s truth.

The Separatists organized themselves into small religious groups, as
independent communities or companies of Christians, covenanted with God
and keeping the Divine Law in a Holy Communion. They consisted in the
main of men and women in the humbler walks of life--artisans, tenant
farmers, with some middle-class gentry. Sufficient to themselves and
knit together in the fashion of a gild or brotherhood, they believed in
a church system of the simplest form and followed the Bible, Old and New
Testaments alike, as the guide of their lives. Desiring to withdraw from
the world as it was that they might commune together in direct relations
with God, they accepted persecution as the test of their faith and
welcomed hardship, banishment, and even death as proofs of righteousness
and truth. Convinced of the scriptural soundness of what they believed
and what they practised, and confident of salvation through unyielding
submission to God's will as they interpreted it, they became conspicuous
because of their radical thought and peculiar forms of worship, and
inevitably drew upon themselves the attention of the authorities, both
secular and ecclesiastical.

The leading centers of Separatism were in London and Norfolk, but the
seat of the little congregation that eventually led the way across the
sea to New England was in Scrooby in Nottinghamshire. There--in Scrooby
manor-house, where William Brewster, the father, was receiver and
bailiff, and his son, the future elder of the Plymouth colony, was
acting postmaster; where Richard Clayton preached and John Robinson
prayed; and where the youthful William Bradford was one of its
members--there was gathered a small Separatist congregation composed of
humble folk of Nottinghamshire and adjoining counties. They were soon
discovered worshiping in the manor-house chapel, by the ecclesiastical
authorities of Yorkshire, and for more than a year were subjected to
persecution, some being "taken and clapt up in prison," others having
"their houses besett and watcht night and day and hardly escaped their
hands." At length they determined to leave England for Holland. During
1607 and 1608 they escaped secretly, some at one time, some at another,
all with great loss and difficulty, until by the August of the latter
year there were gathered at Amsterdam more than a hundred men, women,
and children, "armed with faith and patience."

But Amsterdam proved a disappointing refuge. And in 1609