The Wordy Shipmates Part 7

When Cromwell's weakling son Richard tries to hold on to his father's t.i.tle, Vane writes a withering summary of the whole country's misgivings about Richard's character, stating: One could bear a little with Oliver Cromwell, though, contrary to his oath of fidelity to the Parliament, contrary to his duty to the public, contrary to the respect he owed that venerable body from whom he received his authority, he usurped the government. His merit was so extraordinary, that our judgments, our pa.s.sions might be blinded by it. He made his way to empire by the most ill.u.s.trious actions; he had under his command an army that had made him conqueror, and a people that had made him their general. But, as for Richard Cromwell, his son, who is he? What are his t.i.tles? We have seen that he had a sword by his side; but did he ever draw it? And what is of more importance in this case, is he fit to get obedience from a mighty nation, who could never make a footman obey him? Yet, we must recognize this man as our king, under the style of protector!-a man without birth, without courage, without conduct! For my part, I declare, sir, it shall never be said that I made such a man my master!

Such talk paved the way for the return of Charles II, the dead king's son, from exile in France. After Charles II came home to England and the monarchy was restored, the new king condemned to death a few men he held responsible for the execution of his father, including Henry Vane. Who had argued against the execution! Vane was beheaded. (Cromwell was, too-posthumously. Charles II had Cromwell's corpse dug up, dragged through the streets of London, hanged on a gallows, taken down, and decapitated. His rotting head was skewered on a pike and displayed at Westminster for over twenty years. Eventually, Cromwell's skull was buried at his old college in Cambridge.) Henry Vane's headless ghost is said to haunt the library of his father's house, Raby Castle. But I think it's more accurate to say that Vane's departure in 1637 haunts American history. I can't help but wonder what might have been had he stuck around and lived out his years in New England as John Winthrop's conscience instead of Oliver Cromwell's. Vane's later writing has much in common with the Winthrop of "Christian Charity." In his book The Retired Man's Meditations, The Retired Man's Meditations, Vane describes a good society, in Winthrop-like terms, as "reunited of all good men as one man in a happy union of their spirits, prayers and counsels, to resist all common danger . . . and promote the interest and common welfare of the whole." Vane describes a good society, in Winthrop-like terms, as "reunited of all good men as one man in a happy union of their spirits, prayers and counsels, to resist all common danger . . . and promote the interest and common welfare of the whole."

Reading those words, Vane's abandonment of New England can be seen as the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony's loss. Vane was a person-a governor-who possessed Williams's insistence on religious liberty and and Winthrop's beautiful communitarian ideals (but without his totalitarian flaws). Vane was so young in Ma.s.sachusetts that the disagreements of other men made him cry like a girl. But he matured into a formidable advocate for goodwill and common sense. Considering what happened to his friend Anne Hutchinson right after his exit, Ma.s.sachusetts could have used him. Winthrop's beautiful communitarian ideals (but without his totalitarian flaws). Vane was so young in Ma.s.sachusetts that the disagreements of other men made him cry like a girl. But he matured into a formidable advocate for goodwill and common sense. Considering what happened to his friend Anne Hutchinson right after his exit, Ma.s.sachusetts could have used him.

In September of 1637, one month after Henry Vane sailed away, the freemen meet to decide on matters Hutchinso nian. They resolve, writes Winthrop, "That though women might meet (some few together) to pray and edify one another," a.s.semblies of "sixty or more" as were then taking place in Boston at the home of "one woman" who had had the gall to go about "resolving questions of doctrine and expounding scripture" are not allowed. The Bill of Rights, with its allowance for freedom of a.s.sembly, is a long way off.

Also, a member of a church's congregation "might ask a question publicly, after sermon, for information; yet this ought to be very wisely and sparingly done." In other words, no heckling the ministers allowed.

In November, Wheelwright appears before the court and, refusing to repent for his Fast Day sermon the previous January, is, Winthrop writes, "disenfranchised and banished." So are four other supporters of Hutchinson and Wheelwright, including John Underhill, hero of the Mystic Ma.s.sacre.

"The court also sent for Mrs. Hutchinson," writes Winthrop, "and charged her with . . . keeping two public lectures every week in her house," which were attended by "sixty to eighty persons." She is also accused of "reproaching most of the ministers," except for Cotton, "for not preaching a covenant of free grace, and that they had not the seal of the spirit."

Hutchinson's judges are Winthrop, Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley, five a.s.sistants, and five deputies. Various ministers, including John Cotton, are also present. As governor, Winthrop presides over the trial, for the most part stu pidly. Hutchinson continually outwits him, even though she is, at the age of forty-six, pregnant yet again.

Winthrop explains to Hutchinson she has been "called here as one of those that have troubled the peace of the commonwealth." And, as is his policy toward all G.o.dly persons who repent their blunders, he offers the court's corrections, so that she "may become a profitable member here among us." If not, "the court may take such course that you may trouble us no further."

Hutchinson points out she has not been charged with anything. Winthrop says he just told her why she's here.

"What have I said or done?" she asks.

Winthrop answers that she "did harbor . . . parties in this faction that you have heard of." I.e., she invited troublemakers into her home.

Then he accuses her of being in favor of Wheelwright's Fast Day sermon, and those in favor of the sermon "do break a law."

"What law have I broken?" she asks.

"Why the fifth commandment," answers Winthrop. This is of course the favorite commandment of all ministers and magistrates, the one demanding a person should honor his father and mother, which for Winthrop includes all authority figures. Wheelwright's sermon was an affront to the fathers of the church and the fathers of the commonwealth.

A Ping-Pong match follows in which Winthrop accuses her of riling up Wheelwright's faction and she's, like, "What faction?" And he accuses her of having "counseled" this mysterious faction and she wonders how she did that and he answers, "Why in entertaining them."

She asks him to cite the law against having people over. And he lamely says she has broken the law of "dishonoring the commonwealth."

(Genealogy buffs might enjoy learning that this lopsided battle of the wits will be repeated between Winthrop and Hutchinson's descendants during the presidential debates of 2004. Winthrop's heir, John Kerry, debates Hutchinson's great-something grandson, George W. Bush. Only in this instance it's the Hutchinson who is flummoxed by his opponent's sensical answers. Bush's constant blinking appears on television as if he thinks the answers to the questions he's being asked are tattooed inside his own eyelids.) Winthrop and Hutchinson go back and forth as to whether or not she's honoring her parents, and Winthrop is so flummoxed by the way she crushes his shaky arguments, he erupts, "We do not mean to discourse with those of your s.e.x." Not a particularly good comeback, considering that they're the ones who have forced her into this discourse.

He then quizzes her on why she holds her commonwealth-dishonoring meetings at her house. She cites Paul's Epistle to t.i.tus, in the New Testament, which calls for "the elder women" to "instruct the younger."

He tells her that what she's supposed to instruct the younger women on is "to love their husbands and not to make them clash."

She responds, "If any come to my house to be instructed in the ways of G.o.d what rule have I to put them away?"

"Your opinions," Winthrop claims, "may seduce many simple souls that resort unto you." Furthermore, with all these women at Hutchinson's house instead of their own, "Families should be neglected for so many neighbors and dames and so much time spent."

When she presses him once again to point out the Scripture that contradicts the Scripture she has quoted calling for elders to mentor younger women, Winthrop, fl.u.s.tered, barks, "We are your judges, and not you ours."

Winthrop really is no match for Hutchinson's logic. Most of his answers to her challenges boil down to "Because I said so."

In fact, before this trial started, the colony's elders had agreed to raise four hundred pounds to build a college but hadn't gotten around to doing anything about it. After Hutchinson's trial, they got cracking immediately and founded Harvard so as to prevent random, home-schooled female maniacs from outwitting magistrates in open court and seducing colonists, even male ones, into strange opinions. Thanks in part to Hutchinson, the young men of Ma.s.sachusetts will receive a proper, orthodox theological education grounded in the rigorous study of Hebrew and Greek.

Moving along, Winthrop asks her of ministers preaching "a covenant of works, do they preach truth?"

"Yes sir," she answers, "but when they preach a covenant of works for salvation, that is not truth." In other words, it's fine to exhort people to good behavior, but good behavior is not going to save their souls. Which is in fact, what every person in the room, including Winthrop, believes. They are angry with her because she has accused all the ministers except for Cotton and her brother-in-law, Wheelwright, of preaching only only a covenant of works, a Puritan put-down. Several ministers then gang up on her to claim that that's what she's been going around saying. a covenant of works, a Puritan put-down. Several ministers then gang up on her to claim that that's what she's been going around saying.

The trial resumes the next morning and John Cotton is called to testify. If the court can get the beloved Cotton, Hutchinson's highest-ranking friend, to rat her out for heresy or sedition, she's lost. He stands by her, though, more or less. He says he regrets that any comparison has been made between him and his colleagues, calling it "uncomfortable." But, he adds, "I must say that I did not find her saying that they were under a covenant of works, nor that she said they did preach a covenant of works."

Cotton has exonerated her. Now the court has to acquit her. And it would have except that one person stands up and gives the testimony that will get Anne Hutchinson banished from Ma.s.sachusetts. And that person is: Anne Hutchinson.

"If you please to give me leave I shall give you the ground of what I know to be true," she says.

Music to John Winthrop's ears. He was about to step in and silence her. But, while the trial transcript proves that she's a better debater than he, he's no idiot. He later recalls, "Perceiving whereabouts she went"-namely, self-incrimination-he "permitted her to proceed."

I wish I didn't understand why Hutchinson risks d.a.m.ning herself to exile and excommunication just for the thrill of shooting off her mouth and making other people listen up. But this here book is evidence that I have this confrontational, chatty bent myself. I got my first radio job when I was eighteen years old and I've been yakking on air or in print ever since. Hutchinson is about to have her life-and her poor family's-turned upside down just so she can indulge in the sort of smart-alecky diatribe for which I've gotten paid for the last twenty years.

Hutchinson starts by informing the court of her spiritual biography. She recalls that back home, she was disconcerted by the "falseness" of the Church of England and contemplated "turn[ing] Separatist." But after a "day of solemn humiliation," she had, like every man in the room, decided against separatism. Unlike every man in the room, she claimed to hear the voice of G.o.d, who "let me see which was the clear ministry and which the wrong." Ever since, she continues, she has been hearing voices-Moses, John the Baptist, even "the voice of Antichrist."

To the men before her (and, by the way, to me) this is crazy talk. It might also be devil talk. An a.s.sistant asks her, "How do you know that was the spirit?"

Her answer couldn't be more uppity. She compares herself to the most exalted Hebrew patriarch facing the Bible's most famous spiritual dilemma: "How did Abraham know that it was G.o.d that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the sixth commandment?"

Dudley replies, "By an immediate voice."

Hutchinson: "So to me by an immediate revelation . . . by the voice of his own spirit to my soul."

This is blasphemous enough, but she's on a roll. She then dares them to mess with her, a woman who has the entire Holy Trinity on speed dial. "Look what you do," she warns. "You have power over my body but the Lord Jesus hath power over my body and soul." Their lies, she claims, "will bring a curse upon you and your posterity, and the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

Winthrop provokes her further. Since she is shameless enough to compare herself to Abraham, he seems to think it might be fun to find out if she is Daniel in the lion's den, too. "Daniel was delivered by miracle," he says. "Do you think to be delievered so too?"

Yep. "I do here speak it before the court," she responds helpfully, adding, "I look that the Lord should deliver me by his providence." She claims G.o.d told her, " 'I am the same G.o.d that delivered Daniel out of the lion's den, I will also deliver thee.' "

She was quoting G.o.d. Not the Bible. Just something G.o.d said to her one day when they were hanging out.

A magistrate named William Bartholomew who had sailed to Ma.s.sachusetts on the Griffin Griffin with Hutchinson pipes up that when Boston came into view she was alarmed by "the meanness of the place" but then proclaimed that "if she had not a sure word that England should be destroyed, her heart would shake." Bartholomew recalls that "it seemed to me at that time very strange and witchlike that she should say so." with Hutchinson pipes up that when Boston came into view she was alarmed by "the meanness of the place" but then proclaimed that "if she had not a sure word that England should be destroyed, her heart would shake." Bartholomew recalls that "it seemed to me at that time very strange and witchlike that she should say so."

Hutchinson denies Bartholomew's claim. When Winthrop presses him further, Bartholomew says that back in England he heard her profess "that she had never had any great thing done about her but it was revealed to her beforehand." In other words, she claimed to be able to predict the future. Hutchinson denies this as well.

Now that her witchlike p.r.o.nouncements are on the table, Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley shrewdly seizes the opportunity to challenge John Cotton as to whether "you approve of Mistress Hutchinson's revelations."

Cotton is stuck. Hutchinson has handily enumerated her shocking delusions of grandeur. She has claimed to hear the voice of G.o.d. Honorable men have testified that she boasts of being able to predict the future. The disquieting syllable "witch" has come up. On the one hand, this woman has been his friend and stalwart supporter for years. On the other hand, if he sticks up for her, he could end up like Wheelwright and Underhill and the other men who have defended her-banished. And Cotton already knows what that's like, remembers well his time back in England on the run from Bishop Laud, hiding out in friends' houses, his wife being followed, unable to practice his calling. When he went underground, he was a man without a home or a church, which to an old preacher like Cotton is the same thing.

Dudley presses him: "Do you believe her revelations are true?"

Winthrop steps in, saying, "I am persuaded that the revelation she brings forth is delusion." There's a surprise.

Finally, in one sentence, Cotton sells out Hutchinson by recalling hearing another of her claims to predict the future. He says, "I remember she said she should be delivered by G.o.d's providence, whether now or at another time she knew not."

In this context, Cotton's concession is a smoking gun. He doesn't elaborate. He doesn't have to.

Winthrop is ready to take a vote: Mrs. Hutchinson for these things that appear before us is unfit for our society, and if it be the mind of the court that she shall be banished out of our liberties and imprisoned till she be sent away, let them hold up their hands.

Nine out of twelve hands go up, among them, of course, Winthrop's. He continues, "Mrs. Hutchinson, the sentence of the court you hear is that you are banished from out of our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our society, and are to be imprisoned till the court shall send you away."

She demands, "I desire to know wherefore I am banished?"

Winthrop waves her off. "Say no more," he commands. " The court knows wherefore and is satisfied."

In the Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of the Anti nomians, and Libertines that Infected the Churches of New England, Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruin of the Anti nomians, and Libertines that Infected the Churches of New England, a victory tract published in London in 1644 and almost certainly written by Winthrop, Hutchinson is famously described as "this American Jezebel" whose downfall came when "the hand of civil justice laid hold on her, and then she began evidently to decline, and the faithful to be freed from her forgeries." a victory tract published in London in 1644 and almost certainly written by Winthrop, Hutchinson is famously described as "this American Jezebel" whose downfall came when "the hand of civil justice laid hold on her, and then she began evidently to decline, and the faithful to be freed from her forgeries."

After being banished by the court, Hutchinson is excommunicated by the church. Winthrop writes in his diary that though her banishment had left her "somewhat dejected," excommunication cheered her up. "She gloried in her sufferings, saying that it was the greatest happiness, next to Christ, that ever befell her." He adds that it's actually the churches of Ma.s.sachusetts that are happiest, as the "poor souls who had been seduced by her" had "settled again in the truth."

Winthrop writes that Hutchinson went "by land to Providence, and so to the island in the Narragansett Bay," that being Aquidneck, currently called Rhode Island. There, with the help of her fellow banishee, Roger Williams, Hutchinson, her husband, their litter of children, and some of her followers settled on land "purchased of the Indians." There they would found the town of Portsmouth.

Soon after her departure, it comes to Winthrop's attention that back in Hutchinson's Boston midwifery days, she and a fellow midwife had delivered the stillborn baby of her friend Mary Dyer and, with the blessing of John Cotton, secretly buried the fetus. The reason for this cover-up, according to Winthrop, was "that the child was a monster."

When the other midwife is interrogated by a church elder she confesses that the child, a girl, "had a face, but no head, and the ears stood upon the shoulders and were like an ape's; it had no forehead, but over the eyes four horns, hard and sharp." Also, her "nose hooked upward," her back was covered in scales, "it had two mouths" and "instead of toes, it had on each foot three claws, like a young fowl, with sharp talons."

For a woman, it can't get any worse than bearing a stillborn child, right? Oh, but it can, especially for a woman living in the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony. Remember that to the Puritans, all luck, good or bad, is a message from G.o.d, and thus deserved. A stillborn child is to be seen as G.o.d's punishment of the parents. A stillborn "monster" was obviously an even harsher divine judgment.

Winthrop queried Cotton as to why he advised the women to hide this deformity. The minister answered simply in the terms of the golden rule, that if the girl had been his own child, "he should have desired to have had it concealed." Also, he had witnessed other "monstrous births" and had concluded that these punishments from G.o.d were meant solely "for the instruction of the parents."

Winthrop convinces Cotton that the parents of monstrous stillborns are supposed to be a cautionary tale to others-other sinners. And according to Winthrop, Cotton makes a public apology, "which was well accepted."

If only that were the end of this grisly business. Winthrop, after seeking the advice of the other magistrates and church elders, gives orders for Mary Dyer's stillborn child to be exhumed. John Winthrop, who once said those beautiful words to his s.h.i.+pmates about mourning and suffering together, dug up what he thought was a decomposing monster-a monster sent as a message from G.o.d that Anne Hutchinson was wrong. The fetus, he writes in his journal, was "much corrupted, yet most of those things were to be seen, as the horns and claws, the scales, etc."

The only monster in this anecdote is Winthrop. He explains the child's death as a consequence of her mother's friends.h.i.+p with Anne Hutchinson. To him, this is vindication. The obvious enjoyment he gets out of recounting how mere proximity to Anne Hutchinson destroyed Mary Dyer's child is surpa.s.sed only by his glee a few months later when he hears the news from Rhode Island that Anne Hutchinson herself had "expected deliverance of a child" but "was delivered of a monstrous birth" instead. He even goes so far as to write a doctor he knows living on Aquidneck, fis.h.i.+ng for juicy details about the fetus.

Then, just as he wrote they should in "Christian Charity," Winthrop and his Boston congregation rejoice together. In his journal, he writes that John Cotton celebrates the death of Hutchinson's fetus in his next sermon, proclaiming it to "signify her error in denying inherent righteousness" and that "all Christ was in us." Winthrop had predicted in "Christian Charity" that G.o.d "will delight to dwell among us as His own people" and this had come to pa.s.s.

Winthrop won. As a good Calvinist, he will continue to write in his journal things like "the devil would never cease to disturb our peace." But still, by 1638, the troublemakers were gone. Williams had been banished and yet still served as Winthrop's toady in dealing with the Indians. Hutchinson was not only banished but giving birth to the monster babies she deserved in G.o.dforsaken Rhode Island. The Pequot were done for. That sw.a.n.ky crybaby Henry Vane had sniffled his way back to England, and Winthrop with his G.o.d-given tallness was governor again. Even the s.h.i.+p that was supposed to bring a new governor commissioned by Archbishop Laud had literally broken apart-'twas by G.o.d's providence, for sure. And anyway, the king had so many problems back home as the English Civil War starts to simmer, he couldn't be bothered about a few scruffy religious fanatics in Ma.s.sachusetts.

When Winthrop first mentioned the tiny, ragged settlement of Boston in his journal in 1630, it was to record that a goat had died. Back then, every goat seemed to count. When he died in 1649, even if Boston had yet to become that city upon a hill he'd dreamed of, it was a city nonetheless. Today, from his grave, near John Cotton's, in the King's Chapel Burying Ground, you can look across noisy Tremont Street at a bland, concrete office building, a perfect stereotype of capitalist efficiency.

Such architectural stability would no doubt please Winthrop. But not this: around the corner, on Beacon Street, the grounds of the Ma.s.sachusetts State House feature statues of heroes from the history of the commonwealth. There are two bronze representatives from Winthrop's era-Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer.

Mary Dyer and her husband were among Anne Hutchinson's followers who were banished from the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Colony and followed her to Portsmouth, Rhode Island. Later, on a trip to England, Mary will convert to Quakerism and return to Ma.s.sachusetts in 1658 to preach against the colony's new law banning Quakers. They banish her again. When she returns a third time, she is arrested, sentenced to death, and hanged on Boston Common, which is across the street from her mournful but elegant statue on the State House grounds.

In Portsmouth, Hutchinson and Dyer are remembered in a park called Founders Brook, a lovely spot next to a little stream under the shade of old trees. Hutchinson and Dyer are each remembered on plaques attached to rocks, Hutchinson's talking her up as a "wife, mother, midwife, visionary, spiritual leader and original settler."

Near these rocks, plantings of echinacea, hollyhock, and fennel grow. A feminine hand has written "Hutchinson-Dyer Women's Healing Garden" in black marker on a small piece of plywood. I wish I could say that I find comfort in the words "women's healing garden." I like gardens and healing and quite a few women. I drink echinacea tea and enjoy fennel in salads. I even have a concrete casting of an abstract hollyhock designed by Frank Lloyd Wright hanging on my living room wall.

That said, the words "women's healing garden" fill me with the same feminist dread I feel when a subscription card falls out of a magazine and I catch a glimpse at the address form. A potential male magazine subscriber is given the choice of one t.i.tle, "Mr.," but a female magazine subscriber is given three choices, thereby requiring a woman to inform perfect strangers in the mail room at Newsweek Newsweek or Conde Nast exactly what kind of woman she is. She is either male property (Mrs.), wannabe male property (Miss), or man-hating harpy (Ms.). or Conde Nast exactly what kind of woman she is. She is either male property (Mrs.), wannabe male property (Miss), or man-hating harpy (Ms.).

I hate that I'm picking on a nice little flower garden planted by well-intentioned, historically minded horticulturalists. I guess the Women's Healing Garden makes me uncomfortable for the same reason I feel for Anne Hutchinson-because it's unfair that her gender kept her from pursuing her calling. She should have been a minister or a magistrate. She should have had John Cotton's job-or John Winthrop's. Instead, she spent her working life brewing groaning beer and burying deformed fetuses in the dead of night. There's nothing wrong with healing women, or women's healing. There is something very wrong, or at least very sad, that a legal, theological mind like hers, on display only in her trial transcripts, didn't get to study law or divinity at Cambridge like her male peers and accusers. As Peter G. Gomes once wrote in an article in Harvard's alumni magazine about Hutchinson's role in the origins of that inst.i.tution, "Inadvertent midwife to a college founded in part to protect posterity from her errors, Anne Marbury Hutchinson, ironically, would be more at home at Harvard today than any of her critics."

The reason Founders Brook is called Founders Brook is because it marks the spot where, in 1638, Hutchinson's followers wrote and signed their mutual pledge that came to be known as the Portsmouth Compact. A plaque on another rock near the Women's Healing Garden and the little Hutchinson and Dyer memorials presents the compact's text: We whose names are underwritten do here solemnly in the presence of Jehovah incorporate ourselves into a body politic and as he shall help, will submit our persons, lives and estates unto our lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of his given us in his Holy word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby.

The names of the compact's signers, including Anne Hutchinson's husband, Will, are listed below the text. Here lies the deepest reason why the Women's Healing Garden strikes me as so forlorn-that Hutchinson is remembered here by pink echinacea in bloom instead of on the Portsmouth Compact plaque, where she belongs. All of the signers were there because of her, because she stood up to Ma.s.sachusetts and they stood with her. But all the signers were men. Anne Hutchinson wasn't allowed to sign the founding doc.u.ment of the colony she founded.

After Will's death in 1642, Anne Hutchinson moved with some of her children to the Dutch colony of New Netherland, near what is now the Split Rock Golf Course in the Bronx. In 1643, Anne and every member of her household, except one of her daughters, was killed by Indians at war with the Dutch.

Of course, John Winthrop is not particularly devastated by the loss; after all, he writes in his journal, "these people had cast off ordinances and churches."

Because New York's Hutchinson River is named after Anne Hutchinson, and a major highway is named after the river, the main road leading from New York City to Boston is called the Hutchinson River Parkway. My word, how Winthrop would cringe if he knew that. To get to his city, you see her name.

A few weeks prior to Anne Hutchinson's death, Winthrop notes in his journal that Roger Williams, pa.s.sing through New Amsterdam to board a s.h.i.+p for England to secure a charter for Providence, had actually tried to negotiate a peace between the Dutch and their Indian opponents. Winthrop writes that thanks to Williams, peace was "reestablished between the Dutch and them." Alas for Hutchinson, that peace didn't stick. few weeks prior to Anne Hutchinson's death, Winthrop notes in his journal that Roger Williams, pa.s.sing through New Amsterdam to board a s.h.i.+p for England to secure a charter for Providence, had actually tried to negotiate a peace between the Dutch and their Indian opponents. Winthrop writes that thanks to Williams, peace was "reestablished between the Dutch and them." Alas for Hutchinson, that peace didn't stick.

It is during this 1643 voyage from New Amsterdam that Williams writes his Algonquian dictionary, A Key to the Language of America, A Key to the Language of America, by a "rude lamp at sea." It is an eventful trip. In London, Williams goes on a publis.h.i.+ng binge, printing by a "rude lamp at sea." It is an eventful trip. In London, Williams goes on a publis.h.i.+ng binge, printing A Key, A Key, along with John Cotton's callous letter about his banishment, his response to Cotton's letter, and his diatribe on liberty of conscience, along with John Cotton's callous letter about his banishment, his response to Cotton's letter, and his diatribe on liberty of conscience, The Bloudy Tenent. The Bloudy Tenent. He also secures a charter from Parliament for Providence, Newport, and Portsmouth. The three towns, the doc.u.ment claims, He also secures a charter from Parliament for Providence, Newport, and Portsmouth. The three towns, the doc.u.ment claims, have adventured to make a nearer neighborhood and society with the great body of the Narragansett, which may in time by the blessing of G.o.d upon their endeavors, lay a sure foundation of happiness to all America.

Among the names of parliamentarians signing the charter is one "H. Vane," the former governor of Ma.s.sachusetts Bay.

Williams made another return visit to England in 1651, staying at Vane's house and hobn.o.bbing with Puritan celebrities like Cromwell and the poet John Milton, author of Paradise Lost Paradise Lost (whom Williams taught Hebrew in exchange for lessons in Dutch). But the person who would, some twelve years later, in 1663, make Williams's dream of codifying religious liberty come true was not one of his fellow Puritans. It was the philandering, theater-attending "merry monarch" of the Restoration himself, Charles II. (whom Williams taught Hebrew in exchange for lessons in Dutch). But the person who would, some twelve years later, in 1663, make Williams's dream of codifying religious liberty come true was not one of his fellow Puritans. It was the philandering, theater-attending "merry monarch" of the Restoration himself, Charles II.

The new Rhode Island charter signed by the king proclaimed: No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony; but that all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concern ments, throughout the tract of land hereafter mentioned, they behaving themselves peaceable and quietly.

While the previous charter had urged Rhode Island, like the Ma.s.sachusetts Bay Charter of yore, to "conform to the laws of England," this one extends to the inhabitants of Rhode Island more freedom than the inhabitants of England.

In the years after Ma.s.sachusetts forces Roger Williams, and then Anne Hutchinson, to trudge through the snow to Narragansett Bay, Williams's colony becomes a place of refuge for the unwanted and displaced, the outcasts and the cranks, including Baptists, Quakers, and Jews.

In The Witches of Eastwick, The Witches of Eastwick, a novel set in a fictional, seemingly dull Rhode Island village, John Updike tips his hat to Rhode Island's weirdo founders. Satan moves to town and wonders why the alluring local witches live in such a humdrum place. "Tell him Narragansett Bay has always taken oddb.a.l.l.s in," says one witch to another, "and what's he doing up here himself?" a novel set in a fictional, seemingly dull Rhode Island village, John Updike tips his hat to Rhode Island's weirdo founders. Satan moves to town and wonders why the alluring local witches live in such a humdrum place. "Tell him Narragansett Bay has always taken oddb.a.l.l.s in," says one witch to another, "and what's he doing up here himself?"

That said, Williams's colony is hardly utopia. There is as much internecine squabbling-if not more-going on there as there is in Ma.s.sachusetts.

In 1672, the sixty-nine-year-old Williams himself will wage a vicious war of words with the colony's Quakers because he believes they have "set up a false Christ." The Quaker belief in the "G.o.d within" each person is anathema to a Bible-based Calvinist like Williams, who writes in his screed against Quaker founder George Fox, George Fox Digg'd Out of his Burrowes, George Fox Digg'd Out of his Burrowes, "they preached the Lord Jesus to be themselves." "they preached the Lord Jesus to be themselves."

Williams even holds a three-day-long debate in Newport with three Quakers. "The audience, mostly Baptists and Quakers," writes Perry Miller, "heckled him with cries of 'old man, old man,' and whispered, after he had on the first day shouted himself hoa.r.s.e in order to get any hearing, that he was drunk." (More than three decades after John Cotton accused Williams of missing G.o.d's point back in Salem when he smote him with laryngitis, he was once again struck dumb during a spree of punditry.) Here is the important difference between Ma.s.sachusetts Bay and Narragansett Bay. Quakers such as Mary Dyer are hanged in Boston Common. In Rhode Island, there is bickering, but there is no banis.h.i.+ng. There are mean-spirited spiritual debates, but no forced and freezing hikes of exile.

In 1675, Metacom, aka King Philip (the son of Williams's old Wampanoag friend Ma.s.sasoit) a.s.sembled an army of allied native warriors, attacking English settlements across New England. In 1676, some of Philip's Narragansett allies burned down Providence. One English resident of the town believed the Word of G.o.d would protect him from the native invaders, who nevertheless "ripped him open, and put his Bible in his belly," according to one contemporary account. Williams's house went up in smoke, along with his lifelong sympathy for his Narragansett neighbors. After Philip's death-his head was displayed on a pike in Plymouth for the next twenty years-Williams was one of the colonial officials at the end of the war who approved the sale of vanquished Indians into slavery, primarily in Bermuda, where their descendants still reside.

Though Williams complained of being "old and weak and bruised" with "lameness on both my feet," he lived to see Providence rebuilt. He is well remembered there, having died in 1683 at the age of eighty. What was left of his remains was reburied in 1939 in a park on Prospect Terrace in which a colossal statue of Williams stares out across his city, giving him a view of the statue Independent Man Independent Man on top of the Rhode Island State Capitol, where the Royal Charter of 1663 is, incidentally, housed. on top of the Rhode Island State Capitol, where the Royal Charter of 1663 is, incidentally, housed.

One morning, I sat on a bench near the Williams statue eating breakfast, and from the open window of a pa.s.sing car I heard rapper Eminem on the radio, asking, "May I have your attention, please?" as Williams must have asked so many times, trying to get the men and women of New England to hear what he had to say.

So Providence is an appropriate place to ponder Williams, but the best spot in Rhode Island to commune with his legacy is in the Touro Synagogue, in Newport. This fine colonial temple with its arches and columns is the oldest synagogue in the United States. The building was dedicated in 1763. But the congregation dates back to 1658, when fifteen Jewish families sailed from the West Indies because they had heard of Roger Williams and his colony's commitment to freedom of wors.h.i.+p.

In 1790, George Was.h.i.+ngton and Thomas Jefferson come to Newport, stumping for the Bill of Rights. (Rhode Island is the last state to ratify the Const.i.tution precisely because its citizens hold out for a bill of rights so they can retain the freedom of religion they have enjoyed since the days of Roger Williams.) Moses Seixas, a member of the Touro Synagogue, wrote Was.h.i.+ngton a letter asking about his administration's policy toward Jews. Was.h.i.+ngton's response, addressed "to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island," rea.s.sures Seixas and his brethren that the American government goes beyond mere tolerance: The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizens.h.i.+p. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one cla.s.s of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States . . . gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no a.s.sistance.