WEBVTT NOTE 21. Suppressing Heresy: The Flight of Roger Williams 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.040 Volume 1, Chapter 21, Suppressing Heresy, The Flight of Roger Williams 2 00:00:08.040 --> 00:00:14.480 The Puritans in leaving England, the historian Thomas Jefferson Wharton Baker wrote, fled 3 00:00:14.480 --> 00:00:21.760 not so much from persecution as from error. It was to build a rigorous theocracy free 4 00:00:21.760 --> 00:00:28.540 from dissent that the Puritans built a colony in America, and yet a Protestant theocracy 5 00:00:28.540 --> 00:00:36.300 must always suffer from a grave inner contradiction, for one significant tenet of Protestantism 6 00:00:36.300 --> 00:00:43.820 is the individual's ability to interpret the Bible free of ecclesiastical dictates. 7 00:00:43.820 --> 00:00:50.220 Although particular Protestant creeds may have no intention of countenancing or permitting 8 00:00:50.220 --> 00:00:57.540 dissent, the Protestant stimulus to individual interpretation must inevitably provoke that 9 00:00:57.540 --> 00:01:05.920 If the Puritans were so rigorous in suppressing idleness and frivolity on the Sabbath, we 10 00:01:05.920 --> 00:01:13.080 can imagine their zeal in rooting out heresy. As the Reverend Uriah Oakes put it, the loud 11 00:01:13.080 --> 00:01:20.360 outcry of some is for liberty of conscience. I look upon an unbounded toleration as the 12 00:01:20.360 --> 00:01:24.920 and the firstborn of all abominations. 13 00:01:24.920 --> 00:01:28.040 And the Reverend Thomas Shepard echoed that, 14 00:01:28.040 --> 00:01:34.520 "'Tis Satan's policy to plead for an indefinite and boundless toleration. 15 00:01:34.520 --> 00:01:40.680 The eminent Puritan Divine, John Norton, in the heart of New England rent, 16 00:01:40.680 --> 00:01:42.760 thundered against liberty. 17 00:01:42.760 --> 00:01:47.460 We both dread and bear witness against liberty of heresy. 18 00:01:47.460 --> 00:01:54.260 It is a liberty to answer to the dictated error of conscience in walking contrary to rule. 19 00:01:54.260 --> 00:02:00.700 It is a liberty to blaspheme, a liberty to seduce others from the true God, a liberty 20 00:02:00.700 --> 00:02:04.140 to tell lies in the name of the Lord. 21 00:02:04.140 --> 00:02:11.140 As for liberty of conscience, Norton speciously claimed to be upholding it, but not the liberty 22 00:02:11.140 --> 00:02:13.980 of the error of conscience. 23 00:02:13.980 --> 00:02:21.060 In short, people were to be free to believe what Norton wanted them to, but were not to 24 00:02:21.060 --> 00:02:24.340 be free to differ. 25 00:02:24.340 --> 00:02:31.460 As early as 1631, the Puritan authorities revealed their position on heresy. 26 00:02:31.460 --> 00:02:38.540 In that year, Philip Ratcliffe was whipped, fined 40 shillings, had his ears cut off and 27 00:02:38.540 --> 00:02:45.360 was banished for the high crime of uttering malicious and scandalous speeches against the 28 00:02:45.360 --> 00:02:48.340 government and the church. 29 00:02:48.340 --> 00:02:54.540 The first important case of heresy also came soon after the founding of the colony. 30 00:02:54.540 --> 00:03:03.060 To Massachusetts in early 1631 came the young Reverend Roger Williams, who quickly refused 31 00:03:03.060 --> 00:03:07.060 and the coveted appointment of teacher of the Boston Church. 32 00:03:07.060 --> 00:03:14.060 An individualist and a fearless logician, Williams had concluded that the Puritan Church in Massachusetts, 33 00:03:14.060 --> 00:03:19.060 being separatist de facto, should also be separatist de jure, 34 00:03:19.060 --> 00:03:25.060 that is, should break openly from communion with the Church of England. 35 00:03:25.060 --> 00:03:30.060 In short, he pursued the Puritan's logic further than they were willing to go 36 00:03:30.060 --> 00:03:33.180 and thus embarrassed the Puritans a great deal. 37 00:03:33.180 --> 00:03:38.380 Beginning with this dissent, Williams quickly went on to strike hammer blows 38 00:03:38.380 --> 00:03:41.460 against the entire political structure of the colony. 39 00:03:41.460 --> 00:03:45.860 First he proceeded to deny the right of the civil authority 40 00:03:45.860 --> 00:03:49.260 to punish the infraction of religious rule or doctrine. 41 00:03:49.260 --> 00:03:52.860 This struck at the entire theocratic principle 42 00:03:52.860 --> 00:03:56.980 and the General Court of Massachusetts declared in reply 43 00:03:56.980 --> 00:04:02.500 that it was clearly absurd to maintain that a church might run into heresy and yet the 44 00:04:02.500 --> 00:04:08.620 civil magistrate could not intermeddle. To the Puritans this was clearly a puzzling and 45 00:04:08.620 --> 00:04:15.580 astonishing doctrine. Williams now accepted appointment as teacher of the Salem Church, 46 00:04:15.580 --> 00:04:20.060 but his appointment was overruled by the general court on account of Williams's separatist 47 00:04:20.060 --> 00:04:26.940 views and his dedication to religious liberty. Williams thereupon moved to the fully separatist 48 00:04:26.940 --> 00:04:32.700 Plymouth, where he became assistant to the Reverend Ralph Smith, who had also been ejected 49 00:04:32.700 --> 00:04:39.700 from Salem for his pure separatist views. But Plymouth itself was becoming less separatist 50 00:04:39.860 --> 00:04:46.860 and could not tolerate Williams' libertarianism. As a result, Williams accepted in late 1633 51 00:04:48.300 --> 00:04:54.740 a second call from Salem to be a teacher of the church. There he joined the senior pastor, 52 00:04:54.740 --> 00:05:00.060 Samuel Skelton in attacking the growing practice of ministers in holding 53 00:05:00.060 --> 00:05:06.580 periodical joint discussions, a practice which they perceptively feared would grow 54 00:05:06.580 --> 00:05:13.180 into a form of synodal quasi-presbyterian control over the individual 55 00:05:13.180 --> 00:05:18.900 congregations. Only four years later Skelton and Williams were proved right by 56 00:05:18.900 --> 00:05:24.500 the erection of a system of synods which also resulted in joint ministerial 57 00:05:24.500 --> 00:05:27.500 and National Advice to the Civil Power. 58 00:05:27.500 --> 00:05:30.500 Williams proceeded to strike another fundamental blow 59 00:05:30.500 --> 00:05:33.500 at the social structure of Massachusetts Bay. 60 00:05:33.500 --> 00:05:37.500 He denied the right of the king to make arbitrary grants 61 00:05:37.500 --> 00:05:41.500 of the land of Massachusetts to the colonists. 62 00:05:41.500 --> 00:05:45.500 The Indians, he maintained, properly owned the land 63 00:05:45.500 --> 00:05:49.500 and therefore the settlers should purchase the land from them. 64 00:05:49.500 --> 00:06:04.500 This doctrine attacked the entire quasi-feudal origin of American colonization in arbitrary land grants in the royal charters, and it also hit at the policy of ruthlessly expelling the Indians from their land. 65 00:06:04.500 --> 00:06:20.500 William's, indeed, was the rare white colonist courageous enough to say that full title to the soil rested in the Indian natives, and that white title could only be validly obtained by purchase from its true owners. 66 00:06:20.500 --> 00:06:27.500 The whites, charged Williams, lived under a sin of usurpation of others' possessions. 67 00:06:27.500 --> 00:06:35.380 The denial of the king's right to grant title to land he did not justly own, of course, 68 00:06:35.380 --> 00:06:41.240 hit directly at the basis of the Massachusetts Charter itself, which Williams argued the 69 00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:45.920 colonists had a moral duty to turn from and renounce. 70 00:06:45.920 --> 00:06:52.520 The infuriated authorities now moved in on Williams, charging him with subversive doctrine. 71 00:06:52.520 --> 00:06:58.080 Bowing to force majeure, Williams recanted and offered to burn the tract expressing his 72 00:06:58.080 --> 00:07:04.840 dissenting views. But Williams was too much a man of principle to be suppressed for long, 73 00:07:04.840 --> 00:07:11.840 and by late 1634, news reached Boston that Williams was repeating his old subversive 74 00:07:11.840 --> 00:07:19.200 doctrines as well as adding the purest religious deviation from Puritan orthodoxy that oaths 75 00:07:19.200 --> 00:07:26.320 should not be administered by magistrates to unregenerate sinners. Williams also denounced 76 00:07:26.320 --> 00:07:32.240 the loyalty oaths coerced upon the mass of non-freeman residents of the colony in April 77 00:07:32.240 --> 00:07:40.060 1634 as blasphemous. He refused to subscribe to the oath and urged his congregation to 78 00:07:40.060 --> 00:07:45.400 do the same. Williams did this despite the punishment for refusal having been announced 79 00:07:45.400 --> 00:07:54.740 A crackdown by the Massachusetts authorities was precipitated by Salem Church's appointing 80 00:07:54.740 --> 00:08:00.220 Williams as its chief minister in place of the deceased skeleton. 81 00:08:00.220 --> 00:08:06.200 The Massachusetts authorities now unanimously condemned Williams's views as erroneous and 82 00:08:06.200 --> 00:08:12.540 very dangerous, and denounced Salem's action as a great contempt of authority. 83 00:08:12.540 --> 00:08:17.800 The Massachusetts clergy recommended to the General Court that this dangerous advocate 84 00:08:17.800 --> 00:08:21.240 of religious liberty be removed. 85 00:08:21.240 --> 00:08:29.960 Hauled into General Court in July 1635, Williams now remained adamant, even after several confrontations 86 00:08:29.960 --> 00:08:32.460 with Church authorities. 87 00:08:32.460 --> 00:08:37.580 The General Court now openly moved to undermine Williams with his home base at Salem, punishing 88 00:08:37.580 --> 00:08:50.180 Salem Church struck back with an indignation meeting which sent letters to the congregations 89 00:08:50.180 --> 00:08:56.200 of the other churches of the colony urging them to admonish the magistrates and deputies 90 00:08:56.200 --> 00:08:58.380 for their highness' sin. 91 00:08:58.380 --> 00:09:03.580 The elders of the other churches made certain to suppress any potential upsurge of popular 92 00:09:03.580 --> 00:09:21.800 Roger Williams' fearless spirit, the logic of Protestantism, and the dynamics of the conflict itself drove Roger Williams to the ultimate conclusion of separatism, calling upon Salem to 93 00:09:21.800 --> 00:09:40.800 The fearless spirit, the logic of Protestantism and the dynamics of the conflict itself drove Roger Williams to the ultimate conclusion of separatism, calling upon Salem Church to separate clearly from the other churches of the colony as well as from the Church of England. 94 00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:45.800 This was the straw that broke the Massachusetts camel's back. 95 00:09:45.800 --> 00:09:53.800 The spirit and oligarchy now brandished its temporal sword, sending to Salem its model of church and civil power. 96 00:09:53.800 --> 00:10:01.800 The model gave grave warning that the civil magistrates would strike down any corrupt or schismatic church. 97 00:10:01.800 --> 00:10:09.800 Independent churches would be suppressed. Religious toleration could only end by dissolving the state as well as the church. 98 00:10:09.800 --> 00:10:14.800 In September, the civil power followed this by subduing Salem. 99 00:10:14.800 --> 00:10:21.100 The General Court expelled the Salem deputies and reiterated its refusal to grant the town's 100 00:10:21.100 --> 00:10:22.900 land claims. 101 00:10:22.900 --> 00:10:28.800 The assistant ruling Salem, John Endicott, defended the Salem Church but was promptly 102 00:10:28.800 --> 00:10:33.220 imprisoned until he recanted and was discharged. 103 00:10:33.220 --> 00:10:38.160 Under the severest pressure by the Puritan oligarchy, the majority of Salem Church, as 104 00:10:38.160 --> 00:10:44.080 As Williams was later to write, was swayed and bowed, whether for fear of persecution 105 00:10:44.080 --> 00:10:51.520 or otherwise, to say and practice what, to my knowledge, many of them mourned under. 106 00:10:51.520 --> 00:10:57.440 With Salem brought to heel, it now remained only to suppress the isolated Roger Williams 107 00:10:57.440 --> 00:10:58.440 himself. 108 00:10:58.440 --> 00:11:06.240 Yet, when brought again into general court in October 1635, Williams stoutly maintained 109 00:11:06.240 --> 00:11:12.880 all of his heretical and libertarian opinions. He refused to recant, even when forced to 110 00:11:12.880 --> 00:11:19.360 debate with the Reverend Thomas Hooker, a leading Puritan divine. Thereupon the general 111 00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:25.580 court ordered Williams expelled from the colony within six weeks. The sentence of banishment 112 00:11:25.580 --> 00:11:32.860 declared, whereas Mr. Roger Williams hath broached and divulged diverse, new and dangerous 113 00:11:32.860 --> 00:11:39.860 The court agreed to extend the deadline for Williams' banishment, provided that he would not go about to draw others to his opinions, but the authorities were chagrined to find a solution. 114 00:12:02.860 --> 00:12:09.540 and that even Williams in private was having a subversive effect, while Salem bowed reluctantly 115 00:12:09.540 --> 00:12:16.260 to the decision of the authorities and received the marble headland in return. Williams himself 116 00:12:16.260 --> 00:12:22.780 separated from the Salem Church and others were moved to do the same. Over twenty Salem 117 00:12:22.780 --> 00:12:29.300 families now prepared to follow Williams southward into exile and there build a haven of religious 118 00:12:29.300 --> 00:12:59.300 and Liberty. With the disappearance of the Council for New England in 1635, Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth were both virtually self-governing. And what is more, the land south of the Massachusetts Grand and west of Plymouth became a tempting vacuum, not having been parceled out to any person or group. It was in this free area that Williams now prepared to found a new colony. The Massachusetts authorities were 119 00:12:59.300 --> 00:13:04.740 greatly dismayed because they had expected that Williams would be forced back to England. 120 00:13:04.740 --> 00:13:09.960 It was not enough to oust Williams forcibly from the land area assigned to Massachusetts. 121 00:13:09.960 --> 00:13:14.480 Should he merely move southward, there would still be a danger that, in the words of Governor 122 00:13:14.480 --> 00:13:20.240 John Winthrop, the infection would easily spread to Massachusetts Bay. 123 00:13:20.240 --> 00:13:26.000 The general court hastily sent a ship to Salem to arrest Williams and send him speedily back 124 00:13:26.000 --> 00:13:33.520 to England. But Williams bested his persecutors and fled alone into the wilderness. He trudged 125 00:13:33.520 --> 00:13:40.440 south through the snow and spent the winter among the Friendly Narragansett Indians. 126 00:13:40.440 --> 00:13:45.920 In the spring Williams was joined by four friends and they proceeded to the northern 127 00:13:45.920 --> 00:13:52.840 tip of Narragansett Bay where they founded the settlement of Seekonk. There they were 128 00:13:52.840 --> 00:14:22.840 William's travel had scarcely ended, however. Soon, the governor of Plymouth Colony wrote to Williams regretfully advising him that Seekonk was still inside the Plymouth boundaries and that Plymouth could not dare displease Massachusetts by allowing the little band to remain. So Williams was now banished from Plymouth as well, and the purchase of Plymouth was not enough. 129 00:14:22.840 --> 00:14:28.800 Providence of the Seekonk land from the Indians, the clearing of land and the planting of crops 130 00:14:28.800 --> 00:14:32.000 had all been in vain. 131 00:14:32.000 --> 00:14:37.440 Moving west across the Seekonk River, Williams left the jurisdiction of Plymouth and founded 132 00:14:37.440 --> 00:14:40.400 the settlement of Providence. 133 00:14:40.400 --> 00:14:45.600 In Providence plantations, Williams and the others scrupulously purchased the land from 134 00:14:45.600 --> 00:14:52.320 the Indians and determined to allow religious liberty in their new and spontaneously formed 135 00:14:52.320 --> 00:15:07.320 How Roger Williams was regarded by the frightened Puritan oligarchs of Massachusetts Bay may be seen from the historical account of the Reverend Cotton Mather, one of the main leaders of the later generation of Puritan divines. 136 00:15:07.320 --> 00:15:18.320 There was a whole country in America liked to be set on fire by the rapid motion of a windmill in the head of one particular man, Roger Williams. 137 00:15:18.320 --> 00:15:27.320 And Mathur realized that Williams's doctrines were aimed at the whole political as well as the ecclesiastical constitution of the country. 138 00:15:27.320 --> 00:15:35.320 The reaction of the Massachusetts authorities to Williams's flight was to step up their persecution of Salem separatism. 139 00:15:35.320 --> 00:15:39.320 All meetings of separatists were now outlawed. 140 00:15:39.320 --> 00:15:50.320 Williams' views, at least in these early days of his career, were notably libertarian, especially in contrast to those of other Americans of his time. 141 00:15:50.320 --> 00:16:00.320 But it must be recognized that Williams emerged as an embattled leader within the context of a Puritan and dissenter movement in England, 142 00:16:00.320 --> 00:16:07.320 which in the 1630s and 1640s was rapidly becoming radicalized and increasingly libertarian. 143 00:16:07.320 --> 00:16:19.320 The libertarian movement reached its culmination and was not to reach the same height again for well over a century in the leveler movement of the 1640s. 144 00:16:19.320 --> 00:16:23.320 Williams himself had participated in the emerging Puritan cause. 145 00:16:23.320 --> 00:16:28.320 A protege of the great liberal jurist, Sir Edward Koch, 146 00:16:28.320 --> 00:16:32.320 Williams owned opinions that had brought him into conflict 147 00:16:32.320 --> 00:16:38.320 with the ultra-Anglican and minion of the stewards, Archbishop Laud. 148 00:16:38.320 --> 00:16:44.320 Williams thus received his early ideological training in the liberal dissenter movement. 149 00:16:44.320 --> 00:16:48.320 Free and safe in a providence enjoying religious liberty 150 00:16:48.320 --> 00:17:18.320 and Separation of Church and State. Roger Williams was later able to elaborate on his doctrines of religious liberty. His most famous theoretical work, The Bloody Tenant of Persecution for the Cause of Conscience Disgust, appeared in 1644. A sequel, The Bloody Tenant, yet more bloody, rebutting the reply of the leading Massachusetts divine, Reverend John Cotton, appeared eight years later. 151 00:17:18.320 --> 00:17:34.320 Compulsory religion, Williams pointed out, violated the Christian tenet of love, and by ravishing and forcing souls and consciences led to hypocrisy for fear of state punishment. 152 00:17:34.320 --> 00:17:43.320 Coerced religion, Williams declared, leads to sex, slaughtering each other for their several respective religions and consciences. 153 00:17:43.320 --> 00:18:03.320 Again, unusual for his time, Williams insisted that not only Protestants, but all religions must be completely free, including the most paganish, Jewish, Turkish, or anti-Christian consciences and worships. 154 00:18:03.320 --> 00:18:22.320 He added, To molest any person, Jew or Gentile, for either professing doctrines or practicing worship, is to persecute him in such a person, whatever his doctrine or practice be true or false, suffereth persecutionivid for conscience. 155 00:18:22.320 --> 00:18:30.320 And this man of courage and principle nobly proclaimed the importance of cleaving to truth. 156 00:18:30.320 --> 00:18:36.200 We must not let go for all the fleabidings of the present afflictions, having bought truth, 157 00:18:36.200 --> 00:18:43.580 dear, we must not sell it cheap, not the least grain of it for the whole world, least of 158 00:18:43.580 --> 00:18:49.380 all for the little puff of credit and reputation from the changeable breath of uncertain sons 159 00:18:49.380 --> 00:18:54.500 of men. While Williams's heart was in the right place in insisting on purchasing all 160 00:18:54.500 --> 00:19:01.500 While the Indians were certainly entitled to the land they cultivated, they also, one, laid claim to vast reaches of land which they hunted, but which they did not transform by cultivation, and, two, owned the land not as individual Indians, but as collective tribal landowners. 161 00:19:24.500 --> 00:19:34.500 In many cases, the Indian tribes could not alienate or sell the lands, but only lease the use of their ancestral domains. 162 00:19:34.500 --> 00:19:49.500 As a result, the Indians also lived under a collectivist regime that, for land allocation, was scarcely more just than the English governmental land grab against which Williams was properly rebelling. 163 00:19:49.500 --> 00:19:56.380 Rebelling. Under both regimes, the actual settler, the first transformer of the land, 164 00:19:56.380 --> 00:20:01.780 whether white or Indian, had to fight his way past a nest of arbitrary land claims by 165 00:20:01.780 --> 00:20:07.780 others, and pay their exactions until he could formally own the land. 166 00:20:07.780 --> 00:20:14.460 Williams, always a friend of the Indians, bought from the saccoms, or chiefs, a grant 167 00:20:14.460 --> 00:20:19.300 of the large amount of land called the Providence Purchase. 168 00:20:19.300 --> 00:20:24.900 Williams then donated the land to a town fellowship, a joint property held equally by himself and 169 00:20:24.900 --> 00:20:31.540 five of his followers. The fellowship shortly enlarged to thirteen. As long as only the 170 00:20:31.540 --> 00:20:37.300 original settlers lived in Providence, all was peaceful, and virtually no government arose 171 00:20:37.300 --> 00:20:43.780 at all. As Williams described it, the masters of families have ordinarily met once a fortnight 172 00:20:43.780 --> 00:20:50.400 and consulted about our common piece, watch and plenty, and mutual consent have finished 173 00:20:50.400 --> 00:20:57.100 all matters of speed and pace. But it was inevitable that new settlers would come, and 174 00:20:57.100 --> 00:21:04.100 then that the arbitrary nature of the land allocation should give rise to conflict. Indeed, 175 00:21:04.820 --> 00:21:11.820 recriminations and tensions rapidly developed. Not realizing the inherent injustice of any 176 00:21:11.820 --> 00:21:39.820 William's naturally believed he had acted generously in giving the land to the Fellowship, but the later settlers, forced to purchase the land from the Fellowship, properly resented this feudalistic proprietary. 177 00:21:39.820 --> 00:21:46.320 The Fellowship, later enlarged to 54, assigned 11 acres to each member, plus the right to 178 00:21:46.320 --> 00:21:49.940 an additional 100 acres apiece. 179 00:21:49.940 --> 00:21:55.580 In this way, some of the land passed quickly to the individual members of the Fellowship. 180 00:21:55.580 --> 00:22:00.160 If their acreage was not in precise proportion to the degree of settlement, at least this 181 00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:05.060 land was now in the hands of its just owners, the individual settlers. 182 00:22:05.060 --> 00:22:23.060 But unfortunately, the great bulk of the Providence Tract still remained in the hands of the collective Fellowship Proprietary, and in 1640 the Fellowship moved to formalize its claim and to establish a proprietary oligarchy over future settlers. 183 00:22:23.060 --> 00:22:40.060 In that year, the fellowship drew up a plantation agreement at Providence and appointed a board of five disposers that would take charge of disposing of the land, managing the land held in common, and passing judgment on the qualification of new settlers. 184 00:22:40.060 --> 00:22:47.060 Taught little humility by their own sufferings, the disposers tended to be rigorous in their judgments. 185 00:22:47.060 --> 00:22:53.120 Before a man was permitted to settle and buy land in Providence, even the land of an individual 186 00:22:53.120 --> 00:23:00.120 settler willing to sell, the fellowship had to approve, and a veto by one fellow was sufficient 187 00:23:00.120 --> 00:23:03.100 to bar the newcomer. 188 00:23:03.100 --> 00:23:09.580 The original fellows soon admitted more members, but the number of fellows never exceeded 101, 189 00:23:09.580 --> 00:23:16.580 and the later members received only 25, rather than 100 acres of collectively owned land. 190 00:23:16.580 --> 00:23:46.580 Positions in the fellowship descended to the heirs of the original members. The other settlers, who were permitted to become landowners in Providence, were excluded from the select circle of the fellowship proprietary, which thus controlled the land and government. The fellowship kept a sharp check on its five disposers, but this hardly made the government of Providence less oligarchal. The most oligarchic feature of the plantation agreement dealt 191 00:23:46.580 --> 00:23:53.400 with Potuxet, a tract of land immediately south of Providence. Potuxet had been purchased 192 00:23:53.400 --> 00:23:59.740 from Indian Sagams in the spring of 1638 and turned over by Williams to the Fellows, then 193 00:23:59.740 --> 00:24:06.880 numbering 13. Overriding Williams's wishes, the Fellows, led by William Arnold and William 194 00:24:06.880 --> 00:24:15.380 Harris, decided in October of 1638, eventually, to divide the Potuxet lands among themselves, 195 00:24:15.380 --> 00:24:21.700 without even providing for any new settlers. The agreement of 1640 confirmed Patuxent as 196 00:24:21.700 --> 00:24:30.140 a closed proprietorship. Roger Williams carried his principles of religious liberty into practice. 197 00:24:30.140 --> 00:24:37.940 There was no state church and no one was forced to attend church. Williams himself was to 198 00:24:37.940 --> 00:24:43.520 change his religious views several times, becoming a Baptist for a few months and then 199 00:24:43.520 --> 00:24:48.640 in ending as a seeker who held to no fixed creed. 200 00:24:48.640 --> 00:24:54.120 Liberty has its own inner logic, and so Williams's religious liberty in Providence extended also 201 00:24:54.120 --> 00:24:59.920 to women. One of Williams's Salem adherents who had followed him to Providence, Joshua 202 00:24:59.920 --> 00:25:05.480 Varon, tasting the heady wine of religious liberty, grew disenchanted with Williams's 203 00:25:05.480 --> 00:25:12.640 sermon and stopped attending church. This was perfectly legitimate in his newfound home. 204 00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:18.520 But Varin went so far as to prevent his wife from attending, even beating her to prevent 205 00:25:18.520 --> 00:25:20.000 her from going. 206 00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:26.200 Varin was therefore disfranchised by Providence in the spring of 1638 for restraining his 207 00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:28.120 wife's conscience. 208 00:25:28.120 --> 00:25:35.160 He soon returned to Salem, where he could again exercise the Puritan role of despotic 209 00:25:35.160 --> 00:25:38.320 painter familias. 210 00:25:38.320 --> 00:25:44.180 The logic of liberty had, as we shall see, even more drastic implications. For, as some 211 00:25:44.180 --> 00:25:49.480 citizens of Providence began to reason, if the conscience of the individual was to be 212 00:25:49.480 --> 00:25:56.100 supreme in religious matters, if the state was to have no power to interfere with any 213 00:25:56.100 --> 00:26:03.180 actions determined by his religious conscience, why shouldn't his liberty extend to civil 214 00:26:03.180 --> 00:26:11.380 All matters as well. Why shouldn't the individual's conscience reign supreme in all civil as well 215 00:26:11.380 --> 00:26:12.900 as religious affairs?