Indians ‘in their filthy, smoky holes, to gain their tongue,’ and the value of his book is enhanced by the fact that it was compiled before the language of the Narragansetts had been essentially modified by intercourse with the English.
Williams's friend Vane received him hospitably, and presented him to the commissioners of plantations, who listened to his views with attention and granted him the charter that he sought (dated 14 March 1644), giving to ‘the Providence Plantations in the Narragansetts Bay full power to rule themselves.’ An interval of a few months before setting sail on his return voyage was occupied by Williams in seeing two tracts through the press. The first, ‘Mr. Cotton's Letter lately printed, examined, and answered’ (1644, small 4to), was a reply point by point to the ‘Letter’ justifying the expulsion of Roger Williams which Cotton had printed in 1643—the gist of the writer's complaint being that by the ‘New English elders’ church fellowship was put before godliness. The second of the pamphlets, also in small quarto, was the notable ‘The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for cause of Conscience, discussed in a Conference betweene Truth and Peace, who in all tender Affection present to the High Court of Parliament (as the result of their Discourse) these (amongst other Passages), of highest consideration’ (London, 1644, 4to, two editions). The title-pages slightly differ, but neither bears the author's name (British Museum, Bodl., Advocates' Library). The doctrine of the liberty of conscience in matters of religion was a necessary outcome of protestant conditions, and it had already been preached for many years by independent or baptist divines (see Tracts on Liberty of Conscience and Persecution, ed. Richardson, Hanserd Knollys Society, 1846); but it is doubtful if it had yet been so forcibly expounded as it was in ‘The Bloudy Tenent.’ At the outset of his treatise Williams takes the highest ground in his advocacy of absolute freedom; ‘it is,’ he says, ‘the will and command of God that (since the coming of his Son, Lord Jesus) a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-christian consciences and worships be granted to all men, in all Nations and Countries, and they are only to be fought against with that sword which is only (in soul matters) able to conquer, to wit, the word of God's Spirit, the word of God’ (preface). In concluding, he goes so far as to enounce the principle, ‘The civil magistrate owes two things to false worshippers, (1) Permission, (2) Protection’ (chap. cxxv). Williams sailed about the time of the appearance of his book, probably in July 1644, and it was perhaps as well that he did, for in August the commons ordered ‘The Bloudy Tenent’ to be burned by the common hangman (Commons' Journal, 9 Aug.). Prynne similarly, in his ‘Twelve Considerable Serious Questions’ (1644), denounced Roger Williams's licentious work and dangerous conclusion of free liberty of conscience, which was again condemned by the Sion College manifesto of December 1647. A small piece of manuscript that Williams had left behind him was published anonymously in London in 1645, in octavo, under the title ‘Christnings make not Christians; or a briefe Discourse concerning that name Heathen commonly given to the Indians; as also concerning that great point of their conversion.’
In the meantime Williams had arrived back in Boston (17 Dec. 1644) with letters to the governor which ensured him against molestation, and the new charter which he had obtained for the settlers of Narragansett Bay was formally recognised in 1647. The result of the appeal to England had been so far satisfactory, but in 1651 matters were again disturbed, and the charter seemed in danger of being undermined by a commission obtained in England by William Coddington [q. v.] as governor of Aquidneck Island, in independence of the remainder of the colony of which it forms an integral part (see Rhode Island Hist. Tracts, No. 4). In November 1651 Williams embarked once more for England with a commission to procure the abrogation of Coddington's authority, and at the same time to secure titles and protection for the Rhode Island boundaries against encroachments on the part of either Massachusetts or Connecticut. On his arrival in England he seems to have paid a visit to Sir Henry Vane in Lincolnshire. Vane was now at the height of his influence, and Williams wrote to his friends in Providence to the effect that ‘the great anchor of our ship is Sir Henry.’ One of his first acts in England, however, was to send to press a vindication of his treatise of 1644, the challenge of which had been responded to by Cotton in his ‘Bloudy Tenent washed and made white in the Bloude of the Lambe.’ Williams's answer to Cotton was entitled ‘The Bloudy Tenent yet more Bloudy by Cotton's Endevour to wash it white in the Bloud of the Lambe,’ printed by Giles Calvert, 1652, small 4to (British Museum, Bodleian). And this he followed up with ‘The Hireling Ministry none of Christs, or a Discourse touching the Propagating the Gospel of Jesus Christ’ (London, 1652, 4to; Brit. Museum); and another tract in the form of a letter to his
