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inquisitors of Boston. The President of the Court was Mr. John Haynes, who had come over in the same vessel with Mr. Cotton, and was greatly influenced by the opinions of that minister. Had the proceedings been delayed a few months longer, they might have had a different character and result; for in 1636, Harry Vane the younger was elected Governor of Massachusetts, and in him religious liberty had a champion* as bold as Williams himself. All the ministers of the colony were present; and melancholy is it to read that all, save one," took part against Williams. The letters were read, which he justified. Mr. Hooker, of Hartford (whom Cotton Mather styled "the Light of the Western churches") engaged in the Court in disputation with him, but failed to "reduce him from any of his errors." He was condemned. We have in his own words the grounds of the charges against him. He admits that they were "rightly summed up, expresses his 'hope' that he 'then maintained the rocky strength of them to his own and other consciences' satisfaction,' and professed his readiness for the same grounds not only to be bound and banished, but to die also in New England, as for most holy truths of God in Christ Jesus."

"After my public trial and answers at the general Court, one of the most ancient magistrates, whose name and speech may by others be remembered, stood up and spake Mr. Williams,' said he, 'holds forth these four particulars. First, that we have not our land by patent from the King, but that the natives are the true owners of it, and that we ought to repent of such a receiving it by patent. Secondly, that it is not lawful to call a wicked person to swear [or] to pray, as being actions of God's worship. Thirdly, that it is not lawful to hear any of the ministers of the parish assemblies in England. Fourthly, that the civil magistrate's power extends only to the bodies and goods and outward state of men."-Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined, &c., p. 375.

For these opinions the sentence of the Court was, that within six weeks he should depart from the colony. The only circumstance in this humiliating story on which we can dwell without a feeling of pain, is, that the sentence was not unanimous, and that it was carried by "not a large majority." The time of the year added to the severity of the sentence, for there were in the inclement season of a New-England winter no means by which the banished man could leave the colony. This consideration, in the first instance, wrought upon his judges to extend the period of his departure till the following spring. But when the tidings came to Boston that all Salem was in a state of anxious excitement, that Williams's popularity was greater than before, that he receded not from one of his heresies, and that he and his people were about to withdraw from Massachusetts in company and form an independent settlement upon Narragansett Bay,-the judges were influenced by mingled anger and fear to determine on another mode of ridding the colony of this great troubler. They sent in the depth of the winter for him to appear before the Court, and their intention was then to adjudge that he should be forthwith shipped to England in a vessel lying in the harbour and ready to put to sea.

* Milton's testimony on this point, who does not remember?

"To know

Both spiritual power and civil, what each means,

What severs each, thou hast learned, which few have done."

+ Upham's Life of Williams, p. 52.

Williams probably anticipated their unrighteous purpose, and sent "divers of the people of Salem" with his refusal to appear before the Court on the ground of his broken health.

The magistrates resolved that their victim should not escape, and sent a pinnace to Salem, and gave to Captain Underhill a warrant to apprehend him and transport him by the ship already mentioned as about to set sail for England. The officers proceeded to Salem; on reaching Williams's house, they found his wife nursing an infant* born three months previously, and tending another child of about two years old, but him they found not. Three days previously he had sought for safety from his persecutors by flight.

Mr. Cotton, in the Letter which he afterwards wrote in justification of the proceedings of the Court, alleged that Williams "banished himself from the fellowship of all the churches in those countries." This rather despicable perversion is spiritedly rebuked by Williams in his reply:

"If Mr. Cotton mean my own voluntary withdrawing from those churches resolved to continue in those evils, and persecuting the witnesses of the Lord presenting light unto them, I confess it was my own voluntary act; yea, I hope the act of the Lord Jesus sounding forth in me, a poor despised ram's horn, the blast which shall in his own holy season cast down the strength and confidence of those inventions of men in the worshipping of the true and living God and lastly, his act in enabling me to be faithful in any measure, to suffer such great and mighty trials for his name's sake. But if by banishing myself he intend the act of civil banishment from their common earth and air, I then observe with grief the language of the dragon in the lamb's lip. Among other expressions of the dragon, are not these common to the witnesses of the Lord Jesus, rent and torn by his persecutions? Go now;-say, you are persecuted, you are persecuted for Christ, suffer for your conscience: no, it is your schism, heresy, obstinacy, the devil hath deceived thee, thou hast banished thyself,' &c. Instances are abundant in so many books of martyrs, and the experience of all men, and therefore I spare to recite in so short a treatise. Secondly, if he mean this civil act of banishing, why should he call a civil sentence from the civil state, within a few weeks' execution, in so sharp a time of New England's cold-why should he call this a banishment from the churches? except he silently confess that the frame or constitution of their churches is but implicitly national, which yet they profess against; for otherwise why was I not yet permitted to live in the world, or commonweal, except for this reason, that the commonweal and church is yet but one, and he that is banished from the one must necessarily be banished from the other also."-Pp. 376, 377.

What befel Roger Williams in his flight the imagination of the reader must conceive. The few slight allusions to his sufferings which are found in his writings shew that his dangers and sufferings were great. It was in the stern month of January, 1636, that he found himself, as he says, "denied the common air to breathe in, and a civil cohabitation upon the same common earth; yea, and also without mercy and human compassion, exposed to winter miseries in a howling wilderness."t Acting on a friendly hint from Winthrop, advising him "to steer his course to the Narragansett Bay," he sought the dwellings of the native Indians. Two lines of his celebrated letter to Captain Mason disclose the difficulties of his course over the untrodden snow. "I was sorely

This child Roger Williams had called "Freeborn." + Cotton's Letter Examined, p. 370.

tossed up and down for fourteen weeks, in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean." Elsewhere he thus describes his meals in the wilderness: "With a spoonful of meal (a kind of parched meal which is a ready and wholesome food) and a spoonful of water from the brook, have I made many a good dinner and supper." Thus provided, he travelled a hundred miles through the woods.

Mr. Underhill with much ingenuity supports the view that Williams "journeyed by sea, often landing to seek for food and to hold intercourse with the natives as to his final settlement." "His route by sea would not be less than 200 miles, to accomplish which his own unaided arm might well fill up the fourteen weeks he tells us his journey lasted." (P. xxiv.) The kindly intercourse which Roger Williams had cultivated with the native Indians during his residence at Plymouth was now the means of saving his life, and opening the way to a prosperous settlement. In the wilderness, "these ravens," as he affectionately calls the Indians, "fed me." His wanderings at last came to an end. He reached Mount Hope, a village of the Pokanoket Indians, and was cordially welcomed by a friend, Massasoit, the aged chief of the tribe. From him he immediately received the grant of a tract of fertile land on the river Sekonk. Friends from Salem quickly gathered round him, amongst whom he freely divided his newly-acquired territory. There were the interesting sights and busy sounds common in new settlements. The fields were cleared and planted, and the humble dwellings of the settlers were being built, and the corn had sprung up, when an unexpected alarm, communicated in a not unfriendly spirit by Mr. Winslow, the Governor of Plymouth, suspended their industry, and forced Roger Williams to become a wanderer again. The site of their settlement was unfortunately within the jurisdiction of Plymouth. The Pilgrim Fathers were constrained to make the humiliating confession, that "they were loth to displease the bay." Williams and his comrades were still too near the abodes of civilization to feel assured of justice; another barrier must be placed between them and their Christian countrymen before they could be secured against inhumanity and outrage! They abandoned their new settlement, and embarking in a canoe upon the river Sekonk, crossed the stream in search of a new and safe abode. "There were," says Mr. Upham, "five others, who, having joined him at Sekonk, bore him company in the excursion in which he thus went forth to become the founder of a city and a state. Tradition has handed down, among the sons of these earliest citizens of Rhode Island, the course and incidents of their singular voyage. As the little bark, thus freighted with the fortunes of a future state, was borne along on the waters of the Sekonk, Williams was greeted by some Indians, from the heights that rise on the western banks of the stream, with the friendly salutation, What cheer, netop? (friend)-what cheer? This incident furnished Judge Durfee with the title of a poem, not without merit, describing the adventures of Williams.

Landing at the mouth of a beautiful river (the Mooshausic), he ascended a fertile slope, and when he reached a spring of water, decided there to fix his dwelling and plant the foundations of a future city. To this place, now covered with the monuments of industry and art, and the mansions of wealth and the halls of learning, Williams

gave the name of PROVIDENCE, to mark his sense of the omnipotent and gracious hand that had guided him through so many dangers to this peaceful and lovely habitation.

The earliest records of the colony contain the agreement signed by the members of the new settlement. It is ascribed to Williams, and its simplicity and comprehensiveness well become his wisdom:

"We, whose names are here under-written, being desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to submit ourselves, in active or passive obedience, to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for public good of the body in an orderly way, by the major consent of the present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together into a township, and such others as they shall admit into the same, only in civil things."

From the friendly Narragansett Indians he procured a large grant of land. This he made over by deed to the companions of his adventure, and in a subsequent deed he says, "I desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for conscience." His glorious design was accomplished; and to this great and good man was awarded the satisfaction of welcoming into the territory of Rhode Island many "weak and distressed souls, scattered and flying thither from Old and New England." He piously regarded himself as an instrument in God's hands, saying, "The Most High and Only Wise hath in his infinite wisdom provided this country and this corner as a shelter for the poor and persecuted, according to their several persuasions." One of the first victims of persecution to whom Rhode Island proved an asylum, was the unfortunate but heroic Mrs. Hutchinson, who, like Williams, was banished from Massachusetts for her religious opinions.

At Boston, in the mean time, there were members of the church not unmoved by the spectacle of Williams's persecution and heroic endurance. There were moments, perhaps, as Williams himself conjectures, "when what Mr. Cotton and others did in procuring his sorrows was not without some regret and reluctancy of conscience."* But their stern bigotry prevailed, and Mr. Cotton was particularly forward in giving advice and counsel to those who lamented (as they did with tears) the part they had taken in his condemnation, "proving it just and warrantable to their consciences." To Williams himself Cotton addressed a letter, and a correspondence ensued, the occasion and character of which are well described at the beginning of Williams's Examination and Answer.

"This Letter I acknowledge to have received from Mr. Cotton, whom for his personal excellencies I truly honour and love; yet at such a time of my distressed wanderings amongst the barbarians, that being destitute of food, of clothes, of time, I reserved it, though hardly, amidst so many barbarous distractions, and afterwards prepared an answer to be returned. In the interim, some friends being much grieved that one publickly acknowledged to be godly and dearly beloved, should yet be so exposed to the mercy of a howling wilderness in frost and snow, &c.,-Mr. Cotton, to take off the edge of censure from himself, professed both in speech and writing that he was no procurer of my sorrows. Some letters then passed between us, in which I proved and expressed, that if I had perished in that sorrowful winter's flight, only the blood of Jesus Christ could have washed him from the guilt of mine. His final answer was, ' Had you perished, your blood had been on your own head;

Mr. Cotton's Letter Examined, p. 378.

it was your sin to procure it, and your sorrow to suffer it.' Here I confess I stopped, and ever since suppressed my answer; waiting if it might please the Father of mercies more to mollify and soften, and render more humane and merciful, the ear and heart of that otherwise excellent and worthy man.”— Pp. 367, 368.

Mr. Cotton's defence of himself is most unsatisfactory, and must even in that age of imperfect ideas of religious liberty have been felt to be So. Mr. Underhill very properly observes, "It betrays by his subtle distinctions and passionate language, by his cruel insinuations and ready seizure of the most trifling inaccuracies, a mind ill at ease and painfully conscious that he had dealt both unjustly and unkindly with his former companion in tribulation."-P. xxi.

Within a year of his banishment, Roger Williams had a glorious revenge on his persecutors, heaping coals of fire on their heads, by rendering them a service as great as it was undeserved. An Indian war broke out, threatening the most serious consequences to Massachusetts. In their hour of danger, the Governor and Council applied to him whom they had lately banished to mediate between them and the Narragansett Indians. He, without a moment's delay, scarcely having time to acquaint his wife with his purpose, entered his canoe, and notwithstanding a cutting wind and very heavy sea, alone rowed five-and-twenty miles, every minute in hazard of his life, to the Sachem's house. Here he was forced for three days and nights to lodge and mix with the Pequot ambassadors, "whose hands and arms," he says, "reeked with the blood of my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on Connecticut river, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also."* By his courage and skill he succeeded in detaching the Narragansetts and Mohegins from the Pequots. So great was this service accounted by the Council, that it was debated whether Williams should not in consideration thereof be recalled from his banishment and honoured with some mark of favour. They that hindered this well-deserved recompence, were those who, according to Williams's own statement, "never promoted the liberty of other men's consciences." The hour of danger being past, their benefactor was forgotten, and the Boston clergy and magistrates filled up the measure of their crimes against civil and religious liberty by passing a law prohibiting the inhabitants of Providence from coming within the bounds of Massachusetts. Great was the inconvenience occasioned to the first inhabitants of Rhode Island, as Boston was the port frequented by most of the ships from England. Williams estimated his own losses by this act of injustice at "many thousand pounds."

The General Court, taking advantage of the indefinite character of its own powers, proceeded to lay claim to jurisdiction over the new and independent State. To frustrate this, Williams was requested by his fellow-colonists to proceed to England, in order, if possible, to obtain a charter for Rhode Island. He set sail from New York (being prohibited from entering Boston) in June, 1643. During his voyage to England he composed his Key to the Indian Languages.

Arrived in this country, he found the friendship of Sir Harry Vane

Williams's Letter to Capt. John Mason, preserved in the Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, I. 271-283.