The registry of the Austerfield church records also the baptism of George Morton, February 12, 1598. An attempt has been made to identify him with the father of Nathaniel Morton, the secretary of Plymouth Colony, who came to New England in the _Ann_, in 1623. The discovery of his marriage record in Leyden has been made, however, by Henry C. Murphy, late United States Minister at the Hague, in which he is described as “George Morton, of York, in England, merchant.” It is probable that the Southworths and Carpenters were members of the Scrooby church, and the probability is re-enforced by the tradition that there had been an attachment between Bradford and his wife Alice (Carpenter) Southworth before Bradford left England. The tradition adds that her parents were opposed to the union on the ground of inequality of position, and she married Southworth. Bradford heard in America that she was a widow, and after the death of his first wife proposed anew by a letter, recently, if not now, in existence, and after accepting his proposal, she came in the _Ann_ in 1623, and was married. The baptism of William Butten, son of Robert Butten, is also recorded in the Austerfield registry, under date of September 12, 1589, and that of William, son of William Wright, under date of March 10, 1589. Butten was probably the servant of Samuel Fuller, who started in the _Mayflower_, and was drowned on the passage. Wright was doubtless the same William Wright who was among the passengers in the _Fortune_ in 1621, and both Butten and Wright, it is safe to presume, were members of the Scrooby church. But this church was not to remain long unmolested. James the First had come to the throne in 1603. Whitgift, as Bacon calls him, “the conscientious and therefore relentless persecutor of Nonconformity,” had closed his career almost simultaneously with Elizabeth, and had been followed by Bancroft, whose intolerant spirit was neither guided nor regulated by conscientiousness or timidity. Smith had already planted himself with his congregation in Amsterdam, the London church had gone, and the free land of Holland was sprinkled with scattered exiles.