In 1606, in the obscure English village of Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, a little group of men, which included John Robinson, William Brewster, and William Bradford, had for some years been meeting together in Brewster's house for worship, and had formed themselves into an Independent church. Robinson was a graduate of Cambridge, and had been a Church of England clergyman in Norwich.[190] Brewster, after a short attendance at Cambridge, had become connected, in some capacity, with Davison, then Secretary of State, and had accompanied him to the Low Countries in 1585. When Davison fell from power, Brewster's career at court was ended, and at the time of the formation of the church in Scrooby, he had, for some years, been occupying the position of postmaster there, living in the old manor-house which had attracted the covetous eyes of James the First.[191] A spiritually minded man of some culture but of modest means, he was the most influential layman in the little congregation, which, for the most part, was composed of the untutored farmers and farm-hands of that remote rural district. With little or no education, without even that sharpening of wits which comes from mere contact in the more populous ways of life, they were, as their own historian has said, only such as had been “used to a plaine countrie life and the innocent trade of husbandry.”[192] That historian, William Bradford, was himself of yeoman stock, and a mere lad of sixteen or so, when the Scrooby church was formed.[193] Already one of the leaders in the practical affairs of the church when scarcely more than a lad, he developed into a man of sound judgment, as well as morals, and one whose counsel was to be invaluable to the little colony in the New World, the fortunes of which he was to share and chronicle. A student, and a writer of a singularly pure English style, he seems also to have made himself familiar with Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, if we may believe Cotton Mather's statement, which is, in part, borne out by other evidence.[194] Footnote 190: O. S. Davis, _John Robinson, the Pilgrim Pastor_ (Boston, 1903), pp. 62-74. _Cf._ also C. Burrage, _A Tercentenary Memorial_; Oxford, 1910; and W. H. Burgess, _The Pastor of the Pilgrims_; New York, 1920. Footnote 191: Bradford, _History of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. by C. Deane (Boston, 1861), pp. 409 _ff._; H. M. Dexter, _The England and Holland of the Pilgrims_ (Boston, 1905), pp. 216-320. Scrooby was a halting place on the great northern post-road, and the duties of “postmaster” were more varied and important then than now. Footnote 192: Bradford, _Plymouth_, p. 11; Dexter, _England and Holland_, pp. 379 _ff._ Footnote 193: J. Hunter, _The Founders of New Plymouth_ (London, 1854), pp. 101-15. Footnote 194: Cotton Mather, _Magnalia Christi Americana_ (ed. Hartford, 1855), vol. I, p. 113.