Roger Williams was famously banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1635 for his “new and dangerous opinions” on religious freedom, the separation of church and state, and Indigenous land rights. Williams settled the town of Providence with the permission of the Narragansett Sachems, creating a colony that was arguably the freest in the western world.  Click here for a 73-minute presentation by Roger Williams University history professor and author of Roger Williams and His World, Charlotte Carrington-Farmer at Rogers Free Library on February 3, 2025.

He had grown up in England, where the official state religion changed on the whim of a monarch and heretics were burned alive for their dissenting beliefs. In her presentation, Carrington-Farmer described the London neighborhood where Williams grew up.

After completing school at Pembroke College in Cambridge, where his name appears in the records, Williams crossed the Atlantic in 1631. Williams’ radical ideas cost him dearly. He was banished from Plymouth and Salem but escaped to present day Rhode Island where he created a place where no one was punished for their beliefs.

(Click above, left) The original deed to Providence. (Click above, center) The 1663 Royal Charter. (Click above, right) In England, his masterpiece on religious freedom, The Bloudy Tenent, was burned; his neighbors fought; and he had to live alongside those he despised. In America, his colony was viewed with contempt; his long-term acquaintances wished him dead; his house and town were burned down; and he lived his final years in poverty. However, in the face of opposition and hardship, Williams stood by his “new and dangerous opinions” and created a “lively experiment” in Providence.