Babworth – Huish and Chettle (1907)

The radical preaching of Richard Clifton (d. 1616), rector of All Saints' Church, Babworth, is thought to have inspired William Brewster to begin a Separatist Church in his family home in Scrooby. William Bradford also apparently walked to All Saints' the seven miles from Austerfield to hear Clifton’s sermons. Marcus Huish provides, in 1907, a brief description of the village to accompany Elizabeth Chettle's drawing:

"The locality where the movement originated had been altogether lost sight of until well on in the last century. Governor Bradford in his Journal, although he came from close at hand, had given it no more recognition than that it was near "the joining borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire," and that the place of meeting was at "a manor of the Bishop's." Scrooby, hard by Babworth in Nottinghamshire, alone answering to this description, there is now no doubt whatever as to its being the place. But Babworth must first claim attention, as it was there, as we have said, that the Pilgrim movement had its inception.

This village lies a mile west of East Retford and midway between two streams, the Idle and the Ryton, the latter coming from the Dukeries through Worksop and falling into the Idle just below Bawtry — the whole forming part of the valley of the Trent. The Rectory and Church of Babworth both stand close to the Hall and within a fair, well-watered park. Both are distinguishable in Miss Chettle's drawing. Outside the grounds lies the sparsely scattered village, which contains not a thousand persons upon six thousand acres; the houses for the most part consist of groups of farms, farm buildings, and cottages."

Marcus Bourne Huish, The American Pilgrim's Way in England to Homes and Memorials of the Founders of Virginia, the New England States and Pennsylvania (London: The Fine Art Society ltd, 1907), p. 95.