In 1567 the first congregation of this sort, consisting of about a hundred persons assembled in a hall in Anchor Lane in London, was forcibly broken up and thirty-one of the number were sent to jail and kept there for nearly a year. By 1576 the Separatists had come to be recognized as a sect, under the lead of Robert Brown, a man of high social position, related to the great Lord Burleigh. Brown fled to Holland, where he preached to a congregation of English exiles, and wrote books which were smuggled into England and privately circulated there, much to the disgust, not only of the queen, but of all parties, Puritans as well as High Churchmen. The great majority of Puritans, whose aim was not to leave the church, but to stay in it and control it, looked with dread and disapproval upon these extremists who seemed likely to endanger their success by forcing them into deadly opposition to the crown. Just as in the years which ushered in our late Civil War, the opponents of the Republicans sought to throw discredit upon them by confusing them with the little sect of Abolitionists; and just as the Republicans, in resenting the imputation, went so far as to frown upon the Abolitionists, so that in December, 1860, men who had just voted for Mr. Lincoln were ready to join in breaking up "John Brown meetings" in Boston; so it was with religious parties in the reign of Elizabeth. The opponents of the Puritans pointed to the Separatists, and cried, "See whither your anarchical doctrines are leading!" and in their eagerness to clear themselves of this insinuation, the leading Puritans were as severe upon the Separatists as anybody. It is worthy of note that in both instances the imputation, so warmly resented, was true. Under the pressure of actual hostilities the Republicans did become Abolitionists, and in like manner, when in England it came to downright warfare the Puritans became Separatists. But meanwhile it fared ill with the little sect which everybody hated and despised. Their meetings were broken up by mobs. In an old pamphlet describing a "tumult in Fleet Street, raised by the disorderly preachment, pratings, and prattlings of a swarm of Separatists," one reads such sentences as the following: "At length they catcht one of them alone, but they kickt him so vehemently as if they meant to beat him into a jelly. It is ambiguous whether they have kil'd him or no, but for a certainty they did knock him about as if they meant to pull him to pieces. I confesse it had been no matter if they had beaten the whole tribe in the like manner." For their leaders the penalty was more serious. The denial of the queen's ecclesiastical supremacy could be treated as high treason, and two of Brown's friends, convicted of circulating his books, were sent to the gallows. In spite of these dangers Brown returned to England in 1585. William the Silent had lately been murdered, and heresy in Holland was not yet safe from the long arm of the Spaniard.