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Richard Clyfton (Clifton) (died 1616) was an English Separatist minister, at Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, and then in Amsterdam.
| | This article needs additional citations for verification .(February 2021) |
Richard Clyfton (Clifton) (died 1616) was an English Separatist minister, at Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, and then in Amsterdam.
Clyfton was born around 1553 near the Nottinghamshire village of Babworth but left to attend Cambridge University, a hotbed of dissenting theology. He returned home an ordained minister in 1586 and was named pastor of Babworth’s All Saints Church. His position as pastor provided Clyfton with a "living" and he was able to marry. He and his wife Anne had three sons and three daughters, all born at Babworth. The three daughters died in infancy or childhood, but the three Clyfton sons survived.
Clifton died at Amsterdam on 20 May 1616, and is buried in the Zuiderkerk. [1] The church where he is buried is as an exposition center.
Clifton was instituted to the vicarage of Marnham, near Newark, on 12 February 1585 and on 11 July 1586 to the rectory of All Saints' Church, Babworth, near Retford. [2] The Separatist congregation at Scrooby, which was formed after Clyfton's ejection from Babworth in 1605, ordinarily met in William Brewster's house at Scrooby for a few months. [3] [1]
John Robinson attached himself to Clyfton's church and was shortly afterwards chosen his assistant in the ministry; and after Clyfton's move to the Netherlands became sole pastor of the church. William Bradford belonged to this congregation. [1] Bradford had first encountered Clifton when he was in Scrooby. [4]
Clifton emigrated to Amsterdam in August 1608. He joined other exiles there and attached himself to the church of which Francis Johnson was pastor. He was, perhaps, on Henry Ainsworth's departure (16 December 1610) made teacher among them. Bradford describes him as a "grave and fatherly old man when he left England, having a great white beard". [1]
Clifton was a member and leader of the Pilgrims. He led a congregation with William Brewster. Clyfton was one of the most effective authors for the Pilgrim Separatists. The English Separatist congregation that became the core of the Pilgrim movement had two pastors, Clyfton and John Robinson. Neither saw the "promised land" of Plymouth Colony. Robinson was with the congregation (although not yet pastor) when they moved from England to Holland in search of religious freedom. He was a strong proponent of the group's later move from Holland to America, where they would reestablish their church in the Plymouth Colony.
Bradford describes how the Separatists in the area of England known today as "Pilgrim Country" (Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and Yorkshire) formed themselves into two distinct churches. One was the church gathered at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire (John Smyth became their pastor). The other was the church gathered first at Babworth and then at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, about ten miles from Gainsborough. This Scrooby congregation (which would eventually become the Pilgrim church) was under the leadership of Clyfton.
"In one of these churches [Gainsborough]… was Mr. John Smith, a man of able gifts and a good preacher, who afterwards was chosen their pastor. But these afterwards falling into some errors in the Low Countries [The Netherlands], there (for the most part) buried themselves and their names. But in this other church [Scrooby]…besides other worthy men, was Mr. Richard Clyfton, a grave and reverend preacher, who by his pains and diligence had done much good, and under God had been a means of the conversion of many. And also that famous and worthy man Mr. John Robinson, who afterwards was their pastor for many years, till the Lord took him away by death. Also Mr. William Brewster…"
It was the preaching of Clyfton and the inspiration he provided to Brewster and Bradford that launched the "Pilgrim adventure." Sometime in the 1590s, Clyfton began to preach dissenting religious views and to conduct services using prayers that were not in the officially authorized in the Book of Common Prayer . He soon drew an audience from the surrounding towns and villages. Brewster, living six or seven miles away in Scrooby, heard Clyfton preach. Brewster joined Clyfton's Babworth congregation. Several years later, around 1602, young William Bradford, who was living in Austerfield (some ten miles from Babworth), also, according to Cotton Mather "came to enjoy Mr. Richard Clifton's illuminating ministry." The path from Bradford’s home in Austerfield to the church in Babworth went by Brewster’s home in Scrooby. The two men—Bradford an intellectual teenager and Brewster a settled older family man—walked together and undoubtedly learned each other's minds and characters.
At Amsterdam Clyfton was engaged in several bitter controversies. Having renounced the principles of rigid separation he became one of the most violent adversaries of John Smyth, and published, A Plea for Infants and elder People concerning their Baptisme. Or a Processe of the Passages between M. Iohn Smyth and Richard Clifton, Amsterdam, 1610. He also wrote An Advertisement concerning a book lately published by Christopher Lawne and others, against the Exiled English Church at Amsterdam, 1612. The book attacked is The prophane Schism of the Brownists or Separatists, with the impiety, dissensions, lewd and abominable vices of that impure Sect, discovered, 1612. Henry Ainsworth published An Animadversion to Mr. Richard Clyftons Advertisement, Amsterdam, 1613. [1]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain : "Clifton, Richard (d. 1616)". Dictionary of National Biography . London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.Henry Ainsworth (1571–1622) was an English Nonconformist clergyman and scholar. He led the Ancient Church, a Brownist or English Separatist congregation in Amsterdam alongside Francis Johnson from 1597, and after their split led his own congregation. His translations of and commentaries on the Hebrew scriptures were influential for centuries.
The Pilgrims, also known as the Pilgrim Fathers, were the English settlers who traveled to America on the Mayflower and established the Plymouth Colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Pilgrims' leadership came from the religious congregations of Brownists, or Separatists, who had fled religious persecution in England for the tolerance of 17th-century Holland in the Netherlands.
William Bradford was an English Puritan Separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire in Northern England. He moved to Leiden in Holland in order to escape persecution from King James I of England, and then emigrated to the Plymouth Colony on the Mayflower in 1620. He was a signatory to the Mayflower Compact and went on to serve as Governor of the Plymouth Colony intermittently for about 30 years between 1621 and 1657. He served as a commissioner of the United Colonies of New England on multiple occasions and served twice as president. His journal Of Plymouth Plantation covered the years from 1620 to 1646 in Plymouth.
Bawtry is a market town and civil parish in the City of Doncaster in South Yorkshire, England. It lies 8 miles (13 km) south-east of Doncaster, 10 miles (16 km) west of Gainsborough and 8 miles (13 km) north-west of Retford, on the border with Nottinghamshire and close to Lincolnshire. The town was historically divided between the West Riding of Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. Its population of 3,204 in the 2001 UK census increased to 3,573 in 2011, and was put at 3,519 in 2019. Nearby settlements include Austerfield, Everton, Scrooby, Blyth, Bircotes and Tickhill.
Scrooby is a small village on the River Ryton in north Nottinghamshire, England, near Bawtry in South Yorkshire. At the time of the 2001 census it had a population of 329, in 2011 the count was 315 and by the 2021 census this had fallen further to 307 residents. Until 1766, it was on the Great North Road so became a stopping-off point for numerous important figures including Queen Elizabeth I and Cardinal Wolsey on their journeys. The latter stayed at the Manor House briefly, after his fall from favour.
William Brewster was an English official and Mayflower passenger in 1620. He became senior elder and the leader of Plymouth Colony, by virtue of his education and existing stature with those immigrating from the Netherlands, being a Brownist.
John Smyth was an English Anglican, Baptist, then Mennonite minister and a defender of the principle of religious liberty.
Thomas Helwys, an English minister, was one of the joint founders, with John Smyth, of the General Baptist denomination. In the early seventeenth century, Helwys was the principal formulator of a demand that the church and the state be kept separate in matters of law, so that individuals might have a freedom of religious conscience. He was an advocate of religious liberty at a time when to hold to such views could be dangerous. He died in prison as a consequence of the religious persecution of Protestant Dissenters under King James I.
The Brownists were a Christian group in 16th century England. They were also known as Saints among themselves and Separatists by outsiders, and were a group of English Dissenters or early Separatists from the Church of England. They were named after Robert Browne, who was born at Tolethorpe Hall in Rutland, England, in the 1550s. The term "Brownist" was what outsiders used to describe them.
Babworth is a village and civil parish in the Bassetlaw district of Nottinghamshire, England, about 2 miles west of Retford. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 1,329, rising to 1,687 at the 2011 Census, but dropping to 1,489 in 2021. In addition to the village of Babworth, the parish also includes Ranby.
John Robinson (1576–1625) was the pastor of the "Pilgrim Fathers" before they left on the Mayflower. He became one of the early leaders of the English Separatists called Brownists, and is regarded as one of the founders of the Congregational Church.
Richard Bernard (1568–1641) was an English Puritan clergyman and writer.
Fear Allerton was a woman in Colonial America. She was the third daughter of Mayflower Pilgrim William Brewster and his wife Mary, born in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England. Her early years, and indeed her whole life, were full of unrest. In 1608 she moved, along with the other pilgrims, to Amsterdam.
The Scrooby Congregation were English Protestant separatists who lived near Scrooby, on the outskirts of Bawtry, a small market town at the border of South Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. In 1607/8 the Congregation emigrated to the Netherlands in search of the freedom to worship as they chose. They founded the "English separatist church at Leiden", one of several English separatist groups in the Netherlands at the time.
Robert Parker was an English Puritan clergyman and scholar. He became minister of a separatist congregation in Holland where he died while in exile for his heterodoxy. The Revd. Cotton Mather wrote of Parker as "one of the greatest scholars in the English Nation, and in some sort the father of all Nonconformists of our day."
Francis Johnson was an English separatist, or Brownist, minister, pastor to an English exile congregation in the Netherlands.
The reign of King James I of England (1603–1625) saw the continued rise of the Puritan movement in England, that began during reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558–1603), and the continued clash with the authorities of the Church of England. This eventually led to the further alienation of Anglicans and Puritans from one another in the 17th century during the reign of King Charles I (1625–1649), that eventually brought about the English Civil War (1642–1651), the brief rule of the Puritan Lord Protector of England Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658), the English Commonwealth (1649–1660), and as a result the political, religious, and civil liberty that is celebrated today in all English speaking countries.
All Saints' Church, is a Grade I listed parish church in the Church of England in Babworth, Nottinghamshire.
St Wilfrid's Church, Scrooby is a Grade II* listed parish church in the Church of England in Scrooby.
Marnham is a civil parish in the Bassetlaw district, in the county of Nottinghamshire, England. The parish includes the village of Low Marnham and the hamlets of High Marnham and Skegby. In the census of 2021 the parish had a population of 136. The parish lies in the north east of the county, and south east within the district. It is 122 miles north of London, 23 miles north east of the city of Nottingham, and 17 miles north east of the market town of Mansfield. The parish touches Fledborough, Normanton on Trent, South Clifton, Tuxford and Weston. Marnham shares a parish council with Normanton on Trent. There are 7 listed buildings in Marnham.
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