58 INTRODUCTION: church, and were now become very numerous.. There were several considerable persons at their head : as, Messrs. Smyth, Jacob, Ainsworth; Johnson, and Green- wood. Their London congregation being obliged to meet in different places, to hide itself from the bishops' officers, was at length discovered on a Lord's day at Islington, in the very place in which the protestant congregation met in the reign of. Queen Mary ; when about fifty-six were apprehended, and sent two by two to the different prisons about London, where many others had been long con- fined. The names of most of these persecuted servants of Christ, with the cruel oppressions they endured, are now before me. They suffered a long and miserable confine. ment ; and under the barbarous usage they met with, many of them died in prison,' Mr. Roger Rippon, who died this year, is said to have been the last of sixteen or seventeen that were murdered in Newgate. Numerous families, as well as individuals, were driven into banishment, while many died in close imprisonment, and others sufferedupon the gallows. Among the latter were Mr. Henry Barrow and Mr. John Greenwood. These persons having endured several years close confinement in the Fleet, were tried, condemned, and executed at Tyburn, giving the strongest testimony of their unfeigned piety towards God, and their unshaken loyalty to the queen. Also, Mr. John Penry, a pious and learned minister, was arraigned, condemned, and executed in a most cruel and barbarous manner. Mr. William Dennys was also executed on the same account, at Thetford in Norfolk$ These violent proceedings drove great numbers of the Brownists into Holland, where their leaders, Messrs. Smyth, Johnson, Ainsworth, Jacob, Robinson, and others, by leave of the states, erected churches according to their own viewsof the gospel, at Amsterdam, Arnheim, Middle- burgh, and Leyden. Several champions now appeared in defence of epis- copacy : as, Drs. Bancroft, Bilcon, Bridges, Cosin, and Soam. These were answered by Bradshaw, Fenner, * Sir Walter Raleigh declared in parliament, that in their various con- gregations, they were increased to the number of twenty thousand.-D. Ewes's Journal, p. 517 .-Townshend's Collections, p. 76. Baker's MS. Collec. vol. xiv. p. 311. xv, 59-111. " These round dealings," says a reverend author, "did a little terrify the 'rest of the puritans, and checked the furiousness of the wiser sort. But having the. Earls of Leicester, Warwick, and Shrewsbury, Lords North and Burleigh, Sir Francis Walsingham,and Sir Francis Knollys,with others of the nobility, for their honourablepatrons, they resumedtheir coo, Yage."-Poirce's Vindication, part i. p. 151.-Foulis'sllisf. of Flots, p. 01.
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