Robert Browne (1550s – 1633) was the founder of the Brownists, a common designation for early Separatists from the Church of England before 1620.
He was offered a lecturer position at St Bene't's Church, Cambridge possibly through Greenham, but his tenure there was short lived.
By 1581 he had attempted to set up a separate church in Norwich; he was arrested but released on the advice of William Cecil, his kinsman.
There they organised a church on what they conceived to be the New Testament model, but the community broke up within two years owing to internal dissensions.
His most important works, A Treatise of Reformation without Tarying for Anie, in which he asserted the right of the church to effect necessary reforms without the authorisation of the civil magistrate; and A Booke which sheweth the life and manners of all True Christians which set out the theory of congregational independency, were published at Middelburg in 1582.
[citation needed] He was much engaged in controversy with some of those who held his earlier separatist position and who now looked upon him as a renegade.
In particular he several times replied to John Greenwood and Henry Barrowe; one of his replies, entitled A Reproofe of certaine schismatical persons and their doctrine touching the hearing and preaching of the word of God (1587–1588) sheds light upon the development of Browne's later views.