Episode 453: The Land of Dissent

it was conformity. I think it's important to point out that when the Pilgrims lived and left to found their new colonies, their new Jerusalem, their new Israel, the idea was never that they would have religious toler that was in anathema. The idea was that they would practice what they believed was the true faith. And there weren't other options. You were either saved a member of the separatist community,

or you were damned. Now some people, though, questioned, and some refused to fall quiet, and this is one of those stories. Out of all these banishments, heresies, visions arose eventually a fragile and defiant little kingdom in the New World. It was carved out between bay and forest, settled on a land that hadn't been granted by the king, had been granted by a company, but had been purchased. Imagine

that directly from the native Americans who lived there. It bore no cross of state religion, no uniform creed, no peace, but it bore the name Rhode Island and Providence plantations. This was no accident of colonial expansion. Rhode Island was founded on purpose, just like Massachusetts Bay Colony was founded on purpose by exiles, but a different kind of exile. And this the story doesn't begin with war or wealth, but with a conflict of conscience. Roger Williams landed in

Boston in sixteen thirty one. Who's a man already ill at eased with the company of conformity, A Cambridge educated minister trained in Latin, Hebrew and law. But what made him dangerous wasn't all this scholarship. It was his clarity of thought. Williams believed that the church must be utterly pure, and that the civil state had no authority whatsoever over

the soul or religion of men. In his view, forcing religious practice in any way violated divine will He also insisted that the Massachusetts Charter, which claimed land by royal grant, was invalid because it had not been purchased by the people who were already there by the native peoples. To

Governor John Winthrop in the General Court. These ideas were nonsense, They were intolerable, they were blasphemy, and so in October sixteen thirty five, Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. As the warrant was being prepared, Williams slipped away into the woods in the dead of winter, sheltered only by the nargetissect people that he had tried to defend, whose

property rights he believed him. Years later, he would remember those months in the forest with stark humilie, writing quote, I was sorely tossed for fourteen weeks in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean. End quote. In the spring of sixteen thirty six, william crossed the Sinkonk River, and with the consent of the Nargassett chiefs sachems, he settled on land along the Mushak River, in a place that he called Providence, a name that

he didn't choose for glory, but for grace. This land was deeded to him, it hadn't been conquered. Williams proudly recorded, quote, I desired to deal justly with the natives and to own their title to their lands. And for this cause I obtained the grant of Providence end quote. Now, in sixteen forty three he sailed back to England to secure

billated legal recognition of his colony. Now at this time, as we'll find out in a couple of episodes down the road here, the English Civil War is fully churning. It's at this time that Williams also publishes the bloody tenant of persecution. There's a defense, rather fierce one of liberty of conscience. He would write, amongst other things, quote, it is the will and command of God that a permission of other men's consciousness be allowed in all nations

and countries end quote. That same year, Williams secured a parliamentary patent, finally uniting all the various cities under his name. I'm talking about Providence, new Portsmith, Warwick, under the name of the Providence Plantations. It was the legal foundation for the colony, a fragile document, but one that affirmed their

right to govern independently of Massachusetts Bay. And they would need that source for religious toleration because to the north still other people were attesting the bounds of religious conformity in New England. That story will be Right after this, while Roger Williams had been building providence, Anna Hutchinson was electrifying and terrifying Boston. Born Anne Marbury in England in fifteen ninety one, she was raised in a household that

valued biblical inquiry. Her father had been jailed for criticizing church authorities. She learned her theology early and completely. In sixteen thirty four, she arrived in Massachusetts with her husband and children and a storm of ideas. As a midwife and lay minister, she began holding spiritual meetings in her home, drawing crowds to hear her expound on the sermons of John Cotton and to question the spiritual authority of the

other ministers. She preached what she called, quote unquote, the Covenant of Grace, insisting that salvation came through God's will, not human effort. The Puritan clergy, she said, had lost sight of that, preaching a covenant of works which smacked of Catholicism instead. This wasn't just theology, though, this was

outright rebellion. She was tried in Massachusetts. Her sixteen thirty seven trial before the General Court remains a vivid example of how dangerous female agency and spiritual independence were to Puritan order. She was questioned by Governor Winthrop as follows, quote, you have maintained a meeting in assembly, you have joined

with them in practice. Quote. Hushinson responded, if you please to give me leave, I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true, which Winthrop asked the famous question, say that which you have to say in your own defense. Hutchinson's reply echoes down to us through the centuries. The Lord knows that I could not open scripture. He must buy his prophetical office open it.

Unto me. She was claiming direct relevation from God. In this relevation brought her a quick and swift guilty verdict. Anne Hutchinson was excommunicated and banished. In the spring of sixteen thirty eight, she and her followers followed a path south to Nargace at Bay, where, with advice from Roger Williams, they settled on Aquedect Island, then called Rhode Island. They purchased land from the local Indians and founded the town of Portsmouth. A year later, amid political strife, some left

to found Newport. By sixteen forty seven, these settlements Providence, Portsmouth, Newport, and Warwick formed a united colony under the banner of religious freedom and secular governant. Rhode Island's founding charter was unlike anything in the English colonies. Drafted in sixteen sixty three after a series of earlier patents, it was secured by Roger Williams and John Clark, and later granted by King Charles the Second. Its language was startling for its time.

Quote no person within the said Colony shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences in opinions in matters of religion end quote. This was real religious toleration for the first time in the New World. The colony operated with an elected governor and a general Assembly, but no state church at all. Towns governed themselves and often developed their own codes. Dissent was not merely tolerated, it was foundational. In Rhode Island.

In a letter to John Winthrop Junior, Roger Williams Wright, quote, the sovereign original and foundation of civil power lies in the people, not in kings or priests end quote. Now Rhode Island's economy in the seventeenth century was as unconventional as its politics. It was scrappy, marin time, and oftentimes just shape. By necessity, Rhode Island didn't have rich farmland or a centralized economy like New England. It turned to what it had. It had water, timber, and trade. Agriculture

remained a small scale. The rocky terrain of the mainland was poorly suited to large plantations, though Aquineck Island offered more fertile ground. Farmers grew corn, rye and beans. Livestock, especially cattle and hogs, became key exports to Boston and the Caribbean. Shipbuilding and maritime trade soon became the cornerstone of Rhode Island's economy. Its long coastline, natural harbors, and access to the nargas At Bay made it a haven

for coastal shipping. By mid century, Newport had become a bustling trading with New York, Boston, and the West Indies. Molasses, rum, fish, and livestock were common exports. The colony also became notorious for its tolerance of irregular trade. Its independence made a magnet for merchants, smugglers, and dissenters from elsewhere. Boston Puritans often accused Rhode Island of harboring quote heretics and pirates

end quote, partially true. Land acquisition was also economic. Towns often negotiated directly with the Nargacet and wampan Odd leaders. While some purchases were fair, others became entangled in disputes. The colony's more liberal land policies attracted settlers from Connecticut and Massachusetts, heading to its growth and it's friction with its neighboring colonies. Labor was mixed. Family farming predominated, but

indentured servants were common. Slavery, though not as entrenched as in the South, did exist, particularly by the end of the century as Rhode Island entered the Transatlantic slave trade via Newport. Rhode Island was a colony of edges. It was on the edge of orthodoxy, the edge of legality, and even on the edge of the Atlantic world. Roger Williams and Ann Hutchinson did not set out to found a new kind of society. They were just driven out

of the old one. But in their flight they carried with them something rare, the belief that truth required liberty, and that liberty could survive, even flourish, without uniformity. From exile, they built a place where conscience was unchained, where faith was free, and where difference difference of opinion was embraced, not stamped out. Rhode Island wasn't orderly, wasn't always peaceful,

but it was principled. Roger Williams would once famously say, the greatest crime in the world is to fear a man more than to fear God. Hutchinson would saying similar, better to be cast out of the church than to deny the word of God. And so they were, both of them cast out, and in their casting though, they laid the foundation for a freedom of conscience that would centuries later become part of the soul of a nation.