John Robinson
Pastor of the congregation from which the Plymouth settlers came. He stayed at Leiden with the greater part of his flock, wrote against Thomas Helwys, rebuked the colonists for killing Indians in 1623, and died in 1625.
William Bradford names him among the members of the congregation in the north of England and as its pastor after the move to Leiden (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 1, 3 (pp. 14, 23–24)). When part of the church sailed for America in 1620 the majority, who stayed, asked him to remain with them (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ch. 6 (p. 53)). In 1614 he had answered Thomas Helwys in print, defending infant baptism and the exiles’ flight from persecution, and recording how John Smyth had baptized himself (Robinson, Of Religious Communion, Works 3, pp. 160–163, 168); see the First Baptist Congregations.
After the Plymouth colonists killed several Indians in 1623 he wrote to them that it would have been a happy thing if they had converted some before they killed any, and that it was more glorious in men’s eyes than pleasing to God to be a terror to poor barbarous people (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1623 (pp. 197–198)). A letter from Leiden reports that he fell sick on 22 February 1625 and died on 1 March (Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1625 (p. 248)). See the Pilgrims Land at Plymouth.
In the timeline
- 1620, firm dateThe Pilgrims Land at Plymouth
Part of an English Separatist congregation that had lived in exile at Leiden sails to New England in 1620, forms itself into a civil body by a written covenant, and founds Plymouth. Half die in the first winter; a peace is made with the sachem Massasoit.