1. Barton, T.F., ed., The Registrum Vagnum of Anthony Harrison, 2 vols. (Norfolk Record Society, 1963), 2:34–36.Google Scholar

2. Saint Andrew's was one of many progressive English parishes, known as a donative cure, where lay impropriators controlled the parish tithes. The arrangement allowed for a form of de facto congregationalism in that the appointment of ministers was made entirely by the lay leaders who, as trustees for the parish, were able to dispense with the otherwise obligatory episcopal induction (Collinson, Patrick, Elizabethan Puritan Movement [London, 1967], pp. 34, 339).Google Scholar For Robinson's appointment to Saint Andrew's in this manner, see Jones Manuscript 30, Bodleian Library, Oxford, pp. 73–74.

3. The story is so well known by scholars that it hardly seems necessary to underscore the fact that Robinson did not himself make the journey but for the recent claim, erroneous at every point, that “John Robinson… led the surviving English Calvinist Separatists from Amsterdam to New England in 1618” (Cross, Clair, Church and People, 1450–1660: The Triumph of the Laity in the English Church [London, 1976], p. 173).Google Scholar

4. For the most recent critical examinations of this, see the excellent thesis by George, Timothy, “The Role of John Robinson in the Separatist Tradition” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard Divinity School, 1979), especially pp. 270–284;Google Scholar and Brachlow, Stephen, “More Light on John Robinson and the Separatist Tradition,” Fides et Historia 13 (1980):6–22.Google Scholar Another recent, though less than satisfactory review of the subject, may also be found in Yarbrough, Slayden A., “The Ecclesiastical Development in Theory and Practice of John Robinson and Henry Jacob,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 5 (1978):183–197.Google Scholar

5. Quoted in Nuttall, G.F., The Puritan Spirit (London, 1967), p. 114.Google Scholar

6. Collinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 381.Google Scholar

7. For contemporary references to Robinson's suspension, see Hall, Joseph, A common apologie of the Church of England (London, 1610), p. 115;Google ScholarBurrage, Champlin, ed., An Answer to John Robinson of Leyden by a Puritan Friend (Cambridge, Mass., 1920), p. 55;Google ScholarCotton, John, The way of the congregational churches clear'd (London, 1648), p. 7.Google Scholar According to the research of Babbage, Stuart Barton, Puritanism and Richard Bancroft (London, 1962), pp. 203–206,Google Scholar there is evidence of only eight deprivations in the diocesan records of Norwich, all of which took place between May 1605 and March 1606. He attributes this relatively low number to a lack of information in the usual sources with the exception of the scattered entries in the Norwich Institution Books. Perhaps the reason evidence is lacking for Robinson's suspension is due more to the legal status of curates in the church courts than the paucity of the records. Because curates like Robinson did not hold a secure tenure as did vicars and rectors, they were subject to removal without the safeguards of normal legal proceedings. See Curtis, H.M., “Alienated Intellectuals of Early Stuart England,” Past and Present 23(1962): 34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. According to the visitation returns of 1603, Saint Andrew's was the second largest parish in the Archdeaconry of Norwich (Norfolk Archaeology 10 [1888], p. 178).Google Scholar During the following summer, when Robinson would have been preaching, signs of revitalization appeared when “divers convenient seats” were added to the church in order to accommodate the growing crowds (Barton, , ed., Registrum Vagum, 2: 280).Google Scholar Furthermore, Robinson was apparently well enough liked to be remembered with at least one bequest of 40 shillings in the will of a former mayor, Thomas Lane (George, , “The Role of John Robinson,” p. 121).Google Scholar

9. Robinson, John, Of Religious Communion Private and Publique (Amsterdam, 1614), p. 39.Google Scholar

10. For example, see Lamont, William, The Godly Rule (London, 1969);CrossRefGoogle ScholarCapp, B.S., The Fifth Monarchy Men (London, 1972);Google ScholarHill, Christopher, Antichrist in Seventeenth Century England (Oxford, 1971);Google ScholarToon, Peter, Puritans, The Millennium and the Future of Israel (London, 1970);Google ScholarBall, Bryan W., A Great Expectation (London, 1975);Google ScholarChristianson, Paul, Reformers and Babylon (Toronto, 1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Robinson offered neither a detailed table of the order in which future events would transpire nor any indication of a future millennial reign of Christ with his saints on earth. This was the concern of millennialists like Brightman (Toon, , Puritans, pp. 27–31).Google Scholar The lack of evidence for this kind of preoccupation with a future schedule of millennial events along with the fact that Robinson never referred to Napier, Dent, or Brightman, is an indication that as influential as their writings were on the later development of seventeenth-century sectarian eschatology, they made little or no impact on the thought of separatists like Robinson. His eschatological expectations were more compatible with the amillennial Augussinian tradition of John Foxe who conceptualized the history of the church in a general outline “of the age-long contention of Christ and Antichrist” (Haller, William, Foxe's Book of Martyrs [London, 1963], p. 137).Google Scholar For the influence of Foxe on the separatist sense of history, see White, B.R., The English Separatist Tradition (Oxford, 1971), p. 160.Google Scholar

12. Robinson, John, The Justification of Separation (1610),Google Scholar in The Works of John Robinson, ed. Robert Aston, 3 vols. (London, 1851), 2: 281.Google Scholar (All citations from Justification will be from Aston's edition.) “An answer to a censorious epistle” as printed in the marginal notes of Hall, Joseph, A common apologie of the church of England (London, 1610), p. 33.Google Scholar

13. Ibid., pp. 116, 141; Jones Manuscript 30, p.84.

14. Curtis, M.H., “The Hampton Court Conference and its Aftermath,” History 46 (1961): 1–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarBabbage, , Puritanism and Richard Bancroft, pp. 66–71;Google ScholarCollinson, , Elizabethan Puritan Movement, p. 462.Google Scholar

15. The two previous separatist eruptions, following the first outbreak in London in 1566, occurred in 1580 in Norfolk and in London in 1590 (White, , English Separatist Tradition, pp. 20–90).Google Scholar

16. Hill, Christopher, Economic Problems of the Church (London, 1968), pp. 108, 199–223.Google Scholar

17. Curtis, M.H., “The Alienated Intellectuals of Early Stuart England,” Past and Present 23 (1962): 27–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. For his marriage to Bridget White on 15 February 1604, see Burgess, Walter, John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers (London, 1920), p. 47.Google Scholar Robinson had at least two children baptized while in Norwich (Jones Manuscript 30, p. 5).

19. Stark, Werner, Sectarian Religion (London, 1967), pp. 6–12.Google Scholar

20. See Brachlow, Stephen, “Puritan Theology and Radical Churchmen in Pre-Revolutionary England” (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1979).Google Scholar

21. Robinson, , Justification, p. 82.Google Scholar

22. White, , English Separatist Tradition, pp. 20–43.Google Scholar

23. John F. Wilson seems to have almost stumbled onto this point when he noted the number of Puritan publications coming from the press of the separatist John Canne. “If this be so, a common interest of sorts may have been shared by at least some of those exiles— ‘Separatists,’ ‘Congregationalists,’ and perhaps even ‘Presbyterians’ —usually thought to have been exclusively engaged in irreconcilable controversy” (‘Another Look at John Canne,’ Church History 33 [1964]: 39).Google Scholar For further evidence of the extensive Puritan holdings in separatist libraries, see Harris, Rendel and Jones, Stephen K., The Pilgrim Press (Cambridge, 1922), pp. 31–33;Google ScholarGeller, Lawrence D. and Gomes, Peter J., The Books of the Pilgrims (New York, 1975), p. 6.Google Scholar

24. Although there is no evidence Robinson was influenced by separatist literature before he joined the movement, as in the case of Francis Johnson, it is unthinkable that the writings of earlier separatists did not have some impact. His familiarity with and defence of earlier separatist literature is evident throughout his own works. See Brachlow, , “More Light on John Robinson,” pp. 14–15.Google Scholar For Johnson's conversion to separatism under the influence of Barrow's writings, see Watts, Michael R., The Dissenters (Oxford, 1978), p. 38.Google Scholar For Robinson's discussions with prominent Puritans in an effort to evade his eventual decision to separate, see Manuscript, Jones 30, p. 1;Google ScholarRobinson, , Justification, p. 10;Google Scholar and Robinson, , A Manumission to a manuduction (Amsterdam, 1615), p. 20.Google Scholar According to Ames, William, A second manuduction (n.p., 1615), p. 29,Google Scholar Robinson admitted to a mutual friend that he had been “amongst some company of the separation before his coming to Cambridge, and exercising amongst them had renounced his former ministry.” But Robinson insisted that he had not yet professed separatism when he went to Cambridge (A Manumission, p. 20).

25. Patrick Collinson, “Towards a Broader Understanding of the Early Dissenting Tradition,” in Cole, Robert and Moody, Michael E., eds., The Dissenting Tradition (Athens, Ohio, 1975), p. 10.Google Scholar

26. See n. 2 above.

27. Thomas, Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), p. 161.Google Scholar

28. Hall, , A Common Apologie, p. 117.Google Scholar

29. Robinson, , Justification, pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

30. Hill, Christopher, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London, 1969), p. 469.Google Scholar

31. Bridenbaugh, Carl, Vexed and Troubled Englishmen, 1590–1642 (Oxford, 1976), p. 276.Google Scholar

32. Kendall, R.T., Calvin and English Calvinism (Oxford, 1980), pp. 21–22.Google Scholar

33. Robinson, , Justification, p. 49.Google Scholar

34. Robinson, John, A Just and Necessarie Apologie (Amsterdam, 1625), p. 36.Google Scholar

35. Cartwright, Thomas, A Reply to an Answere Made of M. Doctor Whitgifte (n.p., 1574), p. 14.Google Scholar

36. Robinson, , Of Religious Communion, p. 13.Google Scholar

37. Robinson, , Justification, pp. 95, 100.Google Scholar

38. Miller, Perry, Orthodoxy in Massachusetts, 1630–1650 (Cambridge, Mass., 1933), p. 32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39. Jones Manuscript 30, p. 33.

40. Robinson, , Justification, p. 48.Google Scholar

41. Ibid., p. 502.

42. Ibid., p. 499.

43. Ibid., p. 34.

44. Hill, , Antichrist, pp. 1–40.Google Scholar

45. Robinson, , Justification, p. 107.Google Scholar

46. H.C. Porter, “The Nose of Wax: Scripture and the Spirit from Erasmus to Milton,” in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (1964), p. 165.Google Scholar It was from Whitaker's writings that Robinson in a larger measure developed his understanding of biblical authority and interpretation. See Robinson, John, Observations Divine and Morall (Amsterdam, 1625), pp. 57–59,Google Scholar where he quotes from Whitaker at length.

47. Robinson, , Justification, p. 475.Google Scholar

48. Ibid., pp. 331–332.

49. Coolidge, John S., The Pauline Renaissance in England (Oxford, 1970), pp. 71–75, 89.Google Scholar

50. Robinson, , Justification, p. 313.Google Scholar See also Brachlow, , “Puritan Theology,” pp. 311–318.Google Scholar

51. Ibid.

52. Robinson, , Of Religious Communion, p. 17.Google Scholar

53. Whitley, W.T., ed., The Works of John Smyth, 2, vols. (Cambridge, 1915), 2: 42.Google Scholar

54. Robinson, ,Justification, p. 284.Google Scholar

55. Ibid.

56. Ibid., p. 285.

57. Baillie, Robert, Dissuasive from the Errors of the Times (1645), p. 23,Google Scholar quoted in Woodhouse, A.S.P., Puritanism and Liberty, (London, 1966), pp. 73–74.Google Scholar

58. Jones, R. Tudor, “The Church Covenant in Classical Congregationalism,” The Presbyler 7, no. 4 (1962): 9–10.Google Scholar

59. Robinson, , Justification, p. 103.Google Scholar

60. Jones, , “Church Covenant,” p. 10.Google Scholar

61. Robinson, , Justification, pp. 480, 135.Google Scholar

62. Quoted in Ziff, Larser, “The Social Bond of the Church Covenant,” American Quarterly 10 (1958): 454.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

63. Robinson, , Justification, p. 134.Google Scholar

64. The passages were Genesis 17:7, Leviticus 26:11–12, Revelation 1:11–13, and Hebrew 8:16 [sic]. While the reference to Revelation 1:11–13 does not speak of a church covenant, Robinson interpreted it to be a picture of Christ's immediate presence within each of the seven churches of Asia every one of which he would have understood to have been gathered by a covenant (see Jones Manuscript 30, p. 11).

65. Robinson, John, An Appendix to Mr. Perkins Six Principles of Christian Religion (1642),Google Scholar in Aston, , Works, 3: 434.Google Scholar

66. Robinson, , Of Religious Communion, p. 24.Google Scholar

67. Coolidge, , Pauline Renaissance, pp. 60–61.Google Scholar

68. Robinson to Ames, in Aston, , Works, 3:87.Google Scholar

69. Robinson, John, “Certain Useful Advertisements” (07 1620),Google Scholar in Dexter, H.M., ed., Mourts Relation (1622), (Boston, 1865), p. xiv.Google Scholar

70. Robinson, , Justification, p. 237.Google Scholar

71. Ibid.

72. Robinson, , Obervations Divine and Morall, p. 201.Google Scholar

73. For example, William Bradford's well-marked copy of Robinson's Justification is still in Plymouth, lodged now in the Pilgrim Society Library (Geller, , Books of the Pilgrims, p. 33).Google Scholar