A History of the American People

Winthrop was out of office at the time, or he might perhaps have taken a similar view. But,
nursing his own wrongs, he concluded that the treatment of Williams was unjust and ungodly. In
tiny England, there was no alternative but to suppress him. In vast America, he should be given
the choice of planting himself elsewhere. So Winthrop, who knew what had been decided in
council, secretly warned Williams of the plan to send him back to England and advised him to
slip off from Salem, where Williams was established, into the Narrangansett Wilderness. As
Williams himself related it: '[Winthrop] privately wrote to me to steer my course to
Narrangansett Bay and the Indians, for many high and heavenly and public ends, encouraging
me, from the freeness of the place from any English claims and patents.' So Williams fled, with
his wife Ann, their children, and their household servants. It was the beginning of the harsh New
England winter, and Williams and his family had to spend it traveling through the forest, in
makeshift shelters, until in the spring of 1636 he reached an Indian village at the head of
Narrangansett Bay. To his dying day-and he lived to be eighty-Williams believed that his
family's survival was entirely due to divine providence, a fact which confirmed him in the
rightness of his views. And he retained correspondingly bitter memories of his 'persecutors.' He
negotiated a land purchase with two Indian tribes, and set up a new colony on a site he named
Providence. He let it be known that his new settlement on Rhode Island welcomed dissidents of
all kinds, fleeing from the religious tyranny of the Bay Colony. As he put it, I desired it might be a shelter for persons distressed for conscience.' By 1643, Portsmouth, Newport, and Warwick had been founded as further towns. Williams may have been an extremist. But he was also a man of business. He knew the law of England and the ways of government. He had no title to his colony and the Bay authorities would not give him one: they called Providencethe Sewer of New England.' But he knew that
parliament and the Puritans now ruled in London, so he went there. On March 24, 1644
parliament, at his request, transformed the four towns into a lawful colony by charter, endorsing
an Instrument of Government which Williams had drawn up. He took the opportunity, London
being for the time being an ultra-libertarian city where the most extreme Protestant views could
be circulated, to write and publish a defense of religious freedom, The Bloudy Tenet of
Persecution for the Cause of Conscience discussed. And his new Instrument declared that The form of government established in Providence Plantations is DEMOCRATICAL, that is to say, a government held by the free and voluntary consent of all, or the greater part, of the free inhabitants.' Williams listed various laws and penalties for specific transgressions but added: And otherwise than this, what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their consciences
persuade them, every one in the name of his God. And let the Saints of the Most High walk in
this colony without molestation, in the name of Jehovah their God, for ever and ever.’
Williams' rugged angularity and unbiddable nature emerge strongly from his voluminous
writings and correspondence. His new colony was by no means popular. Public opinion in
Massachusetts was against it. It was believed to be a resort of rogues. Nor was it easy to get title
to land there, as Williams insisted that any acquired from the Indians must be paid for at market
rates. He opposed force, and was virtually a pacifist: `I must be humbly bold to say that it is
impossible for any man or men to maintain their Christ by the sword, and to worship a true
Christ."' The Rhode Island towns were stockaded and fortified. But Williams managed to avoid
any conflict at all with the Indians until the disaster of King Philip's War in 1675-6. His Rhode
Island colony thus got the reputation of being a place where the Indians were honored and
protected. Then again, Williams was accused with some justice of being a man of wild and
volatile opinions, an eccentric, an anti-establishment man. A few colonists liked that sort of