Much warmth of feeling was exhibited in the discussion of these charges; and in the course of the debate it seems the ministers were required to give their opinions severally. All agreed that he who asserted that the civil magistrate ought not to interfere in case of heresy, apostacy, etc., ought to be removed, and that other churches ought to request the magistrates to remove him. Nothing will give a better idea of the state of feeling on this occasion than the fact that when the town of Salem at this time petitioned, claiming some land at Marblehead as belonging to the town, the petition was refused a hearing, on the ground that the church of Salem had chosen Mr. Williams her teacher, and by such choice had offered contempt to the magistrates.
The attendance of all the Ministers of the Bay at the next General Court was requested. This was held in the month of November, 1635. Before this venerable congregation of all the dignitaries of the church, Williams appeared, and defended his opinions. His defence, it seems, was not satisfactory. They offered him further time for conference or disputation. This he declined, and chose to dispute presently. Mr. Hooker was appointed to dispute with him. But Mr. Hooker’s logic, seconded as it was by the whole civil and ecclesiastical power of Massachusetts, could not force him to recognise the right of the civil magistrate to punish heresy, or to admit that the king’s patent could of itself give a just title to the lands of the Indians. The consequence was, that on the following morning he was sentenced to depart, within six weeks, out of the jurisdiction of Massachusetts.
Such were the causes of Williams’ banishment, and such the circumstances under which the decree was passed. He was a man who fearlessly asserted his principles, and practiced upon them to their fullest extent. Persecution could not drive him to a renunciation of his opinions. His observance of any principle which he adopted was conscientiously strict; but this very strictness of observance had its advantages, in enabling him with more certainty to detect any latent error which his opinions involved. He was as free to declare his errors as he was to assert whatever appeared to him to be right. His very honesty in this respect has given occasion to his enemies to brand his character with inconsistency and apostacy; but he remained true to every principle espoused by him, which posterity has since sanctioned, and inconstant in those things only which are unimportant in themselves, and which are unsettled even in the present day. A tacit confession of his own fallibility was implied in the great principle of which he was the earliest asserter, that government ought not to interfere in matters of conscience; and therein consisted a wide difference between his errors, whatever they were, and those of his persecutors. This fact, in estimating the character of Williams, cannot be too well considered.
“Subsequently to his banishment, he was permitted to remain until spring, on condition that he did not attempt to draw others to his opinions.” But the friends of Williams could not consent to see their favorite pastor leave them, without frequently visiting him whilst they yet had an opportunity. In these interviews, the plan of establishing a colony in the Narraganset country, where the principle of Religious Freedom (the assertion of which had been the chief cause of his banishment) should be carried into effect, was discussed and matured. It is also highly probable that he did not fail to do what he conceived to be the duty of a faithful pastor in other respects. At length the rumor of these meetings reached the ears of the civil authorities; and in January, 1635, (O. S.,) “The governor and assistants,” says Winthrop, “met in Boston to consider about Mr. Williams; for they were credibly informed, that he, notwithstanding the injunction laid upon him, (upon liberty granted him to stay until spring,) not to go about to draw others to his opinions, did use to entertain company in his house, and to preach to them even of such points as he had been sentenced for; and it was agreed to send him into England by a ship then ready to depart. The reason was because he had drawn about twenty persons to his opinions, and they were intending to erect a plantation about the Narraganset bay, from whence the infection would easily spread into these churches, the people being many of them much taken with an apprehension of his godliness. Whereupon a warrant was sent to him to come presently to Boston, to be shipped, &c. He returned for answer, (and divers of Salem came with it,) that he could not without hazard of his life, &c. Whereupon a pinnace was sent with commission to Captain Underhill, &c., to apprehend him, and carry him on board the ship, which then rode at Nantascutt. But when they came to his house they found he had been gone three days, but whither they could not learn.”
It thus appears that the object of his government, in directing his immediate apprehension at this time, was to prevent the establishment of a colony in which the civil authority should not be permitted to interfere with the religious opinions of the citizens.
Williams was in the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth year of his age at the time of his banishment. He fled to a wilderness inhabited only by savages. The two principal tribes—the Narragansets and Wampanoags—had, but a short time before he entered their country, been engaged in open hostilities. The government of Plymouth had on one occasion extended its aid to its early friend and ally, Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoags. This interference had smothered, but not extinguished the flame. With these warring tribes, one of which (the Narragansets) was a very martial and numerous people, and exceedingly jealous of the whites, Williams was under the necessity of establishing relations of amity. He himself says that he was forced to travel between their sachems to satisfy them and all their dependent spirits of his honest intentions to live peaceably by them. He acted the part of a peace-maker amongst them, and eventually won, even for the benefit of his persecutors, the confidence of the Narragansets. It was through his influence that all the Indians in the vicinity of Narraganset bay were, shortly after his settlement at Mooshausick, united, and their whole force, under the directions of the very men who had driven him into the wilderness, brought to co-operate with the Massachusetts forces against the Pequots. [See Winthrop’s Journal, and a Sketch of the Life of Roger Williams, appended to the first volume of the Rhode Island Historical Collections, for the above extracts.]
Much less my consort and these pledges dear.
Williams was the father of six children, viz: Mary, Freeborn, Providence, Mercy, Daniel, and Joseph. I am not able to determine their number at the time of his banishment.