notice. Probably their condemnation appeared, even to their companions and to the martyrs themselves, to be due, and was due, to the general fact rather than to the particular method of their dissent from the State Church. Nevertheless they were genuine Congregationalist martyrs, of whom all modern members of that branch of Christ's Church, who are their spiritual descendants and who bear their likeness more or less closely, never should cease to be tenderly proud. How it would have comforted them if they could have foreseen that the utterly improbable would become actual, that the truths for which they died would find wide and loyal acceptance among men, and that, three centuries later, the anniversaries of the martyrdom of some of them would be celebrated with reverent affection and honor by English Congregationalists in the very London and on the same spot where they yielded up their lives!

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CHAPTER V.

SCROOBY AND AUSTERFIELD.

WE

E now are prepared to consider the Pilgrims themselves, and it will be pleasant to form some idea at this point of the region which was the English home of many among them. It has been said already that in 1602 there was a Congregational church in Gainsborough-uponTrent, in Lincolnshire. John Smyth was its pastor. In 1606,' doubtless because of persecution, its majority headed by Mr. Smyth emigrated to Amsterdam. Some and probably most of the remainder lived in or near to Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, a few miles to the westward, the village now famous as the place where the Pilgrim movement first took definite form. The modern Scrooby, identical in site with the ancient, lies on the Great North

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ern Railroad about a hundred and fifty miles nearly north of London, fifty miles west from the North Sea near Grimsby, and ninety miles east from Liverpool. It is perhaps eight or ten miles south of Doncaster. The old turnpike road from London to York and Scotland passes through it. Probably its population is not over one hundred and fifty persons at present and it hardly can have been much larger three centuries ago.

Looking west from the platform of the railway station, one sees, not more than a thousand feet distant, a cluster of low cottages, chiefly of brick, with tiled or thatched roofs, and shaded by overhanging elms. Hedges border most of the narrow lanes and in the midst of the cottages lies the ancient graveyard in which stands the parish church, St. Wilfred's. This has been restored and also enlarged by adding an aisle upon the south side since the time of the Pilgrims, but its graceful spire remains the same as then. In the

eastern distance low hills form the horizon, and woods limit the view more narrowly towards the west. The neighborhood, although not level, hardly undulates enough to be called hilly, and consists of cultivated fields or green meadows, separated by hedges and dotted with elms, which shade the grazing cattle. It is a quiet farming region, not picturesque but possessing in a high degree that charm of peacefulness so characteristic of much English scenery.

Walking up the lane from the railway to the village, one sees at once upon his right hand an irregular meadow containing perhaps six acres and separated from the lane by a fence and a ditch. Beyond the meadow is a farmhouse, long and narrow, extending north and south, having two stories and an attic, with walls partly of brick and partly of rubble or rough plaster of some kind, and with low outbuildings on the east side and a garden, barnyards, and barns and sheds on the west.

The whole estate doubtless is much smaller

1867 it still

One of its

than it was formerly, but in included about seventy acres. most conspicuous features at present is a short row of Lombardy poplars along the wall on the brink of the Ryton, the little river which forms the northern border of the garden. This house stands in part upon the site of the ancient manor-house. To reach it one must pass around through the edge of the village and across the meadow. At first glance it exhibits no appearance of noteworthy antiquity, but examination discovers in its western wall, near the southern end on the outside, a wide, high arch, sunken in the surface of the building, and a deep and peculiar niche, neither of which has any modern use or meaning. The wall of this part of the house is very thick, like those customarily built in great houses in England three or four hundred years ago, and the shape and arrangement of some rooms in this portion of the structure testify to their great age.