BROWNE, ROBERT. - Protestant pastor, b. at Tolethorp (England) c. 1551, d. at Achterchum-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 originator of the principles and norms of ecclesiastical government adopted by the Independents, later called Congregationalists, and introduced among Protestants the “Congregationalist Regime.” According to this regime, individual congregations form a body independent of all others, which has the right to elect and depose its pastors, to formulate its own creed and discipline without any external authority being able to hinder the perfect doctrinal independence of each member. Accused because of these doctrines, which were so contrary to the governance of the official Church of England, he was protected by the Duke of Norfolk, so that he was able to retire to Norwich. Persecuted even there 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 unpopular with the faithful of whom he was pastor; therefore, in 1584, he abandoned them to go to Scotland, where, because of his doctrines which were also contrary to the Presbyterian regime, he was imprisoned. After being released from prison, he returned in 1586 to England, settling in Northampton, where he was again persecuted by the Anglican bishop. Once again protected, he reconciled with the bishop, and having definitively separated from the Church he had founded, in 1591 he was made an Anglican pastor in the small church of Achterchum-Thorpe, where he died, apparently mentally ill.