Roger William's Uses of Legal Discourse: Testing Authority in Early New England

Abstract

ROGER WILLIAMS'S separatist views, which challenged the authority structure in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and precipitated his banishment to Rhode Island, are traditionally considered in the light of biblical typology, but in fact they derive at least as much from his attempt to apply the linguistic assumptions of the English common law to colonial situations. For a man who was, by any definition of the word, a political and social insider in England, Williams's position at the margins of New England society must have been difficult for him to accept, yet that liminal status afforded him an indispensable opportunity to launch his critique of the Puritan divines. In his correspondence with John Winthrop, for example, Williams's appreciation of his legal role entered into accounts of his exile. He extended and refined his legal hermeneutics in A Key into the Language of America (1643), which reveals his understanding of the crucial role of language in evaluating the