These words made a profound sensation in England, as well they might, for they heralded the struggle which within half a century was to deliver up James's son to the executioner. The Parliament of 1604 met in angrier mood than any Parliament which had assembled at Westminster since the dethronement of Richard II. Among the churches non-conformity began more decidedly to assume the form of secession. The key-note of the conflict was struck at Scrooby. Staunch Puritan as he was, Brewster had not hitherto favoured the extreme measures of the Separatists. Now he withdrew from the church, and gathered together a company of men and women who met on Sundays for divine service in his own drawing-room at Scrooby Manor. In organizing this independent Congregationalist society, Brewster was powerfully aided by John Robinson, a native of Lincolnshire. Robinson was then thirty years of age, and had taken his master's degree at Cambridge in 1600. He was a man of great learning and rare sweetness of temper, and was moreover distinguished for a broad and tolerant habit of mind too seldom found among the Puritans of that day. Friendly and unfriendly writers alike bear witness to his spirit of Christian charity and the comparatively slight value which he attached to orthodoxy in points of doctrine; and we can hardly be wrong in supposing that the comparatively tolerant behaviour of the Plymouth colonists, whereby they were contrasted with the settlers of Massachusetts, was in some measure due to the abiding influence of the teachings of this admirable man. Another important member of the Scrooby congregation was William Bradford, of the neighbouring village of Austerfield, then a lad of seventeen years, but already remarkable for maturity of intelligence and weight of character. Afterward governor of Plymouth for nearly thirty years, he became the historian of his colony; and to his picturesque chronicle, written in pure and vigorous English, we are indebted for most that we know of the migration that started from Scrooby and ended in Plymouth. [Sidenote: The congregation of Separatists at Scrooby]