OLD BROWNISTS:--By this name may be called certain adherents of that vehement Independency, more extreme than mere Congregationalism, which had been propagated in Elizabeth's reign by Robert Brown himself. Brown's writings, we learn from Baillie, had totally disappeared in England; so that the so-called _Brownists_ can hardly have been his direct disciples, but must have been persons who had arrived at some of his opinions over again for themselves. Briefly, without being Baptists, they were more violent Separatists, more fierce in their rejection of the discipline, worship, and ordination of the Church of England than the Independents proper. Henry Burton, minister of Friday Street church, now between fifty and sixty years of age, was one of the chief of them, and his _Protestation Protested_ (Vol. II. 591-2) may be regarded as a manifesto of their views. Even the Independents of the Assembly disowned these views. Mr. Nye had said of the book that "there was in that book gross Brownism which he nor his brethren no way agreed with him in;" and Edwards had heard stories of queer goings-on in Mr. Burton's church, and his quarrel with "a butcher and some others of his church" about prophesying. Among the Brownists, besides Burton, Edwards names prominently "Katherine Chidley, an old Brownist, and her son, a young Brownist, a pragmatical fellow," who preached in London, and occasionally went on circuit into the country. Edwards characterizes Mrs. Chidley as "a brazen-faced audacious old woman;" but we know the motive. He had not forgotten the thrashing in print he had received from Mrs. Chidley in 1641 (Vol. II. 595). [Footnote: Paget's _Heresiography_, pp. 55-82 (a great deal about the Brownists; but with next to no real information); Edwards's _Gangræna_, Part I. pp. 62-64 and Part III. 242-248 (gossip about Burton); and Part III. 170, 171 (about Chidley); Baillie's Letters, II. 184 and 192; Hanbury's Historical Memorials, II. 108 _et seq._]