"He

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. 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.

The work to which this dedication is prefixed is not such a work as we should expect to find as the first-fruits of a young Puritan minister's studies, for it is a translation of the plays of Terence, a small quarto, printed by John Legate, at Cambridge, in 1598. We collect from it that Bernard was then residing at Epworth, in the Isle of Axholm, a place not far distant from Scrooby, from whence issued a family which originated a more formidable separation from the Church than that in which Bernard was an agent. Not long after the publication of this volume he was removed from Epworth, having been presented by Richard Whalley to the vicarage of Worksop, where he received institution on the 19th of June, 1601.

Here he was for several years the very zealous minister, carrying to an extreme length the Puritan scruples, going to the very verge of separation; and joining himself even to those of his Puritan brethren, who thought themselves qualified to go through the work of exorcism. At length when Smith, and doubtless other persons, when they saw him silenced by the archbishop, were expecting that he would break from all church authority, he began to consider more fully the question of conformity; and when this consideration issued in