The little church of Non-Conformists at Scrooby had Richard Clifton for pastor and John Robinson for teacher. William Brewster, who subsequently attained to much distinction as pastor of the Puritan church in Plymouth, New England, was then a private member of the church. This little band of christians decided to emigrate in a body to Holland that they might there worship God in freedom. It was a great trial to these christians to break away from their country, their homes, and their employments, to seek exile in a land of strangers. To add to their embarrassments cruel laws were passed forbidding the emigration of any of the Non-Conformists or Puritans as they began to be called. Bands of armed men vigilantly guarded all the seaports. Governor Bradford, who shared conspicuously in these sufferings, wrote: “They could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side. Some were taken and clapped up in prison. Others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped capture. The most were fain to fly and leave their houses and habitations and the means of their livelihood. Yet seeing themselves thus molested, by a joint consent they resolved to go into the Low Countries where they heard was freedom of religion for all men; as also that sundry persons from London, and other parts of the land, had been exiled and persecuted for the same cause, and were gone thither, and lived at Amsterdam and other places of the land. “Being thus constrained to leave their native soil and country, their lands and living, and all their friends and familiar acquaintance, it was much, and thought marvellous by many. But to go into a country they knew not except by hearsay, where they must learn a new language, and get their livings they knew not how, it being an expensive place and subject to the miseries of war, it was by many thought an adventure almost desperate, a case intolerable, and a misery worse than death. Especially seeing they were not acquainted with trades or traffic, by which the country doth subsist, but had been only used to a plain country life and the innocent trade of husbandry. “But these things did not dismay them, though they did at times trouble them, for their desires were set on the ways of God and to enjoy his ordinances. But they rested on His providence and knew whom they had believed. Yet this was not all; for though they could not stay, yet were they not suffered to go; but the ports and havens were shut against them; so as they were fain to seek secret means of conveyance, and to bribe and fee the mariners, and give extraordinary rates for their passages. And yet they were often betrayed, many of them, and both they and their goods intercepted and surprised, and thereby put to great trouble.”