: Historic Towns of New England by Powell Lyman P Lyman Pierson Editor - New England History

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INTRODUCTION George Perry Morris 1

PORTLAND Samuel T. Pickard 53

RUTLAND, MASS. Edwin D. Mead 81

SALEM George Dimmick Latimer 121

BOSTON word of God. How not only these base and beggerly ceremonies were unlawfull, but also that y^ lordly & tiranous power of y^ prelats ought not to be submitted unto; which thus, contrary to the freedome of the gospell, would load & burden mens consciences, and by their compulsive power make a prophane mixture of persons and things in the worship of God. And that their offices & calings, courts and cannons &c. were unlawfull and antichristian; being such as have no warrante in y^ word of God; but the same that were used in poperie & still retained."

So these brave men, whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for His truth,

"as y^ Lords free people joined them selves into a church estate, in y^ felowship of y^ gospell, to walke in all his wayes, made known, or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them. And that it cost them something this ensewing historie will declare."

The charming scene of these secret meetings is now well known. In the little village of Scrooby, where the three shires of Nottingham, York and Lincoln join their borders, then stood a stately manor-house, once the favorite hunting-seat of the archbishops of York. Under this hospitable but already somewhat crumbling roof William Brewster, who had been appointed "Post" of Scrooby in 1590, welcomed these sufferers for conscience sake. Hither they stole through the green country lanes, from far around to listen to the "illuminating ministry" of Richard Clyfton,

"a grave & rever?d preacher who under God had been a means of y^ conversion of many. And also that famous and worthy man, Mr. John Robinson, who afterwards was their pastor for many years till y^ Lord tooke him away by death."

Here, too, from the neighboring hamlet of Austerfield, came the lad William Bradford, already eager for spiritual guidance.

Walking under the elm-trees of the highroad, and through the yellow gorse, across green meadows and by the banks of the placid Idle, he stopped perhaps to admire the mulberry-tree planted there by the world-weary Cardinal Wolsey. That arch-enemy of the Reformation little thought that a branch of this tree would one day cross the Atlantic, to be preserved with Pilgrim relics by friends of that "new, pernicious sect of Lutherans," against which he warned the king!

Near Bradford's birthplace in Austerfield now stands, completely restored, the twelfth-century parish church where he was baptized in 1590, and from which he "seceded" when about seventeen years old. Did the quaint old bell-cote with the two small bells, the beautiful Norman arch of the southern doorway with its rich zigzag ornament and beak-headed moulding, the wicked-looking dragon on the tympanum, with the tongue of flame--did this perfect picture of Old-World beauty flash across his memory when, some thirty years later, he helped build the rude fort on our Burial Hill, which served as the first "Meeting-House" in New England?

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