by Rod Gragg
Untold numbers of Separatist men and women from Scrooby, Gainsborough, and elsewhere in the East Midlands found themselves arrested for their faith.
ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Under Tobias Matthew, the archbishop of York, English authorities raided Separatist congregations in the East Midlands, arresting and jailing worshippers.
NATIONAL AND DOMESTIC HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Yet seeing themselves thus molested, and that there was no hope of their continuance there, by a joint consent they resolved to go into the Low Countries, where they heard was freedom of religion for all men, as also how sundry from London and other parts of the land, that had been exiled and persecuted for the same cause, were gone thither, and lived at Amsterdam, and in other places of the land. So after they had continued together about a year, and kept their meetings every Sabbath in one place or another, exercising the worship of God amongst themselves, notwithstanding all the diligence and malice of their adversaries, they seeing they could no longer continue in that condition, they resolved to get over into Holland. . . .
“By a joint consent they resolved to go into the Low Countries, where they heard was freedom of religion”
For some, the sea voyage from England to Holland was even more life-threatening than the persecution they faced at home, as Bradford reported:
Afterwards they endured a fearful storm at sea, and it was fourteen days or more before they reached port, in seven of which they saw neither sun, moon, nor stars, being driven near the coast of Norway. The sailors themselves often despaired, and once with shrieks and cries gave over all, as if the ship had foundered and they were sinking without hope of recovery.
But when man’s hope and help wholly failed, there appeared the Lord’s power and mercy to save them; for the ship rose again, and gave the crew courage to manage her. If modesty permitted, I might declare with what fervent prayers the voyagers cried to the Lord in their great distress—even remaining fairly collected when the water ran into their mouths and ears; and when the sailors called out, “We sink, we sink,” they cried (if not with miraculous, yet with sublime faith). “Yet Lord, Thou canst save; yet Lord, Thou canst save!”
Upon which, the ship not only righted herself, but shortly afterwards the violence of the storm began to abate, and the Lord filled their afflicted minds with such comfort as but few can understand, and in the end brought them to their desired haven, where the people came flocking, astonished at their deliverance, the storm having been so long and violent. . . . In the end, notwithstanding the storms of opposition, they all got over, some from one place, some from another, and met together with no small rejoicing.6
“Hunted and persecuted on all sides”—in the words of William Bradford—Separatists from Scrooby and Gainsborough sold their homes and belongings and fled England in search of religious freedom.
ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND
In the early seventeenth century, Dutch ships brought Protestant refugees from various nations into Holland, making it a melting pot of Protestant denominations. By 1609, scores of Separatists from Scrooby and Gainsborough were among them.
RIJKSMUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM
“They endured a fearful storm at sea, and it was fourteen days or more before they reached port”
CHAPTER FOUR
“Butter-Mouths,” “Lubbers,” and “Manifold Temptations”
For an eighteen-year-old, William Bradford had experienced a lot of life, and much of it had been hard. He was born in the village of Austerfield, about four miles north of Scrooby, in 1590. His father William, whose name he bore, owned a prosperous farm and other real estate, and his mother, formerly Alice Hanson, was a shopkeeper’s daughter. He was the youngest of three Bradford children—the only son. In the culture of his day, he could have grown up in a comfortable home with the expectation of one day inheriting family property and living as a man of means. Instead, his father unexpectedly sickened and died while William was still a toddler. When he was four, his mother remarried, and for unknown reasons William was sent to live with his grandfather. Two years later, his grandfather died, and the youngster was brought back home, but within a year his mother also died. Left an orphan at age seven, the boy was sent by his stepfather to live with two uncles on a nearby farm, and they put him to work watching their sheep.
A conjectural portrait of Pilgrim leader William Bradford as he might have appeared in later life.
UNITED STATES HISTORY
Future Pilgrim leader William Bradford was born in this house in the English village of Austerfield, which was located about four miles from Scrooby.
THE ROMANTIC STORY OF THE MAYFLOWER PILGRIMS
Bradford was a sickly child, unable to work the flocks at times, so in order to make him useful around the farm, his uncles arranged for him to learn how to read and write. He is believed to have been tutored by a pastor at the small Anglican church in Austerfield. Wherever he received his schooling, Bradford excelled at it. He was a natural student—bright, inquisitive, analytical, and disciplined—and developed a scholar’s heart, a writer’s craft, and a lifelong love of books. By age twelve he had become a serious student of the Bible, and a few years later he began attending worship services at Pastor Clyfton’s church in Babworth.
Bradford was a sickly child who was often unable to tend to the farm’s sheep flock, so his uncles arranged for him to learn how to read and write—skills that would shape his future life.
DAVID M. RUBENSTEIN LIBRARY, DUKE UNIVERSITY
There, the fatherly Pastor Clyfton took interest in the orphan boy, and when Clyfton established the Separatist congregation at nearby Scrooby, Bradford joined the congregation. He was reportedly mentored by William Brewster, and by age seventeen he was a committed Separatist. Doubtlessly aware of the risks to their nephew and themselves, Bradford’s uncles tried to dissuade him from embracing Separatism. Their efforts did not deter him, nor did the ridicule he received from his peers. Bradford believed that he was being obedient to the Word of God, and he would not abandon his faith. He had endured much in his young life from what he called “the grave mistress Experience,” and he was willing to endure more for his faith. “I am not only willing to part with everything that is dear to me in this world for this cause,” he wrote his uncles, “but I am also thankful that God has given me an heart to do, and will accept me to suffer for Him.”
As a teenager, William Bradford was befriended by the Separatist pastor and congregation in nearby Scrooby. There—to the dismay of his uncles—he became a devout Separatist.
ILLUSTRATED NOTES ON ENGLISH CHURCH HISTORY
When the Scrooby and Gainsborough Separatists escaped to Holland, Bradford was with them, apparently as one of those who “endured a fearful storm at sea.” The pastors—Scrooby’s Clyfton and Robinson and Gainsborough’s Smyth—remained in England until later in 1608, so they could lead the final and “weakest” of their congregations into exile. In Holland, the Separatists were finally able to meet and worship as they felt led without fear, but the transition from England was not easy. In the words of Scripture, they were “strangers and pilgrims” in a foreign land.1
At some point, William Bradford slipped aboard a departing ship with other Separatists and left England for Holland. “I am . . . willing to part with all that is dear to me,” he wrote.
ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The Scrooby and Gainsborough Separatists initially settled in Amsterdam, which was a bustling, cosmopolitan city of fifty thousand.
RIJKSMUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM
“Armed with Faith and Patience”
The Scrooby and Gainsborough Separatists Begin a New Life in Holland
They settled first in Amsterdam, a sprawling, cosmopolitan city of more than fifty thousand people then on the verge of becoming an international financial center, boosted by Dutch shipping interests and a booming economy. A decade earlier, other English Separatists had established a church in Amsterdam. Known as the Ancient Brethren
, their congregation numbered about three hundred by 1608, and they were worshipping in a newly constructed church building. The Ancient Brethren welcomed the newly exiled congregations from Scrooby and Gainsborough, and the three congregations worshipped together—at least for awhile.
Once in Holland, Pastor Smyth of the Gainsborough congregation surprised the other Separatists by announcing that he had come to accept doctrines that differed from Separatist theology. He had come to believe, he explained, that infant baptism had no solid Scriptural grounds, and that believer baptism alone was biblical. Furthermore, he concluded, any baptism performed under the authority of the Church of England was unbiblical, and therefore most of his congregation needed to be baptized again. He had also come to believe that the Bible should be read in worship services only in its original languages—Hebrew and Greek—and translated on the spot into English by the preacher.
Eventually, Smyth would join the Anabaptist movement and become instrumental in the founding of America’s Baptist denominations, but theological debate was not why Pastor Robinson and the Scrooby congregation had come to Holland. The solution to the unexpected dilemma, Robinson and others concluded, was to relocate elsewhere. Pastor Clyfton did not want to leave Amsterdam and eventually would become a teacher with the Ancient Brethren, so the Scrooby congregation turned to Pastor Robinson. He agreed to lead those who wished to follow him to the Dutch city of Leiden, which was located about thirty miles southwest of Amsterdam. By 1608, exiled Puritans and Presbyterians had established English congregations in a half-dozen Dutch cities, including Amsterdam, The Hague, Rotterdam, and Leiden. The Dutch government allowed Protestant exiles to establish churches in Holland and even sometimes provided financial support and meeting space.
Anabaptist exiles joyfully conduct a baptism in Holland. Soon after relocating to Amsterdam, Pastor Smyth, leader of the Gainsborough Separatists, announced that he had adopted Anabaptist theology.
RIJKSMUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM
Robinson and his Separatist congregation asked for nothing from the Dutch government—except permission to move to Leiden and establish their church there. Relocating to Leiden would not only enable Robinson and his followers to avoid being ensnarled in Pastor Smyth’s baptism controversy, but the city offered employment opportunities for the newcomers. In February of 1609, they petitioned a Dutch court to allow “one-hundred persons born in England” to move to Leiden by the first of May, promising that they would not be “a burden in the least to anyone.” English authorities in Holland, who had reportedly kept the Separatist exiles under surveillance, protested to the Dutch government on behalf of King James I. The Dutch court granted permission anyway, noting that Dutch law “did not refuse any honest persons free and unrestrained ingress, provided they behaved themselves honestly and submitted to all the laws.”
In 1609, Pastor Robinson led the Scrooby exiles from Amsterdam to Leiden, Holland’s second-largest city, which lay about twenty-five miles to the south.
ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF ENGLAND
So, in the spring of 1609, Pastor Robinson led most of the former Scrooby congregation to Leiden. Chronicler William Bradford, who made the move with Pastor Robinson, later recalled the congregation’s early days in Holland.
“They heard a strange and uncouth language, and beheld the different manners and customs of the people”
Being now come into the Low Countries, they saw many goodly and fortified cities, strongly walled and guarded with troops of armed men. Also they heard a strange and uncouth language, and beheld the different manners and customs of the people, with their strange fashions and attires; all so far differing from that of their plain country villages (wherein they were bred, and had so long lived) as it seemed they were come into a new world. But these were not the things they much looked on, or long took up their thoughts; for they had other work in hand, and another kind of war to wage and maintain. For though they saw fair and beautiful cities, flowing with abundance of all sorts of wealth and riches, yet it was not long before they saw the grim and grisly face of poverty coming upon them like an armed man, with whom they must buckle and encounter, and from whom they could not flee; but they were armed with faith and patience. . . .
Now when Mr. Robinson, Mr. Brewster, and other principal members were come over, (for they were of the last, and stayed to help the weakest over before them,) such things were thought on as were necessary for their settling and best ordering of the church affairs. And when they had lived at Amsterdam about a year, Mr. Robinson, their pastor, and some others of best discerning, seeing how Mr. John Smith and his company was already fallen in to contention with the church that was there before them, and no means they could use would do any good to cure the same, and also that the flames of contention were like to break out in that ancient church itself (as afterwards lamentably came to pass); which things they prudently foreseeing, thought it was best to remove, before they were any way engaged with the same; though they well knew it would be much to the prejudice of their outward estates, both at present and in likelihood in the future; as indeed it proved to be.
For these and some other reasons they removed to Leiden, a fair and beautiful city, and of a sweet situation, but made more famous by the university wherewith it is adorned, in which of late had been so many learned men. But wanting that traffic by sea which Amsterdam enjoys, it was not so beneficial for their outward means of living and estates. But being now here, they fell to such trades and employments as they best could; valuing peace and their spiritual comfort above any other riches whatsoever. And at length they came to raise a competent and comfortable living, but with hard and continual labor.
Being thus settled (after many difficulties) they continued many years in a comfortable condition, enjoying much sweet and delightful society and spiritual comfort together in the ways of God, under the able ministry and prudent government of Mr. John Robinson and Mr. William Brewster, who was an assistant unto him in the place of an Elder, unto which he was now called and chosen by the church. So as they grew in knowledge and other gifts and graces of the spirit of God, and lived together in peace, and love, and holiness; and many came unto them from diverse parts of England, so as they grew a great congregation.
Two seventeenth-century Dutch weavers take a break from the loom to exchange a story. Many of the Separatists took jobs in Holland’s booming textile industry, despite the long hours, tedious work, and low pay.
RIJKSMUSEUM OF AMSTERDAM
And if at any time any differences arose, or offences broke out (as it cannot be, but some time there will, even amongst the best of men) they were ever so met with, and nipped in the head betimes, or otherwise so well composed, as still love, peace, and communion was continued; or else the church purged of those that were incurable and incorrigible, when, after much patience used, no other means would serve, which seldom came to pass. Yea such was the mutual love, and reciprocal respect that this worthy man had to his flock, and his flock to him, that it might be said of them as it once was of that famous Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the people of Rome, that it was hard to judge whether he delighted more in having such a people, or they in having such a pastor.
His love was great towards them, and his care was always bent for their best good, both for soul and body; for besides his singular abilities in divine things (wherein he excelled), he was also very able to give directions in civil affaires, and to foresee dangers and inconveniences; by which means he was very helpful to their outward estates, and so was every way as a common father unto them. And none did more offend him than those that were close and cleaving to themselves, and retired from the common good; as also such as would be stiff and rigged in matters of outward order, and inveigh against the evils of others, and yet be remiss in themselves, and not so careful to express a virtuous conversation. They in like manner had ever a reverent regard unto him, and had him in precious estimation, as his worth and wisdom did deserve. . . .2
“Being thus settled . . . they cont
inued many years in a comfortable condition, enjoying much . . . spiritual comfort together in the ways of God”
“Diligent They Were in Their Callings”
The Separatists Earn the Respect of Their Dutch Neighbors
For Pastor Robinson, William Brewster, and the other Separatists, the years that followed their move to Leiden were a mixture of good times and hard times. Other English Separatists also escaped England and joined them, swelling their congregation to more than two hundred members. The congregation collectively purchased a large house for Robinson and his family near the Pieterskerk—St. Peter’s Church—which was a former Catholic cathedral converted to a Dutch Reformed church. Robinson’s home was also the congregation’s worship center or meeting house. Members of the congregation bought or rented approximately twenty cottages around the meeting house, establishing a Separatist compound of sorts in the neighborhood.
Leiden lay on the Old Rhine River about twenty-five miles south of Amsterdam and twelve miles south of The Hague. At the time, it was the second largest city in Holland, and was in the midst of a growth boom, thanks to a thriving textile industry that steadily drew workers to the city and boosted its population to half the size of Amsterdam. It was also recognized as a rising center for the arts and publishing, and was home to Leiden University, which was quickly gaining acclaim as a center of European research and education. Leiden’s architecture, numerous canals, and picturesque gardens also enhanced the city’s reputation, leading a contemporary French travel writer to describe Leiden as one of the “grandest, cleanest and most agreeable cities of the world.”