When the youth should have gone to the University of Cambridge, the silencing of many Puritan ministers for non-compliance with the ceremonies of the Church of England induced the father to take his son into his own business.
Sir Henry Marten moved to sue the king to issue a writ de hæretico comburendo, but William Laud interposed.
[2] Returning to Norwich in 1635, Brabourne probably resumed his ministry; but he got some property on the death of a brother, and thenceforth gave up preaching.
In 1654 he writes in his reply to John Collinges, formerly of St. Saviour's, then of St. Stephen's, Norwich, 'I have left the pulpit to you for many years past, and I think I may promise you never to come in it again.'
[2] After the Restoration, Brabourne put out pamphlets rejoicing in liberty of conscience, and defending the royal supremacy in ecclesiastical matters.
Brabourne left it to every man's conscience whether he will keep the sabbath or the Lord's day, but decided that those who prefer the former are on the safe side.
The document is called a recantation, but when safe from the clutches of the court, Brabourne explained that all he had actually retracted was the word "necessarily".
He had affirmed "that Saturday ought necessarily to be our sabbath"; this he admitted to be a "rash and presumptuous error", for his opinion, though true, was not 'a necessary truth.
He had been bolt-poake, weaver, hosier, maltster (in St. Augustine's parish), and was now "a nonsensical scribbler", who was forced to publish his books at his own expense.
While this dispute with Collings was going on, Brabourne brought out an Answer to the Sabbatum Redivivum, &c., of Daniel Cawdrey, rector of Great Billing, Northamptonshire.