Pilgrim Elders - William Brewster

William Brewster (c. 1566 – 10 April 1644) was an English official and Mayflower passenger in 1620. In New England he became a Separatist colonist leader and preacher. William Brewster was born in Scrooby, Nottinghamshire, England, about 1566, and died at Plymouth, Massachusetts on 10 April 1644. He was the son of William Brewster and Mary Smythe and he had a number of half-siblings. 

He was raised in Scrooby, north Nottinghamshire. In the seventeenth century, 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 studied briefly at Peterhouse, Cambridge before entering the service of William Davison in 1584. In 1585, Davison went to the Netherlands to negotiate an alliance with the States-General. In 1586, Davison was appointed assistant to Queen Elizabeth's Secretary of State Francis Walsingham, but in 1587 he lost the favour of Elizabeth, after the beheading of her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. Brewster was the only Pilgrim with political and diplomatic experience. With his mentor in prison, Brewster had returned home to Scrooby for a time, where he took up his father’s former position as postmaster.

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 Separatists settled in Amsterdam and worshiped with the Ancient Church of Francis Johnson and Henry Ainsworth. Offput by the bickering between the two, which ultimately resulted in a division of the Church, the Separatists 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, as the partner of one Thomas Brewer, printed and published religious books for sale in England, though they were proscribed there. In 1619, Brewster and Edward Winslow published a religious tract critical of the English king and his bishops. James ordered Brewster’s arrest, and when the king’s agents in Holland came to seize the Pilgrim elder, Brewster was forced into hiding just as preparations to depart for America entered the most critical phase. The printing type was seized by the authorities from the English ambassador, Sir Dudley Carleton, and Brewster's partner was arrested. Brewster escaped and, with the help of Robert Cushman and Sir Edwin Sandys, obtained a land patent from the London Virginia Company on behalf of himself and his colleagues.

With Brewster in hiding, the Separatists looked to their deacon John Carver and to Robert Cushman to carry on negotiations with the appropriate officials in London. In 1620 when it came time for the Mayflower departure, Elder Brewster returned to the Leiden congregation. He had been hiding out in Holland and perhaps even England for the last year. The return of Brewster, the highest-ranking layperson of the congregation and their designated spiritual leader in the New World.

Brewster joined the first group of Separatists aboard the Mayflower on the voyage to North America. Brewster was accompanied by his wife, Mary Brewster, and his sons: Love Brewster and Wrestling Brewster.

-- from William Brewster of the Mayflower and His Descendants for Four Generations 

by Barbara Lambert Merrick 

and Mayflower: A story of Courage, Community and War 

by Nathaniel Philbrick

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