The Pilgrim Region in England
As we have seen, the region whence the Pilgrims came was a cluster of small villages in the north of England, at the point where Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire join.
From: 1500 C.E. To: 1600 C.E.
Location: Scrooby, United Kingdom
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
“The Pilgrim Region in England” in The Mayflower Pilgrims by Edmund J. Carpenter, 1918.
As we have seen, the region whence the Pilgrims came was a cluster of small villages in the north of England, at the point where Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and Lincolnshire join. This whole region, it is said, was once lowland, composed chiefly of marshes and swamps, at times overflowed by extraordinary tides from the North Sea. Perhaps the best known of the poems of Jean Ingelow, it is remembered, is descriptive of one of these high tides on the coast of Lincolnshire. Centuries ago, however, cunning engineers, mainly Dutchmen, by a system of ditching, diking, and draining converted this swampy country into a region dry and fertile, beautiful for situation, covered with smiling gardens and fields of waving grain.
Of the scores and perhaps hundreds of Americans who yearly make their pilgrimage to the Pilgrim shrine at Scrooby, the major portion tell us that the most pleasing approach to the ancient and historic hamlet is on foot from the nearby town of Bawtry, situated about a mile to the northward of the village. Indeed, Bawtry is about equally distant from the villages of Scrooby and Austerfield, both famed in Pilgrim annals. The region lies on a line of railway, distant about one hundred and fifty miles north of London.
The walk from Bawtry to Scrooby is through one of the most lovely as well as most interesting regions in all England. The walk is by no means long and wearisome, for, while the attention of the traveler is taken by the fields, the meadows, and the winding waters of the stream where unite the Idle and the Ryton, the graceful spire of the church at Scrooby breaks upon the sight, through the sweeping branches of the great elms which arch the road. Scrooby is a tiny hamlet of scarcely more than two hundred souls. Austerfield, though a somewhat larger village, still has a population of less than four hundred. There is no reason to believe that these villages were larger in the Pilgrim time than to-day, and one of the mysteries which attach to Pilgrim history is by what means so important a religious movement could have had its origin in a community so thinly settled as this.
The village of Scrooby, however, was situated on the Great North Road, which in the sixteenth century was the main highway leading from London to Edinburgh. Despite its small size and population, Scrooby was in those days a place of considerable importance. Here was a manor of the Archbishop of York, surrounded by an ancient moat and supporting a reat manor house or mansion. In Pilgrim days this manor house, although still the property of the see of York, was used as a station of the great royal post road. Let it not be forgotten that in 1514, Wolsey, afterward the great cardinal, was the Archbishop of York. A few years later, Wolsey, who had been high in the favor of King Henry VIII, fell from his lofty estate, at the mandate of Anne Boleyn, and, banished from the royal presence, returned to his diocese, took up his residence at the manor house in Scrooby, and here he passed many of his later days.
This circumstance alone, had it no other claims, would readily place the little hamlet of Scrooby in the list of historic places. But there are other things which must serve to add to its fame. In June, 1503, Margaret, daughter of King Henry VII—through whom, later, the Stuart sovereigns gained their right to the English throne—was married to King James IV of Scotland. On her wedding journey to her new home her way led through Scrooby, and here at the manor house she passed a night. Just one hundred years later Robert Carey, cousin of Queen Elizabeth, who lay dead at Richmond, rode stormily through the night, over the Great North Road, and through Scrooby, to carry to the grandson of Margaret the intelligence of the death of the queen of England and of his own accession to the English throne. King Henry VIII passed a night at the manor house in 1541. As we have already learned, it was in the manor house at Scrooby where dwelt the father of William Brewster, then the keeper of the royal post at this station on the Great North Road. Here, after the fall of Davison, Queen Elizabeth's secretary, young Brewster returned and became an assistant to his father. After the death of the latter, young Brewster succeeded to his position as keeper of the post. Here he became the leader of the religious movement which later resulted in the Pilgrim migration and the final settlement at Plymouth.
The old manor house, as it was in Brewster's day, is no longer standing. It is easy, however, to trace the line of its foundations, through the meadow which now covers the place; and a much smaller, but still ancient, dwelling covers a portion of the site. An archway, long since bricked up, shows the former entrance to some portion of the old mansion and a stable nearby was evidently built of some of the materials of the old manor house, for overhead are certain curiously carved oak beams, once portions of the roof of some lordly hall.
Austerfield, lying two miles north of Scrooby, with the village of Bawtry midway between the two hamlets, was the home of William Bradford, afterward governor of Plymouth. Here, in the little Church of Saint Helen, is to-day to be seen the baptismal record of the little child; and not far away stands the unpretentious stone cottage in which the future governor was born. Austerfield, as well as Scrooby, is entitled to its historic fame. Here in the year 702, as we have before seen, was held the great ecclesiastical synod, which was in reality a struggle of the churches in England against the assumed supremacy of the bishop of Rome. The synod took the form of a hearing of a protest of Wilfrid, Bishop of York, concerning the proper date for the celebration of Easter. The English churches had adopted one calendar for computation; the pope employed another. Wilfrid, a warm advocate of papal supremacy, laid the matter before the bishop of Rome, and, of course, was sustained. King Egfrid deposed Wilfrid from his bishopric and the synod sustained his action—the first struggle in England against the claims of papal Rome.
The third of the Pilgrim villages is Gainsborough, lying some ten miles east of Scrooby and Austerfield, and thus forming the apex of a triangle. It was at Gainsborough, indeed, that the Separatist movement in this region may perhaps be said to have had its inception; for there in 1602 was formed, secretly of course, the formal church of the new faith, of which both Brewster and Bradford were original members. In this town, on the banks of the River Trent, King Alfred was married, and here Canute was proclaimed King of England. Here in the old hall King Henry VIII once held court when he came to Yorkshire in 1541 to receive the submission of a faction of revolting subjects. Hither came, every Sunday, on foot from Scrooby and Austerfield, Bradford and Brewster and others of the faithful brethren, to join in worship with them of Gainsborough and listen to the preaching of the pastor, John Smyth.
The region about this Pilgrim country is of unusual interest. Not far distant is Epworth, the shrine of Methodism throughout the world, the birthplace of John and Charles Wesley. Within easy distance is Sherwood Forest, renowned for centuries past as the scene of the exploits of Robin Hood and his band of kindly outlaws, who waylaid and robbed the wealthy and distributed the spoils to the poor. Who does not remember the ancient tale of Robin Hood and Friar Tuck, Little John, Scarlet, and Maid Marian, so ancient that its author's name is lost in the mists of antiquity? In this region too Scott laid the scene of Ivanhoe, and Kingsley his story of Hereward the Wake. Gainsborough too is the "St. Oggs" of George Eliot's novel The Mill on the Floss. The River Trent, which flows here, is the "Floss" and the "Dorlcote Mill" still stands below the town.
And if we turn again from literature to history, we find, not far from Scrooby and Austerfield, the walls of Fotheringhay Castle, where for eighteen years Mary, Queen of Scots, was held a prisoner of state and where she met her death at the hands of the executioners.
Such was the region in which the great Pilgrim movement had its rise. It must not be understood that this region was necessarily the center of the entire Separatist movement of which the Scrooby congregation was but a part. Robert Browne, usually regarded as the originator of the movement for separation, probably never visited Scrooby. As already suggested, by what means the sentiment became rife in this far-away cluster of villages
in the north of England is a mystery. But there was perhaps no portion of England at that day to which this movement did not penetrate. Until the authorities discovered, probably through an informer, that Brewster and a company at Scrooby were of the pernicious sect of Brownists, the village of Bury Saint Edmunds, in West Suffolk, was believed to be the place chiefly infested with this heresy; and there were undoubtedly many secret meetings of Separatists held in London itself. Since Scrooby was on the main highway from London to Edinburgh, it is not improbable that some traveler, passing a night at the old manor house, brought this phase of the gospel to the ears of Brewster, who spread the story to others. We know too that Brewster, while in the employ of Davison, on one occasion accompanied his master upon a special embassy to Holland, then the refuge of many whose religious convictions had led them to flee from England.
At all events, in Scrooby the movement for Separatism had taken such firm root that its leaders and adherents perhaps grew less wary in their movements. The weekly foot journey of ten miles to Gainsborough and return had become too wearisome for hard working people to endure and a division had occurred, a separate church being formed in Scrooby, of which Brewster was the leader. Bradford, finding it far more convenient to walk from Austerfield, through Bawtry, to Scrooby, every Sunday, than to undertake the twenty-mile journey to Gainsborough and return, joined his fortunes with those of Brewster.
Frequent meetings for prayer and religious converse were held, probably in the hayloft of the stable of the manor house, until there came a day of discovery. Brewster, who had been absent, probably in London upon government concerns, returned home to find that a considerable company of the faithful, including his own wife, had been arrested and lodged in jail. Brewster fortunately escaped and went into hiding. Bradford does not seem, at this time, to have been known openly as a Brownist, and he also escaped the clutches of the law. But this discovery brought to the leaders the stern alternative of flight from the country or the abandonment of their faith. To their minds there was no alternative; apostasy was not for a moment to be considered. Nothing was left but flight. The "lock-up" in this tiny village was probably inadequate for the permanent detention of the arrested ones and they were soon set at liberty. The story of the flight to Holland must be told in another chapter.
Carpenter, Edmund J. The Mayflower Pilgrims. The Abingdon Press, 1918.
About TOTA
TOTA.world provides cultural information and sharing across the world to help you explore your Family’s Cultural History and create deep connections with the lives and cultures of your ancestors.
