in 1620. Robinson had come to Separatist convictions and left his parish ministry in 1606; he joined with a pair of linked Separatist congregations in Gainsborough and Scrooby, north west of Lincoln, which had been founded by Richard Clyfton, another former clergyman, two years before, and had divided for reasons of safety, rather than schism. Clyfton became pastor in Scrooby, to be succeeded by Robinson; the pastor and elder of the Gainsborough congregation were, respectively, John Smyth and Thomas