CHAPTER VIII.

OTHER SCROOBY PILGRIMS AND THE

DECISION TO EMIGRATE.

A

LLUSIONS exist to a few others

who probably were members of the Scrooby company, and in the lamentable absence of full information they deserve mention. Hunter states that Robert Rochester and Richard Jackson,1 from Scrooby, belonged to the Gainsborough church and probably they helped to form that at Scrooby. At any rate, they were condemned with Brewster in August, 1608, by the Commissioners of Causes Ecclesiastical for not obeying a summons to appear at the Collegiate Church, Southwell, and the three were fined £20 apiece.2 Elizabeth Neal is likely to have been another, for the Leyden records - which declare her betrothal to William Buck

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ram on November 30, 1611, and their marriage on December 17 of the same year- also note that she was from Scrooby. Edward Southworth, who, according to Hunter, was from Basset Lawe, the "hundred," or civil district, which included Scrooby, apparently was a Pilgrim who accompanied the others to Leyden and died there, his widow Alice (Carpenter) later, at Plymouth, Mass., becoming the second wife of William Bradford.

Francis Jessop also, whose estate was in Tilne, and who was of "a wealthy and considerable family," probably was one of the Scrooby church. He had been married to Frances White in Worksop near by on January 24, 1605, and was admitted to citizenship in Leyden on May 5, 1625. But neither he nor any other of those just mentioned, except Mrs. Southworth, came to America. Doubtless many others who were members of the Pilgrim body in Leyden had come from Scrooby or its vicinity, for it was a considerable company

"6

which fled from England. Bradford says that "a large companie of them purposed to get passage at Boston and it is recorded that the number of those who subsequently received permission to settle in Leyden, which evidently included most, if not nearly the whole, of the company from Scrooby, was "one hundred persons or thereabouts." 7 But it is now impossible to determine who the others were, excepting perhaps George Morton, and the evidence in his case is not complete.

A short distance northwest of Bawtry there had lived for some generations, at the least, a family named Morton. Hunter quotes Sir Egerton Brydges, as calling it one of "the historical families" of England. It had a fine estate, which now has dwindled to a large farm, but which still is so valuable that it changed hands in 1891 for $150,000. Back in Roman Catholic times one of this family endowed a little chapel and an almshouse for a few poor old women, which still stand close by

the entrance to the grounds of Bawtry Hall, yet actually in the next parish, and, although no longer in the hands of Roman Catholics, continue their useful services. The Leyden records state that on August 2, 1612, one George Morton, a merchant, who had come from York in England, was married to Juliana Carpenter. There is no absolute proof, but it probably is true that he was one of this family of Mortons and had grown up in the neighborhood of the Pilgrims in England, and that, after passing at York some time subsequent to their departure, he followed them to Leyden. There were other and humbler Mortons in or near Austerfield, and he may have been one of them, but he is known to have been a man of so much education and leadership that he is much more likely to have come of the superior stock. Moreover, just at this time one of its representatives certainly bore his name, and Hunter speaks of this one as "unaccounted for," which implies a large possi

bility of his identity with his Pilgrim namesake. At any rate, Morton became prominent among them in Holland and went to England several times in their interest. He aided in completing the arrangements for their voyage to America, and intended to accompany them in the Mayflower, but he remained for a time in England, where he wrote the introduction to and superintended the publication of the work describing their early American experiences, which, from his connection with it, came to be called Mourt's Relation. He finally followed them with his immediate family to Plymouth in 1623 in the Anne and died in less than a year thereafter, much respected and mourned.9 These few facts seem to be all hitherto ascertained about the Scrooby Pilgrims personally.

It is difficult to form a completely trustworthy estimate of their means, their social position, and the degrees of their culture from such meager data as we