Roger Williams

His father cut and sold cloth in Smithfield, and the son was the sort of adolescent who impresses powerful men. Sir Edward Coke, the great common-law jurist, took him up and paid for Charterhouse. Williams went on to Pembroke College, Cambridge, took a bachelor's degree in 1627, and collected Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Dutch and French along the way. A conversion his father disapproved of pushed him past the Church of England altogether. He served as chaplain to a gentry family in Essex, married Mary Bernard in 1629, and boarded a ship for New England that anchored off Boston on February 5, 1631. Nothing in the record suggests he expected to become the most troublesome man in the colony.

Massachusetts tried him in October 1635 and convicted him of sedition and heresy. The sheriff came the following January and found him three days gone: 55 miles on foot through deep snow to a Wampanoag winter camp, where the sachem Massasoit kept him alive until spring. What he built afterward at the head of Narragansett Bay, and the charter and the books that defended it, are BriefHistory's subject. The question left over is what the man was willing to do once the colony was his to run.

The founder of the first English colony to guarantee liberty of conscience also trafficked in people. After the Pequot War he helped colonists distribute and sell captives and fielded requests to hunt down those who ran, using his contacts among Native leaders to find them, while writing to John Winthrop asking that terms of servitude be limited. Forty years later it came home. Narragansetts under Canonchet burned Providence on March 29, 1676, his own house among them. Williams, past 70 and elected captain of the town militia, then chaired the committee that appraised Rhode Island's Native prisoners, brokered their sale to residents, and recommended that Providence let them be kept as slaves. He organized the trial and execution of a captured war leader.

He was buried on his own land, and 50 years later the house collapsed into the cellar and took the location of the grave with it. When Providence dug for him in 1860, what came up was nails, teeth, bone fragments, and an apple tree root that had grown into the shape of a body — forking at the hips, bending at the knees, turning up at the feet. The town kept the root. The bone went under a monument at Prospect Terrace Park in 1939, the root to the John Brown House in 2007. The argument fared better: the Supreme Court reached for him in Everson in 1947 and again in Wallace v. Jaffree in 1985.

Roger Williams's life against the full span of the corpus.

• First Baptist Church in America company
  Founded at Providence after his own baptism by Ezekiel Holliman 1638
• A Key into the Language of America book
  The first book-length study of a Native American language in English 1643
• The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience book
  Parliament ordered the public hangman to burn every copy 1644
• The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody book
  His second answer to John Cotton 1652
• The Hireling Ministry None of Christ's book
  Against a paid, state-supported clergy 1652
• George Fox Digged out of his Burrowes book
  A late attack on Quaker doctrine, printed in Boston 1676

• 1627 aged ~24 Takes a bachelor's degree at Pembroke College, Cambridge He had been schooled at Charterhouse under the patronage of the jurist Sir Edward Coke.
• 1629 aged ~26 Marries Mary Bernard and takes a chaplaincy in Essex
• February 5, 1631 aged ~28 The Lyon anchors off Boston with Williams aboard
• October 1635 aged ~32 The General Court convicts him of sedition and heresy Banishment was delayed because he was ill and winter was coming on.
• January 1636 aged ~33 Slips out of Salem three days before the sheriff arrives He walked 55 miles through snow to a Wampanoag camp, where Massasoit sheltered him until spring.
• 1643 aged ~40 Publishes A Key into the Language of America in London
• 1647 aged ~44 Providence, Portsmouth, Newport and Warwick unite as one colony
• March 29, 1676 aged ~73 Narragansetts led by Canonchet burn Providence, his house among them
• 1683 aged ~80 Dies at Providence, on a date nobody recorded

• John Winthrop 1588–1649
  Long-serving Massachusetts Bay governor whose vision of a covenant community influenced New England political culture. corresponded with
• William Penn 1644–1718
  Founder of Pennsylvania who advanced representative government and religious toleration in colonial America. successor in the experiment
• Thomas Jefferson 1743–1826
  Principal author of the Declaration of Independence and third President who oversaw the Louisiana Purchase. carried the argument into law
• James Madison 1751–1836
  Fourth President and Father of the Constitution who co-authored the Federalist Papers. drafted the amendment
• Hugo Black 1886–1971
  Justice who championed strong First Amendment protections and incorporation of the Bill of Rights. cited him from the bench