Scrooby and equally quiet. It contains a cottage in which, according to a tradition generally believed to possess some probability, William Bradford, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, was born, and it is a matter of record that he was baptized by Rev. Henry Fletcher on March 19, 1589, in its quaint little church, St. Helen's. Here he doubtless worshiped during his boyhood. This church, too, has been modernized somewhat within, but its low, rough buttressed walls of stone, its tiny belfry, its narrow windows with their diamond-shaped panes, its oak chancel rail, the Norman arch of its porch with its "zigzag and beak" ornamentation and its rude carving of a dragon, and the rough stone benches on either side of the porch, must be essentially as they have been from the first.

These are but few and disconnected links to bind the present to the past. Yet, when it is remembered that except by the building of the railroad - the

region has undergone almost no change, that the fields and meadows lie substantially as they always have lain, that the courses of the highroad and most of the crossroads are essentially unaltered, that the tranquil waters of the Idle and the Ryton flowed formerly just where they flow to-day, and that the same shadowy hills bounded the horizon to the east and similar stretches of woodland to the west, it is easy to appreciate quite well how these scenes must have appeared to the familiar eyes of Brewster, Bradford, Robinson, and the others who helped to form the Pilgrim church.

CHAPTER VI.

WILLIAM BREWSTER AND

WILLIAM BRADFORD.

T is a common belief that most of the

IT

Pilgrims who settled at Plymouth were from Scrooby or its vicinity originally. But some of the original emigrants from Scrooby never reached America, and the Plymouth colony included many who joined the Pilgrims in Holland, from different parts of England, as well as others who united with them first in England on their way hither. It is remarkable and to be regretted that so little is known of the Pilgrims personally, especially of the members of the Scrooby church. But fortunately something is recorded about several concerning whom information is most desirable.

One of these is William Brewster.1