BROWNE, ROBERT. - Protestant pastor, b. at Tolethorp (England) ca. 1551, d. at Achurchum-Thorpe, between 1631 and 1633. After studying at Cambridge in Corpus Christi College, he began in 1571 to preach his doctrines at Islington.
B. was in fact the initiator of the principles and norms of ecclesiastical government adopted by the Independents, later called Congregationalists, and he introduced among Protestants the "Congregationalist Regime." According to this regime, the individual congregations form a body independent of every other, which has the right to elect and to depose its pastors, to formulate its "creed" and its discipline without any outside authority being able to hinder the perfect doctrinal independence of each member. Accused because of these doctrines of his, so contrary to the manner of governing of the official Church of England, he was protected by the Duke of Norfolk, so that he was able to withdraw to Norwich. Persecuted here too by the Anglican bishop of the diocese, he left England and went to Middelburg in Holland. Here he wrote his three treatises, in which he explains the doctrines of the Congregationalists. But his character made him disliked by the faithful of whom he was pastor; therefore, in 1584, he abandoned them to go to Scotland, where for his doctrines, contrary also to the Presbyterian regime, he was imprisoned. Released from prison, he returned in 1586 to England, settling at Northampton, where he was likewise excommunicated by the Anglican bishop. Protected this time as well, he was reconciled with the bishop, and having definitively separated himself from the Church he had founded, in 1591 he was made Anglican pastor in the small church of Achurchum-Thorpe, where he died, it seems, mentally ill.
Bibliography4 works
Camillo Crivelli