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Roger Williams and the Historians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

LeRoy Moore Jr
LeRoy Moore Jr
Affiliation:
Claremont Graduate School
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Extract

The journey is long from the Massachusetts theocracy that banished Roger Williams in 1635 to the predominantly Roman Catholic Massachusetts of the twentieth century that finally in 1936 lifted that ancient ban against the original Rhode Islander. The tale of this remarkable transition is the story of how the heretic became the hero. In his own time, Williams had days of agony and glory—mostly the former. Likewise, in the running currents of our national history, his reputation has had days of agony and glory—mostly the latter. This is not to say, however, that he always properly deserved the precise glory given him, or, rather, that he has been invariably lauded for his true contribution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 1963 , pp. 432 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1963

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References

1. A 1637 law making Rhode Islanders subject to arrest if they enter Massachnsetts was repealed in 1948.

2. Wecter, , The Hero in America: A Chronicle of Hero Worship (N. Y.: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941), p. 479.Google Scholar

3. Three of the several American colleges then in existence published library catalogues prior to 1800. The 1760 catalogue from Princeton contains nothing by Williams. The Harvard catalogue of 1723 includes nothing, while the 1790 edition lists only George Fox Digg'd out of His Burrowes. The Yale catalogue of 1791 includes one item credited to Roger Williams — “against Persecution” — which very likely means The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. However, this volume was probably not on the Yale shelves before 1777, when Isaac Backus published the first volume of his History of New England (see below, note 46).

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19. Cf. Tyler, Moses Coit, A History of American Literature, 1607–1765 (N.Y.: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1878), I, pp. 126–28.Google Scholar

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48. Shortly after the publication of George Fox Digg'd out of his Burrowes, William Coddington, a prominent citizen of Rhode Island who had become a Quaker, wrote to George Fox that Wilhams was “a mere weathercock, constant only in inconstancy.” (Cf. the letter of 1677 in Backus, , History, I, p. 353.)Google Scholar

49. Ibid., I. pp. 53, 135ff, 375, 414, 408–09.

50. Cf. Ibid., II, p. 198.

51. Cf. Edwards, , Materials for a History of the Baptists in Rhode Island, in R. I. Historical Soc., Collections, VI (1867), pp. 302ff.Google Scholar

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64. The 1963 publication (see above, note 9) embodies an exact reprint of the earlier Narragansett Club edition (6 vols.; Providence: Prorvidence Press Co., 1866–1874), thereby maintaining, as the publisher notes, “the integrity of the voluminous references to the Narragansett Edition in the literature about Roger Williams.” Volume VII of the new edition contains material previously omitted, as well as Perry Miller's “Essay in Interpretation.”

65. Wroth, Lawrence C., “Roger Williams,” in Brown Univ., Papers, XIV (1937), p. 36.Google Scholar

66. The Bloudy Tenent, Writings, III, p. 13.Google Scholar