Although the magistrates, from Mayor John Mayson downward, felt for the sufferers and doubtless ameliorated their condition as far as they could, it was not until after a month's imprisonment that the greater part were dismissed and sent back, baffled, plundered, and heart-broken, to the places they had so lately left, there to endure the scoffs of their neighbours and the rigours of ecclesiastical discipline.
Seven of the principal men, treated as ring-leaders, were kept in prison and bound over to the assizes. Apparently nothing further was done with them. Brewster is said to have been the chief sufferer both in person and pocket. He had eluded a warrant by leaving for Boston, and we know this was in September, because on the fifteenth of that month the messenger charged to apprehend Brewster and another man, one Richard Jackson of Scrooby, certified to the Ecclesiastical Court at York "that he cannot find them, nor understand where they are." On the thirtieth of September also the first payment is recorded to Brewster's successor as postmaster at Scrooby.
How the imprisoned Separatists fared, there is nothing to show. No assize record exists. The Privy Council Register, which could have thrown light on the matter, was destroyed in the Whitehall fire of 1618; and the Boston Corporation records, which doubtless contained some entry on the subject that would have been of the greatest interest now, are also disappointing, as the leaves for the period, the first of a volume, have disappeared.
Eventually the prisoners were all liberated. That dreary wait of many weeks was a weariness of the spirit and of the flesh. Patiently they bore the separation, and by and by they met to make more plans. Next spring they agreed with another Dutchman to take them on board at a lonely point on the northern coast of Lincolnshire, between Grimsby and Hull, "where was a large common, a good way distant from any town." This spot has been located as Immingham, the site of the new Grimsby docks.
The women, with the children and their goods, came to the Humber by boat down the Trent from Gainsborough; the men travelled forty miles across country from Scrooby. Both parties got to the rendezvous before the ship, and the boat was run into a creek. This was unfortunate, as when the captain came on the scene next morning the boat was high and dry, left on the mud by the fallen tide, and there was nothing for it but to wait for high water at midday.
Photograph by Bocklehurst, Gainsborough
Trentside, Gainsborough
Meanwhile the Dutchman set about taking the men on board in the ship's skiff, but when one boatload had been embarked he saw to his dismay, out on the hills in hot pursuit, "a great company, both horse and foot, with bills and guns and other weapons," for "the country was raised to take them." So the laconic historian says, "he swore his country's oath—Sacramente," and heaving up his anchor sailed straight away with the people he had got. Their feelings may be imagined; and their plight was aggravated by a violent storm, which drove them out of their course and tossed them about for a fortnight, until even the sailors gave up hope and abandoned themselves to despair. But the ship reached port, at last, and all were saved.
The scene ashore meantime had been scarcely less distressing than that at sea. Some of the men left behind made good their escape; the rest tarried with the forsaken portion of the party. The women were broken-hearted. Some wept and cried for their husbands, carried away in the unkindly prudent Dutchman's ship. Some were distracted with apprehension; and others looked with tearful eyes into the faces of the helpless little ones that clung about them, crying with fear and quaking with cold.