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That honour was reserved for William Brewster, son of a country gentleman who had for many years been postmaster at Scrooby. The office was then one of high responsibility and influence. After taking his degree at Cambridge, Brewster became private secretary to Sir William Davison, whom he accompanied on his mission to the Netherlands.
There in Scrooby manor-house, where William Brewster, the father, was receiver and bailiff, and his son, the future elder of the Plymouth colony, was acting postmaster; where Richard Clayton preached and John Robinson prayed; and where the youthful William Bradford was one of its members there was gathered a small Separatist congregation composed of humble folk of Nottinghamshire and adjoining counties.
For the first time we have the full connection presented in solid history between the Scrooby Church and Plymouth Colony. And the tracing is beautifully done. An artist may find his paintings in these pages. Our poets may here find themes which will be the more tempting and rewarding, the more closely they are held to severe historic verity.
Another important member of the Scrooby congregation was William Bradford, of the neighbouring village of Austerfield, then a lad of seventeen years, but already remarkable for maturity of intelligence and weight of character. It was in 1606 two years after King James's truculent threat that this independent church of Scrooby was organized.
For, however changed were those within its walls, whoever were its inheritors or inhabiters, Scrooby Priory never changed nor altered its own character. However incongruous or ill-assorted the portraits that looked from its walls, so ill met that they might have flown at one another's throats in the long nights when the family were away, the great house itself was independent of them all.
She did not love Lord Algernon, neither did she love her grandfather; she was equally willing to sacrifice either or both; she knew that neither Lord Algernon nor his father would make her connections an objection, however they might wish to keep the fact a secret, or otherwise dispose of them by pensions or emigration, but she could not bear to KNOW IT HERSELF! She never could be happy as the mistress of Scrooby Priory with that knowledge; she did not idealize it as a principle!
In what manner Robinson, who was capable of speculating on political tendencies, or Brewster, whose early position had compelled him to observe them, had augured concerning the prospect of public affairs in their native country, no record tells; while the rustics of the Scrooby congregation, who fled from a government which denied them liberty in their devotions, could have had but little knowledge and no agency in the political sphere.
Bradford was born in 1590 at Austerfield, in Yorkshire, England, and at the age of sixteen, joined a company of Puritans or Separatists, which met for a time at the little town of Scrooby, but, being threatened with persecution, resolved to remove to Holland. Most of the congregation got away without interference, but Bradford and a few others were arrested and spent several months in prison.
No human creature would have heard of him had his career ended with his official life. Two centuries and a half have passed away and the name of the outlawed Puritan of Scrooby and Leyden is still familiar to millions of the English race. All these Englishmen were not poor. Many of them occupied houses of fair value, and were admitted to the freedom of the city.
They admitted for truth the doctrinal articles of the Dutch Reformed Churches. They had not come to the Netherlands without cause. At an early period of King James's reign this congregation of seceders from the establishment had been wont to hold meetings at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, once a manor of the Archbishop of York, but then the residence of one William Brewster.
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