Not in Massachusetts alone did people object to his doctrines. His work, The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, was burned in England by the common hangman, by order of Parliament.
George Fox Digged Out of His Burrowe seems a volume of formidable proportions to the modern reader. With Quaker doctrines Roger Williams had small patience, although he permitted members of the persecuted sect to live in the Colony. It seems that G. Fox did not avail himself of an offer of disputation on fourteen proposals. His opponents claimed that he “slily departed” to avoid the debate. It went on just the same, being “managed three days at Newport and one day at Providence.”
This volume, George Fox, etc.[41], is dedicated to Charles II. by “Your Majestyes most loyal and affectionate Orator at the Throne of Grace.”
One can guess how much attention the Merrie Monarch paid to the fourteen “proposalls”[42] and the elaboration thereof.
The best testimony to the essential gentleness and goodness of this eccentric divine is the behavior toward him of the Indians. During King Philip’s war they marched on Providence with the intention of burning it.
“The well-attested tradition is that Roger Williams, now an old man, alone and unarmed, save with his staff, went out to meet the band of approaching Indians. His efforts to stay their course were unavailing, but they allowed him to return unmolested, such was the love and veneration entertained for him by these savages.”
Of my mother’s ancestors on the maternal side, the most interesting was her great-great-uncle, Gen. Francis Marion, the partisan leader of the Revolution. She was descended from his sister Esther, “The Queen Bee of the Marion Hive,” the general himself having no children.
Many romantic stories are told of him. He was present at a drinking-party during the siege of Charleston when the host, determined that no one should leave the festivities until some particularly fine Madeira had been disposed of, locked the door and threw the key out of the window. Marion had no notion of taking part in any excesses, so he made his escape by jumping out of the window. A lame ankle was the result, and the Huguenot left the city, all officers unfit for duty being ordered to depart. Marion took refuge now with one friend, now with another, and again he was obliged to hide in the woods, while recovering from this lameness. The accident was a most fortunate one, however. If he had remained in Charleston he would have been obliged to surrender and the brigade of “Marion’s Men” might never have existed.
How he formed it in the darkest hour of the war in the South is a matter of history. How, like so many will-o’-the-wisps, they led the British a weary dance “thoro’ bush, thoro’ brier,” all through the woods and the swamps of South Carolina, is a tale that delights the heart of every school-boy.
Well knows the fair and friendly moon