Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/566

tion on the part of the settlers of Massachusetts to throw off their allegiance, and accordingly they hastened to condemn Mr. Williams and his views. This purely political question was complicated with disputes arising from Mr. Williams's advanced opinions on toleration. He maintained that " no human power had the right to intermeddle in mat- ters of conscience ; and that neither church nor state, neither bishop nor king, may prescribe the smallest iota of religious faith." For this, he main- tained, " man is responsible to God alone." The ministers, with his friends, Cotton and Hooker at their head, sent a committee to Salem to censure him; but he denied their spiritual jurisdiction, and declared his determination to "remove the yoke of soul-oppression." In July, 1635, he was summoned before the general court at Boston, and in October he was ordered to quit the colony within six weeks, but permission was presently granted for him to remain until spring. It was then reported that many people in Salem, " taken with an appre- hension of his godliness," repaired to his house for religious instruction, and that they meditated with- drawing from Massachusetts and founding a colony upon Narragansett bay, in which the principle of religious toleration should be strictly upheld. To Erevent this movement, it was decided to send him ack to England. He was again summoned to Boston, but refused to obey the summons, where- upon the magistrates sent to Salem a warrant for his arrest. He suspected what was coming, and left his home just before the officers arrived. He made his way through the wilderness to the wigwams of the Pokanokets. Their chief, Massasoit, granted him a tract of land on Seekonk river. There, in the spring, he was joined by friends from Sa- lem, and they began to build; but, in order to avoid any complications with the Plymouth colony, they moved to the site of Providence, where they made their first settlement in June, 1636. This territory was granted to Mr. Williams by the Narra- gansett chiefs, Canonicus and Miantonomoh. His influence over these Indians was great, and it soon enabled him to perform for the infant colonies a service that no other man in New England could have undertaken with any hope of success ; he de- tached the powerful tribe of Narragansetts from the league that the Pequot sachem Sassacus was forming for the purpose of destroying all the Eng- lish settlements. The effect of Mr. Williams's diplomacy was to leave the Pequots to fight with- out allies, and the English soon exterminated them. During the Pequot war the magistrates of the colony that had banished him sought his counsel, and he gave it freely. In 1638 he assisted John Clarke and William Coddington in negotiating the purchase of Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, for which the Indians were liberally paid. True to his prin- ciple of toleration, while he opposed the opinions of that restless agitator, Samuel Gorton, he refused to join in the movement for expelling him from Providence. In 1643 he went to England and ob- tained the charter for the Rhode Island and Provi- dence settlements, dated 14 March, 1644. While in England he published his " Key into the Lan- guage of America " (London, 1643), a work of great value on the speech of the New England Indians. He also wrote and published anonymously his famous book " The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience " (London, 1644). In this book the doctrines of religious freedom are ably and attractively presented in the form of a dialogue between Truth and Peace. It was dedicated to the parliament, then waging war against the king, and it attracted general attention from its great literary merit as well as from the nature of the subject. It was answered by Mr. Cotton's book entitled " The Bloody Tenent washed and made White in the Blood of the Lamb " (London, 1647). After a while Mr. Williams published an effective rejoinder en- titled " The Bloody Tenent made yet more Bloody by Mr. Cotton's Endeavor to wash it White " (Lon- don, 1652). The controversy was conducted on both sides with a candor and courtesy very rare in those times. While in London, in 1644, Mr. Will- iams also published a reply to Mr. Cotton's state- ment of the reasons for his banishment. This ad- mirable book, a small quarto of forty-seven pages, entitled " Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined and An- swered," is now exceedingly rare. Mr. Williams landed in Boston, 17 Sept., 1644, with a letter signed by several members of parliament, which was vir- tually a safe-conduct for his passage through Massa- chusetts territory. Through his exertions a treaty was made with the Narragansetts, 4 Aug., 1645, which saved New England from the horrors of an Indian war. In order to obtain the abrogation of the commission of William Coddington as governor of the islands of Rhode Island and C6- nanicut, Mr. Williams sailed in November, 1651, for England, in company with John Clarke. Through the aid of Sir Henry Vane this mission was successful. While in England, Mr. Williams spent several weeks at Vane's country house in Lincolnshire, and he saw much of Cromwell and Milton. At this time-he wrote and published his " Hireling Ministry None of Christ s " (London, 1652), which is an able argument against an estab- lished church and the support of the clergy by taxation. In the same year he published " Experi- ments of Spiritual Life and Health, and their Pre- servatives. He returned to Providence in 1654 and took part in the reorganization of the colonial government in that year. He was chosen, 12 Sept., 1654, president of the colony, and held that office until May, 1658. During this time he secured the toleration of the Quakers, who were beginning to come to New England, and on this occasion he was again brought into conflict with the government of IViassachusetts. A new charter was granted to Rhode Island, 8 July, 1663, under which Benedict Arnold was first governor and Roger Williams one of the assistants. This charter established such a liberal republican government that the Revolution in 1776 made no change in it, and it was not super- seded until 1842. (See Dorr, Thomas Wilson.) Mr. Williams in 1663 was appointed commissioner for settling the eastern boundary, which had long been the subject of dispute with both Plymouth and Massachusetts. For the next fourteen years he was most of the time either a representative or an assistant. In 1672 he was engaged in his famous controversy with the Quakers, of whose doctrines and manners he strongly disapproved, though he steadfastly refused to persecute them. George Fox was then in Newport, and Mr. Williams challenged him to a public discussion of fourteen theological propositions. Fox left the colony before the challenge had been delivered to him, but it was accepted by three Quaker champions, John Stubbs, John Burnet, and William Edmundson. Mr. Williams, though seventy-three years of age, rowed himself in a boat from Providence to Newport, about thirty miles, to meet his adversaries. The debate was carried on for three days in the Quaker meeting-house, without changing anybody's opinion. Mr. Williams afterward wrote an account of the affair, and maintained his own view, in the book entitled " George Fox digged out of his Burrowes," a small quarto of 327 pages (Boston,