Scrooby Congregation
The Scrooby Congregation was an English Protestant separatist church near Scrooby, on the outskirts of Bawtry, a small market town at the border of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. In 1607/1608 the congregation emigrated to the Netherlands in search of the freedom to worship without conforming to the Church of England. They founded the "English separatist church at Leiden", one of several English separatist groups in the Dutch Republic at the time.
In Scrooby
Richard Clyfton was rector of All Saints' Church, Babworth, near Retford, from 1586. He lost his position as rector of Babworth through deprivation in 1605 under suspicion of nonconformity. Suspended, he continued to preach at Bawtry, near Scrooby though over the county boundary in Yorkshire. From 1606 the congregation around Clyfton met in the house of William Brewster. This manor house has been identified as on the site of the former Scrooby Palace of the archbishops of York, though much of the older building had been demolished by then. In 1607 Clyfton was excommunicated.John Robinson from Sturton le Steeple, also in northern Nottinghamshire, had lost his pulpit for his views and returned home by about the end of 1604; he made contact with Dissenters in Gainsborough, just over the eastern county boundary in Lincolnshire, as well as Scrooby. John Smyth became the minister of the Gainsborough Dissenters. In this way the two separatist churches were drawn together, with Robinson assuming authority in the Scrooby congregation alongside Clyfton after a process of ordination.
Members of the congregation included William Bradford, William Brewster and his wife Mary Brewster.