Pastor John Robinson
     
Rev. John Robinson was born in 1576, admitted to Christ Church College, Cambridge, in 1592, received the A.M. degree and became a fellow of that college in 1596.  He lived for a time in Norwich, County of Norfolk, England, and was there referred to as 'a man worthily reverenced of all the city for the Grace of God in him'.
      In 1606, Rev. John Robinson was chosen pastor of the Puritans gathered at the residence of William Brewster at Scrooby in Nottingham County.  He moved with the church in the winter of 1607-8 to Amsterdam, then in 1610 to Leyden.  he witnessed the departure of a portion of his congregation to America aboard the Mayflower in 1620 and in 1625 died on March 1 at Leyden.
     Thirty-five members of Rev. Robinson's former congregation in Leyden came to Plymouth in 1629;  another company of his followers arrived in 1630.  One of these groups included Rev. Robinson's widow and children, including his son Isaac, who settled at Scituate, Massachusetts, and son John, who settled in the Cape Ann area.
     1597:  Went to Corpus Cristi, Cambridge and elected fellow.
     1599:  MA at Cambridge, England.
     1603-4:  Minister at St. Andrew's Church, Norwich, dismissed when he refused to subscribe to "39 Articles of  Religion."
     1606:  Assistant pastor to Richard Clifton at Scrooby, England.
     1607-1608:  Originally with the Pilgrims at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, he was a teacher at Scrooby.  He was pastor of the Pilgrims when they left England for Holland in pursuit of religious freedom.
     1608-1609:  To Amsterdam in 1608 for one year then to Leyden in May 1609.  He was the pastor at Leyden from 1609 to 1625.
     1608:  They had been living in Leyden for two years before he made any move to buy property there. It was in the year 1608 that the Scrooby congregation escaped into Holland.  In spring of that year the first of them reached Amsterdam;  a handful of men and boys, including a recent convert, the enthusiastic, confused, seven dismayed teen-agers, William Bradford.  In August their pastor, Richard Clifton, arrived safely with his family;  but it was late December or early January before the last of them.. Brewster and Robinson... managed to find sanctuary in Holland. 
     1609:  Before the end of April 1609, King James, through his Ambassador at The Hague, appealed to the States General (government of the Netherlands) to turn over to him these people or at least their leader.. whom he, himself, had not been able to lay hands upon before they slipped out from under his very nose.  The States General called the city fathers of Leyden to account for harboring the fugitives, whereupon the Honorable Burgomasters and Council of Leyden assured the States that "the Honorable Winwood, Ambassador of His Majesty the King of Great Britain" had been misinformed if he thought they had entered into any compact with them.  It behooved John Robinson and his people to live quietly and inconspicuously.  They did, at least for a while.  Before they began to apply for citizenship and to buy real estate, the only way they got into the records was to die, marry, or become part of someone else's vital statistics.
     1611:  It was a handsome house that John Robinson bought in 1611.  It was called Groeneport (Green Door) and became Roninson's residence and the place of worship.  It was ideally located in  the very heart of the city.  The house fronted on Pieterskerk Plaza, and the garden abutted grounds of the University.  the University Library, once the chapel of the Veiled Nuns, was all but in his backyard.  This house was his home for the rest of his life.  Pieterskerk is the cathedral overlooking Green Gate Meeting House in Bell Alley, Leyden.  He stayed in Holland when the pilgrims left for America.
     1615:  He matriculated at the University of Leyden in Theology.
     1622:  Register of the Poll-tas ano 1622:  "Jan Robbenson, predicant (minister),  Brugitta Robbenson, sijne huy svrouwe (his wife),  Jannes (John), Brugitta, Isack, Mercy, Ferer (Fear), Jacobut (James), - Robbensons kinderen (children), and Mary a Hardy, dienstmeijt (maid-servant).
 Pieterskerk was 300 years old when Robinson lived across Clock Alley from it.  Services have recently been discontinued and the noble old church closed for lack of money - roofs leaking badly and more serious problems expected.
     1625:  The Pastor fell sick on Feb 22nd, died on Mar 1, and was buried in the church on Mar 4th, as described by Winslow in 1646 - And our Pastor Mr. Robinson... has as good respect amongst (the Dutch) as any of their own Divines;  Insomuch as when God took him away from them and us by death the University, and Ministers of the City accompanied him to his grave with all their accustomed solemnities;  bewayling the great losse that not onely that particular Church has, whereof he was Pastor;  but some of the chief of them sadly affirmed, that all the Churches of Christ sustained a losse by the death of that worthy instrument of the Gospel.
     In the late 1600's the Robinson house was demolished to make way for the Jean Pesynhofje which is still there.
John Robinson had got his ideas about the true Church from the Bible.  by the yardstick of the Biblical blueprint he judged all so-called Christian churches.  He believed that in the Bible were recorded, especially in the New Testament, the clues which would enable any earnest man to sit down and to reconstruct the kind of church Christ required.  Furthermore, he and those who thought like him believed that if they did not build a church after the New Testament pattern they would incur the wrath of God.  They built their policy on the following closely interlocked assumptions:  first, that there was one perfect pattern for the organization of the Christian congregation laid down in Scripture.  Secondly, they believed that the one pattern, when reconstructed could be reconstituted at any time and in any place in history.  Thirdly, they believed that the one pattern must be reconstituted as part of their obedience to God.  Fourthly, they believed that the one pattern was very like what we would now call a congregational church.
     Hence they believed that the individual congregation had the power to accept or expel members, to hire and to fire ministers and no other church had the right to control their decision or compel them to do anything they do not want to do.  Of course, they understood that though the church meeting of all the (male!) members was the final court of appeal, the seat of final authority, yet, nevertheless that church meeting was not a democracy as many since John Robinson have mistakenly tried to make it.  Church meeting was not there to find out what the majority of the members wanted but the members were there, guided by their officers and other spiritually mature people, to discern the will of Christ.
     All this, of course, was deeply subversive of all that ordinary people believed in early 17th Century England.  They believed that the church was headed not by church meeting but by the monarch and by the bishops and that anyone who took a different line was guilty of un-English activities.  hence John Robinson and his friends went into exile - and from exile in Holland to exile in New England.  They were, in brief, regarded as politically and religiously disaffected and disreputable:  the sort of people who could be well spared to inhabit a desolate waste on the edge of the world!

Pastor John Robinson's writings New Essays; or, Observations Divine and Moral, was printed in 1628 - click here for text

for John Robinson's Catechism - click here

For a summary of the Pilgrims' religious beliefs - click here

 

REV. JOHN ROBINSON, OF LEYDEN, AND SOME OF HIS DESCENDANTS.

   By Rev. William A. Robinson, D.D.
(The Robinson Family Genealogical and Historical Association, Published by the Association, New York, 1902)

     It is characteristic of the true hero to be modestly unconscious of his heroism.  He simply goes forward doing his duty, and is too busy with his work to pose for effect or think of fame.  Emphatically was this true of John Robinson, the Pilgrim Pastor and Leader.
     But if it was difficult for him to think of himself as a hero, it is hardly less so for us fully to appreciate what it meant for him in his day to take the noble course his conscience prompted, and face the inner conflict and outward persecutions which he quietly braved in obeying his convictions.  It requires a careful study of his life and times fully to understand the faith and courage he exemplified in pursuing the course which he took in God's name, but among the names of the heroes in God's service in that age, that of John Robinson holds honored place.
     John robinson was born near Gainsborough, England, in the year 1575.  Of his childhood and youth nothing is recorded save that he fitted for college and matriculated in cambridge University.  two Cambridge colleges claim him as a student, but Corpus Christi appears to have the best warrant for its claim.  the Register of that college shows this entry:  "John Robinson, F., Lincolnshire, Admitted 1592;  Fellow, 1598."
     He took orders after his graduation in the church of England, but because of his modification of certain ceremonies, and his broad and progressive views, he was suspended by the Bishop of Norwich.  Upon this, in 1604, he resigned his fellowship, and parted finally with the Established Church.  For a time he assisted Rev. Mr. Clyfton, pastor of a Separatist Church which met at the dwelling of William Brewster near Scrooby in Nottinghamshire.  Later he became pastor of that little church, and in 1609, after many difficulties and persecutions, he with his church escaped to Holland.  Settling finally at Leyden, he ministered to his little flock with the utmost fidelity and devotion.  At the same time by his counsels and his writings he labored valiantly and efficiently to promote the cause of civil and religious liberty.  September 5, 1615, he became a member of the University of Leyden and was held in high esteem for his scholarship and the breadth and catholicity of his views.  In 1620, the younger and more bigorous portion of his flock joined in that famous "pilgrimage" to America, which has meant so much for this country and the world.  Pastor Robinson gave them his historical "Parting counsel," and intended himself soon to follow them to America, but was unable so to do.  the father of the writer of this sketch used to say that John Robinson had one reason for deferring his journey to America, which has been a limitation upon many of plaquehis descendants - he was in debt.  Be this as it may, his hopes for reunion with his flock in America was terminated by his death at Leyden, March 1, 1625, in the 50th year of his age.  He was buried in the churchyard of St. Peter's Cathedral, in the presence of the gentry and dignitaries of the City and University.
     In 1891, a committee of the National council of congregational Churches of this country, on which the writer of this sketch had the honor to serve, caused a handsome bronze tablet to be placed in his memory upon the wall of St. Peter's Cathedral at Leyden, bearing, besides the record of his name and offices, the apt inscription "In Memoria Aeterna Erit Justus." 
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