© Duane A. Cline 1999
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PRINCIPAL LEADERS OF THE SCROOBY PILGRIMS
William Brewster was postmaster of the little country town of Scrooby, and it was part of his job to be on the alert for travelers or royal mail carriers passing up and down the Great North Road. He was required by law to keep three �good and sufficient� horses, together with saddles, bridles, and post bags for the use of the post riders, who carried only royal and official mail. He was also expected to keep an inn or tavern for the riders, as well as stables for their horses. In order to serve passing travelers, Brewster set aside the largest room in Scrooby manor to serve as the tavern, overseeing a bake house and a brew house to provide bread and beer.
In his position as postmaster on that important highway, Brewster kept in touch with the world by talking with travelers passing through Scrooby.
Richard Clyfton was minister of the church at Babworth, not far from Scrooby, where William and Mary Brewster worshipped. Although a minister of the Church of England, Clyfton believed the church needed to be reformed. Clyfton had studied at Cambridge and had been the �grave and reverend� minister at Babworth since 1586. Each Sunday the Brewsters-together with their children Jonathan and Patience-walked six miles across the countryside to hear Clyfton's sermons.
Many in the Scrooby district were converted to Clyfton's dangerous religious views. By 1602 there were several other churches in the nearby countryside which had begun question the prsctices of the Church of England. One congregation of about 100 people met at Worksop, near Babworth. Another more radical group was meeting at Gainsborough, eight miles east of Scrooby.
Suddenly short tracts (pamphlets) ridiculing the bishops began flooding England. People read them and passed them from hand to hand. The name of the person who wrote them is still not known for certain. But in 1593 the bishops arrested, accused, and sent John Penry to trial for having operated the press where the tracts were printed. That same year Penry, who was a classmate of Brewster's at Cambridge, was hanged in London. For his writings against the church, Penry's friend John Greenwood had also been hanged a few months earlier.
One Sabbath in 1602, at Clyfton's church in Babworth, Brewster met a twelve-year-old boy named William Bradford. He had been born in the nearby village of Austerfield. When William Brewster first met him, Bradford was a rather sickly, intelligent boy whose parents were both dead and Bradford was living with his two uncles. Bradford's uncles strongly objected to the radical ideas their nephew was learning from his new acquaintances at Babworth. However, Bradford insisted he would not be deterred.
William Brewster and the young Bradford were to became lifetime friends with Bradford bcoming like a son to the older Brewster. Later, in Holland, Bradford lived in the Brewster home until the time he married. In his old age, Brewster would live with Bradford in the New World.
William Brewster soon invited the Scooby congregation to meet secretly in Scrooby manor, where Clyfton , Robinson and the rest of the Separatists continued to meet until the Fall of 1607.
On 30 September 1607 William Brewster lost his job as postmaster - probably because the authorities had learned the Separatists were holding meetings at Scrooby manor. Bradford tells us �they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side.� Some of the members found they were watched night and day by the church officers, tormented, imprisoned and �by a joynte consente they resolved to goe into the Low Countries, wher they heard was freedome of Religion for all men.�
The Scrooby Separatists were soon to learn the Gainsborough congregation of seventy or eighty members and their pastor, John Smyth, had sold their lands and goods and removed themselves and their families to Amsterdam, where they joined the First Church at Amsterdam, known as the Ancient Brethern.
Last modified November 7, 1999
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