Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty

Abstract

The young Roger Williams was apprenticed as a shorthand scribe by the privy councillor Sir Edward Coke, who then sponsored Williams's further education. According to John M. Barry, witnessing Coke's appeals to common law in Charles I's Star Chamber (a court that held trials in closed sessions and without juries or other elements of due process) was formative for Williams as a political thinker, leading to his “deep understanding of state power, of individual rights, and of the law” (pp. 6, 58–59). An ambitious survey of the contexts for Williams's ideas, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul traces religious reform back to John Wycliffe, legal culture back to Henry de Bracton, and New World exploration back to John Cabot. Williams is the main subject of only about half the chapters, and we learn little about his family life or pastoral ministry to colonists or natives. Barry is most interested in Williams as a political figure. The book's most compelling sections are vivid portrayals of Williams in London lobbying energetically with the Earl of Warwick and Oliver Cromwell to defend Rhode Island's charter, or in Narragansett territory interceding with the sachem Miantonomi.