COLLECTIONS CONCERNING THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE FOUNDERS BY JOSEPH HUNTER, A FELLOW OF THE SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF LONDON, AND AN ASSISTANT KEEPER OF DR. ALEXANDER YOUNG, your Corresponding Secretary, flatters me by saying that it would be gratifying to the members of the Massachusetts Historical Society to be able to incorporate in their volumes of Collections the substance of a Tract of which I printed a small number of copies in the year 1849; though the Tract itself, I have reason to know, is already in the hands of many members of the Society. He is pleased to say that it will be a suitable accompaniment to a former communication, in which I have endeavored to trace to their English homes several of the Suffolk emigrants of 1630. I will therefore, without further preface, act upon his suggestion. It must be obvious that no one can enter upon such an inquiry as this, without owing perpetual obligations to the collection of the writings of Governor Bradford made by Dr. Young, and in some cases to other tracts printed in the same volume,* but in all cases to the Notes, the fruit of so much original research, with which the publication is en riched. * Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers of the Colony of Plymouth, from 1602 to 1625, now first collected from Original Records and contemporaneous Printed Documents, and illustrated with Notes. By ALEXANDER YOUNG. Second Edition. Boston: Little & Brown. 1844. 8vo. pp. 502. I need not say that the first settlers of the Colony of New Plymouth were persons who composed a Congregational or Independent Church, which had been originally formed in England, but which was for some years at Amsterdam and Leyden, in Holland, before the determination was formed to remove themselves to the then desolate shores of New England. Nor need I dilate upon the important consequences which have ensued upon that determination, - consequences which mark it as an important event in the history of the migration of nations, and render the persons who were concerned in carrying out the determination worthy subjects of historical curiosity. In endeavoring to arrive at some more exact information concerning them than was to be found in what had before been published, my first object was to ascertain, with more precision, the district in England from the inhabitants of which the people were collected who formed this Church; and, secondly, the precise place at which they were at first accustomed to assemble for discipline and worship. Hitherto this had been left in the same state of uncertainty in which Governor Bradford had placed it; or had even been made more uncertain, later writers having been content with saying that the people of whom they spoke lived "in the North of England." This expression would be understood here as pointing to some site far to the northward of the place we now know to have been the actual place of the Church's assemblies. But Bradford has not left the question in quite so indeterminate a state; for he tells us that the people who formed the Church were persons who lived "near the joining borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire." This expression, however, leaves the mind at liberty to range over a considerable extent of country, as may be seen by referring to any of the maps of that part of England; and it was not till I found another condition of place in another of the writings of Bradford, and then brought some slight historical and topographical knowledge to bear on the question, that I ascertained, as I conceive beyond all possibility of doubt, the actual village in which the Church at its beginning held its meetings, and the very house in which it assembled. This important passage, from which may be said to flow whatever of new information may be found in the Tract, occurs in Governor Bradford's slight but most interesting sketch of the Life of Elder Brewster. "They [the Church] ordinarily met at his house on the Lord's day, which was a manor of the Bishop's, and with great love he entertained them when they came, making provision for them to his great charge, and continued so to do while they could stay in England."* Now though "near the joining borders of three counties" is a vague expression, a bishop's manor-house or mansion is not at all so. Such a building is a something fixed, notorious, and remarkable, and is moreover rare in any district; and I, who have some acquaintance with the whole of the country which can be said to be near the joining borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, can affirm with confidence that there was no episcopal or archiepiscopal manor in that part of England, except one, which in Brewster's time had appertained to the Archbishop of York; and that this one was at the ancient village of SCROOBY, which will be found in the maps in the part of Nottinghamshire known as the Hundred of Bassetlaw, about a mile and a half south of a little market-town called Bawtry, which is situated on the line of the boundary of the two counties of Nottingham and York, and only a very short distance from the verge of Lincolnshire. GENTIS BAWTRY MAXIME YORKE + INCUNABULA NOTTINGHAMSHIRE Scrooby I anticipate no possibility that this can ever be disputed, even on the ground of authority, on which I have now placed it. But we shall find, as we proceed, Brewster described in a contemporary document as living at Scrooby. We shall find, also, Bradford living at the neighboring village of Austerfield, not Ansterfield, as by a most unfortunate misprint in Dr. Cotton Mather's Magnalia the place of his birth is called; which Austerfield is a Yorkshire village, about as far to the north of Bawtry as Scrooby is to the south. But I must, to preclude cavil, remark thus early, that, when Bradford says that Brewster lived in a manor of the Bishop's, he does not use the word manor in what is its ordinary sense, a district throughout which certain feudal privileges are enjoyed, but in a sense not at all uncommon, as denoting a large mansion-house. In the same Hundred of Bassetlaw was Worksop-manor, and a little farther distant were Winfield-manor, Sheffield-manor, Brierly-manor, Helaugh-manor, not districts, but houses, seats of the noble families of Talbot, Stanley, and Wharton. A person living in the house at Scrooby in the reign of Elizabeth, describes himself in his will as of "Scrooby-manor, Esquire." Scrooby is now but an obscure agricultural village, with no object of interest beside the church, and the interest which will now attach to the very small remains which may still be traced of the house in which the fathers of North American civilization were wont to hold their earliest assemblies. But it was a very different place in early times. It seems to have been a possession of the see of York from the Conquest, and probably from before the Conquest. It lay near the road from York to London, and was on that account a convenient resting-place for the archbishops in their journeys. It lay near the Chace of Hatfield, which afforded unrivalled opportunities for the enjoyment of the sport of hunting, the favorite amusement of the great ecclesiastics of the Middle Ages. Godwin informs us that Archbishop Savage, who lived in the reign of Henry the Seventh, made Scrooby his frequent residence for that particular reason.* It was for many weeks the residence of Cardinal Wolsey, when he was sent by the King, in his displeasure, to his northern diocese, and Cavendish has given a very interesting description of the manner in which the fallen minister passed his time at this place. It was the rendezvous of the Earl of Shrewsbury and his contingent when he joined the army of the King assembled to oppose the Pilgrimage of Grace. King Henry the Eighth slept here one night in his northern progress in 1541; and in the same year it was visited by Leland, who * De Præsulibus, Vol. II p. 71. † Life of Wolsey, Singer's edition, 8vo, 1825, Vol. I. p. 260. gives this description of the manor, which may be taken as being descriptive of it as it appeared in Brewster's time, fifty or sixty years later. "In the mean townlet of Scrooby I marked two things: the parish-church, not big, but very well builded; the second was a great manor-place, standing within a moat, and longing to the Archbishop of York; builded in two courts; whereof the first is very ample and all builded of timber, saving the front of the house, that is of brick; to the which ascenditur per gradus lapideos. The inner court building, as far as I marked, was of timber-building, and was not in compass past the fourth part of the utter court." * In the reign of Queen Elizabeth there came an Archbishop who made great changes at Scrooby. The name of Sir Edwin Sandys is intimately and honorably connected with that of Brewster, and with the history of the removal of him and the first portion of his church from Holland to New England. It was the father of that Sir Edwin Sandys, the Archbishop of York of that name, who produced this great change. He alienated Scrooby, both the lands and the episcopal manor which stood upon them, from the see, and settled them on one of his own sons ; not Sir Edwin, but another son, whose name was Samuel, and who was also a knight, like his brother. Sandys lies under a scandal, from which his memory can hardly be relieved, of having impoverished the sees of Worcester and York to enrich a numerous family of sons. In fact, he created a rich and powerful family, one branch of which was ennobled. His conduct in respect of Scrooby, as it appears in the few evidences we have concerning it, seems especially to require explanation; for we find him excusing himself to the Queen, who had expressed a wish to have it leased to her, on the ground of the injury which such a grant would be to his see, ‡ and yet, in a very short time after, granting a lease to one of his own sons, at a rent of £65 6s. 8d. This lease was executed some time before May, 1586, and in 1588 the Archbishop died. * Itinerary, Vol. I. p. 36. † See on this Lans. MS. at the British Museum, Vol. L. Art. 34, where Lord Burghley has in his own hand summed up the grants made by the Archbishop to his six sons. See Le Neve's Lives of the Protestant Archbishops, 8vo, 1720, p. 61. |