Twelve miles to the south of Doncaster, on the great Northern line of
railway, and just at the junction of Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, and
Lincolnshire, in the county of Nottingham, but bordering upon the fenny
districts of Lincolnshire, whose monotonous scenery reminds one of
Holland, lies the village of Scrooby. Surely it is of more interest to
us than all the Pictish forts and Roman walls that the "Laird of
Monkbarns" ever dreamed of. I was dropt out of the railway-carriage,
which hardly stopt upon a wide plain at a miniature station-house, with
some suspicions of a church and small village across the flat rushy
fields in the distance. This was indeed the humble village (tho now
beginning to be better known) which I had been searching for; and which
nobody of whom I inquired in Doncaster, or on the line of the railway,
seemed to know anything about, or even that such a place existed. I made
its discovery by the help of a good map. The station-master said he came
to Scrooby in 1851, and then it numbered three hundred inhabitants; and
since that time there had been but twelve deaths.

My search for the manor-house where Brewster and Bradford established
the first church of the Pilgrims, was, for a time, entirely fruitless. I
inquired of a genuine "Hodge" working in the fields; but his round red
face showed no glimmer of light on the matter so far removed from beans
and barley. I next encountered a good Wesleyan minister, trudging his
morning circuit of pastoral visitation, but could gain nothing from him,
tho a chatty, communicative man. At the venerable stone church of
Scrooby, very rude and plain in architecture, but by no means devoid of
picturesqueness, I was equally unsuccessful. The verger of the church,
who is generally the learned man of the village, was absent; and his
daughter knew nothing outside the church and churchyard.

I strolled along the grassy country road that ran through the place till