Brewster resided there one of the post towns on the great road from London to Berwick. Leland, who visited the place in 1541, gives this Barly topographical notices of Scrooby. account of it :-" In the meane townlet of Scrooby I marked two things-the parish church not big but very well builded; the second was a great manor place, standing within a moat, and longing to the Archbishop of York; builded in two courts, whereof the first is very ample and all builded of timber, saving the front of the house that is of brick, to the which ascenditur per gradus lapideos. The inner court building, as far as I marked, was of timber building, and was not in compass past the fourth part of the outer court." It had belonged to the see of York in the time of Domesday book. The archbishops not unfrequently resided here, it being favourably situated for the enjoyment of field-sports, an exercise in which bishops in the old time greatly delighted. Archbishop Savage in particular, we are expressly told by Godwin, often made this his place of residence for the purpose of hunting in Hatfield chase.10 Margaret, Queen of Scotland, daughter of King 9 Itinerary, vol. i, p. 36. 10 De Presulibus, vol. ii, p. 71. Henry VII, slept here on her way to Scotland, 12th June, 1503. When Wolsey was dismissed by his tyrannical master to his northern diocese he passed some weeks at Scrooby, and very pleasing is the picture which his faithful servant Cavendish has drawn of him as he then appeared, "ministering many deeds of charity and attending on Sundays at some parish church in the neighbourhood, hearing or saying mass himself and causing some of his chaplains to preach to the people: and that done he would dine at some honest man's house of that town, where should be distributed to the poor a great alms, as well of meat and drink, as of money to supply the want of sufficient meat, if the number of the poor did so exceed of necessity."11 A few years later King Henry VIII slept in this house for one night during his northern progress in 1541. A great change took place at Scrooby in the time of Archbishop Sandys, who was elevated to the see of York in 1576. He was a prelate worthy to be held in esteem on Great change produced there by Archbishop Sandys. many accounts, but it seems hard to justify his proceedings in respect of the temporalities of 11 Life of Wolsey, Singer's edition, 8vo, 1825. vol. i, p. 260. his sees. He was the first Protestant bishop who raised a powerful family out of the goods of the church, and this he did by granting leases of episcopal lands to his sons. Samuel had six, Miles five, Edwin four, Henry two, Thomas two, George two; as they are enumerated by Lord Burghley himself, in his own hand, in a manuscript now in the British Museum.1 Scrooby was the subject of one of the leases granted to Samuel his eldest son,13 and it must have been under him that the Brewsters held the manor. 12 Vol. 50 of the Lansdowne MSS. art. 34. 12 13 The archbishop's conduct in respect of this lease seems to require a special justification, for there exists a letter of his which is printed by Le Neve, p. 61, in which he excuses himself from granting a lease of it to the Queen, on the ground of the injury which would thereby be done to his see. He speaks of Scrooby as a usual residence of the archbishops, and says, that he himself had lived for four months together there and at Southwell; and that "the reserved rent for this newly-conceived lease is £40. by year, and yet the annual rent thereof to the bishop is, £170. by year; but this is a small loss to that which followeth. I am compelled by law to repair two fair houses standing upon these two manors (Southwell and Scrooby), by this lease, if it should pass, I am excluded out of both." He presses other arguments, and makes appear, that if such a lease were granted, the loss to the see would be £60,000. [query £6000 ?] at least; "too much, Most Gracious Sovereign, too much to pull from a bishoprick inferior to many others in revenue, but superior in charge and countenance." This letter was written on November 24th, 1582; and yet on the 20th of it But though Scrooby was the residence of William Brewster, the chief agent in this move ment, and his house was opened for wor ship and discipline to the persons who The private church collect ed from people around Scrooby. thought and acted with him, it is not to Scrooby only that we are to look for the persons composing the church, who were drawn from various places in December in the same year, he granted to his son Sir Samuel Sandys a lease of this manor of Scrooby for a rent of £65. 6s. 8d. It is probable that we have not sufficient information to enable us to form a proper estimate of the whole of the archbishop's conduct in this particular. But it is clear that it amounted in fact to a perpetual alienation of Scrooby from the see. The defence in these cases lies in the legal power which was understood to be vested in the bishops to grant these beneficial leases, and next that possessing such a power, there was no reason why they should not exercise it in favour of those of their own household as well as of strangers to them in blood. It is in fact the great question of Nepotism. But it ought to be added, that if there was a case in which such a proceeding could be considered as justified by the subsequent conduct of the youths in whose favour the power was exercised, it is the case of the Sandys family in which we have Sir Edwin one of the most sensible writers on ecclesiastical affairs, and George the traveller and religious poet. Sir Edwin Sandys in the course of events was, as we shall see, a principal agent in obtaining a legal permission for the Scrooby people to remove themselves to America. He sympathized with the more cultivated and rational part of them in most of their opinions, and we see in what I have now stated how there would arise a private acquaintanceship between the Sandys' and the Brewsters. the surrounding country. The vicinity of Scrooby was in those times, and is now, an agricultural district; having a few villages scattered about, each with its church and perhaps an esquire's General character of the country. seat; but the population was for the most part employed in husbandry, an occupation little congenial to the growth of extreme opinions in either religion or politics, or of voluntary sacrifices to a severe estimate of duty or a supposed call of conscience. The very natural features of the country may be said to have been unpropitious to the production of persons such as those who formed the emigration; for it is usually in hilly countries not in plains that the sense of religious duty takes deepest root and produces the most remarkable fruits, or where men are collected in large masses, as in cities. or great commercial towns. There had indeed been. an unusual number of religious houses surrounding Scrooby in the times before the Reformation. Almost all the more conspicuous of the religious for the number orders had here a representative; for there were Cistercians at Rufford, Gilbertines Remarkable of religious houses before the Reformation. at Mattersey, Carthusians in the Isle of Axholm, Benedictines at Blythe, Benedictine ladies at |