John Robinson (pastor)

He became one of the early leaders of the English Separatists called Brownists, and is regarded (along with Robert Browne and Henry Barrow) as one of the founders of the Congregational Church.

Robinson was born at Sturton le Steeple in Nottinghamshire, England, between March and September 1576, this range of dates deduced by comparing two records at Leiden (Leyden), Netherlands, that give his age at the time of the event.

[1] Following the attainment of his Master's degree, he obtained two positions at Corpus: Praelector Graecus, a lectureship in Greek, and Decanus, a post involving student oversight.

Anyone who did not attend the services of the Church of England for forty days, and who attended private services “contrary to the laws and statutes of the realm and being thereof lawfully convicted shall be committed to prison, there to remain without bail mainprise until they shall confirm and yield themselves to same church.” When Richard Bancroft became Archbishop of Canterbury in December 1604 he required all ministers and preachers to subscribe to 141 canons, which included declarations that the Prayer Book and episcopacy were biblically sound, or be deprived.

[2] College fellows were prohibited from marrying so Robinson resigned his fellowship to wed Bridget White, on 15 February 1604 at St Mary's Church, Greasley in western Nottinghamshire.

Bridget was the daughter of Alexander and Eleanor (Smith) White, formerly prosperous yeoman farmers at Sturton le Steeple, who were deceased at the time of the wedding.

In August 1603, Robinson became associate pastor of St Andrew's Church in the commercial centre of Norwich, after he preached a sermon there denouncing episcopal courts.

[3] The city of Norwich had contacts on the continent with Holland and Flanders and had a considerable number of foreign workers and refugees.

He subsequently preached privately at various locations in northern Nottinghamshire, including in the Spring of 1605 at his home village of Sturton le Steeple.

Robinson wrestled with the question of leaving the Church of England, and travelled widely to consult with the most respected puritan authorities.

He respected their decision to stay, but also read Brownist books and felt their call to separate ‘as a burning fire shut up in my bones’.

[4] He took part in a conference on the subject in Coventry, in 1606, at the mansion of the puritan Isabel Bowes, with other including John Smyth, Richard Bernard and Thomas Helwys.

A large Brownist congregation, the Ancient Church, had moved to Amsterdam from London in 1593, led by Francis Johnson and Henry Ainsworth, and were able to worship as they chose.

The churches of Robinson and Smyth secretly packed their belongings, and set out on foot for the sixty mile journey to the port town of Boston, Lincolnshire.

The second attempt to flee to the Netherlands went wrong when the boat carrying the women and children got stuck in mud, horsemen came to seize the pilgrims, and the ship's captain fled, taking the men to Amsterdam alone.

When Smyth's church became Baptists though, in January 1609, Robinson and about 100 followers petitioned the City of Leiden for permission to resettle there by 1 May 1609, the latter date being the Dutch "moving day."

Some of the most important scholars of the day were on the faculty of the University of Leiden, and it attracted students from all over western Europe as well as England.

Around 1611 Robinson hosted a group of puritans in exile, including Henry Jacob, and was persuaded, unlike other Brownists, 'that it is permissible to pray privately with godly members of the false church'.

[8] In January 1611, Robinson, William Jepson, Henry Wood, and Robinson's sister-in-law Jane White, signed a contract to purchase for 8,000 guilders property called the "Groene Poort" or Green Gate near the Pieterskerk (St Peter's Church) and within short walking distance of the University of Leiden.

In 1617, Robinson's church started a secret printing operation, which included books such as Perth Assembly by David Calderwood which so incensed James I it provoked an international manhunt for the author and printer.

Calvinists, on the other hand, which was the basis of the state's Dutch Reformed Church, maintained that God is sovereign in the areas of redemption and regeneration.

Robert Parker (1616), Apologia Brownistarum (1619), A Defence of the Doctrine propounded by the Synod of Dort (1624), Observations Divine and Morall (1625), and his more tolerant A Treatise on the Lawfulness of Hearing Ministers in the Church of England (1624; published after his death in 1634).

Of the minority group that emigrated, Robinson's brother-in-law, John Carver, was appointed governor and William Brewster, as ruling elder.

Before Carver and his group left Leiden, a solemn service was held, at which Robinson chose Ezra 8:21 as his text: Then I proclaimed a fast there, at the river of Ahava, that we might afflict ourselves before our God, to seek of him a right way for us, and for our little ones, and for all our substance.

There was no daughter named Ann born at Norwich in 1605 as this purported child was misidentified by Burgess, Dexter and Sumner in both England and in Leiden.

It is inscribed: “On this spot, lived, taught, and died John Robinson, 1611–1625.”On 24 July 1891 under the auspices of the National Council of the Congregational Churches of the United States, a bronze marker in his memory was placed on the wall of the Pieterskerk.

It is inscribed: The John Robinson Memorial Church in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, was dedicated in 1897; the cornerstone had been laid by Thomas F. Bayard, US Ambassador.