Romsey & District The Voyage of the Mayflower from Southampton, August 1620 Researched and written by Chris Amery for the Architecture and Local History Group Background In the early years of the 16th century, Pope Leo X wanted money to rebuild St Peter’s Basilica. He tried to raise it by an aggressive drive to sell indulgences (i.e. forgiveness of sins and immediate entry to Heaven on death) to rich and poor alike. In 1517 the scholar and Augustinian monk Martin Luther, of Wittenberg in Germany, formally protested against what he saw as corruption, by (as the probably apocryphal story goes) nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the church there. With astonishing speed the resulting ‘Reformation’ spread across Europe. Protestantism was born, with its primary emphasis on personal faith (rather than adherence to an institutional structure) as the only route to salvation. Just 17 turbulent years later, the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, establishing Henry VIII as the head of the Church of England. The next few years saw a new orthodoxy established and embedded via liturgy, the Book of Common Prayer, Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible, a new formulation of the Ten Commandments, dissolution of the monasteries, and all the accoutrements of an official national Church with Bishops, the priesthood, tithes, etc. And the next few decades, with the reigns of Elizabeth and then the Catholic Mary, saw the struggle between this new Church and Rome end decisively in favour of the former. The Church of England became the Established Church.
Against a New Orthodoxy Even among the reformers, not everyone was happy. ‘Revolutions devour their own children’. Protestants who listened to Luther, or Zwingli in Zurich, or Calvin in Geneva, or John Knox in Scotland, soon chafed at any sort of new orthodoxy that, as they saw it, simply replaced Rome with a lookalike. Doctrinal or liturgical differences between reformed church adherents became cause for trouble and schism. Bishops were a particular stumbling block. Splits and splinters were everywhere.
Reform in England It is against the above background that our story begins, with a popular movement towards freedom of religious belief during Queen Elizabeth I’s reign. The Separatists (i.e. ‘separate’ from the new state religion, the Church of England) wanted the freedom to worship God according to their own interpretation of Scripture, without bishops or in some cases even priests to stand between them and their God. Cambridge University was a hotbed of Separatism towards the end of the 16th century. Many of the leading characters in this tale studied and formed their passionate religious views there, influenced by the charismatic leader Robert ‘Troublechurch’ Browne.
Men of Conscience William Brewster was the son of the postmaster of Scrooby, on the Lincolnshire / Yorkshire border. Living in Scrooby Manor House and administering the Archbishop of York’s estates there, the Brewsters were in touch with all the nation’s official news as it sped along the Great North Road, England’s main communications artery. An intelligent and perceptive man, Brewster studied at Cambridge and became one of Troublechurch Browne’s followers. Browne fled to Holland in 1578 and thirty years later his congregation welcomed Brewster and other fugitives whose story is told here.