Williams, Roger

Williams, Roger (c.1603–83), born in London, early became the protégé of the great lawyer Sir Edward Coke, and was educated at Cambridge and destined for the law. After receiving his B.A. (1627), he determined to become a minister, and by 1629 had taken orders in the Anglican Church. He became increasingly influenced by the Puritans, though he soon went beyond their beliefs. Arriving in Massachusetts (1631), he refused a call from a Boston church because it was not Separatist and after a brief period at the more liberal Plymouth he went to Salem as a minister, holding democratic views of church government even beyond those of Separatists.

He became anathema to the Massachusetts theocracy because of his “leveler” principles, based on the ideals of the New Testament and representing the incarnation of Protestant individualism, as well as for his political views, which caused him to attack the royal charter as an imperialistic expropriation of Indian rights. His extremely democratic church at Salem so disturbed the hegemony that the General Court banished him (1635), and, “sorely tossed for one fourteen weeks, in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean,” he made his way to Rhode Island to found its earliest settlement at Providence (1636). Carrying out his democratic principles, he entered upon his apostolic labors among the Indians, living with them “in their filthy smoky holes …to gain their tongue,” which efforts resulted in A Key into the Language of America (1643).

Meanwhile he became a Baptist for a few months (1639), then a Seeker, believing in the fundamentals of Christianity but in no creed, and espousing a mysticism that held to an indwelling God of love. His colony of those who had followed him from Salem was based on the compact theory which held that government is a man‐made institution resting on the consent and equality of its subjects: church and state were separate, family heads had a voice in government, and all shared equally in a land association.

Opposition from the encircling New England Confederation and antagonisms among his own individualistic settlers posed problems that led him to go to England (1643), where through the aid of his friend Sir Henry Vane he got a charter for the “Providence Plantations” (1644). While abroad he became an intimate of Milton and Cromwell, taking part in the Revolution. To current arguments on church government he added Queries of Highest Consideration (1644), addressed to both houses of Parliament as objection to the establishment of a national church. He also composed an answer to a letter written six years before by John Cotton, which had justified Williams's banishment, and published the reply as Mr. Cotton's Letter Lately Printed, Examined and Answered (1644). This statement of his side of the controversy, with the representation of his own view that “persecutors of men's bodies seldom or never do these men's souls good,” was followed by a more famous controversy with Cotton. Challenging the views of the Massachusetts hierarchy, and pleading for a complete religious and political liberty, he published his most celebrated work, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution (1644).

Returning to his colony in the autumn of the same year, he found that William Coddington had usurped leadership, and opposed both Williams's democracy and his desire to unite the various Rhode Island settlements. After a temporary settlement, Williams again went to England (1651), where he succeeded in overthrowing his rival. While there, he wrote The Bloudy Tenent Yet More Bloudy … (1652) in reply to Cotton's The Bloudy Tenent Washed and Made White in the Bloud of the Lamb (1647). Williams returned to become president of his colony (1654) and obtained a new charter (1663). Illustrating his belief in complete toleration, he admitted both Jews and Quakers, but nevertheless soon found himself involved in a dispute with the latter group. With great vituperation he attacked the followers of the English Quaker, Fox (1672), and published George Fox Digg'd out of his Burrowes (1676). Although this and other controversies embittered his last years, as did the necessity to take part with the other colonies in King Philip's War (1675–76) against the Indians, whom he had so long befriended, he continued to the end of his life to be a democratic leader, in both religious and temporal affairs. In addition to lesser writings such as Christenings Make Not Christians (1645) and The Hireling Ministry None of Christs (1652), various fugitive materials have been gathered in Letters and Papers of Roger Williams (1924).