ROGER WILLIAMS
[Illustration: Detail of Roger Williams Statue, Roger Williams Park,
Providence]
ROGER WILLIAMS
BY
MAY EMERY HALL
_Author of “Dutch Days,” “Jan
and Betje,” etc._
[Illustration: _The Seal of Roger Williams_]
THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON CHICAGO
COPYRIGHT 1917
BY FRANK M. SHELDON
THE PILGRIM PRESS
BOSTON
FOREWORD
For much of the data contained in this biography of Roger Williams, I
am indebted to the following authorities:
Narragansett Club Publications;
Memoir of Roger Williams, by James D. Knowles;
Roger Williams: the Pioneer of Religious Liberty, by Oscar S. Straus;
Roger Williams, by Edmund J. Carpenter;
Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations;
History of the State of Rhode Island, by Samuel Greene Arnold;
Rhode Island: Its Making and Its Meaning, by Irving Berdine Richman;
Providence in Colonial Times, by Gertrude Selwyn Kimball;
Annals of the Town of Providence, by William R. Staples;
Winthrop’s Journal.
My sincere thanks are due Mr. Howard M. Chapin, Librarian of the
Rhode Island Historical Society, for the illustrations of the Charter
House, statue of Roger Williams and the Roger Williams seal, also for
permission to photograph the Roger Williams compass, and for other
substantial assistance rendered in the preparation of this little
volume.
I desire, too, to express my thanks for the story of the Roger Williams
watch given by Mr. Henry Russell Drowne of New York City and photograph
of the same.
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
FOREWORD v
INTRODUCTION xi
I OUT OF THE SHADOWS 3
II WESTWARD, HO! 15
III NEW NEIGHBORS 23
IV THE WAR OF WORDS 38
V “A CORNER FOR THE PERSECUTED” 52
VI THE PEQUOT WAR 68
VII THE INDIAN KEY 80
VIII IN QUEST OF THE CHARTER 93
IX NARRAGANSETT DAYS 108
X THE CHARTER ON TRIAL 120
XI THE SECOND MISSION 128
XII ROGER WILLIAMS AS COLONIAL PRESIDENT 142
XIII THE COMING OF THE QUAKERS 156
XIV ROGER WILLIAMS AS CITIZEN 169
XV KING PHILIP’S WAR 185
XVI BACK TO THE SHADOWS 200
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
DETAIL OF ROGER WILLIAMS STATUE _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
ENTRANCE TO CHARTER HOUSE, LONDON 10
THE ROGER WILLIAMS TREE 46
THE WILLIAMS STREET MONUMENT 56
THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH OF PROVIDENCE 78
CANONICUS BRIDGE, THE BETSEY WILLIAMS COTTAGE, ROGER WILLIAMS PARK 120
STATUE OF ROGER WILLIAMS, ROGER WILLIAMS PARK 162
ROGER WILLIAMS’ POCKET-COMPASS, SUN-DIAL AND WATCH 206
INTRODUCTION
The new Life of Roger Williams is certain to receive a cordial welcome
and a wide reading. It has been eight years since Dr. Edmund J.
Carpenter published his “Roger Williams, a Study of the Life, Times
and Character of a Political Pioneer,” and twenty-three years since
the admirable work by Oscar S. Straus, entitled “Roger Williams, the
Pioneer of Religious Liberty,” appeared. In the meantime Irving B.
Richman has given to the public his able volumes on “Rhode Island, its
Making and its Meaning,” which naturally and inevitably portrayed the
character and service of its great founder. Rhode Island was but the
incarnation of the views and principles of Roger Williams.
In view of these recent biographies, added to several which had been
written previously and the large place which Roger Williams fills in
all publications on New England history, it may be asked, “Is there a
demand for a new Life?” It may be answered emphatically, “Yes, if it
is written in the attractive and popular style in which Mrs. Hall has
done her work.” She has made herself familiar with the facts of Roger
Williams’ life so far as known, with the spirit of the Puritan age and
the causes which led to his banishment, with his advanced views of
religious liberty, his courageous efforts to defend them and his heroic
self-denials and sufferings to incorporate them in human government,
with the reasons which justify the title now universally given to him
as “the pioneer and apostle of soul liberty,” with the evidences of his
humane and forgiving spirit toward those who had persecuted him and
his wonderful success in preserving them more than once from slaughter
by hostile Indians, with his deep and abiding interest in the native
tribes and his labors for their moral and spiritual elevation, with his
success in acquiring their barbarous language, winning their confidence
and turning many of them from their idolatry and superstitions to the
knowledge of the true God and the acceptance of Christian truth, which
labors place him side by side with John Eliot, the Puritan apostle to
the Indians. With all these things Mrs. Hall has made herself familiar,
and also with his noble service, often rendered, as a wise statesman
and recognized peacemaker among the turbulent elements in his little
colony as well as between the natives and the Puritan settlers, with
his recognition by the British Parliament as a scholar of exceptional
ability and an eminent philanthropist, when they granted his request
for a charter for his imperiled venture, and also with his intimate
acquaintance with some of the distinguished leaders of the England
of his day, viz., Cromwell, Milton and Sir Henry Vane, Jr., and she
has told the wonderful story in a manner that will charm and instruct
readers, both old and young.
The life of Roger Williams was surrounded with not a little of
romance--the uncertainty of the date and place of his birth, his
discovery and patronage by the eminent jurist, Sir Edward Coke, his
unfortunate first-love experience, his migration to the wilderness of
the new world, his expulsion by his companions from their primitive
society, who found him a disturbing element by reason of his advanced
political opinions, his retention of the esteem and friendship of
some of the ablest men who drove him out because of his “pestilential
doctrines,” as, for instance, the Winthrops, father and son, with whom
he kept up an affectionate correspondence as long as he lived (more
than one hundred of his letters to them have been preserved), and
the remarkable success of his “lively experiment,” which has given
to him an honored and conspicuous name with all modern historians
and has exerted an influence upon human government which is rapidly
encircling the globe. Roger Williams was charged by his Puritan
neighbors with having “a windmill in his head.” Not only Rhode Island
and Massachusetts, but the whole nation, from ocean to ocean, is now
enjoying the priceless grist which that despised windmill ground out.
It looks as if Roger Williams was fast coming into his own. Prof. Romeo
Elton said in his “Life of Roger Williams,” published sixty-three
years ago, “His property, his time and his talents were devoted to
the promotion of the temporal and spiritual welfare of mankind, and
in conducting to a glorious issue the struggle to unloose the bonds
of the captive daughter of Zion.” Charles Francis Adams, in his
“Massachusetts, its Historians and its History,” frankly declares,
“Massachusetts, in the person of her ministers and magistrates, missed
a great destiny by rejecting Roger Williams.”
We of to-day undoubtedly look upon the Puritans with more charity and a
greater appreciation of their spirit and excellences than did those of
a former generation. We recognize their great virtues as well as their
glaring faults. They were men of sterling character, of deep religious
convictions, of willingness to make painful sacrifices for the sake of
principle, of great reverence for the Bible and the institutions of
religion, of purity of life in the home and in their social relations.
They believed that religion was the supreme thing and that the
commandments of God were of binding obligation upon all intelligent
moral beings. They may have been too rigid in their interpretations
and too severe in their application of religion to life and conduct,
as, for example, in the observance of the Sabbath. But in our day of
extreme and dangerous neglect men are saying, “There are some things
that are worse than a Puritan Sabbath.” It might be well for modern
life if we, the descendants of the Puritans, had inherited more of
their virtues.
Of course in the matter of the separation of church and state they were
still in the bonds of ignorance. Though they had broken away from the
persecuting hand of the mother land and “the mother church,” as they
loved to call it, they had not broken away from the belief which was
the source and instigator of the persecuting spirit. As Prof. John
Winthrop Platner has said recently in his “King’s Chapel Lecture” on
the Congregationalists, “The connection between church and state was
also close, in spite of their theoretical separation, so close in fact
that the government of Massachusetts Bay has often been described as a
theocracy.... They believed that no human government could be firmly
established, unless based upon the divine.... The mixture of law and
religion of course gave rise to difficulties, and aroused criticism.
It was the persistent exercise of jurisdiction over offenses “against
the first table of the law” (i.e., against the first four commandments
of the decalogue) that provoked the open hostility of Roger Williams
against the authorities, and caused him to protest that the things of
God and the things of Cæsar should not be confounded, a protest which
brought him into trouble.”
The Puritans had hardly reached the dawn of the glorious day which
was to be distinguished by absolute religious liberty. Roger Williams
was enveloped in its full noonday splendor. Hon. James Bryce
denominates him “an orthodox Puritan.” True, if he means an intense,
logically consistent, fully ripened, radical Puritan, a Pilgrim of
the Pilgrims. In the memorable words of Judge Storey, “In the code
of laws established by Williams and his companions we read for the
first time, since Christianity ascended the throne of the Cæsars, the
declaration that the conscience should be free, and that men should
not be punished for worshiping God in the way they were persuaded He
requires.” In similar language Professor Masson declares that Roger
Williams organized “a community on the unheard-of principles of
absolute religious liberty combined with perfect civil democracy.”
Such is the unanimous testimony of historians as to the character and
service of the founder of Rhode Island. Mr. Oscar Straus expresses the
hope “that the time is not far distant when the civilized people in
the remotest corners of the earth will recognize the truth and power
of the principles which throw around the name of Roger Williams a halo
of imperishable glory and fame.” May this new and popular biography,
charming in style, appreciative in spirit and in harmony with the
generally accepted facts of history, hasten the realization of this
sublime hope.
HENRY M. KING,
_Pastor Emeritus of the First Baptist Church_
(_The Roger Williams Church_).
PROVIDENCE, R. I.
ROGER WILLIAMS
“ROGER WILLIAMS STEERED HIS LITTLE SHIP
OF STATE TO A SAFE HARBOR BY THE COMPASS
OF AN ENLIGHTENED CONSCIENCE.”--_STRAUS._
ROGER WILLIAMS
CHAPTER I
OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Tucked away in the northeastern corner of the United States is the
tiny state of Rhode Island. “Little Rhody” she is often affectionately
called, although her full name is “State of Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations.” Such an overwhelming title for such a small body! Yet not
only in length of name, but in the number of her capital cities, has
Rhode Island led her sister states. Up to the year 1900 she boasted two
capitals, while every other state in the Union was contented with one.
From the beginning, Rhode Island has made up in interesting history
what she has lacked in size.
Much of this history is hinted at in the names found within her
borders. Take the name Providence, for example. It sounds as if it had
a story back of it--as, indeed, it has. Other quaint and suggestive
names are found in the streets of the capital--Benefit, Benevolent and
Friendship--and in the islands in Narragansett Bay--Prudence, Patience,
Hope.
Rhode Island’s story is largely that of Roger Williams, yet he was
too great a man to belong to one bit of the country alone. He is one
of the finest characters in United States history, though people were
long in finding it out. Even to-day we do not always remember the noble
services he rendered our country. Men who do spectacular things have
many biographers, while quiet lives often remain unrecorded. We are
apt to forget that it may take as much bravery to stand abuse and loss
of friends as to face the cannon’s mouth, that even more courage is
required to fight for disagreeable truths than to win battles. So while
Roger Williams never did anything to startle the world, he will remain
one of the great moral soldiers of all time. Lacking appreciation in
the day in which he lived, he deserves the honor of our own age. It is
time he came into his own.
The lives of most famous men begin with a fixed date. Stories of family
and boyhood follow, with perhaps a clear description of the great man
himself. In this respect, Roger Williams’ life is different from the
others. We have not the faintest idea what he looked like--whether
he was tall or short, stout or thin, dark or light, had blue eyes or
brown. No true portrait of him has ever been discovered. The artists
who have attempted to give us his likeness in bronze or marble or on
canvas have had to idealize him.
Out of a shadowy past, largely from our own imagination, we must make
up for ourselves a picture of his early days. Roger Williams has left
a very scant account of his boyhood and he was too unpopular in the
seventeenth century for others to take the trouble to record it. When
later writers did so, they made many mistakes. This is not strange,
as there were probably several persons by the name of Roger Williams
living at the same time as our hero.
To begin with, the very date of Roger Williams’ birth is unknown. It
is given by different historians anywhere between 1599 and 1607. In
his own writings, Roger Williams referred once or twice to his age,
but in such an indefinite way that we are led to think that he was not
exactly sure of his birthday. Thus in a letter written to John Winthrop
in 1632, he said he was “nearer upwards of thirty than twenty-five.”
Again, in 1679, he said he was “near to fourscore years of age.” Even
with the most careful arithmetic, we shall have to be content with the
rather vague information that he was born near the beginning of the
seventeenth century.
As to his birthplace, on this point also there has been much dispute.
For many years it was thought to be Wales, but now it has been quite
clearly proved that Roger Williams was born in London. The ancient
court records that point to this fact show that James Williams was the
father of Roger and a merchant tailor living in the parish of “St.
Sepulchres, without Newgate, London.” He was apparently in comfortable
circumstances, for his will provided not only for his wife and
children, but directed that gifts of money and bread be distributed
among the city poor.
Alice Williams, the mother of Roger, who survived her husband, owned
or leased property in Cow Lane. In her will she mentioned four
children--Sidrach, the oldest, Roger, “now beyond the seas,” Katherine,
wife of John Davies, and Robert. To Roger she bequeathed ten pounds, or
about fifty dollars, to be paid yearly for a term of twenty years.
The oldest boy of the family, Sidrach, after he grew up, became a
merchant of Turkey and other southern countries of Europe. Roger
Williams referred to him as follows:
“Myself have seen the Old Testament of the Jews, most curious writing,
whose price (in way of trade) was threescore pound, which my brother, a
Turkey merchant, had and showed me.”
Roger’s younger brother Robert became, like himself, a Rhode Island
colonist. He was one of the first settlers of Providence and later
became a schoolmaster at Newport.
Like many another boy, Roger Williams owed his start in life to a great
man. Sir Edward Coke was a brilliant English lawyer when Roger was
young. His friendship for the lad is best described by Sir Edward’s
daughter:
“This Roger Williams, when he was a youth, would, in a short-hand, take
sermons and speeches in the Star Chamber, and present them to my dear
father. He, seeing so hopeful a youth, took such liking to him that he
sent him in to Sutton’s Hospital, and he was the second placed there.”
The Star Chamber was a London Court, so called because the room in
which it met had a ceiling decorated with gilt stars. The school
mentioned in the letter is better known as the Charter House School.
On its roll of students are such famous names as Addison, Steele, John
Wesley and Grote. That Roger Williams remembered his early friend with
gratitude is shown by these words written in middle life:
“And I may truly say, that beside my natural inclination to study and
activity, his example, instruction and encouragement have spurred me
on to a more than ordinary, industrious and patient course in my whole
course hitherto.”
There is, indeed, every reason to think that Roger Williams proved to
be the kind of pupil Sir Edward hoped he would be, for while at the
Charter House he successfully prepared himself for college. Yet of
his real life as a schoolboy--his chums, his sports, his pranks, his
holidays--we know almost nothing. One tiny bit of information has come
down to us, however, which would seem to show that Roger Williams was
not very different from other boys. Thackeray, the great novelist, who
was himself a scholar at the Charter House School years later, once
said, in a lecture in Providence, that he had found in a beam of the
old school the letters “R W” which Roger Williams cut there as a boy.
Whenever Thackeray had to educate his boy characters, he usually sent
them to this venerable old institution. This is the way he pictures it
in “The Newcomes”:
“Under the great archway of the hospital he could look at the old
Gothic building; and a black-gowned pensioner or two crawling over
the quiet square, or passing from one dark arch to another. The
boarding-houses of the school were situated in the square, hard by the
more ancient buildings of the hospital. A great noise of shouting,
crying, clapping forms and cupboards, treble voices, bass voices,
poured out of the schoolboys’ windows: their life, bustle and gaiety
contrasted strangely with the quiet of those old men, creeping along in
their black gowns under the ancient arches yonder, whose struggle of
life was over, whose hope and noise and bustle had sunk into that gray
calm.”
In all probability, Roger Williams continued his education at Pembroke
College. Being the college of the great man who had interested himself
in the boy, it was the one that would most likely be chosen. After
graduating with a degree, Roger Williams studied law for a time. Then,
deciding to become a minister, he took orders in the Church of England
and obtained a position as chaplain in the household of Sir William
Masham of Otes, in the county of Essex.
[Illustration:
Entrance to Charter House, London. This photograph was loaned by Mr.
Howard M. Chapin, Librarian of the Rhode Island Historical Society,
Providence.]
A delightful and, at the same time, amusing love story has come to
light which reveals one of the last glimpses of Roger Williams in the
Old World. It seems that the wife of his patron, Lady Masham, had a
cousin, Jane Whalley, with whom the young chaplain fell in love. He
proceeded to write two letters to Miss Whalley’s aunt and guardian,
Lady Barrington, asking for the hand of her niece. In the first, he
mentions the fact that the affair has caused considerable talk and
he hints that Miss Jane returns his affection. Then he sums up his
worldly possessions--an expected trifling legacy from his mother, a
little money (“sevenscore pieces”) and a small library (“a little yet
costly study of books”). Pitiful means, indeed, for winning a young
lady of rank! Yet Roger Williams frankly pointed out to the aunt that
the advantages were not all on one side, for in spite of Miss Whalley’s
high birth, she had a most passionate temper.
Everything considered, it is not strange that the struggling minister
was flatly rejected. The second letter addressed to Lady Barrington is
such as only a disappointed, angry lover could write. He says in plain
language that the Lord is very angry with her ladyship and that if she
does not repent, all sorts of dreadful things are likely to happen to
her. The lengthy sermon-letter is filled with Scriptural quotations.
Still, although he asserts, “We hope to live together in the heavens
though the Lord have denied that union on earth,” time proved a rapid
healer. In less than two years he had transferred his affection to a
Miss Mary Warnard, or Barnard, and made her his wife.
The sequel of the unfortunate love affair is rather interesting. Of
course Miss Jane married another man, but, as it happened, he was a
clergyman like her former sweetheart. In turn she came to know the
pioneer life of New England as did Roger Williams, being located for
some years in Massachusetts and Connecticut. She later returned to
old England, where her husband became chaplain to her cousin, Oliver
Cromwell, who was also a friend of Roger Williams. In fact, Cromwell’s
real family name was Williams and some historians have even asserted
that he was related to Roger Williams.
The correspondence with Lady Barrington is of importance aside from
the disappointing love passages it records. For here is given an
early inkling of that unrest and dissatisfaction in religious matters
that was to play so large a part in the future life of the youthful
chaplain. Already beginning to protest against the established forms of
worship, he writes, “A tender conscience hath kept me back from honor
and preferment.” Then follows the merest hint of having received a call
from New England.
By this time Roger Williams had formed the habit of thinking for
himself and of holding firmly to what he believed to be right, whether
others agreed with him or not. During his stay in Essex, he used to
talk over religious subjects with his fellow-clergymen and to explain
why he differed from them on certain points. Among these companions
were Thomas Hooker and John Cotton, whose lives ran parallel to his on
both sides of the water. The three friends rode through the countryside
earnestly discussing the burning questions uppermost in their minds.
Little did they dream where these same discussions would lead! Had
Master Hooker and Master Cotton been told that the argumentative man
who rode by their side was to become one of the makers of American
history and a leader in world thought, they would most likely have
said, “Oh, no. Roger Williams is our friend, but he is really a very
short-sighted and very obstinate fellow.” Indeed, he had gained the
reputation among his Sussex neighbors of being “divinely mad.”
These, then, are the few meager facts of the beginnings of Roger
Williams’ existence before he set his face toward the New World. His
life in England will always remain more or less of a mystery. Not so,
fortunately, his life in America. His hardships, trials, adventures and
sufferings have become familiar history. And it is this part of the
story that is most important, for Roger Williams is, first and last, a
great American.