ORIGIN OF THE PILGRIM MOVEMENT.

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the banks of the Trent, in Lincolnshire-the successors of the Bible readers who met by stealth in that county in the days of Cardinal Wolsey.

Immediately after the martyrdom of Penry, and at his dying request, the brethren in London conferred with their friends in the North, as to the measures they should adopt for their departure in a body to some distant country. A petition, still extant in the original, was presented to the Privy Council for this object, at the time, but with no immediate success.

"Francis Johnson went from the Clink prison, in Southwark, to accept the pastorate of the church in Amsterdam. John Smyth (a pupil of Johnson's), and a prisoner subsequently in the Marshalsea, in Southwark, was chosen pastor of the church at Gainsborough, in 1602. He corresponded with the church at Scrooby, before Robinson and Clyfton went there, at the house of William Brewster.

"Henry Jacob, who was immured in the same prison in which Barrowe, Greenwood, and Johnson had been in turn confined, went from the Clink to Leyden, and was the teacher of a small Christian society there, a short time before the arrival of Robinson and his company in that city. He returned from Holland to form a congregational church in Southwark, in 1616.

"John Lothrop succeeded him in Leyden, and the little church continued to exist there after the removal of the Pilgrims.

"The Mayflower sailed from the Thames, within sight of the place in which the separatists met in 1592, and amongst her passengers were members of the church who received their principles from the Pilgrim martyrs.

"On the removal of Jacob to America, John Lothrop took his place in Southwark, and in 1634 went, with thirty of the members, to Scituate, in New England; and, in conjunction with a number of brethren dismissed from Plymouth for the purpose, formed a church in that locality. The moral affinities between the two branches of the Pilgrim family might be traced much

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CONGREGATION AT SCROOPY.

further, and the whole subject elucidated by original documents; but for the present this brief outline may suffice. It may be mentioned that, in 1851, a lineal descendant of John Lothrop visited the church in Southwark-removed from Deadman's Place (the site of Barclay's Brewery), and now meeting in an obscure yard in Union-street, near High-street, Borough-soon to pass out of its possession, from the lapse of the lease. The present year, 1853, is the bi-centenary of John Lothrop's death."

Among these congregational churches in the North was one, which, under the venerable name of the "Pilgrim Fathers," has attained a celebrity of which its members little dreamed.

As to the place of their origin, Bradford, their historian, vaguely informs us that it was near "the joining borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire;" to which he adds, that their place of meeting was at "a manor of the bishop's," then occupied by Brewster.

It is to the critical acumen and persevering research of a distinguished antiquary, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., that we are indebted for a knowledge of the precise locality. He informs us, that after a diligent scrutiny he finds no place that answers this definition exactly, except Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, and the principal mansion of that village, the house which had been for centuries a palace of the archbishops of York, but which was in those days held under one of the many leases of episcopal lands granted by Archbishop Sandys. Certainly no spot could better answer to Bradford's description than this, since it is situated on the borders of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire, and only six miles from the nearest point in the county of Lincoln. 'And," to use Mr. Hunter's own words, "that no hesitation may remain respecting this point, I shall anticipate what will hereafter come more fully before us, and state that we find a Brewster assessed to a subsidy, granted to Queen Elizabeth, on the township of Scrooby-cum-Ranskill, and that in 1608, when a fine was im

posed upon William Brewster by the commissioners for ecclesiastical causes, he is described as being of Scrooby." A collateral, though unnecessary evidence, is found in the fact that the village of Austerfield (incorrectly, as Mr. H. observes, spelt Ansterfield by the printer of Cotton's Magnalia), the birth-place and residence of William Bradford, is within two or three miles. of Scrooby; and Bradford, we know, became a convert from listening to the preaching of Clyfton, who was the leading pastor of this little congregation.

The soul of this small but ever-famous confederacy was WILLIAM BREWSTER. He was a man of good family, and after receiving his education at Cambridge, probably at Emmanuel College, and there being, to use the language of his biographer, Bradford, "first seasoned with the seeds of grace and virtue," he went up to London to seek employment at the court. Here he entered into the service of the unfortunate William Davison, Secretary of State, himself "a religious and godly gentleman, who found him so discreet and faithful as he trusted him above all other that were about him, and only employed him in matters of greatest trust and secrecy. He esteemed him rather as a son than a servant, and for his wisdom and godliness, in private he would converse with him more like a familiar than a master." The United Provinces were at that time hard pressed in the struggle against Spain, and a community of interest against the great foe of Protestantism led Queen Elizabeth to assist them with a loan, for which, however, she obtained security by the possession of three of their most important sea-ports, thence denominated "the cautionary towns." On this occasion Davison being sent abroad to conclude the negotiation, Brewster accompanied him as his confidential servant; and when the keys of Flushing were delivered up to him, after keeping them some time, he committed them to Brewster's charge, who the first night slept with them beneath his pillow. At his return, the States complimented Brewster with a golden chain, and his

master committed it to him, and commanded him to wear it when they arrived in England, as they rode through the country, until they came to the court.

But this full career of favour was abruptly arrested by the disgrace of his patron. Neither Davison nor Brewster—both of them men of high principle and unsuspicious temper-were proof against the insidious arts of a corrupt court, at a period when plots and intrigues, both foreign and domestic, kept all men's minds in a state of perpetual excitement.

Mary Queen of Scots having been tried and condemned, was anxiously awaiting the result at Tutbury Castle. The mind of Elizabeth was scarcely less agitated; and, while personal resentment and state policy led her to desire the death of her rival, she seemed to shrink from the last decisive step, or, conscious at least of the odium such a measure could not fail to draw upon her, she sought to devolve it upon her agents. Sending privately for Davison, she ordered him to draw the death warrant, and having signed it herself, sent him to the chancellor to affix the signature of the Great Seal. When the tragedy was over, the queen affected vast indignation at what she called the precipitancy of the unfortunate secretary, of whom she had made so unworthy a tool; and, throwing him into the Tower, deprived him at once of his office and of the greater part of his estate. Brewster did not shrink from the side of his unhappy patron, but continued to render him all possible service in his hour of distress. His own aspiring prospects, if he had any, were blighted; but it is probable that this instance of the duplicity of the great, and the slipperiness of court favour, deepened that sense of the world's vanity with which, as a religious man, he was already impressed, and determined him to retire from its more active scenes to seek a more congenial sphere of occupation.

He went down to his estate in the country, where he lived "in good esteem amongst his friends and the good gentlemen of those parts, especially the godly and religious." He had already,

JOHN SMYTH AND RICHARD CLYFTON.

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in all probability, become a zealous Puritan; and the activity which he had displayed in the civil service, was now transferred to the propagation of his favourite views. To quote the words. of Bradford," He did much good in the country where he lived, in promoting and furthering religion; and not only by his practice and example, and provoking and encouraging of others, but by procuring of good preachers to all places thereabouts, and drawing on of others to assist and help forward in such a work, he himself most commonly deepest in the charge, and sometimes above his ability. And in this state he continued many years, doing the best good he could, and walking according to the light he saw, until the Lord revealed further unto him." That persecution helped forward his enlightenment, or at least tended to increase his detestation of spiritual domination, and to drive him to the utmost possible extreme from a Church which scrupled not to practise it, we have the express assurance of his biographer. "And in the end," continues Bradford, "by the tyranny of the bishops against godly preachers and people, in silencing the one and persecuting the other, he and many more of those times began to look further into particulars, and to see into the unlawfulness of their callings, and the burden of many antichristian corruptions which both he and they endeavoured to cast off."

The pastors at first chosen to preside over the congregation were John Smyth and Richard Clyfton, both Puritan ministers who had renounced their connexion with the Church of England. Smyth is supposed by Mr. Hunter to have been formerly curate of Gainsborough, in the neighbouring Lincolnshire, and is described by Bradford as "a man of able gifts and a good preacher." Clyfton, also, Mr. Hunter has ascertained to have been a Puritan minister in the Church-first vicar of Marnham, near Newark, and afterwards rector of Babworth, near Retford, not far from Scrooby, and from this spot "the influence of his ministerial services radiated through the country round."

One of those most deeply impressed with the preaching of