It is believed that Roger Williams was born in December of 1603. The Virgin Queen Elizabeth I passed away the previous March and King James I was crowned that July. Roger’s father was a successful fabric merchant, who apprenticed his intelligent son to the hard-nosed lawyer Sir Edward Coke.
In 1603 Sir Walter Raleigh, English adventurer/hero, founder of Jamestown, and former rumored love interest of Queen Elizabeth, was put on trial for treason. Years earlier, Sir Walter had estranged himself from his Queen when she discovered he had secretly wed her lady in waiting, Bess Throckmorton, who was soon to have his child. My wife and children are Throckmorton descendants, so you will hear that family name again.
BTW, Bess Throckmorton was the daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, Queen Elizabeth’s ambassador to the French court and liaison to Catherine de Medici, the Black Queen of France. Again, I recommend Leonie Frieda’s book Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France to you, as Sir Nicholas plays a large role. Also, if you haven’t seen Elizabeth: The Golden Age, the 2007 movie is the story of Sir Walter, Queen Elizabeth, and Bess Throckmorton (see the extended UK trailer at the bottom of this page).
One last tidbit on Sir Nicholas is that he was raised in the home of his cousin, Catherine Parr, who was to become the Queen of England and last wife of Henry VIII (watch the HBO series “The Tudors” or the upcoming 2023 release Firebrand for more). You could say one thing about Catherine Parr, she kept her head under difficult circumstances.
Back to the drama…
An enraged Queen Elizabeth had Sir Walter, Bess, and their newborn baby boy thrown into the Tower of London where the baby would soon die of plague (very much NOT the story presented in Elizabeth: The Golden Age). A recalcitrant Queen Elizabeth had them released upon hearing the terrible news for she did love them both. Yet after her death, her replacement King James I had Sir Walter rearrested and put back in the Tower for supposedly plotting to put James’ first cousin Lady Arbella Stuart on the throne in his stead. Sir Edward Coke was put in charge of the prosecution.
With only hearsay evidence, Sir Walter Raleigh was charged with treason, and sentenced to death. But, the King thought better of it and kept Sir Walter imprisoned in the Tower. Almost twelve years later, King James released the adventurer and sent him on an expedition to find gold in the New World, which he did, one way or another.
Upon his return, Sir Walter was charged with piracy and inciting war with Spain. His sentence was reinstated, and he was beheaded in 1618. His head was embalmed and delivered to his wife Bess, who put the head of her beloved in a red velvet bag and kept it until her own death.
Sir Edward Coke also tried the Gunpowder Plot conspirators who attempted to blow up the House of Lords in 1605. You’ve heard of Guy Fawkes, right? Anyway, you probably know how that went, so let’s return to young Roger Williams.
Coke eventually sent Roger to his own Alma Mater, Cambridge University, and if you have read any of my previous blog posts, you can imagine what happened. Yes, he became a Puritan and turned his back on the Church of England, even though he had already taken Holy Orders to be an Anglican minister.
Bishop William Laud rises, yada yada, (please see my previous blog, “Anne Marbury Hutchinson Part 1: John Cotton, William Laud, and William Blackstone”), and on 1st December 1630, Roger and his new wife Mary Bernard are forced to flee to Salem, Massachusetts on the ship Lyon accompanied by their friends John Throckmorton and his pregnant wife Rebecca (Rhode Island ancestors). They were to make the trip with about sixteen other passengers and 200 “tonnes” (tons) of goods.
BTW, this was the first voyage of the Lyon to the New World, though its captain, William Pierce, had been sailing there in different ships since 1623, including captaining the second voyage of the Mayflower. The Lyon would make three more trips bringing passengers, and provisions, from England, including John Coggeshall and family in 1632 (Rhode Island ancestors, more on them in a future post). Unfortunately, the Lyon would find itself shipwrecked on a reef in 1633 with Pierce at the helm. Pierce and passengers would survive, and the Captain would purchase a new ship, the Rebecca and continue his good work.
Capt. Pierce authored the first book published in America entitled “An Almanac for New England for the Year 1639” under the auspices of Harvard College. He served in the House of Burgesses, and also had a street named after him, the first one-way street in Boston, cut from his wife’s garden.
The good captain began to ferry goods and passengers to the West Indies, and especially the new colony of New Providence in the Bahamas. I will be discussing the colonization of the Bahamas in another post as this is how my wife’s family would come from Rhode Island to settle in the Bahamas.
Our Captain Pierce made a stop at Nassau, which the Spanish considered a haven for pirates. It was of course, but more on that later. It is said that 13 July 1641, he was carrying passengers and goods to another Puritan settlement on Providence Island near Nicaragua, when he became suspicious the island may have been captured.
Other captains in the flotilla seemed determined to sail right into the trap, but Pierce ordered them to anchor. He then sailed his bark into the harbor to investigate, and to the horror of his passengers, they could see the guns roll out from the fort. Captain Pierce sent his passengers below, but he remained at the helm as the Spanish opened fire. He was quickly ripped to pieces by shot, along with a cotton merchant, Samuel Wakeman.
That’s the Hollywood ending anyhow. The truth is, Pierce was so tough it took him hours to die, and the cotton merchant, hit in the legs, lingered for days before he followed. A sad epilogue for brave men.
So, back to the indomitable Roger Williams…
Roger Williams left Boston, Lincolnshire for his new home in Boston, Massachusetts, recently established by his friend John Winthrop, Cambridge man, famed attorney and the former Lord of Groton. After arriving in the ship Lyon on 5 February 1631, Williams was soon invited by Winthrop to take the place of Rev. John Wilson as pastor of the Church of Boston. Reverend Wilson would return to England in the Lyon to fetch his wife, so Winthrop felt the Reverend Willams was the perfect replacement. Much to Winthrop’s surprise, Roger had become more of a hardcore non-conformist than when they’d previously met.
BTW, another influential Puritan preacher was to arrive with Williams. The Reverend John Eliot, of Nazeing, Essex, booked passage as chaplain on the Lyon. He was the brother of my 9th GGM Sarah Eliot Curtis, who is also the ancestor of Sir Winston Churchill and both of the Bush Presidents. We will be doing a deep dive into the Nazeing migration in a later post, but just so you know, Eliot, who will later be called “The Apostle to the Indians” will play an important part and may even get his own post. He would also take Rev. Wilson’s place as pastor of the Church of Boston after Roger Williams’ refusal.
Williams found Wilson’s congregation much too faithful to the tenets of the Church of England than was to his liking. He not only refused the position of minister, but he would not even join the congregation.
Winthrop suggested his friend move to Salem, and take a teaching position at the more strict Church of Salem. This sounded satisfactory to Williams, as he knew the pastor Rev. Samuel Skelton from Lincolnshire. Unfortunately, the rumors of his rabble rousing reached Salem before he did, and under pressure from the Boston authorities, Roger was summarily refused the position.
There was only one nearby congregation more strict than Salem, and that was Plymouth. The non-conformists of the Plymouth Colony were not even considered Puritans by some, but called “Strangers” for their strict rejection of any vestige of the Church of England.
Mary Barnard Williams was already acquainted with the leaders of the Plymouth Colony as her father Rev. Richard Bernard was the vicar of Worksop very near to Scrooby, home of the Scrooby Congregation. This congregation was founded by Rev. John Robinson, and its members included such figures as William Brewster and William Bradford. The Mayflower voyage was organized by Robinson, while Brewster would become their religious leader and Bradford their governor. All were personal friends of Mary’s father.
Needless to say, the couple were quickly accepted into the Plymouth Colony and Plymouth Church, and soon Roger was made assistant pastor to Rev. Ralph Smith. Williams found the Plymouth Colony much more to his liking, and Gov. William Bradford wrote that “his teachings were well approved”.
The other thing Roger really enjoyed was the close relationship between the Plymouth Colony and their Native counterparts. The Wampanoag depended on their alliance with the Plymouth colonists for protection from their frenemies, the Narragansett.
When the Mayflower landed in Plymouth, they founded their settlement on the site of a devastated Wampanoag village. Skulls littered the landscape as the Wampanoag had been literally decimated by a terrible plague likely brought on by contact with European explorers. A tribe of an estimated 3000 were now down to less than a couple hundred remaining.
In the months following their debarkation from the Mayflower, the settlers were nearly wiped out as well, and yet, the English separatists and their new Native companions had worked together to survive. Now both were thriving once more.
Roger soon befriended Massasoit Ousamequin, chief of the Wampanoag tribe. You will recognize him as the very same “Massasoit” from the Thanksgiving story. Massasoit actually means “Great Sachem”, with sachem meaning “chief” in our parlance.
From Ousamequin and others, Roger began to learn the Algonquian language, in which he became so fluent that he eventually wrote a best-selling book entitled A Key to the Language of America. The book published in 1643 became a hit among European linguists and just about anyone interested in moving to the New World.
He also met and befriended warriors from the competing Narragansett tribe, and Roger Williams discovered the more he learned about the Natives, their culture and religious beliefs, the more he began to question his own beliefs. Roger found it quite unfair that the English King was handing out parcels of Native land as if it was his own by right.
His opposition to this apparent land grab became such that he decided to pen a tract denouncing the King. He sent the tract to England for print, and announced his return to Boston where he would share the new developments in his religious and political thinking. The ever pragmatic William Bradford would later write that Williams developed a few “strange opinions which caused some controversy between the church and him.”
Upon his arrival in Boston, Williams was to discover his letters had been intercepted by the authorities. You can be sure they were tipped off, as both the Plymouth and Boston colonies were there under Royal charter. Roger was put on trial in civil court, but his allies saw to it that the tract and letters were burned.
Roger Williams was censured and released, and he returned to Salem, where he became pastor of the Church of Salem, replacing the late Rev. Skelton. But the ever-so-strict Reverend Williams had had a change of heart it would seem.
At one point as pastor, he had railed against the taking of Communion by those who were unworthy. He began to forbid his parishioners from partaking one by one, until not even his dear wife was allowed to partake in Communion. As he became the only one in the congregation considered holy enough to have Communion, he thought (to paraphrase), “but am I not a sinner?”
Well, obviously, it was a sin to have such hubris, so then he decided (again paraphrasing), “if we are all sinners, and Jesus commanded us to take Communion in remembrance of Him, then He must have expected sinners to partake in Communion.” Once again, his congregation was opened to Communion but this time with no restrictions. The preacher who had once suggested women should be veiled in public, which was even too strong for the separatist Puritans, was now sounding more like a cursed Baptist.
He was tried once more and removed from his position as pastor. The sentence of banishment was postponed due to his illness and the support of his allies, but when it was found he had started his own conventicle, the call for his arrest went out!