The Wordy Shipmates

Through further analysis of William’s words and actions, Vowell presents a more complete articulation of the man’s social goals and worldview. Williams readily engaged in conflict, believing that people should be allowed to challenge the state without fear of retribution. Even in theological disputes, he condemned any resulting violence or punishment. Williams, “a diehard zealot, is unflinching in his recognition that other diehard zealots are equally set in their ways. […] he does not think [a person of faith] should be jailed or hit or stabbed or shot for their stupidity” (136). This is not a humanitarian concern—William simply believes that punishment will be eternal damnation.

In July 1635, the Boston court summoned Williams “to explain his ‘dangerous opinions’” (136). Winthrop recorded the court’s ultimatum: Unless Williams recanted his behavior, he would be banished, from the colony. This court decision reflects the fact that there was “no agreeing to disagree in Massachusetts Bay. There is only agreeing to agree” (104). Still, the court clearly wanted to avoid banishing a Puritan from their midst. Winthrop even agreed with some of William’s foundational causes, if not his methods. The ultimatum was “the seventeenth-century equivalent of a time-out [for Williams] to think through his opinions and come around to theirs” (138).

A central Puritan principle was the right of a congregation to choose its own clergy. However, in this case, the court admonished Williams and the Salem congregation who had hired Williams as their teacher “while he stood under question of authority, and so offered contempt to the magistrates” (139). Like the refusal to obey the king’s wishes and turn over their charter, this incident reveals the intersection of personal political objectives and religious practice as Winthrop and his fellows acted in their own self-interest.

Failing to recant his behavior and mend his relationships with the Boston magistrates, Williams instead doubled down on his opinions and outspokenness. The court offered another grace period, but when Williams “tells the court that he doesn’t need any more time,” they banished him (143). The punishment would take effect after the dangers of winter were over, so Williams went home to Salem to acquire more followers. In response, the court likened Williams to “an infection” and moved to banish him instantly on a boat back to England (144). In an exciting twist, when officials arrived to take Williams, he had already fled his home after a secret tip from John Winthrop.

Williams spent a very difficult winter south of his previous home. He initially purchased land from the Wampanoags, but, with the permission of two Narragansett tribes (Wampanoag rivals), he settled more permanently on the Seekonk River at a place he named Providence. This settlement was the birth of Rhode Island. Several followers “bolted from Massachusetts” to join Williams (149), and together, they created the Providence Agreement, which functioned as a communal oath to create a society that demanded only civil, and not religious obedience among its ranks. Despite his exile, Williams remained in friendly contact with Winthrop and in adversarial contact with Cotton.

In an aside, Henry Vane the Younger joined the colonists in New England in October 1635. Vowell claims that he was not only “the fanciest person yet to set foot in New England” (being of considerably noble birth), but also “a voice of reason, moderation, liberty, and love” (140). In coming to New England, Vane the Younger had abandoned the Anglican church, his familial wealth, and his castle to pursue a life of holy communion with God in a “slapdash shantytown at the edge of the world” (141). Vane the Younger would witness some of the most incendiary events of the colonial period.