The other members of the Scrooby congregation were of humble station, and have left little trace even of their names; most notable to us is young William Bradford, born in 1590 in Austerfield, a hamlet two and a half miles to the northward, within the limits of Yorkshire.
After they had covenanted together in church relations, “they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side.... For some were taken and clapped up in prison; others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped their hands; and the most were fain to fly and leave their houses and habitations. ... 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.”
The remedy of exile was not new to a generation that could remember the emigration of Robert Browne’s followers from Norwich to Zealand in 1581, and had witnessed the transfer of their Gainsborough neighbors to Holland shortly after their own organization. “So, after they had continued together about a year, and kept their meetings every Sabbath in one place or other, ... seeing they could no longer continue in that condition, they resolved to get over into Holland as they could.” A large number attempted, in the latter part of the year 1607, to embark at Boston in Lincolnshire, the most convenient seaport for them, though fifty miles distant from Scrooby. But emigration, except with a license, was in general prohibited by an early statute (A. D. 1389), and the ship’s captain, who had engaged to take them, found it to his interest to betray them in the act of embarking; so that the only result for most of them was a month’s detention in Boston jail, and the confiscation of their goods, while seven of the leaders, including Brewster, were kept in prison still longer. In a new attempt the following spring, an unfrequented strip of sea-coast in northeastern Lincolnshire, above Great Grimsby, was selected, and a bargain made with a Dutch captain to convey the party thence to Holland; then, perhaps, taking advantage of the Idle, a sluggish stream flowing near their doors, tributary to the Trent, and so to the Humber, the women and children, with all the household goods, were in that case despatched by water, while the men marched some forty miles across country to the rendezvous. But after a part of the men (who arrived first) had embarked, on the appearance of armed representatives of the law the captain took alarm and departed; some of those left on shore fled, and reached their destination by other means; but the women and children, with a few of the men and all their valuables, were captured. Another season of suspense followed; but at length the absurdity of detaining such a helpless group began to be felt, the magistrates were glad to be rid of them, and by August, 1608, the last of the straggling unfortunates got safely over to Amsterdam.
They found there the church of English Separatists transplanted under Francis Johnson upwards of twenty years before, as well as that of John Smyth and his Gainsborough people; but the church from Scrooby appears to have kept its separate organization, and their experience is calmly recounted by their historian, Bradford, as follows: “When they had lived at Amsterdam about a year, Mr. Robinson, their pastor, and some others of best discerning, seeing how Mr. John Smyth and his company was already fallen into 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 the ancient church itself (as afterwards lamentably came to pass),—which things they prudently foreseeing, thought it was best to remove, before they were anyway 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, with other reasons, in the winter after their arrival they asked the authorities of Leyden, an inland city, twenty miles or more southwest from Amsterdam, and the next in size to it in the province, to allow their congregation, of about one hundred English men and women, to remove thither by May 1, 1609.[478] The application was granted, and the removal to that beautiful city was accomplished, probably in May; but their senior pastor, Clyfton, being oppressed with premature infirmity, preferred to remain in Amsterdam.
LEYDEN.