Manny Pereira

October 21, 2026 14 min read

ost Puritans stayed in the Church of England and labored to reform it. The Separatists came to believe they could not. If the national church would not be reformed by the Word of God, then believers must gather churches that were, and wait for no bishop, Parliament, or king to give them leave. It was a costly conclusion. It sent some to the gallows, many to prison, and a small congregation from Scrooby to Holland and then across the Atlantic to Plymouth. William Bradford described the moment that congregation was formed:

So many therfore of these proffessors as saw ye evill of these things, in thes parts, and whose harts ye Lord had touched with heavenly zeale for his trueth, they shooke of this yoake of antichristian bondage, and as ye Lords free people, joyned them selves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church estate, in ye felowship of ye 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. William BradfordOf Plimoth Plantation, chap. 1¹

The First Gathered Churches

Separate congregations met in London almost as soon as Elizabeth’s settlement was enforced. In 1567 a group arrested at Plumbers’ Hall described themselves as “a poore congregation whom god hath separated from the churches of england.”² The next year Bishop Edmund Grindal of London complained to Heinrich Bullinger in Zurich:

Some London citizens of the lowest order, together with four or five ministers, remarkable neither for their judgment nor learning, have openly separated from us; and sometimes in private houses, sometimes in the fields, and occasionally even in ships, they have held their meetings and administered the sacraments. Edmund Grindalto Heinrich Bullinger, June 9, 1568³

“Reformation Without Tarrying for Any”

The movement found its first spokesman in Robert Browne, a Cambridge graduate who had probably heard Thomas Cartwright lecture. In 1581 he gathered a church at Norwich meeting “in private houses and conventicles.” Browne asked whether the parish assemblies of England were true churches of Christ and answered no: “They are not Jerusalem.”⁴ After prison, he took his flock to Middelburg in Zeeland and in 1582 published the book whose title became the Separatist watchword:

A Treatise of Reformation without tarrying for any, and of the wickedness of those Preachers, who will not reform them and their charge, because they will tarry till the Magistrate command and compel them. Robert Brownetitle, 1582⁵

Browne himself was a sad example. Later in life, McBeth notes, Browne “withdrew from the movement he had set on foot, submitted to episcopal authority, and lived in relative comfort while his erstwhile brethren suffered persecution for practices he had taught them.” McBeth’s verdict is sharp: “Seldom does one find purer doctrine associated with a more unlovely character.”⁶ The Separatists rejected the name “Brownists” that their enemies gave them.

Barrowe, Greenwood, and Penry

In London the cause passed to two more Cambridge men, John Greenwood, a minister, and Henry Barrowe, a lawyer of Gray’s Inn. Both were imprisoned in 1586. A paper of the time records that they had lain thirty weeks in the Clink “for reading a portion of scripture in a friend’s house on the Lord’s day.”⁷ Barrowe’s Four Causes of Separation (1587) charged the Church of England with false worship, a false ministry, false discipline, and a false basis of membership.⁸ From prison he wrote of the archbishop who held them:

For our parts, our lives are not dear to us, so that we may finish our testimony with joy: we are alway ready, through God’s grace, to be offered up upon the testimony of the faith that we have made. Henry Barroweletter from prison⁹

They were condemned in March 1593. Twice they were carted to Tyburn. The first time they stood under the gallows and were brought back; on April 6, 1593, they were hanged. Hugh Broughton observed that their lives would have been spared “if they would have promised to come to church.” At the gallows they prayed so earnestly for the queen that, Neal writes, when she heard of it “she repented that she had yielded to their death.”¹⁰ About six weeks later John Penry, a Welshman who claimed to be “the first… that preached the gospel publicly to the Welsh,” was hanged as well.¹¹

The London church gathered in the prisons chose Francis Johnson as its pastor. Johnson had once ordered a book by Barrowe and Greenwood burned, but saved two copies to refute them; reading them, he was convinced instead. Under the new Act of 1593 most of the congregation went into exile in Amsterdam, where it became known as the “Ancient Church.”¹²

Scrooby and Gainsborough

Early in the reign of James I a new Separatist movement arose in the north, where Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire meet. Bradford, then a young man from Austerfield, was part of it. He explains how godly people who had long borne the pressure of the church courts came at last “to see further into things by the light of ye word of God”:

How not only these base and beggerly ceremonies were unlawfull, but also that ye lordly & tiranous power of ye 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 & things in the worship of God. William BradfordOf Plimoth Plantation, chap. 1¹³

They formed two congregations. One met at Gainsborough under John Smyth. The other met at Scrooby Manor, the home of William Brewster, where Richard Clifton was pastor and John Robinson, “that famous and worthy man,” later succeeded him.¹⁴ Smyth’s congregation went to Amsterdam, where in 1609 Smyth came to reject infant baptism. From his followers came the first English General Baptists, and from the later London Separatist church of Henry Jacob came the Particular Baptists of the First London Confession.¹⁵

Exile in Holland

The Scrooby congregation did not enjoy peace for long:

But after these things they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted & persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken & clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly escaped their hands; and ye most were faine to flie & leave their howses & habitations, and the means of their livelehood. William BradfordOf Plimoth Plantation, chap. 1¹⁶

In 1607 and 1608 they tried to escape to Holland, “wher they heard was freedome of Religion for all men.”¹⁷ One ship’s master betrayed them to the officers at Boston in Lincolnshire. At another attempt near Hull, soldiers came upon them while the women and children were still on shore, and the ship sailed with the men alone. In the end they all reached Amsterdam, and in 1609 they settled at Leyden. Bradford remembered those years with deep affection:

I know not but it may be spoken to ye honour of God, & without prejudice to any, that such was ye true pietie, ye humble zeale, & fervent love, of this people (whilst they thus lived together) towards God and his waies, and ye single hartednes & sinceir affection one towards another, that they came as near ye primative patterne of ye first churches, as any other church of these later times have done. William BradfordOf Plimoth Plantation, chap. 3¹⁸

When they later asked the Virginia Company for help to remove to America, Robinson and Brewster described the bond that held them:

We are knite togeather as a body in a most stricte & sacred bond and covenante of the Lord, of the violation wherof we make great conscience, and by vertue wherof we doe hould our selves straitly tied to all care of each others good, and of ye whole by every one and so mutually. John Robinson and William Brewsterto Sir Edwin Sandys, December 15, 1617¹⁹

Pilgrims

Bradford gives several reasons for leaving Holland: the hardness of life, the aging of the congregation, and the danger to their children from “ye great licentiousnes of youth” in that country. The last reason was the greatest:

Lastly, (and which was not least,) a great hope & inward zeall they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way therunto, for ye propagating & advancing ye gospell of ye kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of ye world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a work. William BradfordOf Plimoth Plantation, chap. 4²⁰

In July 1620 the younger and stronger part of the church left Leyden. Robinson stayed behind with the rest, meaning to follow. Before they parted he preached to them. His words are remembered in a form recorded years later by Edward Winslow, and Neal gives them:

If God reveal any thing to you, by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I am verily persuaded, the Lord has more truth yet to break forth out of his holy word. John Robinsonfarewell to the Pilgrims, 1620²¹

Robinson also urged them to “shake off, the name of Brownists; it is a mere nickname.”²² Then they went down to Delfshaven to board the Speedwell. Bradford wrote the words that gave them their name:

So they lefte that goodly & pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place near 12. years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, & looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to ye heavens, their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits. William BradfordOf Plimoth Plantation, chap. 7²³

After the Speedwell proved unseaworthy, 102 passengers sailed from Plymouth, England, in the Mayflower on September 6, 1620. Not all were members of the Leyden church. When they reached Cape Cod in November, Bradford writes, “they fell upon their knees & blessed ye God of heaven, who had brought them over ye vast & furious ocean.”²⁴ Before landing, the men signed the Mayflower Compact, which begins, “In ye name of God, Amen,” and binds them to “covenant & combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick” for the “glorie of God, and advancemente of ye Christian faith.”²⁵ The covenant that had made them a church at Scrooby now shaped their civil life as well.

Plymouth and Thanksgiving

The first winter killed half of them. Yet by the autumn of 1621 Bradford could write: “And thus they found the Lord to be with them in all their ways, and to blesse their outgoings & incomings, for which let his holy name have ye praise for ever, to all posteritie.”²⁶ Edward Winslow’s letter of December 11, 1621, tells how the harvest was celebrated. The governor sent men out fowling, “that so we might after a more special manner rejoice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labors.” Massasoit and about ninety of his men joined them for three days of feasting. Winslow added:

And although it be not always so plentiful, as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want, that we often wish you partakers of our plenty. Edward Winslowletter of December 11, 1621²⁷

That is the gathering Americans remember as the first Thanksgiving. Its roots, as Bradford insisted, run back through Leyden and Scrooby to the Reformation itself. The full story is told in this site’s Thanksgiving features.

Weighing the Separatists

The Separatists were not always easy saints. McBeth admits that “from today’s perspective, they look fussy and judgmental, condemning those who differed from them even on minute details, and all too ready to separate from one another as they had earlier separated from the Church of England.” Yet he also gives them their due:

The Separatists took the Bible seriously and determined to order their lives by its teachings. They insisted upon a church made up only of the redeemed, a “gathered church.” H. Leon McBethThe Baptist Heritage²⁸

The Puritans who stayed believed the Separatists had given up too soon on the church of their fathers. The Separatists believed the others had waited too long. Both sought the same thing: a church ordered by the Word of God, made up of people who had been changed by the grace of God. The Separatists paid for it with exile and blood. In the Pilgrims at Leyden we see them at their best, gentle, prayerful, and bound together in love, strangers and pilgrims on the earth who looked for a better country, that is, a heavenly one.

Puritans Next: A Thanksgiving Legacy