Robert Browne was graduated from Cambridge in 1572, the year after
Cartwright's expulsion. The next three years he taught in London and
"wholly bent himself to search and find out the matters of the church:
as to how it was guided and ordered, and what abuses there were in the
ecclesiastical government then used." [2] When the plague broke out in
London, Browne went to Cambridge. There, he refused to accept the
bishop's license to preach, though urged to do so, because he had come
to consider it as contrary to the authority of the
Scriptures. Nevertheless, he continued preaching until he was silenced
by the prelate. Browne then went to Norwich, preaching there and at
Bury St. Edmunds, both of which had been gathering-places for the
Separatists. At Norwich, he organized a church. Writing of Browne's
labors there in 1580 and 1581, Dr. Dexter says: "Here, following the
track which he had been long elaborating, he thoroughly discovered and
restated the original Congregational way in all its simplicity and
symmetry. And here, by his prompting and under his guidance, was
formed the first church in modern days of which I have any knowledge,
which was intelligently and one might say philosophically
Congregational in its platform and processes; he becoming its pastor."
[3] Persecution followed Browne to Norwich, and in order to escape it
he, in 1581, migrated with his church to Middelburg, in
Zealand. There, for two years, he devoted himself to authorship,
wherein he set forth his teachings. His books and pamphlets, which had
been proscribed in England, were printed in Middelburg and secretly
distributed by his friends and followers at home. But Browne's
temperament was not of the kind to hold and mould men together, while
his doctrine of equality in church government was too strong food for
people who, for generations, had been subservient to a system that
demanded only their obedience. His church soon disintegrated. With but
a remnant of his following, he returned in 1583 by way of Scotland