Meanwhile, Brewster, nourished in that old nest of Archbishops, had imbibed distinctly anti-episcopal ideas, probably in Holland. His activities in founding the Separatist Church led to his resignation of the postmaster’s office in 1607. In that old Manor House where he lived assembled others of his ways of thought: the Revd. Mr. Clifton, rector of Babworth, near Retford, William Bradford of Austerfield, John Smyth, and other shining lights and painful and austere persons. William Bradford records how the congregation “met ordinarily at William Brewster’s house on the Lord’s Day; and with great love he entertained them when they came, making provision for them, to his great charge.” They would not attend services at the parish church; an offence then punishable by fine and imprisonment, and thus, persecuted, there was no ultimate course but to leave the country: itself not for some time permitted. “They were,” wrote William Bradford, “hunted and persecuted on every side. Some were taken and clapt up in prison, others had their houses beset and watched, night and day, and hardly escaped their hands; and the most were fain to fly and leave their houses and habitations and the means of their livelihood.” The Manor Farm, where these early developments of the Puritan movement took place, and where the Brewsters lived, remains in part, and bears an explanatory bronze tablet placed there by the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, Massachusetts. And there, too, near the road, stands Scrooby church, rather dilapidated, with its stone spire, much the same as ever. [Picture: The Stables, Scrooby Manor House] Yorkshire, upon which we have now entered, is the largest shire or county in England. In one way it seems almost incredibly large, for it has more acres than there are letters (not words) in the Bible. There are 3,882,851 acres in Yorkshire, and 3,566,482 letters in the Bible. Yorkshire does not reveal its full beauty to the traveller along this road. Its abbeys and waterfalls, its river-gorges and romantic valleys, belong rather to the by-ways. Picturesqueness and romance spelt discomfort, and the uneventful road was the one the travellers of old preferred. Thus it is that those who pursue this route to the North, and know nothing else of Yorkshire, might deny this huge county, more than twice the size of Lincolnshire, the next largest, that variety and beauty which, in fact, we know it to possess. For eighty miles the Great North Road goes through Yorkshire with scarce a hill worthy the name, although towards the north the Hambleton Hills, away to the east, give the views from the road a sullen grandeur.