For more than twenty years, the Puritan colonies of New England – Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven – would do their utmost to gain control of Rhode Island, Roger Williams’s refuge committed to “soul liberty.” They hated his nest of heretics on their border, and they coveted Rhode Island’s arable land. The Puritan New Englanders would try everything short of military conquest, from subversion, to legal and military attacks on the Narragansetts, Rhode Island’s closest indigenous allies, to political maneuvering in London. At every turn, Williams would outfox them, finally obtaining a charter from Charles II that definitively established absolute religious liberty in Rhode Island, and mandated a “democratical” form of government. Rhode Island under Williams would become the freest place in the English world, and Rhode Islanders would defend their freedoms even after Williams was no longer in their government.

This is that story.

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Selected references for this episode

John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul (Commission earned)

James A. Warren, God, War, and Providence: The Epic Struggle of Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians against the Puritans of New England (Commission earned)

Joshua J. Monk, “Roger Williams’ A Letter to the Town of Providence”

Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, “‘Naked as a sign’. How the Quakers invented nudity as a protest,” Clio. Women, Gender, History, June 2021.