Page:History of the United States of America, Spencer, v1.djvu/90

 unsettled in judgment, and a troubler of the public peace. It was certainly unfortunate that the scruples of Williams were such as tended to divide and weaken the colony, struggling as it was for independent existence, amid all the difficulties by which it was en- compassed. His agitations even served to paralyse resistance against aggressions which they were calculated to bring about : and it must be confessed that, however excellent the principles he had espoused, his conduct bears some tinge of factious opposition, or, to say the least, of an ill-timed and narrow-minded scrupulosity. But his piety was so genuine, and his character so noble and disinterested, that the people of Salem, who knew and loved him, reflected him for their pastor, in spite of the censure of his doctrines by the Court at Boston, an act of contumacy for which they were reprimanded and punished by the withholding a certain portion of lands. Such harshness aroused Williams to retort by a spirited protest, and he engaged the Salem church to join with him in a general appeal to the other churches against the injustice of which the magistrates had been guilty—a daring proceeding, for which the council suspended their franchise, and they shrunk from their leader, who was thus left absolutely alone. Upon this he openly renounced allegiance to what he deemed a persecuting church. His opinions and conduct were condemned by the council, who pronounced against him a sentence of banishment, but on account of the dangerous feeling of sympathy it awakened, decided shortly after on sending him back to England.

In the depth of a New England winter, Williams fled into the wilderness, and took refuge among the Narragansett Indians, with whom he had become acquainted at Plymouth. He wandered for fourteen weeks through the snow-buried forests, before he reached their wigwams, where he was received and sheltered with the utmost kindness. In the spring he departed in quest of some spot where he could found an asylum for those who, like himself, were persecuted for conscience sake. He first attempted a settlement at Seekonk, but afterwards, at the friendly suggestion of Winslow, the governor of Plymouth, removed to Narragansett Bay, where he received from the Indians a free grant of a considerable tract of country, and in June, 1636, fixed upon the site of a town, which he named "," as being a refuge from persecution and wanderings. Many of his friends from Salem joined him here, and he freely distributed his lands among them. This was the beginning of the State of Rhode Island, one of the most free and liberal in its institutions of any ever founded in America.

It was not long before fresh troubles prang up, in great measure having their origin in the same claim to the right of private judgment in all matters of religious truth and obligation. Hugh Peters, chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, and Henry Vane, a young man of superior ability and acquirements, came over to join the Massachusetts colony. The emigration of a man of Vane's distinction and family created