This photograph was taken on Roger Williams Avenue, Philipsdale, East Providence. A glimpse of the Seekonk River is seen in the background. The house itself has no historical interest.
The tree is marked with a tablet bearing these words: “This oak tree marks the first dwelling place of Roger Williams after his banishment from Salem, Mass., in 1636, which he abandoned in the spring of that year by request of Governor Winslow of Plymouth. The spring is 160 feet north. This tree was planted April 27, 1904, by the Roger Williams Association.”
It would be too tedious and wearisome to wade through all the disputes of those troublous days. After a lapse of nearly three hundred years, it is not easy to decide accurately who was in the right and who in the wrong. There is still a great difference of opinion on the subject. There was, without doubt, something of right and wrong on both sides. Some of the points Roger Williams fought for with vigor were not worth the effort, others were big principles that the world has long since adopted.
It will throw some light on the matter to know just what the disgraced man himself considered the true grounds of his banishment. He tells us one of the magistrates rightly summed up the offences under four heads:
“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, 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 magistrates’ power extends only to the bodies and goods, and outward state of men.”
How harmless these opinions seem to-day! Tinged perhaps with a bit of narrowness, they are at the same time hardly “crimes” for which a person should be cut off from his fellow men.