At the north end of the village the house still stands which tradition claims as our Bradford's birthplace. It is of substantial brick, exceedingly rare in his day and a sign of social distinction. Many houses of the time were quite attractive in appearance with their red roofs, green shutters and yellow doorsteps. This is a ruddy cottage from fluted tiling down to the grass, and sufficiently large to comprise two tenements now. The boy's grandfather William and maternal grandfather John Hanson were the only mentioned owners of property in their small town in 1575, and he inherited in time a good patrimony. His father William died in 1591, his mother Alice soon after, and the paternal grandfather, in whose care he was left, expired not until January of 1596, the only ancestor the third William would be likely to remember. Then the simple life and talk of the farm ceased, on the part of those who would converse with the lad on their common interests and show the most of natural affection toward him. The charge over his life by his uncles Thomas and Robert was one of legal imposition rather than a matter of love. Robert naturally wished him to be a farmer, but permitted him to study when he proved not very rugged at first. Before he was twelve, an illness of long continuance coming upon him, youthful intelligence and spiritual sensitiveness were developed in him untroubled by temptations more liable in physical vigor. Denied the warmth of family affection, and for a season the wholesome sports of youth, while naturally made more serious also as an orphan, the boy delighted in the contemplation of religious truth, particularly in Bible study; and this became with him a lifelong habit. Over the line in Nottinghamshire a few miles away, lay another small town, Scrooby, where one William Brewster was postmaster, well qualified as a collegiate and public official, to teach history and civil government. He occupied an ancient manor and commodious hostelry which royalty had twice coveted. Within its spacious halls were wont to gather a few earnest souls who were discontented with the empty formalism so common in religious profession at that time, and they were restive under the super-abundant authority of the state in church matters. They insisted on freedom of the individual conscience, from either civil or ecclesiastical domination, and were also convinced that genuine Christianity called for a Christlike life. This was nothing less than Puritanism, which as a term was originally coined by its foes in contempt, but later became a name of honor and glory. Though long in preparing, since Wycliffe gave to the English people the Holy Scriptures in their own familiar speech, this movement was only now coming to its full fruition; and the group of earnest worshipers in Scrooby, who had first organized at Gainsboro in 1602, composed the earliest Puritan church to stand and prosper, others following in a multitude as the cause gained momentum.