Roger Williams and the Founding of Providence (1636)

Roger Williams, an English Puritan minister banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony, founded the settlement of Providence in 1636 on land granted by the Narragansett people. He made it a refuge where government had no power over matters of conscience. Providence became the heart of Rhode Island, the first English colony built on the principle of full religious liberty.

Background: a troublesome minister

Williams was born in London around 1603 and educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge. A committed Puritan, he sailed to New England and arrived in Boston in February 1631, shortly after the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

He quickly caused controversy. He refused a post with the Boston church because it had not formally separated from the Church of England. He served in Salem and Plymouth, where he learned the languages of neighbouring Native peoples, and then returned to Salem.

His ideas alarmed the colony’s leaders. Williams argued that civil magistrates should punish only civil crimes, not offences against religion such as Sabbath-breaking or blasphemy. He held that the king’s charter could not give the colonists land that belonged to Native peoples unless they bought it. He also objected to requiring oaths from people who were not true believers.

Banishment and flight

In October 1635 the General Court found him guilty of spreading new and dangerous opinions and ordered him to leave the colony. He was allowed to stay until spring because of illness, but in January 1636 the magistrates learned that he was still preaching and planned to ship him back to England.

Warned in advance, reportedly by John Winthrop himself, Williams left Salem in the depths of winter. He later wrote that for about 14 weeks he did not know what bread or bed meant, and he relied on the hospitality of the Wampanoag and Narragansett, with whom he had traded and whose language he spoke.

Founding Providence

In the spring of 1636 Williams began a settlement at Seekonk, east of the Seekonk River. Plymouth’s governor warned him that the land lay within Plymouth’s patent, so he crossed the river with a handful of companions. They settled near a freshwater spring at the head of Narragansett Bay.

The Narragansett sachems Canonicus and his nephew Miantonomi granted Williams the land; a written deed recording the grant is dated 24 March 1638. Williams named the place Providence, in thanks for God’s care in his distress. Unlike many colonial leaders, he insisted that land must be obtained from its Native owners, not simply claimed by royal charter.

The first settlers agreed to obey decisions made by the majority of householders, but “only in civil things”. This brief compact, made around 1637, separated civil government from religion. Newcomers of any faith were welcome, and Providence soon attracted dissenters, including followers of Anne Hutchinson, who founded nearby Portsmouth in 1638.

Williams and the Narragansett

Williams’s friendship with the Narragansett proved vital to New England. In 1636, as tensions with the Pequot mounted, he travelled to the Narragansett sachems and helped persuade them not to join the Pequot against the English. Their alliance with the colonists contributed to the English victory in the Pequot War.

In 1643 he published A Key into the Language of America, a guide to the Narragansett language and customs that remains one of the most important sources on the Native peoples of southern New England. It treated Native people with unusual respect, while still viewing them through the eyes of a Christian missionary.

Rhode Island and liberty of conscience

Williams also helped found the First Baptist Church in Providence in 1638 or 1639, though he soon left it. In 1643–1644 he went to England and obtained a patent from Parliament uniting Providence, Portsmouth and Newport as the Colony of Providence Plantations.

In 1644 he published The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, a powerful argument that forced worship was contrary to Christianity and that governments had no authority over souls. In a related work he described a wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world. In 1663 Charles II granted Rhode Island a royal charter, secured by John Clarke, that guaranteed what it called a lively experiment in religious freedom.

Williams later served as president of the colony. He died in Providence in early 1683.

Timeline

• c. 1603: Roger Williams is born in London.
• 1631, February: Williams arrives in Boston.
• 1635, October: The Massachusetts General Court banishes him.
• 1636, January: He flees Salem in winter.
• 1636, spring: Williams and companions found Providence.
• 1638, 24 March: The Narragansett deed for Providence is recorded.
• 1644: Parliament’s patent unites the Narragansett Bay towns; The Bloudy Tenent is published.
• 1663: Charles II grants Rhode Island its royal charter.

Why it matters

Providence was one of the first places in the Western world where government deliberately stayed out of religion. Williams’s ideas about liberty of conscience and the separation of church and state influenced later debates and are often seen as a forerunner of the religious freedom clauses of the US Constitution.