Standing in a medieval churchyard in the 21st century, I found 17th-century ecclesiastical contentions intriguing. Intellectual revolution and liberalization marked the age. Elizabeth instituted reforms in the church, but some people wanted to go further and abolish clerical vestments and caps, bowing to the name of Jesus, using the sign of the cross in baptisms, and the church hierarchy of archbishops and bishops. Clergy who agreed with these points became known as Non-Conformists, and those who wanted to separate Church and State were known as Separatists.

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When King James, a Catholic, ascended the English throne in 1603, he declared Non-Comformists and Separatists seditious and made participation in Separatist worship services punishable by loss of livelihood, which in 17th-century England meant destitution and imprisonment.

The Conformists denounced Richard Clyfton in 1604. Deprived of his means of making a living, he went to live with Brewster at Scrooby Manor House where they formed their own clandestine congregation, including William Bradford from Austerfield and John Robinson from nearby Sturton-le-Steeple. Many in Robinson's family later sailed on the Mayflower.

Brewster's Manor House looked like nearby Gainsborough Old Hall. Today only a dovecote and an ivy-clad wing dating from 1750 remain. The house, now a private residence, is visible from Railway Road, across the dry fishponds that once formed part of the manorial estate.

William Bradford was baptized a few miles from Scrooby in St. Helena's Church, Austerfield. It's the most architecturally interesting of the three Pilgrim churches. Visitors enter the church through a Norman-Saxon door, its lintel decorated with an ancient and inexplicable horse-headed serpent. Immediately through the door stands the stone, lead-lined baptismal font where Bradford was baptized in the winter of 1589-90. A beautiful stained glass window commemorates the 400th anniversary of this event. The window casts coloured light upon other memorabilia connected with Bradford, including his Governour's flag placed below the church's chancel arch.

The Scrooby Separatists had contact with a similar group in Gainsborough who enjoyed the secret protection of the Hickman family, owners of Gainsborough Old Hall. Crossing the Trent, I drove into Gainsborough. In the 17th century this thriving port town prospered from tariffs levied on the barges that carried goods down the Trent to Hull, and on the carts that paid tolls to cross the bridge. Some of this wealth accrued to the Hickman family.

Gainsborough Old Hall is a 500-year-old manor house, well worth visiting for its Pilgrim connections and many other wonderful historical insights. Colourful heraldic flags decorate its timber-framed Great Hall. Here John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, preached, and Richard III and Henry VIII banqueted. What sumptuous feasts they must have been–roast meats, stuffed swan, many sweet confections, toasts with fine ales and wines from a well-provisioned cellar, accompanied by the music of mandolins and minstrels from overhead galleries.

I particularly enjoyed the enormous kitchen where a hierarchy of men prepared and artistically presented the food, from the head chef to the lowly scullers who cleaned the dishes (the origin of the term'scullery maid'; the exhibits explain the roots of many English expressions such as 'curfew,' 'potluck,' and the aromatically disgusting origins of 'wardrobe').

The Hickmans, though powerfully rich, were politically astute enough not to have the Separatists living or meeting in their home. No one knows where they did meet. In 1607 the Gainsborough Congregation, probably with Hickman's financial assistance, fled to religiously tolerant Holland. Shortly afterwards the Scrooby Congregation decided to follow.

Standing by a simple memorial to the Separatists' first flight from persecution and looking along the exposed tidal mud of Scotia Creek, I tried to imagine their fear and determination. They walked here, afraid of being discovered. Secretly they passed over the Lincolnshire Wolds–a range of undulating chalk hills with agricultural vistas of yellow canola and blue flax fields–always scared of arrest and betrayal. Officials had issued an arrest warrant against Brewster. The fugitives skirted Boston town, its location marked by the Boston Stump–the parish church's tower which for centuries served as a navigational aid. Then on the verge of escape, as they boarded the Dutch vessel contracted to take them to Holland, they were arrested, their departure thwarted by the captain's betrayal.

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