The First Cancelled American

Guest author Murray Buttner explains what Roger Williams, the first “cancelled” American can teach us about free speech and tolerance.

I am pleased to print this fascinating bit of American historiography from Dr. Murray Buttner, family physician by day and historian by night. — AK

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It was on this day, October 9^th, in 1635 that Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for holding “new and dangerous opinions against the authority of the magistrates.” Exile at that time of year was essentially a death sentence. Fortunately for Williams, Governor John Winthrop intervened to postpone the banishment going into effect until the Spring. However, when Williams kept spreading his "heresies" in his home church, the magistrates had had enough: they sent a gang of men to apprehend him and send him as a prisoner back to Britain, where he would most likely face trial by the ecclesiastical authorities and then execution. One could say that the censorship-industrial complex was a lot more efficient and ruthless back in the 17th century!

Cancelling, deplatforming, shadow banning… the growing intolerance of those with different worldviews and the suppression of dissenting voices by those in power that we are living through is not new. The world has been here before, many times. Some might say these behaviors are hardwired into our species. Lord Acton famously said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” When we hear that phrase, we tend to think of the second clause regarding absolute power and imagine infamous tyrants and genocidal mass murders: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. But power can corrupt up and down the pecking order, and nobody is immune to its temptations.

America’s Founding Fathers certainly understood the perils of unchecked power. They tried to mitigate against our republic devolving into a tyranny through the checks and balances in the U.S. Constitution and the limitations on government and the guarantees of personal freedoms and rights in the Bill of Rights. Most of us are familiar with the history of the American Revolution and the subsequent writing and passage of the U.S. Constitution. Less familiar are the events of a century and a half earlier, and the story of the man who has been called the Founding Grandfather. He also happens to have been the first cancelled American. In how he responded to that cancellation, Roger Williams shaped our modern world.

Tolerance was not common in the first half of the 17th century. Europe was awash in blood from the crescendo of religiously motivated violence that we now call the 30 Years War, (which eclipsed both World Wars in both military and civilian casualties^[1]). While that was happening on the Continent, across the waters in the British Isles, Catholics and Protestants were suppressing, torturing and killing each other in turns, depending on which of Henry VIIIth’s children was on the throne. And the suppression and killing wasn't just Protestant vs. Catholic.  Under Queen Elizabeth and then King James I, reforming Protestants were felt to be a threat to the establishment and were treated accordingly. William Laud, the Archbishop of Canterbury, used his powers to suppress, harass and torture those who did not fall into line.

Some of these fled to the Netherlands and then to new settlements in North America, where they could try to live and practice their beliefs unmolested. The first of these groups was the Pilgrims, who in 1620 crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower and settled in Plymouth. In 1630, a larger group of colonists founded the Massachusetts Bay Colony 35 miles away in what would become greater Boston. The colony struggled mightily that first Winter – over 20% of the colonists perished and many who survived the Winter chose to return to England. In February 1631, a Cambridge educated preacher Roger Williams and his young wife Mary arrived on the relief ship Lyon.^[2]  Williams’ Christian faith was extremely strong, even for that characteristically religious age,^[3] and his reputation preceded him to New England. He had fled Britain because his views were unacceptable to the established Church of England and he was in Archbishop Laud’s sights.  

On arrival in Boston he was offered one of the most prestigious positions in the new colony, that of teaching pastor at the Boston church. His future would have been secure. But he turned the position down on the grounds that the Boston church had not separated from the Church of England. Over the next four years he moved first to Salem, then to Plymouth, and then back to Salem. He kept moving because he kept discomforting the local powers that be with his heterodox worldview. Though brilliant and charismatic, Williams was also strong willed and unbending in his core beliefs. And the two beliefs that he held dearest were, first, that the state should not interfere with matters of conscience, i.e. that there should be no state established religion; and second, that the colonists had no right to the lands of the Native Americans if they did not purchase them, and furthermore, that the King of England had no right to be granting the Native American’s lands away. Those beliefs cost him everything in 1635 when he was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

The handful of small, fragile settlements along the New England shore could ill afford to have someone as esteemed as Williams stirring up dissent and questioning their land claims. They tried to muzzle him, but he wouldn't stay muzzled. When he kept speaking his mind to others in Salem during the Winter delay to his banishment, the magistrates had had enough. By mid-January they sent troops to arrest him. Once again Governor Winthrop intervened and tipped Williams off. He fled alone into the wilderness, leaving his wife and small children behind. Had he then died of exposure, which easily could have happened, we would be living in a very different world.

The story of his flight, of how he was sheltered by Native Americans and subsequently given land by them on Narragansett Bay, where he founded the community of Providence, is relatively well-known and has almost an air of folklore about it. But it is at that point, however, that his story gets really interesting. Where Williams theology led him into an ever-shrinking circle of what constituted the true church (to the point where he didn't even share communion with his wife), one would have anticipated that he would have chosen to populate his community with a very select group of those who shared his theology. But he did the opposite.  

Williams reacted to his banishment by forming a community that was open to everyone, no matter what creed they followed. Providence welcomed not just Protestants, but Catholics, Jews, Muslims, and those of no faith at all. Other thinkers had preceded him in some of his ideas, but none of them had tried to realize these principles in practice. Other New England colonists who held beliefs and opinions that were not tolerated by the Puritans migrated to Rhode Island^[4] and the colony grew. The outcast preacher had succeeded in creating something new: a self-governing community of settlers who did not all follow one particular religious sect.

Even more remarkably, this relentlessly devout Christian, whose entire life revolved around his faith and who was hypercritical of his co-religionists, did something unprecedented. He made sure that the ecclesiastical authority was kept separate from the secular authority; i.e., that the church was independent from the state.^[5] He believed passionately that the government should have no role in enforcing religion or interfering with a person’s conscience.  

From his personal experiences of religious intolerance enforced by the power of the state, first in England and then in New England, Williams had the insight that toleration of dissenting views and the separation of church and state were the keys to ending the religious strife that was tearing apart Europe, the United Kingdom, and even the colonies in the New World. And as living proof of that revolutionary insight, his small colony that was open to all, especially those persecuted elsewhere, took root and flourished. But the struggle was not over.

Rhode Island's very existence was an affront to its larger neighbors: Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Plymouth.  Moreover, these neighboring communities coveted the attractive lands and ports of Williams’ small, non-conforming colony and they started to scheme how to carve Rhode Island up amongst themselves. The only hope to keep this from happening was to secure a charter from the British government, and with that purpose Williams sailed back across the Atlantic to plead Rhode Island’s case in London. Massachusetts sent competing envoys to press its claim to the Narragansett-granted lands. William arrived in England in April, 1643 and returned to North America in September the following year. In those 18 short months, with his spoken and written words, he kindled a fire for freedom that was to have enormous repercussions on both sides of the Atlantic.

In his two most famous works, A Key into the Language of America and The Bloody Tenent of Persecution for Cause of Conscience, as well as numerous pamphlets, Williams had a huge impact on the civil rights debates during the Commonwealth period. Not least, Williams had a substantial influence on John Milton, whose Areopagitica – considered by many the greatest defense of free speech ever written – was published two months after Williams had departed to return to America.^[6]

Williams’ writings and conversations with leading Commonwealth figures (he was friends with John Milton, Henry Vane^[7], and Oliver Cromwell) during his two trips to England^[8] and his “lively experiment”^[9] in Rhode Island were a major influence on subsequent political developments on both sides of the Atlantic. His thought echoes through the political debates of the post-Commonwealth and pre-Revolutionary War periods, including in the more famous writings of John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison.

Williams has been called a progressive for his opinions about the rights of the Native Americans, and he has been called a libertarian for his very strong beliefs about the limits of government. But those are modern labels that should not be applied to him. Roger Williams was very much a man of his time. But I believe that we are in need of his wisdom now in these Orwellian times, where the very powerful are trying to control what we can say and even what we can think!

Roger Williams would tell us that censoring speech does not further the search for truth or advance the goals of unity and peace; neither does enforcing belief (or as he would say, forcing consciences – forcing souls) promote these aims.  He would explain that suppressing and persecuting those who see the world differently is morally wrong (for him, this was contrary to the teachings of the Gospel) and ultimately, counterproductive.

The powerful will always seek ways to suppress the voices of the less powerful.  They will succeed only if we let them. 388 years ago today they tried to silence Roger Williams permanently. Thank God he didn't let that happen!

“The reason we must 'defend to the death’ the right to utter ‘intolerable speech’ is that failure to do so results in the swift and certain condemnation as 'intolerable’ all speech that diminishes the power or legitimacy of those in power. More succinctly, we must defend the ‘pariah’s’ right to speak or everyone who crosses the regime, conveniently, becomes a pariah.”

-Emily Burns 2023

“Men's consciences ought in no sort to be violated, urged, or constrained. And whenever men have attempted any thing by this violent course, whether openly or by secret means, the issue has been pernicious, and the cause of great and wonderful innovations in the principallest and mightiest kingdoms and countries…”. 

-Roger Williams 1644

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^[1] The Thirty Years’ War is thought to have claimed between 4 and 12 million lives. Around 450,000 people died in combat. Disease and famine took the lion’s share of the death toll. Estimates suggest that 20% of Europe’s people perished, with some areas seeing their population fall by as much as 60%. By comparison, the First World War – including the post-armistice outbreak of Spanish Flu – claimed 5% of Europe’s population.

^[2] Crossing the North Atlantic in the Winter is something that very few would do now, even on an ocean liner, if given a chance.  It is hard to imagine what that must have been like on a small, crowded 17th century sailing ship.

^[3] Williams was a strict Calvinist but he was hyper-critical of his co-religionists. He began life as an Anglican, became a Puritan after Cambridge, a Separatist upon arrival in the New World, America's first Baptist...and then left that denomination after four months. Ultimately, he eschewed all forms of organized religion and became a seeker—a church of one.

^[4] perhaps most famous Anne Hutchinson and her followers who founded Newport on Rhode Island.  Hutchinson was truly a remarkable woman, but she too had threatened the powers that be in Massachusetts and she too had been banned

^[5] This had not been the case in the Christian world since before Roman Emperor Constantine made Christianity a state religion in the year 312.

^[6] Both works were published by the same printer. Ironically, many of Williams’ and Milton's writings were banned by Parliament and burned.

^[7] Henry Vane is another fascinating, underappreciated character in early American history. He was the highest ranked aristocrat to have emigrated to New England when he arrived in October 1635, coincidentally just as Roger Williams was being tried for his heresies. Just months later, because of his intelligence and status, Vane was elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the age of 23, replacing Winthrop. He led the colony through both the turmoil of the Pequot War and the theological storm of the Anne Hutchinson affair. Because Vane took the side of Hutchinson and her followers, he was thrown out of office and returned to the UK less than 2 years after he had arrived. Those two years shaped him profoundly. He became the most important member of parliament during the early years of the civil wars and commonwealth period. During that time, Vane was a steadfast leader for the causes of tolerance and representative democracy. He was instrumental in helping his friend Roger Williams secure charters for Rhode Island in 1644 and 1653. He retired from public life when Cromwell dramatically dissolved Parliament in 1653, singling out Vane by name. He bravely and publicly opposed the military dictatorship of Cromwell’s Protectorate and was imprisoned for his efforts. After Cromwell’s death, he tried valiantly to save the English republic right up to the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.  He was imprisoned for the next two years, removed from the public eye during his captivity in a tiny fort out in the Scilly Isles. Then just after his 49th birthday in 1662, he was brought back to London to be tried and executed. King Charles II and the royalists in Parliament had decided that he was “too dangerous a man to let live.” He was the only member of Parliament who hadn’t signed the death warrant for King Charles (i.e. the only non-regicide) to be sentenced to death.

^[8] He returned to England a second time in 1651-54 and was again involved in the civil rights struggles of the Commonwealth.

^[9] This was the phrase used in the 1662 Charter granted to Rhode Island by King Charles II after the restoration of the monarchy.  The charter codified a degree of religious freedom and self-governance that was not enjoyed by all of her sister colonies until more than a hundred years had passed and a long, brutal war had been waged.

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