132 REVIEWS OF BOOKS January errors : ' Ires ' on p. 78 should be written in full or else should retain the abbreviation mark ; ' Xpofer ' on pp. 178-9 should retain the sacred monogram or be written ' Christofer ' ; and Six Dialogues about Sea Service on p. 314 should be credited to Nathaniel Boteler. Geoffrey Callender. John Robinson, Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers. By Walter H. Burgess. (London : Williams & Norgate, 1920.) When Mr. Alexander Gordon wrote of Robinson in the Dictionary of National Biography he had to leave it an open question which of three namesakes and contemporaries was the Leyden pastor. Mr. Burgess has made it almost certain that he was fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, so furnishing another illustration of the resemblance between the Cambridge church movement of the seventeenth century and the Oxford movement of the nineteenth ; each was led by young fellows of colleges, and each ended in a violent separation, for the breach between Newman and Pusey was not deeper than that which divided such separatists as John Robinson and John Smith from normal puritanism. Mr. Burgess, in some touches concerning Robinson as a Cambridge man and a churchman, shows himself unfamiliar with university and ecclesias- tical matters. For instance, when Robinson is described in his college register as sacerdos he says that the description ' points to his having by this time taken up some regular duty in the church of England while still holding his fellowship '. It simply means that he had been ordained priest in the usual course, no doubt on the title of his fellowship ; and it is strange that Mr. Burgess, who has diligently sought through registers of wills and other more or less recondite sources, has not taken the trouble to consult the bishops' registers, which are neither numerous nor inacces- sible, for so important a date in Robinson's life. But he has fallen into no serious error, though he has not seized every point of interest. In the will of Robinson's father John, the eldest son, is almost disinherited as regards personalty. Since there is no reason to suppose ill will on the father's part, we may guess that the son was to inherit freehold or copy- hold estate, which for some reason was not mentioned in the testament and which might still be traced by inquiry. The Robinsons were of a substantial yeomanry family, connected with the smaller gentry, in the region of north Nottinghamshire where separatism sprang up, and John Robinson married a wife from a family of the same class in the same district. There was money on both sides, and this probably enabled him to marry without waiting for a living ; Corpus was a small college with few benefices in its gift. After holding his fellowship for seven years he went with his wife to Norwich, to act as assistant, paid by the parishioners, in the very puritan parish of St. Andrew's. He had imbibed, and retained till his death, the strict dogmatic Calvinism of his day, and with it the Calvinist notion that a Christian nation should have a national church. This church existed, very imperfectly reformed, in England, and Robinson had troubles, like many others, with his bishop over the nonconformity which he regarded as his duty. But he advanced from
