William Brewster (Pilgrim)

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William Brewster
Am imaginary likeness of William Brewster. There is no known portrait of him from life.
Am imaginary likeness of William Brewster. There is no known portrait of him from life.
Background information
Birth name William Brewster
Born c. 1560 in Scrooby, England
Died 10 April 1644 in Duxbury, Massachusetts

Elder William Brewster (c. 1566 - April 10, 1644), was a Pilgrim colonist leader and preacher who came from Scrooby, in north Nottinghamshire and reached what became the Plymouth Colony in the Mayflower in 1620. He was accompanied by his wife, Mary Brewster, and his sons, Love Brewster and Wrestling Brewster. Son Jonathan joined the family in November 1621, arriving at Plymouth on the ship Fortune, and daughters Patience and Fear arrived in July 1623 aboard the Anne.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Origins

He was the son of William Brewster and Mary Smyth and he had a number of half-siblings. His paternal grandparents were William Brewster and Maud Mann. His maternal grandfather was Thomas Smyth. Brewster may have been born in Doncaster.

Scrooby Manor was in the possession of the Archbishops of York. Brewster's father, William senior, had been the estate bailiff for the archbishop for thirty-one years from around 1580. With this post went that of postmaster, which was a more important one than it might have been in a village not situated on the Great North Road, as Scrooby was then.

William Junior studied briefly at Peterhouse, Cambridge before entering the service of William Davidson in 1584. In 1585, Davidson went to the Netherlands to negotiate an alliance with the States-General. In 1586, Davidson was appointed assistant to Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State Francis Walsingham, but in 1587 Davidson lost the favour of Elizabeth, after the beheading of her cousin (once removed) Mary, Queen of Scots.

[edit] Dissent

Cambridge was a centre of thought concerning religious reformism, but Brewster's time in the Netherlands, in connection with Davidson's work, gave him opportunity to hear and see more of reformed religion. While, earlier in the sixteenth century, reformers had hoped to amend the Anglican church, by the end of it, many were looking toward splitting from it. (See Brownist).

On Davidson's disgrace, Brewster returned to Scrooby. There, from 1590 to 1607, he held the position of postmaster. As such he was responsible for the provision of stage horses for the mails, having previously, for a short time, assisted his father in that office. By the 1590s, Brewster's brother, James, was a rather rebellious Anglican priest, vicar of the parish of Sutton cum Lound, in Nottinghamshire. From 1594, it fell to James to appoint curates to Scrooby church so that Brewster, James and leading members of the Scrooby congregation were brought before the ecclesiastical court for their dissent. They were set on a path of separation from the Anglican Church. From about 1602, Scrooby Manor, Brewster's home, became a meeting place for the dissenting Puritans. In 1606, they formed the Separatist Church of Scrooby.

[edit] Emigration

Restrictions and pressures applied by the authorities convinced the congregation of a need to emigrate to the more sympathetic atmosphere of Holland, but leaving England without permission was illegal at the time, so that departure was a complex matter. On its first attempt, in 1607, the group was arrested at Scotia Creek, but in 1608 Brewster and others were successful in leaving from The Humber. In 1609, he was selected as ruling elder of the congregation.

Initially, the Pilgrams settled in Amsterdam, and worshipped with the Ancient Church of Francis Johsonson and Henry Ainsworth. Offput by the bickering between the two, though (which ultimately resulted in a division of the Church), the Pilgrams left Amsterdam and moved to Leiden, after only a year.

In Leiden, the group managed to make a living. Brewster taught English and later, in 1616-1619, printed and published religious books for sale in England though they were proscribed there, as the partner of one Thomas Brewer. In 1619, the printing type was seized by the authorities under pressure from the English ambassador Sir Dudley Carleton and Brewster's partner was arrested. Brewster escaped and, with the help of Robert Cushman, obtained a land patent from the London Virginia Company on behalf of himself and his colleagues.

In 1620 he joined the first group of Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower on the voyage to North America. When the colonists landed at Plymouth, Brewster became the senior elder of the colony, serving as its religious leader and as an advisor to Governor William Bradford.

As the only university educated member of the colony, Brewster took the part of the colony's religious leader until a pastor, Ralph Smith, arrived in 1629. Thereafter, he continued to preach irregularly until his death in April 1644.

Brewster was granted land amongst the islands of Boston Harbor, and four of the outer islands (Great Brewster, Little Brewster, Middle Brewster and Outer Brewster) now bear his name.[1][2]

[edit] Descendants

A rare 17th-century "Brewster Chair," named after the original owned by William Brewster [1]
A rare 17th-century "Brewster Chair," named after the original owned by William Brewster [1]

William Brewster married Mary, whose maiden name is unknown. During much of the 20th century she was thought to be the daughter of Thomas Wentworth, however there is no compelling evidence to support this. More recent speculation suggests her maiden name was Wyrall, but again the evidence is weak at best.[3]

The children of William and Mary were:

There are many notable descendants of William Brewster, including Zachary Taylor, Cokie Roberts, Roger Nash Baldwin, Katharine Hepburn, Bing Crosby, William Brewster, Brewster Shaw, Lyndon LaRouche, George B. McClellan, Julia Child, Richard Gere, Nelson Rockefeller, Norman Rockwell, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Chevy Chase, Ted Danson, Howard Dean, Seth MacFarlane, Chaylon Brewster, Charles G. Dawes, Bill Richardson, John Foster Dulles, Archibald MacLeish, David Souter, Adlai Stevenson III, William Nicholson, Jan Masaryk, Benjamin C Bradlee, and Doris Humphrey.[citation needed]

[edit] References

[edit] Specific references

  1. ^ Calf Island Factsheet. Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. Retrieved on August 11, 2006.
  2. ^ Islands You Can Visit - Great Brewster Island. Boston Harbor Islands Partnership. Retrieved on August 3, 2006.
  3. ^ Stratton, Eugene Aubrey (1986). Plymouth Colony: Its History & People. Salt Lake City, Utah: Ancestry Publishing, 250-2551. ISBN 0-916489-18-3. 

[edit] General references

  1. Dowsing, J. Places of the Pilgrim Fathers Sunrise Press, London.
  2. Encyclopædia Britannica. (1960)
  3. This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

See Ashbel Steele's Chief of the Pilgrims; or the Life and Time of William Brewster (Philadelphia, 1857); and, most importantly, a sketch in Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 by William Bradford; the complete text, with notes and an introduction by Samuel Eliot Morison (1952; 2001).

More recent sources are:

  • 'Brewster, William' in the American National Biography (2000) and the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004).
  • Mary B. Sherwood, Pilgrim: A Biography of William Brewster (1982)
  • Richard Greaves and Robert Zaller, eds. Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals in the Seveneeth Century (1982)
  • Dorothy Brewster, William Brewster of the Mayflower (1970)

Genealogical information may be found in:

  • Emma Brewster Jones, The Brewster Genealogy, 1566-1907, Two volumes (1907)
  • Barbara Lambert Merrick, compiler, William Brewster of the Mayflower and His Descendants for Four Generations Mayflower Families in Progress. 3rd Edition (2000)
  • Barbara Lambert Merrick, compiler, William Brewster of the Mayflower and the Fifth Generation Descendants of his son Love2. Mayflower Families in Progress. (2003)

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brewster_%28Pilgrim%29"
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