Roger Williams (c. 21 December 1603 - between 27 January and 15 March 1683) was a Puritan minister, English Reformed theologian, and Reformed Baptist who founded the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. He was a staunch advocate for religious freedom, separation of church and state, and fair dealings with American Indians, and he was one of the first abolitionists.
Williams was expelled by the Puritan leaders from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for spreading "new and dangerous ideas", and he began settling the Providence Plantations as a refuge offering what he called "liberty of conscience" in 1636. In 1638, he founded the First Baptist Church in America, also known as the First Baptist Church of Providence. He was a student of Native American languages, and he organized the first attempt to prohibit slavery in any of the British American colonies.
Video Roger Williams
Early life
Roger Williams was born in London around 1603, though the exact date is unknown because his birth records were destroyed in the Great Fire of London of 1666 when St Sepulchre's Church was burned. His father James Williams (1562-1620) was a merchant tailor in Smithfield, and his mother was Alice Pemberton (1564-1635). He had a spiritual conversion at an early age, of which his father disapproved.
As a teen, Williams was apprenticed under Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) the famous jurist. He was educated at Charterhouse School under Coke's patronage, and also at Pembroke College, Cambridge (Bachelor of Arts, 1627). He seemed to have a gift for languages and early acquired familiarity with Latin, Hebrew, Greek, Dutch, and French. Years later, he tutored John Milton in Dutch in exchange for refresher lessons in Hebrew.
Williams took holy orders in the Church of England in connection with his studies, but he became a Puritan at Cambridge and thus ruined his chance for preferment in the Anglican church. After graduating from Cambridge, he became the chaplain to Sir William Masham. He married Mary Barnard (1609-76) on 15 December 1629 at the Church of High Laver, Essex, England. They ultimately had six children, all born in America: Mary, Freeborn, Providence, Mercy, Daniel, and Joseph.
Williams knew that Puritan leaders planned to migrate to the New World. He did not join the first wave, but he decided before the year ended that he could not remain in England under Archbishop William Laud's rigorous administration. He regarded the Church of England as corrupt and false, and he had arrived at the Separatist position by the time that he and his wife boarded the Lyon in early December.
Maps Roger Williams
Life in America
The Boston church offered Williams a post in 1631 filling in for Rev. John Wilson while Wilson returned to England to fetch his wife. However, Williams declined the position on grounds that it was "an unseparated church". In addition, he asserted that civil magistrates must not punish any sort of "breach of the first table" of the Ten Commandments such as idolatry, Sabbath-breaking, false worship, and blasphemy, and that individuals should be free to follow their own convictions in religious matters. These three principles became central to his teachings and writings: separatism, liberty of conscience, and separation of church and state.
Salem and Plymouth
As a Separatist, Williams considered the Church of England irredeemably corrupt and believed that one must completely separate from it to establish a new church for the true and pure worship of God. The Salem church was also inclined to Separatism, and they invited him to become their teacher. The leaders in Boston vigorously protested, and Salem withdrew its offer. As the summer of 1631 ended, Williams moved to Plymouth Colony where he was welcomed, and he informally assisted the minister there. He regularly preached and, according to Governor William Bradford, "his teachings were well approved".
After a time, Williams decided that the Plymouth church was not sufficiently separated from the Church of England. Furthermore, his contact with the Narragansett Indians had caused him to question the validity of the colonial charters that did not include legitimate purchase of Indian land. Governor Bradford later wrote that Williams fell "into some strange opinions which caused some controversy between the church and him". In December 1632, Williams wrote a lengthy tract that openly condemned the King's charters and questioned the right of Plymouth to the land without first buying it from the Indians. He even charged that King James had uttered a "solemn lie" in claiming that he was the first Christian monarch to have discovered the land. Williams moved back to Salem by the fall of 1633 and was welcomed by Rev. Samuel Skelton as an unofficial assistant.
Litigation and exile
The Massachusetts Bay authorities were not pleased at Williams' return. In December 1633, they summoned him to appear before the General Court in Boston to defend his tract attacking the King and the charter. The issue was smoothed out, and the tract disappeared forever, probably burned. In August 1634, Williams became acting pastor of the Salem church, the Rev. Skelton having died. In March 1635, he was again ordered to appear before the General Court, and he was summoned yet again for the Court's July term to answer for "erroneous" and "dangerous opinions". The Court finally ordered that he be removed from his church position.
This latest controversy welled up as the town of Salem petitioned the General Court to annex some land on Marblehead Neck. The Court refused to consider the request unless the church in Salem removed Williams. The church felt that this order violated their independence, and sent a letter of protest to the other churches. However, the letter was not read publicly in those churches, and the General Court refused to seat the delegates from Salem at the next session. Support for Williams began to wane under this pressure, and he withdrew from the church and began meeting with a few of his most devoted followers in his home.
Finally, in October 1635, the General Court tried Williams and convicted him of sedition and heresy. They declared that he was spreading "diverse, new, and dangerous opinions" and ordered that he be banished. The execution of the order was delayed because Williams was ill and winter was approaching, so he was allowed to stay temporarily, provided that he ceased publicly teaching his opinions. He failed to do so, and the sheriff came in January 1636, only to discover that he had slipped away three days earlier during a blizzard. He traveled 55 miles through the deep snow, from Salem to Raynham, Massachusetts where the local Wampanoags offered him shelter at their winter camp. Their Sachem Massasoit hosted Williams for the three months until spring.
Settlement at Providence
In the spring of 1636, Williams and a number of others from Salem began a new settlement on land which he had bought from Massasoit in Rumford, Rhode Island. However, Plymouth authorities asserted that he was within their land grant and were concerned that his presence there might anger the leaders of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Williams and his friends had already planted their crops, but they decided to move across the Seekonk River just the same, as that territory lay beyond any charter. The outcasts rowed across and encountered Narragansett Indians who greeted them with the phrase, "What cheer, Neetop" (hello, friend). Williams acquired land from Canonicus and Miantonomi, chief sachems of the Narragansetts. He and 12 "loving friends" then established a new settlement which Williams called "Providence" because he felt that God's Providence had brought them there. Williams named his third child Providence, the first to be born in the new settlement.
Williams wanted his settlement to be a haven for those "distressed of conscience", and it soon attracted a collection of dissenters and otherwise-minded individuals. From the beginning, a majority vote of the heads of households governed the new settlement, but only in civil things. Newcomers could also be admitted to full citizenship by a majority vote. In August 1637, a new town agreement again restricted the government to civil things. In 1640, 39 freemen (men who had full citizenship and voting rights) signed another agreement which declared their determination "still to hold forth liberty of conscience". Thus, Williams founded the first place in modern history where citizenship and religion were separate, providing religious liberty and separation of church and state. This was combined with the principle of majoritarian democracy.
In November 1637, the General Court of Massachusetts disarmed, disenfranchised, and forced into exile some of the Antinomians, including the followers of Anne Hutchinson. John Clarke was among them, and he learned from Williams that Rhode Island might be purchased from the Narragansetts; Williams helped him to make the purchase, along with William Coddington and others, and they established the settlement of Portsmouth. In spring 1638, some of those settlers split away and founded the nearby settlement of Newport, also situated on Rhode Island (which is today called Aquidneck Island).
Pequot War and relations with Indians
In the meantime, the Pequot War had broken out. Massachusetts Bay asked for Williams' help, which he gave despite his exile, and he became the Bay colony's eyes and ears, and also dissuaded the Narragansetts from joining with the Pequots. Instead, the Narragansetts allied themselves with the Colonists and helped to crush the Pequots in 1637-38. The Narragansetts thus became the most powerful Indian tribe in southern New England.
Williams formed firm friendships and developed deep trust among the Indian tribes, especially the Narragansetts. He was able to keep the peace between the Indians and the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations for nearly 40 years by his constant mediation and negotiation. He twice surrendered himself as a hostage to the Indians to guarantee the safe return of a great sachem from a summons to a court: Pessicus in 1645 and Metacom ("King Philip") in 1671. Williams was trusted by the Indians more than any other Colonist, and he proved trustworthy.
However, the other New England colonies began to fear and mistrust the Narragansetts, and soon came to regard the Rhode Island colony as a common enemy. In the next three decades, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Plymouth exerted pressure to destroy both Rhode Island and the Narragansetts. In 1643, the neighboring colonies formed a military alliance called the United Colonies which pointedly excluded the towns around Narragansett Bay. The object was to put an end to the heretic settlements, which they considered an infection. In response, Williams traveled to England to secure a charter for the colony.
Returns to England and charter matters
Williams arrived to find the English Civil War in full swing. Puritans held power in London, yet Williams obtained a charter through the offices of Sir Henry Vane the Younger, despite strenuous opposition from Massachusetts' agents.
His first published book A Key into the Language of America (1643) proved crucial to his charter success, albeit indirectly. The little book combined a phrase-book with observations about life and culture, as an aid to communicate with Indians. The book covered everything from salutations in the first chapter, to death and burial in chapter 32. Williams also sought to correct English attitudes of superiority toward the Native Americans:
Boast not proud English, of thy birth & blood;
Thy brother Indian is by birth as Good.
Of one blood God made Him, and Thee and All,
As wise, as fair, as strong, as personal.
This became the first dictionary of any Indian tongue in the English language, and fed the great curiosity of English people about the Native Americans. It was printed by John Milton's publisher, Gregory Dexter, and became an instant bestseller, giving Williams a large and favorable reputation.
Williams secured his charter from Parliament for "Providence Plantations" in July 1644, then published his most famous book The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience. This produced a great uproar; Parliament responded in August by ordering the public hangman to burn all copies. By then, however, Williams was already on his way home to Providence Plantations.
Because of William Coddington's opposition on Rhode Island, it took Williams until 1647 to get the four towns around Narragansett Bay to unite under a single government. Freedom of conscience was again proclaimed. The colony became a safe haven for people who were persecuted for their beliefs, including Baptists, Quakers, and Jews. Still, the divisions between the towns and powerful personalities did not bode well for the colony. Coddington never liked Williams, nor did he like being subordinated to the new charter government. He sailed to England and returned in 1641 with his own patent making him "Governor for Life" over "Rhode Island" (Aquidneck) and Conanicut.
As a result, Providence and Warwick, and Coddington's opponents on Rhode Island, dispatched Roger Williams and John Clarke to England to get Coddington's commission canceled. Williams sold his trading post at Cocumscussec (near present-day Wickford, Rhode Island) to pay for his journey, although the trading post was his main source of income. Williams and Clarke succeeded in getting Coddington's patent rescinded, but Clarke remained in England for the next decade to protect the colonists' interests and secure a new charter. Williams returned to America in 1654 and was immediately elected the colony's President. He subsequently served in many offices in town and colonial governments.
"Providence Plantations" (Providence and Warwick) passed a law on 18 May 1652, during the time when Coddington had separated "Rhode Island" (Newport and Portsmouth) from the mainland, intended to prevent slavery from taking root in the colony. In 1641, Massachusetts Bay had passed the first laws to make slavery legal in the English colonies, and these laws had spread to Plymouth and Connecticut with the creation of the United Colonies in 1643. Roger Williams and Samuel Gorton both opposed slavery, and the 1652 law was their attempt to stop slavery from coming to Rhode Island. Unfortunately, when the parts of the colony were reunited, the Aquidneck towns refused to accept this law, making it a dead letter. For the next century, the economic and political center of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was Newport, which disregarded the anti-slavery law. Indeed, Newport entered the African slave trade in 1700, after Williams' death, and became the leading port for American ships carrying slaves in their Triangular trade until the American Revolution.
Relations with the Baptists
By 1638, Williams had come to accept the idea of believer's baptism, or credobaptism. He had been holding services in his home for some time for his neighbors, many of whom had followed him from Salem. To that point, they had been like the Separatists of Plymouth, still believing in infant baptism. Williams came to accept the ideas of English antipedobaptists, that a valid baptism required knowing consent.
John Smyth, Thomas Helwys, and John Murton were co-founders of the General Baptist movement in England and had written extensively about liberty of conscience. Williams had commented on them in his Bloudy Tenent. Smyth, Helwys, and Murton were General Baptists, but a Calvinistic Baptist variety grew out of some Separatists after 1640. Williams became a Calvinist or Particular Baptist.
However, Williams had not adopted antipedobaptist views before his banishment from Massachusetts, for that had not been a charge against him in those legal proceedings. Gov. Winthrop instead attributed Williams's "Anabaptist" views to the influence of Katherine Scott, a sister of Anne Hutchinson. It is possible that she impressed upon Williams the importance of believers' baptism, though it seems that Williams likely arrived there from his own studies.
Ezekiel Holliman baptised Williams in late 1638. Thus began a church that still survives as the First Baptist Church in America. A few years later, John Clarke, Williams' compatriot in the cause of religious freedom in the New World, established the First Baptist Church in Newport, Rhode Island, which suddenly claimed to be the first Baptist church in America in 1847. If nothing else, Roger Williams had gathered and resigned from the Providence church before the town of Newport was even founded. Still, both Roger Williams and John Clarke are variously credited as being the founder of the Baptist faith in America.
Williams never again affiliated himself with any church, but remained deeply religious and active in preaching and praying. He looked forward to the time when Christ would send a new apostle to restore the church but, in the meantime, he remained a "witness" to Christianity. Williams remained interested in the Baptists, agreeing with their rejection of infant baptism and most other matters. Both enemies and admirers sometimes called him a "Seeker", first as a smear in England by associating Williams with a heretical movement that accepted Socinianism and universal salvation. Williams rejected both of these ideas.
King Philip's War and death
King Philip's War (1675-1676) pitted the colonists against Indians with whom Williams had good relations in the past. Williams, although in his 70s, was elected captain of Providence's militia. That war proved to be one of the bitterest events in his life, as his efforts ended with the burning of Providence in March 1676, including his own house.
Williams died in 1683 sometime between January and March and was buried on his own property. Fifty years later, his house collapsed into the cellar and the location of his grave was forgotten. According to the National Park Service, in 1860, Providence residents determined to raise a monument in his honor "dug up the spot where they believed the remains to be, they found only nails, teeth, and bone fragments. They also found an apple tree root" which they thought followed the shape of a human body; the root followed the shape of a spine, split at the hips, bent at the knees, and turned up at the feet. The Rhode Island Historical Society has cared for this tree root since 1860 as representative of Rhode Island's founder, and has had it on display in the John Brown House since 2007.
Separation of church and state
Williams was a staunch advocate of separation of church and state. He was convinced that there was no scriptural basis for a state church, and historian Timothy Hall suggests that Williams had arrived at this conclusion before landing in Boston in 1631. He declared that the state should concern itself only with matters of civil order, not with religious belief, and he rejected any attempt to enforce the "first Table" of the Ten Commandments, those commandments that dealt with the relationship between God and individuals. Instead, Williams believed that the state must confine itself to the commandments dealing with the relations between people: murder, theft, adultery, lying, and honoring parents. He employed the metaphor of a "wall of separation" between church and state, which was later used by Thomas Jefferson in his Letter to Danbury Baptists (1801).
Williams considered it "forced worship" if the state attempted to promote any particular religious idea or practice, and he declared, "Forced worship stinks in God's nostrils." He considered Constantine the Great to be a worse enemy to Christianity than Nero because the subsequent state support corrupted Christianity and led to the death of the Christian church. He described the attempt to compel belief as "rape of the soul" and spoke of the "oceans of blood" shed as a result of trying to command conformity. The moral principles in the Scriptures ought to inform the civil magistrates, he believed, but he observed that well-ordered, just, and civil governments existed even where Christianity was not present. Thus, all governments had to maintain civil order and justice, but Williams decided that none had a warrant to promote or repress any religion. Most of his contemporaries criticized his ideas as a prescription for chaos and anarchy, and the vast majority believed that each nation must have its national church and could require that dissenters conform.
Writings
Williams's career as an author began with A Key into the Language of America (London, 1643), written during his first voyage to England. His next publication was Mr. Cotton's Letter lately Printed, Examined and Answered (London, 1644; reprinted in Publications of the Narragansett Club, vol. ii, along with Cotton's letter which it answered). His most famous work is The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, for Cause of Conscience (published in 1644), considered by some to be one of the best defenses of liberty of conscience. An anonymous pamphlet was published in London in 1644 entitled Queries of Highest Consideration Proposed to Mr. Tho. Goodwin, Mr. Phillip Nye, Mr. Wil. Bridges, Mr. Jer. Burroughs, Mr. Sidr. Simpson, all Independents, etc. which is now ascribed to Williams. These "Independents" were members of the Westminster Assembly; their Apologetical Narration sought a way between extreme Separatism and Presbyterianism, and their prescription was to accept the state church model of Massachusetts Bay.
Williams published The Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody: by Mr. Cotton's Endeavor to wash it white in the Blood of the Lamb; of whose precious Blood, spilt in the Bloud of his Servants; and of the Blood of Millions spilt in former and later Wars for Conscience sake, that most Bloody Tenent of Persecution for cause of Conscience, upon, a second Tryal is found more apparently and more notoriously guilty, etc. (London, 1652) during his second visit to England. This work reiterated and amplified the arguments in Bloody Tenent, but it has the advantage of being written in answer to Cotton's A Reply to Mr. Williams his Examination (Publications of the Narragansett Club, vol. ii.).
Other works by Williams include:
- The Hireling Ministry None of Christ's (London, 1652)
- Experiments of Spiritual Life and Health, and their Preservatives (London, 1652; reprinted Providence, 1863)
- George Fox Digged out of his Burrowes (Boston, 1676).
A volume of his letters is included in the Narragansett Club edition of Williams' Works (7 vols., Providence, 1866-74), and a volume was edited by J. R. Bartlett (1882).
- The Correspondence of Roger Williams, 2 vols., Rhode Island Historical Society, 1988, edited by Glenn W. LaFantasie.
Brown University's John Carter Brown Library has long housed a 234-page volume referred to as the "Roger Williams Mystery Book". The margins of this book are filled with notations in handwritten code, believed to be the work of Roger Williams. In 2012, Brown University undergraduate Lucas Mason-Brown cracked the code and uncovered conclusive historical evidence attributing its authorship to Williams. Translations are revealing transcriptions of a geographical text, a medical text, and 20 pages of original notes addressing the issue of infant baptism. Mason-Brown has since discovered more writings by Williams employing a separate code in the margins of a rare edition of Eliot's Indian Bible.
Legacy
Williams' legacy has grown over time with changing values. His defense of Native Americans, accusations that Puritans had reproduced the "evils" of the Anglican Church, and denial that the king had authority to grant charters for colonies put him at the center of nearly every political debate during his life. By the time of American independence, however, he was considered a defender of religious freedom and has continued to be praised by generations of historians who have often altered their interpretation of his period as a whole.
Tributes to Williams include:
- Roger Williams National Memorial, established in 1965, is a park in downtown Providence.
- Roger Williams Park, Providence, Rhode Island, and the Roger Williams Park Zoo within it are named in his honor.
- Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island is named in his honor.
- Roger Williams Dining Hall at the University of Rhode Island
- Roger Williams Inn, the main dining hall at the American Baptists' Green Lake Conference Center, founded in 1943 in Green Lake, Wisconsin
- Williams was selected in 1872 to represent Rhode Island in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the United States Capitol.
- Williams is depicted on the International Monument to the Reformation in Geneva, Switzerland, along with other prominent reformers.
- Williams is honored with Anne Hutchinson with a feast day on the liturgical of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America on 5 February.
- Roger Williams at Find a Grave
- National Baptist Memorial Church in Washington, D.C. was originally conceived of as a memorial to Roger Williams and religious freedom, though the church that was eventually built does not include the proposed statue of Williams.
See also
- Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
- Rhode Island
- List of early settlers of Rhode Island
- John Cotton (puritan)
- John Winthrop
- Roger Williams National Memorial
- Roger Williams Park
References
Further reading
- Barry, John, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul (New York: Viking Press, 2012).
- Bejan, Teresa, Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). Addresses Roger Williams' ideas in dialogue with Hobbes and Locke, and suggests lessons from Williams for how to disagree well in the modern public sphere.
- Brockunier, Samuel. The Irrepressible Democrat, Roger Williams, (1940), popular biography
- Burrage, Henry S. "Why Was Roger Williams Banished?" American Journal of Theology 5 (January 1901): 1-17.
- Byrd, James P., Jr. The Challenges of Roger Williams: Religious Liberty, Violent Persecution, and the Bible (2002). 286 pp.
- Davis. Jack L. "Roger Williams among the Narragansett Indians", New England Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Dec. 1970), pp. 593-604 in JSTOR
- Field, Jonathan Beecher. "A Key for the Gate: Roger Williams, Parliament, and Providence", New England Quarterly 2007 80(3): 353-382
- Goodman, Nan. "Banishment, Jurisdiction, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century New England: The Case of Roger Williams", Early American Studies, An Interdisciplinary Journal Spring 2009, Vol. 7 Issue 1, pp 109-39.
- Gaustad, Edwin, S. Roger Williams (Oxford University Press, 2005). 140 pp. short scholarly biography stressing religion
- Gaustad, Edwin, S., Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams in America. (Judson Press, Valley Forge, 1999).
- Hall, Timothy L. Separating Church and State: Roger Williams and Religious Liberty (1998). 206 pp.
- Johnson, Alan E. The First American Founder: Roger Williams and Freedom of Conscience (Pittsburgh, PA: Philosophia Publications, 2015). In-depth discussion of Roger Williams's life and work and his influence on the US Founders and later American history.
- Miller, Perry, Roger Williams, A Contribution to the American Tradition, (1953). much debated study; Miller argues that Williams thought was primarily religious, not political as so many of the historians of the 1930s and 1940s had argued.
- Morgan, Edmund S. Roger Williams: the church and the state (1967) 170 pages; short biography by leading scholar
- Neff, Jimmy D. "Roger Williams: Pious Puritan and Strict Separationist", Journal of Church and State 1996 38(3): 529-546 in EBSCO
- Phillips, Stephen. "Roger Williams and the Two Tables of the Law", Journal of Church and State 1996 38(3): 547-568 in EBSCO
- Skaggs, Donald. Roger Williams' Dream for America (1993). 240 pp.
- Stanley, Alison. "'To Speak With Other Tongues': Linguistics, Colonialism and Identity in 17th Century New England", Comparative American Studies March 2009, Vol. 7 Issue 1, p1, 17p
- Winslow, Ola Elizabeth, Master Roger Williams, A Biography. (1957) standard biography
- Wood, Timothy L. "Kingdom Expectations: The Native American in the Puritan Missiology of John Winthrop and Roger Williams", Fides et Historia 2000 32(1): 39-49
Historiography
- Carlino, Anthony O. "Roger Williams and his Place in History: The Background and the Last Quarter Century", Rhode Island History 2000 58(2): 34-71, historiography
- Irwin, Raymond D. "A Man for all Eras: The Changing Historical Image of Roger Williams, 1630-1993", Fides Et Historia 1994 26(3): 6-23, historiography
- Morgan, Edmund S. " Miller's Williams", New England Quarterly, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Dec. 1965), pp. 513-523 in JSTOR
- Moore, Leroy, Jr. "Roger Williams and the Historians", Church History 1963 32(4): 432-451 in JSTOR
- Peace, Nancy E. "Roger Williams: A Historiographical Essay", Rhode Island History 1976 35(4): 103-113,
Primary sources
- William, Roger. The Complete Writings of Roger Williams (7 vol; 1963)
- William, Roger. The Correspondence of Roger Williams. Vol. 1: 1629-1653. Vol. 2: 1654-1682 ed. by Glenn W. LaFantasie. (1988) 867 pp.
Fiction
- Settle, Mary Lee, I, Roger Williams: A Novel, W. W. Norton & Company, Reprint edition (2002).
- George, James W., The Prophet and the Witch: A Novel of Puritan New England, Amazon Digital Services (2017).
External links
- Literature by and about Roger Williams in the German National Library catalogue
- "Roger Williams". Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL) (in German).
- Works by or about Roger Williams at Internet Archive
- Side of the US-American Roger Williams circle of friends
- Documentary about Roger Williams life: Roger Williams - Freedom's Forgotten Hero (Part 1 to 7)
- Lecture by Martha Nussbaum: Equal Liberty of Conscience: Roger Williams and the Roots of a Constitutional Tradition
- Chronological list of Rhode Island leaders
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