At last the pilgrims said farewell to a town crowded with precious memories and entrained for Lincoln, where their welcome by the Free Churches and Cathedral authorities was in keeping with that extended to them everywhere on their route. At Lincoln they received an address. "We feel," said the Nonconformists there, "that in welcoming you to this county of ours, we are welcoming you back to your ancestral home, for Lincolnshire people never forget that their county is inseparably associated with the history of the Pilgrim Church. We claim the great John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrim church, as our own, and the neighbouring town of Gainsborough boasts of having been for some time the church's home. We are proud of the men, of the testimony they bore, of the work they did. All England is debtor to the men of the Pilgrim Church for their heroic witness in behalf of a pure and Scriptural faith and freedom of conscience worship." And "the neighbouring town of Gainsborough," home of the Pilgrim Church, gave itself up at this time to a ceremonial stone-laying of the Robinson Memorial Church, a function which the American pilgrims attended, together with the Honourable T. F. Bayard, the United States Ambassador, who made a journey into Lincolnshire to lay this stone, and Congregationalists gathered from all parts. [Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_ ROBINSON MEMORIAL CHURCH, GAINSBOROUGH _The corner-stone of the church was laid by Mr. Bayard in June, 1896_]