36 Toleration in Rhode Island (1670)

Providence, 22 June, 1670

My honored dear and ancient friend. My due respects and earnest desires to God for your eternal peace, &c.

I crave your leave and patience to present you with some few considerations occasioned by the late transactions between your colony and ours. The last year you were pleased to tell me that you longed to see my face once more before you died. I embraced your love, though I feared my old lame bones and yours had arrested traveling in this world. And therefore I was and am ready to lay hold on all occasions of writing as I do at present. The occasion I confess is sorrowful, because I see yourselves with others embarked in a resolution to invade and despoil your poor countrymen in a wilderness. To this end Sir please you with a calm and steady and a christian hand, to hold the balance and to weigh these few considerations in much love and due respect presented.

First, when I was unkindly and unchristianly as I believe driven from my house and land and wife and children (in the midst of New-England winter, now about 35 years past) at Salem, that ever-honored Governor Mr. Winthrop privately wrote to me to steer my course to Narragansett Bay and Indians for many high and heavenly and public ends, encouraging me from the freeness of the place from any English claims or patents. I took his prudent motion as a hint and voice from God and waiving all other thoughts and emotions, I steered my course from Salem (though in winter snow which I feel yet) unto these parts.

2. I first pitched and began to build and plant at Secunky [Seekonk] now Rehoboth, but I received a letter from my ancient friend Mr. Winslow, then Governor of Plymouth, professing his own and others love and respect to me yet lovingly advising me since I was fallen into the edge of their bounds and they were loth to displease the Bay, to remove but to the other side of the water. And then he said I had the country free before me and might be as free as themselves and we should be loving neighbors together. These were the joint understandings of these two eminently wise and christian Governors, together with their counsel and advice as to the freedom and vacancy of this place, which in this respect and many other Providences of the most holy and only wise, I called Providence.
3. Sometime after Plymouth’s great Sachem (Ousamaquin) upon occasion affirming that Providence was his land and therefore Plymouth’s land and some resenting it, the then prudent and godly Governor Mr. Bradford and others of his godly council answered that if after due examination it should be found true what the barbarian said, yet having too my loss of a harvest that year, been now (though by their gentle advice) as good as banished from Plymouth as from the Massachusetts. And I had quietly and patiently departed from them at their motion, to the place where now I was, I should not be molested and tossed up and down again while they had breath in their bodies. And surely between those my friends of the Bay and Plymouth, I was sorely tossed for one fourteen weeks in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean. Beside the yearly loss of no small matter in my trading with English and natives, being debarred from Boston, the chief mart and port of New England. God knows that many thousand pounds cannot repay the very temporary losses I have sustained. It lies upon the Massachusetts and me, yea and other colonies joining with them to examine with fear and trembling before the eyes of flaming fire, the true cause of all my sorrows and sufferings. It pleased the Father of spirits to touch many hearts dear to him with some relentings, amongst which that great and pious soul Mr. Winslow melted and kindly visited me at Providence and put a piece of gold into the hands of my wife for our supply.
4. When the next year after my banishment the Lord drew the bow of the Pequot war against the country, in which Sir, the Lord made yourself with others a blessed instrument of peace to all New England. I had my share of service to the whole land in that Pequot business, inferior to very few that acted.
5. Consider: Upon frequent exceptions [complaints] against Providence men that we had no authority for civil government, I went purposely to England and upon my report and petition the Parliament granted us a charter of government for these parts, so judged vacant on all hands. And upon this the country about us was more friendly and wrote to us and treated us as an authorized colony; only the differences of our consciences much obstructed. The bounds of this our first charter I (having ocular knowledge of persons, places, and transactions) did honestly and conscientiously draw up from Pawcatuck River, which I then believed and still do is free from all English claims and conquests.
6. Sometime after the Pequot war and our charter from the Parliament, the government of Massachusetts wrote to myself (then chief officer in this Colony) of their receiving of a patent from the Parliament for these vacant lands as an addition to the Massachusetts. And thereupon requiring me to exercise no more authority, &c. For, they wrote, their charter was granted some few weeks before ours. I returned what I believed righteous and weighty to the hands of my true friend, Mr. Winthrop, the first mover of my coming into these parts. And to that answer of mine I never received the least reply. Only it is certain that at Mr. Gorton’s complaint against the Massachusetts, the Lord High Admiral said openly in a full meeting of the commissioners that he knew no other charter for these parts than what Mr. Williams had obtained. And he was sure that charter which the Massachusetts Englishmen pretended had never past the table.
7. The King’s Majesty sent his commissioners, among other his royal purposes, to reconcile the differences of and to settle the bounds between the colonies. Accordingly the King’s  aforesaid commissioners at Rhode [Island] (where, as a commissioner for this colony, I transacted with them as did also commissioners from Plymouth) they composed a controversy between Plymouth and us and settled the bounds between us in which we rest.
8. Alas Sir, in calm midnight thoughts, what are these leaves and flowers and smoke and shadows and dreams of earthly nothings, about which we poor fools and children disquiet ourselves in vain? What are all the contentions and wars of this world about, generally? Besides Sir, the matter with us is not about these children’s toys of land, meadows, cattle, government, &c. But here all over this colony a great number of weak and distressed souls are flying hither from Old and New England, the Most High has in his infinite wisdom provided this country and this corner as a shelter for the poor and persecuted, according to their several persuasions. Thus Sir, the King’s Majesty has vouchsafed his royal promise under his hand and broad seal that no person in this Colony shall be molested or questioned for the matters of his conscience to God, so he be loyal and keep the civil peace. Sir, we must part with lands and lives before we part with such a Jewel.

Some of yours, as I heard lately, told tales to the Archbishop of Canterbury, viz. that we are a profane people and do not keep the Sabbath but some do plough, &c. But you told him not how we suffer freely all other persuasions, yea the [Anglican] common prayer which yourselves will not suffer. I have offered to discuss by disputation, writing, or printing, among other points of differences these three positions: first that forced worship stinks in Gods nostrils. Second that it denies Christ Jesus yet to be come and makes the church yet national, figurative and ceremonial. Third that in these flames about religion, as his Majesty, his father, and grandfather have yielded, there is no other prudent, christian way of preserving peace in the world but by permission of differing consciences.

Source: Roger Williams, Letter to Major John Mason, in Massachusetts Historical Society, Collections (Boston, 1792), I, 275-283. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.45493/page/n421/mode/2up