m Norwich went Robinson to help to build up in Amsterdam that Church
of the Pilgrim Fathers which was to be in its turn the mother of a great
Republic such as the world had never seen. He has been styled the Father
of Modern Congregationalism; be that as it may, when he bade farewell in
that quaint old harbour, Delfhaven--which looks as if not a brick or a
building had been touched since--he was doing a work from which neither
himself nor those who stood with him could ever have expected such
wonderful results. That emigration to Holland in Wren's time was a great
loss of money and men to England, and was an indication of Nonconformist
strength which wise Churchmen would have conciliated rather than driven
to extremities. 'In sooth it was,' wrote Heylin, 'that the people in
many great trading towns which were near the sea, having long been
discharged of the bond of ceremonies, no sooner came to hear the least
noise of a conformity, but they began to spurn against it; and when they
found that all their striving was in vain, that they had lost the comfort
of their lecturers and that their ministers began to shrink at the very
name of a visitation, it was no hard matter for those ministers and
lecturers to persuade them to remove their dwellings and transport their
trades.' 'The sun of heaven,' say they, 'doth shine as comfortably in
other places; the Sun of Righteousness much brighter.' 'Better to go and
dwell in Goshen, find it where we can, than tarry in the midst of such an
Egyptian darkness as is now falling on the land.' One of the preachers
who gave that advice and acted in accordance with it was William Bridge,
M.A. Against him Wren was so furious that he fled to Holland and settled
down as one of the pastors of the church at Rotterdam. In 1643 we find
him pastor of the church at Norwich and Yarmouth, and one of the Assembly
of Divines. In 1644 the church was separated--a part meeting at Yarmouth
and a part at Norwich. This was done on the advice of Mr. John Phillip,
of Wrentham--a godly minister of great influence in his denomination in
his day.

As was to be expected, I was taken to the Old Meeting House at Norwich,
where many learned men had preached, and where many men almost as learned
listened. The gigantic pews, in which a small family might have lived,
filled me with amazement. And equally appalling to me was the
respectability of the people, of a very different class from that of our
Wrentham ch