ited to appear before the court in the fall of the same
year, the decree of banishment was a foregone conclusion. Like Luther
before the diet, Anne Hutchinson pressed for reasons--"I desire to know
wherefore I am banished." It was in the spirit of the Roman Church that
Governor Winthrop replied--"say no more; the Court knows wherefore, and
is satisfied."

The direct result of the expulsion of Williams and Anne Hutchinson was
the founding of Rhode Island, famous as an early experiment in the
separation of Church and State. Williams, with his few followers, denied
admittance to Plymouth, went on to the south and founded the town of
Providence. Into this region there shortly came the much larger group,
including William Coddington, who followed Anne Hutchinson into exile.
The settlements of Portsmouth and New Port, which they established
there, were united with Providence, under a patent procured by Williams
in 1643, to form the colony of Rhode Island, where flourished, to the
scandal of its neighbors, that "soul liberty" of which Williams was the
apostle. Yet not without difficulty. Peopled by those who were too
eccentric not to prove troublesome, the history of the little colony was
a stormy one--its peace "like the peace of a man who has the tertian
ague"; but its fame is secure, and, its founder, condemned by the common
sense of his age, will ever be celebrated as the prophet of those
primary American doctrines, democracy and religious toleration.

Rhode Island was founded by those who were not allowed to remain in
Massachusetts; Connecticut by those who, finding its conditions too
restricted, did not wish to remain there. Few facts have been more
potent in determining the history of America than the steady migration
in search of better opportunities. A decade had not passed before the
westward movement began. As early as 1633 many people at the Bay, fired
by favorable reports which John Oldham brought back from the Connecticut
Valley, began to have "a hankering after it." In 1634 the people of
Newtown, under the leadership of Thomas Hooker, asked permission of the
general court to remove there, advancing, in support of their petition,
"their want of accommodation for their cattle, the fruitfulness and
commodiousness of Connecticut, and the strong bent of their spirits to
remove thither." The petition was at first denied, but in 1636,
permission having at last been obtained, a considerable number from the
towns of New