Dismissed by the Church: The Defiance of Richard Clifton

Richard Clifton (Clyfton) was a troublemaking minister during the late 1500s and early 1600s. He faced multiple disciplinary meetings for his noncompliance with church customs like announcing church holy days, making the sign of the cross during baptisms, or wearing a traditional white clergy robe. The Church of England dismissed him from his duties on March 15, 1605, when he would not pledge submission to new church laws. 

Finding kinship with Separatists in northern Nottinghamshire, Clifton joined the unauthorized church in Scrooby. There he became a crucial early mentor to William Brewster, William Bradford, and Pastor John Robinson who became the Pilgrims’ most cherished spiritual shepherd.  

After many Scrooby Separatists fled to Holland to escape English persecution, Clifton followed them to Amsterdam in 1608. He emerged as a prominent writer championing Separatist views and rebuking the English church. However, soon his views softened. Renouncing his earlier dogmatic positions, he began criticizing his former religious partners. 

The conflicts between Separatist churches in Amsterdam prompted John Robinson’s flock to move to Leyden. Clifton passed away in Amsterdam in 1616, four years before many among his former church left Holland for rugged New England.  

Despite Clifton’s surprising religious reversal, William Bradford remembered his former mentor fondly, describing him as a “fatherly old man” with a “great white beard, and it was a pity that such a reverend old man should be forced to leave his country, and at that age go into exile. But it was his lot, and he bore it patiently.”

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“We are afflicted on every side, yet are we not in distress: we are in doubt, but yet we despair not. We are persecuted, but not forsaken: cast down, but we perish not.”

(2 Corinthians 4:8-9; 1599 Geneva Bible)