hurch were regarded as
inseparable, the only difference on this question between Massachusetts
and England being as to the character of the public worship which the
State should enforce upon consciences willing and unwilling. The doctrine
of Roger Williams, therefore, seemed to the Boston authorities to strike
at the very foundation of all government, and in particular of their
government. In the autumn of 1635, when Roger Williams was pastor of the
church at Salem, the General Court of Massachusetts ordered him to quit
the colony within six months. Afterward suspecting that Williams was
preparing to found a new colony, the Boston magistrates resolved to
deport him to England, and a vessel was sent to Salem to take him away.
Williams received timely warning, and fled from his home in mid-winter,
and made his way through the wilderness to the shores of Narragansett
Bay. He was joined by five companions, and at a fine spring near the head
of Narragansett Bay they planted a colony, and Williams called the place
"Providence," in grateful acknowledgment of God's providence to him in
his distress. Williams and his companions founded a pure democracy, with
no interference with the rights of conscience. Indeed, they carried this
principle to an extreme at which even in these days most people would
hesitate, for one member of the colony was disciplined because he
objected to his wife's frequent attendance on the preaching of Mr.
Williams to the neglect of her household duties. Rhode Island became a
refuge for the victims of Puritan intolerance, without regard to their
belief or unbelief, and was therefore held in hatred and contempt by the
Boston people. This very hatred was the salvation of Rhode Island, the
government of England being favorably inclined to the colony on account
of the stubborn and independent attitude of Massachusetts toward the home
authorities.

The name "Rhode Island" requires mention here of the fact that Rhode
Island and Providence Plantations were originally separate settlements.
In 1638 William Coddington, a native of Lincolnshire, England, and for
some time a magistrate of Boston, was driven from Massachusetts along
with others who had taken a prominent part on the side of Anne
Hutchinson, in the controversy between that brilliant woman and the
dominant element of the church. Coddington and his eighteen companions
bought from the Indians the island of Aquitneck, or Rhode Island, and
made settlements on