a Christlike life. This was nothing less than
Puritanism, which as a term was originally coined by its foes in
contempt, but later became a name of honor and glory. Though long in
preparing, since Wycliffe gave to the English people the Holy Scriptures
in their own familiar speech, this movement was only now coming to its
full fruition; an