charged the duty of an historian better had he told us more. Two ministers he especially names as those who had the greatest influence in alienating men's minds from the church, and with less definiteness he speaks of others concerning whom a few particulars will be found hereafter. There are also others not named by him who are to be classed with the ministerial fathers of Basset-Lawe nonconformity.

The

person whom Bradford places first among the

John Smith.

ministers, who was a separatist himself, and who made others separatists, is JOHN SMITH, a name so general in England as almost to preclude the possibility of recovering any circumstance that can be said to belong to him without great chance of attributing to him what may belong to another. I add that I wish we had a person to deal with at this beginning of the nonconformist roll of ministers, on whom the mind could dwell in a more calm and discriminating approbation. Bradford's estimate of him is, that he was "a man of able gifts and a good preacher,"18 and in another of his writings, the interesting and instructive "Dialogue," that "he was an eminent man in his time, and a good preacher and of 18 Young, p. 22.

other good parts; but his inconstancy and unstable judgment, and being so suddenly carried away with things, did soon overthrow him."19 His residence was at Gainsborough on the Trent, where it divides Basset-Lawe from Lincolnshire. He collected there that other community of Separatists, of which Bradford speaks, an older church than that of Scrooby, and he first set the example of removing to Holland, which the church of Scrooby in a few years followed. 'He was some time pastor to a company of honest and godly men which came with him out of England and pitched at Amsterdam. He first fell into some errors about the scriptures; and so into some opposition to Mr. Johnson, who had been his tutor, and the church there."20 Poor Mr. Smith could be at peace under no system, and having a violence of temper and possibly a disposition to take an unfavourable view of the conduct of everybody about him, he was a trouble to

19 Young, p. 450.

20 Young, p. 450. Francis Johnson and Henry Ainsworth were two ministers, both university men and men of learning, who went very early into the way of separation, and flying to Holland from the persecution in England, established a separatist church at Amsterdam. This was in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. Smith would probably be an unwelcome intruder upon them.

every one, and perhaps in the highest measure to himself. Bradford proceeds, "But he was convinced of his errors by the pains and faithfulness of Mr. Johnson and Mr. Ainsworth, and revoked them: but afterwards was drawn away by some of the Dutch Anabaptists, who finding him a good scholar and unsettled, they easily misled the most of his people, and other of them scattered away. He lived not many years after, but died there of a consumption, to which he was inclined before he came out of England. His and his people's condition may be an object of pity for after times."21

But though Mr. Smith may be now regarded as an object of pity rather than of esteem, we cannot but regret that our information should be so confined respecting his birth, his education, entrance into the ministry, and his conduct generally while he remained in England, where he would be subject to some control from the authorities under which the Church of

England places its ministers. It appears in Mr.

Brook's account of him that he was a Master of Arts of the University of Cambridge, and we have seen that Francis Johnson, one of the earliest Separatists, was

21 Young, p. 451.

his tutor at Christ's College. In 1592 he was in London and imprisoned there for acts of nonconformity. He was for some time at Lincoln before he settled at Gainsborough. But I must content myself with referring for these and other particulars to Mr. Brook's valuable work and the authors cited by him in the margin. In the Appendix to this volume I may give a specimen of his writings illustrative of the spirit which he perhaps knew not that he was of. The writings of Crosby and Hanbury may also be consulted with advantage.

nard.

Another very zealous Puritan minister in these parts was RICHARD BERNARD, who had Richard Berthe misfortune to fall under the displeasure of Mr. Smith for not going to the same excess of riot in his nonconformity, and for this he pours the vials of his wrath upon him in terms which find no counterpart, it is to be hoped, in modern controversy. Bernard was a man of gentle and yet determined spirit; and so decided were his objections to the ceremonies, that he was silenced by the archbishop at Worksop, where he was the vicar. But he never went into the way of separation, though his preaching must have contributed to lead others to do so. Brad

ford's notice of him is very slight. He speaks of him only as one who had been "hotly persecuted by the prelates."22 I shall add a few dates and particulars, as of a man who has received less notice than he deserves at the hands of the dispensers of posthumous honours. He was born in 1566 or 1567, according to the inscription on his engraved portrait, which states that he was 74 at the time of his death, 1641. While very young he fell under the notice of two ladies, daughters of Sir Christopher Wray, lord chief justice of England, who were among the most eminent of those times for piety and Christian zeal. One of them was the wife successively of Godfrey Foljambe, Esquire; Sir William Bowes, of Walton, near Chesterfield; and of John, the good Lord Darcy of Aston. The other married Sir George Saint Paul, of Lincolnshire; and afterwards, the Earl of Warwick. They sent him to Christ's College, Cambridge, where it seems that he might be contemporary with Smith. They were probably in other respects his benefactors, since in the dedication of his first printed work he speaks of them as those to whom next to God and nature he owed all that he had.

22 Young, p. 422.