The penalties for conducting unofficial services included imprisonment and larger fines. Under the 1559 Act of Uniformity, it was illegal not to attend official Church of England services (unless the church was a signatory to the allegiance to the Church of England, as the Puritan church was, for example), with a fine of one shilling (£0.05 about £12 today )įor each missed Sunday and holy day. The Scrooby Separatists had long been controversial. The core of the group that came to be known as the Pilgrims were brought together between 15 by a common belief in the ideas promoted by Richard Clyfton, a Wikipedia:Brownist parson at All Saints' Parish Church in Babworth, near East Retford, Nottinghamshire. The Separatists decided to leave England for the Dutch Republic (where religious freedom was permitted). The people also learned that other Separatists in London had been put into prison and left to starve to death.

Some members were put into prison and others were watched night and day. Brewster was made to pay a fine for going to the church. By 1607 many members of the Separatists were arrested. King James I of England (1566-1625) started to punish the people who did not follow the Church of England. There were several local groups that soon began to associate with one another, hold church meetings in private homes and then in late 1607 and early 1608 migrated to Leiden and Amsterdam to seek religious freedom. These men and their families and followers then suffered significant persecution by local church authorities, were relieved of their church duties and excommunicated by the church. Several church priesthood leaders and lay leaders in the area started teaching non-conformity in the period of 1604-1608.

Separatists pilgrims