Introduction

The sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers on The Mayflower to North America now precisely 400 years ago is a good opportunity to address the theme of church/state relationships and the question regarding freedom of conscience. The arrival of the Mayflower Pilgrims in 1620 marks the formation of the first colony in Plymouth. This was followed by two further settlements through the migration of much larger groups of Puritans to New England: the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1630) and the Rhode Island settlement (1636).

These three new communities were characterised by three different views and the accompanying practices regarding the question of freedom of conscience. We will find that equally devout Puritans conscientiously differed among themselves as to how a Christian community should be modelled and expressed.

The article begins with a brief introduction of the historical background followed by a survey of the formation of these three communities and their different views.

1. Historical background

Separatists not tolerated

During the reign of ‘Bloody Mary’ (1553-1558), over 800 leading clergy, including five bishops and fifty-seven Doctors of Divinity fled the country. They found refuge in Zurich and Geneva. They delighted to experience what they regarded as pure biblical worship: the Reformed churches firstly rejected the episcopal hierarchy of the Roman Church – and returned to the New Testament pattern of church order. Secondly, they rejected Roman rituals, returning to a New Testament simplicity of service.

They grieved when news came in of their co-religionists being arrested, imprisoned and burned. When news came of Mary’s death, on 17 November 1558, the exiles rejoiced. When they finally did get back, many of their bright hopes for biblical reform would be disappointed.

The subsequent Elizabethan Settlement meant that the Church of England, would, broadly, follow Protestant theology (ie doctrine of salvation). But church practice both in terms of organisation (ie episcopacy or bishops) and worship practice (ie liturgy) would, in many ways, remain Roman Catholic.

Those clergy who, ultimately would be known as Puritans could not, in conscience, ‘conform’ to ceremonies and liturgy that were not found in Scripture. They regarded such as idolatrous and blasphemous. They preferred to risk their freedom and even their lives rather than conform. They believed that Christ is King. All relics of papal practice were in their minds a blasphemous challenge to that Kingship.

The Protestant reformers who pushed this Settlement through, the so-called ‘Court Reformers’, did accept the final authority of Scripture with regard to doctrine (eg the doctrine of justification). But they did not think that Scripture provided an authoritative pattern of discipline and church government. This could be left to the discretion of the civil magistrate.

Those who became known as Puritans, by contrast, maintained that in discipline as well as in doctrine nothing should be imposed as necessary which could not be proved from Scripture. Here, we need to draw a distinction. Some believed that the Church of England was inadequately and insufficiently reformed, but that it was reformed enough to be regarded as a true church. These Puritans stayed in it, to work for further reform from within.  Others (ie Separatists) regarded the Church of England as so contaminated as to be a false church. These Puritans felt compelled, on conscientious grounds, to withdraw from it. In other words, Puritans became Separatists if and when their patience was exhausted.

These Separatists were persecuted as they were defying the law of the land, renounced their affiliation with the Church of England and established their own independent congregations. As a result, they faced fines, imprisonment or death. And it was illegal to emigrate without official permission. Nevertheless, several groups attempted to flee to the Netherlands.

Elizabeth I died on 24 March 1603. Her successor was James VI of Scotland, I of England. At first the Puritans had high hopes of the new monarch. It is said that 1,000 of them signed the Millenary Petition, which they presented in 1603, calling for reform. James played for time by convening the famous Hampton Court Conference in 1604, which resulted in the commissioning of the so-called King James Version of the Bible (Authorised Version). But he was utterly opposed to religious dissent of any kind. At the Hampton Court Conference, James I treated the delegation of dissenting men with contempt. Times became harder and harsher for those who in conscience could not worship in their parish churches.

Separatists in the ‘Pilgrim Quadrilateral’

Now we are going to zoom in on one tiny and obscure corner of England, an area at the intersection of Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire. Here the group that came to be known as the Pilgrims came together between around 1586 and 1605. By the beginning of the reign of James I in 1603, the community of Protestant dissent in this area was widespread. In this remote rural area, during the reign of Elizabeth I, clergy who had refused to conform had been relatively unmolested, and groups of believers who longed for reform were able to meet in small villages.

One centre was the tiny village of Babworth. With about 96 inhabitants then, and something over a thousand inhabitants now, Babworth lies in the northern corner of Nottinghamshire. For nearly twenty years, since 1585, the minister of the parish church, All Saints’, had been Richard Clyfton, a powerful and faithful preacher. Clyfton’s ministry came to an abrupt end following the Hampton Court Conference in 1604. At that conference, the new King James I substantially denied the concessions requested by the Puritans. About 80 reforming clergy were expelled from their livings, including Clyfton, who was forced out of his ministry at Babworth in 1605. He was jobless and homeless.

From the year 1605, unofficial worship services were taking place secretly at both the Manor House at Scrooby, and several miles over the border of Lincolnshire in the Great Hall at Gainsborough. In the context of the time, we have to remember that dissent was not a ‘merely’ religious matter. As Nick Bunker explains:

‘The fact was that Brownists did not go to jail simply for being radical in their religious views, or for creating a Separatist community at Scrooby. They did so because they attacked the legal authority of the Church, and in terms based on a defence of civil liberties that applied across a far wider domain than religion alone. When the final crisis came, it concerned politics and law rather than faith or theological dissent.’^[1]Nick Bunker, Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World (Vintage Books, 2010), p183.

To make things far worse, it seems that many in the rural communities regarded religious dissenters as a threat and a nuisance. Huge informal pressure was put on them to conform. Believers had to face open hostility, sneering, backbiting, and false accusations. This daily nagging, scoffing, and derision was one of the factors pushing the group to brave the unknowns of a risky journey and a foreign culture.

Exile to the Netherlands

Several groups of people fled into exile in the Netherlands at various times in the late 16^th century, including a group from the ‘Pilgrim Quadrilateral’. A first attempt ended in disaster as they were betrayed by the Dutch captain of a ship that was to take them across the North Sea. Eventually about 125 of them arrived in Amsterdam in a second attempt by the summer of 1608. There were already two English separatist congregations in Amsterdam. In February 1609, about a hundred of the Scrooby group applied to the authorities for permission to move to Leiden, Holland’s second largest city.  They moved there, and within ten years, they numbered over 400, as more joined from England. John Robinson pastored this church. Winslow later wrote: ‘Never people upon earth lived more lovingly together … than we the Church at Leiden did.’^[2]Robert Tracy McKenzie, The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story tells us about Loving God and Learning from History (IVP Academic, 2013), p60.

But while they enjoyed freedom from religious persecution, life in Holland presented new threats. In Of Plymouth Plantation, William Bradford gave four reasons why they left: (1) hardness of the place, poor conditions, endless work and a bad diet; (2) Weakening as they aged prematurely through hard labour; (3) Children had to go out to work from an early age; and (4) the Pilgrims hoped to take the gospel to the New World.

Winslow added other motives: fear of losing identity, lack of education for the young, fear of violence, social disorder and religious conflict. At this time in the Netherlands there was conflict between the followers of William of Orange and those who were loyal to Spain. Most of all they feared spiritual danger and decline, as they sensed their children growing worldly, and the manifold temptations presented by this new urban environment.

Journey to America and arrival at Plymouth

Early in 1619, two members with business experience went to London to negotiate with the Virginia Company, a joint-stock corporation chartered by James I to facilitate English colonisation of North America. They managed to secure permission to sail over and settle near the infant settlement in Virginia. They weren’t able to secure a guarantee of religious freedom, but it was hoped that if they settled at a distance from the English settlement, they would be left alone.

Initially, a minority of the Leiden congregation would go ahead to America. They bought an old ship, The Speedwell, to transport them and their goods, initially to London, then Southampton, en route to America.

Robinson’s brother-in-law, John Carver was appointed governor of the group, and William Brewster the ruling elder of the believers’ church. Before the group sailed for London, Robinson led a solemn service of farewell and commitment.

The plan was for the group sailing to America to be divided between The Speedwell and a larger ship, The Mayflower. When The Speedwell proved completely unseaworthy, the group and all their belongings had to fit on The Mayflower.

Only thirty-five of Robinson’s Leiden congregation actually sailed on The Mayflower. Thirty-five out of 102 passengers on The Mayflower were ‘Pilgrims’. Before disembarking, all the adult passengers put their names to the Mayflower Compact, or agreement. This bound them together, believers and non-believers, ‘Pilgrims and Strangers’, in a civil compact to work for the common good. Having been delayed in sailing, and having suffered brutal conditions on their voyage, they arrived in North America in winter, the worst time possible. Blown off course, north of where they had planned, they landed at Cape Cod. But there was no suitable place to disembark and settle. After six weeks of exploration, they arrived in the area near present day Plymouth, Massachusetts on 21 December 1620. On 23 December, all who were able went ashore and set to work to put up some basic shelters.

2. The Plymouth Colony

Following their arrival, and during the first harsh winter, half of them died. Within weeks, 52 of the 102 passengers were dead, including 14 of the 26 heads of families. The survivors only made it through the next year because of the help and friendship of two native American Indians. The first, Squanto, gave advice on farming which saved the little group from starvation. The second, Samoset, mediated between the settlers and neighbouring native American Indians. His capacity to negotiate with the local tribes saved the settlers from attack, but also made all the difference in terms of the economic viability of the settlement. The settlers began both farming and trading. They not only celebrated the first Thanksgiving after their harvest in 1621, they were also able to send furs and wood back to England in the next ship to be sent over by their financial backer, Thomas Weston.

The arrival in England of this valuable cargo would have reduced their debt by 50%. Sadly, the ship carrying it was seized by the French on its return journey. None of the goods ever reached England.  Such setbacks were to prove common in the first decade or so. At times it seemed impossible that their debt would ever be paid, and unlikely that the settlement would ever be economically viable.

It was the opening up of trade in beaver skins with the North American Indians, that provided the tipping point for economic viability. When in 1628, the first cargo of beaver skins arrived in England from the Plymouth settlement, that was the signal to fellow Puritans in England that further colonisation would now be possible. 

During the first shockingly hard years, from 1620 onwards, only the strong Christian convictions of the core members of the Plymouth Colony enabled them to persevere. Ten years later, the Plymouth Colony still only numbered 300. It was soon outnumbered by the larger settlement of Puritans from 1630 onwards in Massachusetts Bay, which we’ll turn to in the next section.

The small group of surviving ‘Pilgrims’ still regarded John Robinson as their pastor, even though he had remained in Leiden. Robinson was a strong advocate of religious liberty. He claimed that:

‘… religion ought to be taken up freely … God would not be worshipped of the unwilling … neither is God pleased with unwilling worshippers, nor Christian societies bettered, nor the persons themselves … by this course of compulsion many become atheists, [and] hypocrites…’^[3]Rees, Stephen, ‘Obadiah Holmes: Pioneer of Religious Freedom’, Westminster Conference Papers 2011, Freedom, Courage and the Truth, pp39-64, p43.

But toleration was not unlimited. Robinson, with many other Separatists at the time, believed that the civil magistrate should enforce both tables of the moral law, and should have power to punish any breach of the Ten Commandments. William Bradford, governor of the Plymouth Colony for thirty years, agreed that the civil magistrate should have power to enforce both tables of the moral law.      

In 1645, a petition for complete religious toleration for all who lived in peace with others was presented to the Plymouth General Court. It was rejected by a majority, including Bradford. So, in the Plymouth Colony, there was a measure of religious freedom, but not unlimited religious toleration.

3. The Massachusetts Bay Colony

We now turn to the next wave of religious emigration to America. During the 1630s the number of Puritans leaving for New England numbered not hundreds, but tens of thousands. Why? For the answer, we need to remind ourselves of what had been happening in England during the 1620s.

Religious Background in England

King James I died in 1625 and was succeeded by his son King Charles I. Charles immediately offended the Puritans by marrying a Roman Catholic, Princess Henrietta Maria of France.

From 1626 the high church clergyman William Laud was advancing in influence. Laud was Arminian in doctrine, and ritualist in practice. From 1628 as Bishop of London, he re-introduced Roman Catholic practices which had fallen out of use. Up to now, some Puritans had been able to get away without conforming to the Prayer book rituals. Laud wanted to stamp out all such irregularities. It was common knowledge that Laud would be appointed as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. The Puritans knew that he would use that position to micro-manage church life in every corner of the realm.

Laud was finally enthroned as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. Long before that, many Puritans had decided to emigrate. It seemed to them that under Charles I England was turning away from the Reformation and seemed set to return to Rome. They believed that the nation was under God’s heavy hand of judgment. A significant number of Puritans came to believe that the only option was to found a new and godly colony.

By the end of the 1620s, some leading Puritans were moving to the conviction that God’s judgment was breaking out over both England and continental Europe (which suffered from the terrors of the 30-year war 1618-1648). They believed that America might provide a place of refuge. 

The Massachusetts Bay Company

By 1628, a committed group of Puritans had put their funds together and bought a controlling interest in what would be the Massachusetts Bay Company. They had been watching the agonisingly painful progress of the Plymouth Colony. It was only after that successful shipment of beaver skins to England in 1628, that they knew for sure that another colony in New England could be viable. And these believers came from the same Puritan quadrilateral as the Mayflower Pilgrims, the intersection of Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire.

The Earl of Lincoln was a committed Puritan. So was his mother, the Dowager Countess Elizabeth. So was his sister, Lady Arbella and her husband Isaac Johnson, a wealthy Puritan preacher.

The group included another leading Puritan, Thomas Dudley, the Earl of Lincoln’s steward. His gifted daughter, Anne, at age sixteen married twenty-four-year old Simon Bradstreet. Simon was a brilliant academic who had been employed by Anne’s father to assist in managing the Earl of Lincoln’s affairs.^[4]Anne became the first published female writer of poetry in the English language. Faith Cook has written her biography: Faith Cook, Anne Bradstreet (Darlington, EP Books, 2010).

The group also included Thomas Hooker, Roger Williams and John Winthrop – all to be key figures in the history of New England. John Winthrop, a wealthy and gifted Puritan lawyer, sold his family estate in Suffolk, and contributed the proceeds of £6,000 to the new endeavour. He would be chosen as their first governor. He was an extraordinarily gifted man, and he was a true Puritan in the sense of living an utterly God-centred life. The well-spring of that God-centred life was a heart experience of Christ.

Many of this group lived on the Earl of Lincoln’s large estate at Sempringham, just fifteen miles from Boston. Every Saturday, a group of them made the three-hour journey through muddy lanes in covered coaches to Boston. They stayed there for two nights each weekend in the Earl of Lincoln’s Boston home. They, along with many others, were willing to travel in order to sit under the incomparable ministry of John Cotton, minister of St Botolph’s Church in Lincoln.

We are going to consider Cotton’s ministry now, both because it encapsulates the Puritan spirit, and because it was a group from his church members who formed the nucleus of the 1630 exodus to New England.

The Ministry of John Cotton (1585-1652)

Having attended Grammar School in Derby, John Cotton went to Trinity College Cambridge. After graduating, he moved to Emmanuel College, first as a graduate student, then as a Teaching Fellow. He first came under deep conviction of sin at Cambridge, under the Puritan William Perkins’ ministry.  After a protracted internal struggle, he wrote:

‘I saw my hopes in my own reformation would not serve my turn, and therefore I believed in Jesus Christ; and now nothing shall draw me from Jesus Christ, nor pull me from my confidence…’^[5]Rosenmeier Fletcher, Jesper, Spiritual Concupiscence: John Cotton’s English Years (Richard Kay Publications), 2012, pp29-30.

As a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cotton became a highly regarded preacher. At this time, the Master of Emmanuel was the great Puritan, Lawrence Chaderton. Emmanuel College ignored Church of England rituals, and practised a ‘primitive’, biblical form of Christianity. The central mission and vision of Emmanuel College was to provide ministers to make Christ’s church beautiful. Cotton’s reputation as an orator grew. In 1608 he was given the highest honour of preaching the oration at the funeral of the Vice Chancellor of Cambridge. A short time afterwards, he made the deliberate and costly decision to renounce oratory and preach simply.

In April 1612, the Parish Church at Boston, St Botolph’s, was looking for a new minister. A delegation went to Cambridge to find one. They invited John Cotton, who took up ministry at St Botolph’s in 1612. At this time Boston had around 3,000 inhabitants, and the population was made up of factions for and against Puritanism. These factions would persist throughout Cotton’s ministry. But for twenty years, this was a strategic post for him to hold. Boston was then still surrounded by extensive fens (marshlands). It was a position which was both protected from London and Lincoln, and yet close enough for Cotton to stay in touch with the community of Puritans at Cambridge.

Cotton was extraordinarily energetic and passionately committed to his flock. He preached the free offer of the gospel to the whole congregation, but he also drew together a gathered church of committed believers, usually numbering about 80 to 100. As people were converted, they might join this inner group. We know that his ministry was marked by notable conversions. Cotton’s preaching always pointed to the clear division between the saved and lost.

Cotton refused to wear the surplice, to kneel at Communion, to stand at the Creed, or to use the sign of the cross at baptism or the ring in marriage. He supervised the clearing of the church of images and the painting of the walls with plain white paint, to be adorned only with Scripture texts.

Cotton was hugely influenced by the ministry of the Puritan Richard Sibbes. He was especially impacted by Sibbes’ powerful preaching about adoption and the love of God. Cotton’s ministry was deeply experiential. Like other Puritans he drew heavily on the Song of Solomon to describe the matchless experience of knowing assurance of the love of God through union with Christ. But the felt presence of Christ can be lost through wilful disobedience. Hence his fierce zeal to conform the conduct of worship to God’s Word. Huge zeal led to huge opposition, and Cotton was at some point forced out of the ministry. He was humble in the face of hostility.

When some of Cotton’s flock left for New England in 1630, he resisted their pleas for him to go with them. He preached their farewell sermon but was determined to stick it out at Boston until it was no longer possible for him to do so. So we turn again to the 1630 exodus to the New World.

The 1630 Sailing

In the spring of 1630, the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Company chartered a number of ships to sail from Southampton e to New England. The flagship was named The Arbella, after Lady Arbella, the daughter of the Earl of Lincoln. She sailed on it, along with her husband, and also her friend, the seventeen-year old Anne Bradstreet, as well as Anne’s husband Simon, and Anne’s parents. Also on The Arbella was the newly appointed governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, John Winthrop. The ship carried around 300 passengers, plus a crew of 50. Three other ships sailed in convoy, which brought the total number of Puritans to around 1,000.

Whereas the Plymouth Puritans were Separatists, the Massachusetts Bay Puritans saw themselves as members of the Church of England. Their vision was that of a ‘state church, though one purged of corruption’. The first ministers of the new colony (Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton) wrote:

‘We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England, though we cannot but separate from the corruptions in it, but we go to practise the positive part of church reformation and to propagate the Gospel in America.’^[6]Rees, Stephen, ‘Obadiah Holmes: Pioneer of Religious Freedom’, Westminster Conference Papers 2011, Freedom, Courage and the Truth, pp39-64, p44-5.

These Puritans went with legal authorisation from the Government. They were emigrants, not escapees. In 1629, the company had obtained a new charter from the King, with a view to establishing a colony.

In June 1630, the settlers landed at Cape Ann, and were greeted by Captain Endecott, who had been sent out with a pioneering group in September 1628 by the Massachusetts Bay Company to start the colony. He took the new arrivals to the small settlement, which he had established at Nahumkeck – later to be called Salem. It was in a pitiful state. About 80 out of the little population of 200 had died the previous winter, there was very little food, and only about ten wooden houses. That winter would bring deaths nearly every day, including that of Lady Arbella, aged just thirty, and her husband, Isaac. 

The survivors dispersed and set about building their homes in a handful of small settlements. Winthrop settled at a site with a pure spring of fresh water, which as it overlooked three mountains, he named Trimountain.

Winthrop and his fellow Puritans wanted society in every aspect to glorify God. Church and society together were the community of the covenant people. A credible profession of faith (including an experience of conversion) was expected for church membership. The ideal was a ‘gathered church’ of true believers. That was the same as in the Plymouth Colony. But the key difference was that, unlike in the Plymouth Colony, in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, only church members could vote. So, it was hoped, voters would choose rulers who would honour God and uphold God’s laws.

The church was not ‘joined’ to the state, in that each church was independent in governing its own affairs. Churches were Congregational in polity. So it’s not strictly true that New England was a ‘theocracy’. Church ministers didn’t rule the civil community. But only church members could vote for civil rulers. And officers of the state were to uphold religious uniformity. 

In the next ten years, some 20,000 more people, many of them Puritan, would make the journey over to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Among them, were John Cotton and his family.

John Cotton and ‘The New England Way’

Although Cotton had resisted pressure to leave in 1630, ever increasing opposition, the threat of imprisonment, and also increased sickness, all led to a change of mind. The dampness of the Fens brought on the ‘ague’ (ie malaria) for both his wife and himself. In 1631 his wife died of malaria. John remarried in 1632, but that year also he was summoned before the Court of High Commission. Imprisonment loomed. He knew that imprisonment in damp conditions would probably kill him, and so he went into hiding. As he was no longer able to preach in England, he decided to make the move to New England. He and his wife sailed in 1633. Their first son was born during the voyage. John called his son ‘Seaborn’.  

On their arrival, the settlement at Trimountain was renamed Boston in Cotton’s honour. He was recognised as a minister of the First Church in Boston, a position he held until 1652. Having seen a revival in St Botolph’s back in Lincolnshire, and many powerful conversions, Cotton’s preaching now sparked the first spate of religious conversions recorded in American history.

And yet, it was during the next twenty fruitful years of ministry that tensions erupted. Those with differing religious views were treated with what seems, with hindsight, to be unacceptable harshness. To be fair to the context of the time, we have to remember two things. Firstly, the Puritans were convinced that all of life is God’s. There is no division between sacred and secular. Secondly, we have to understand that those who had left so many earthly goods behind, and risked so much to make a new start, were not easily going to see their new and holy commonwealth polluted, as they saw it, with heretical belief. Pearse writes: ‘They had not travelled three thousand miles into the wilderness to have it subverted from below, as it were, by dissent. They sought room, not for religious liberty, but for their own holy experiment.’^[7]Pearse, Meic, The Great Restoration: The Religious Radicals of the 16th and 17th Centuries (Paternoster Press, 1998), p281.

The sincere desire to keep a ‘pure’ form of faith and worship, and to protect the church, led to intolerance of any with varying views of doctrine. Paul Cook describes the tension like this:

‘In New England, the Puritan urge for a complete reformation of the church led to ‘the New England Way’, and to gathered churches of believers. There was a fatal defect however, one which was eventually to lead to its spiritual undoing, and that was a spiritual rigorousness which extended to the whole community, so that pressure to conform became a violation of a man’s liberty of conscience in religious matters.’^[8]Cook, Paul, ‘The Puritans: The Complete Story’ (review of John Adair, Founding Fathers, Banner of Truth magazine, February 1984, pp24-28.

John Cotton argued that once someone had been taught the truth, then their conscience would always ‘move in the direction’ of truth. If they then insisted on a ‘wrong’ opinion, they were sinning against their own conscience. The magistrate was justified in intervening to save them from that sin. This meant that it was, effectively, the ministers who determined the conscience of the whole community.

4. Rhode Island

And so we’ll turn finally to the third model of a godly community, a community where religious freedom was held up as the biblical ideal.

Roger Williams (1603-1683)

Roger Williams was born around 1603 in London. He was converted at the age of twelve. He trained in theology at Cambridge University. Here, as so many others had done, he came to strong Puritan convictions. He was one of the original group of Puritans who met in Lincolnshire in 1628 to form the Massachusetts Bay Company. In 1631 he sailed over to Massachusetts.

Roger Williams argued that force never produces genuine faith. He believed there had been a clear break between the situation of the Old Testament, where a whole nation could be regarded as ‘elect’, and the New Testament, where only believers can be regarded as ‘elect’. He saw Canaan as a type or shadow.  After Christ, he believed that we should not expect to enforce a national church. Churches are made up of ‘the new Israel, that is, the new born, the spiritually circumcised, as opposed to the physically circumcised’. Crucially, he argued that forced worship is abominable to God. The magistrate, therefore, has no place in controlling the church. He believed that the magistrates had nothing to do with matters of the first table, but only the second. There should be a general and unlimited toleration of all religions, and for any man to be punished for any matters of his conscience was persecution.

In addition, Williams taught that the land of New England rightfully belonged to the North American Indians, not the King or colony. He was one of the very first to explicitly declare that all races are made equally in the image of God the Creator.

In 1635, he was convicted of teaching ‘diverse, new and dangerous opinions’, and ordered to leave Massachusetts before the spring. But since Williams wouldn’t keep his opinions to himself throughout the winter, the leaders of Salem decided to arrest him immediately and send him to England, where he was also likely to face imprisonment. Williams fled into the wilderness alone. He was discovered in the snow, nearly frozen, by members of the Wampanoag tribe. They nursed him back to health, and Chief Massasoit even gave him some land. Unfortunately, it was still inside territory controlled by the colonial charter, so Williams moved on yet again.

In 1636 he purchased land from the Narragansett Indians on Rhode Island, where he founded a settlement which he called ‘Providence’ – a ‘haven for those with distress of conscience.’ This was the first colony which deliberately set out to practise separation of church and state; and freedom of conscience and religion. Williams was joined by his family and twelve followers. This colony was initially known as ‘Providence’, then, as ‘The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantation’. Finally it came to be known as Rhode Island.

Roger Williams is remembered in history as the first to campaign against slavery, and also as the first to publish a dictionary of one of the North American languages. He took a keen mission interest in the peoples native to America and campaigned for justice in dealing with them.

In 1644, Roger Williams wrote The Bloody Tenent of Persecution, a passionate defence of religious liberty (tenent here is the archaic spelling for ‘tenet’, a word which means ‘principle’ or ‘belief’).^[9]See the article by Mostyn Roberts in this issue.

In response, John Cotton defended religious coercion for the sake of societal stability in The Bloody Tenet washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb (1647).

Williams responded to that in 1652 and argued that just as people shouldn’t be forced to marry those they did not love, so people should not be forced to ‘worship’ where they cannot believe. This work was produced partly in response to the persecution of Obadiah Holmes, to which we’ll now turn.

Obadiah Holmes (1610-1682)

Obadiah Holmes and his wife Catherine had left England in 1638.  Obadiah was a model citizen and church member in Salem, Massachusetts for a number of years. By his own account, though, he was only truly converted when he and his family moved south to Plymouth Colony in 1645. He then found deep peace with God for the first time. He also became convinced of believers’ baptism. He gathered a little fellowship of like-minded believers around him. The magistrates in Boston heard of this. They wrote to the civil authorities in Plymouth, demanding that they take action against this group. In June 1650, the authorities in Plymouth exiled Holmes and his followers, about ten people in all. They sought refuge in Rhode Island. 

There they joined a Particular (ie Calvinistic) Baptist church pastored by John Clarke. In July 1651, nine months after settling in Rhode Island, Holmes and his pastor John Clarke, and another church member named John Crandall, set out on a pastoral visit to an elderly blind man called William Witter. This man, who lived in the town of Lynn, Massachusetts, was Baptist by conviction. Of course, there was no church for him to join. He had often been brought before the courts. But he was too old and infirm to be exiled, or to move by himself. So he requested a pastoral visit from the Baptist church in Rhode Island.

On Sunday 20 July, the visitors, Pastor Clarke, Obadiah Holmes and Crandall, held an informal service in Witter’s home. They were arrested. In court in Boston, John Cotton affirmed that ‘denying infant baptism would overturn all and was a capital offence, and that they were soul murderers.’

Their punishment was exile. But the court had a problem, because they had already been exiled, and now lived in Rhode Island. So they were fined: Clark £20, Crandall £5, and Holmes, £30. If they failed to pay, the court ruled that they were to be ‘well whipped’. In fact, the law did not actually lay out these penalties. The court was making law up as they went along. The three asked what legal authority lay behind the sentence. Governor Endicott at that point lost his temper and said that they deserved death.

Pastor Clarke’s fine was paid by friends, apparently against his will. Crandall put up bail and returned home. Holmes, on principle, stayed in prison. He refused to pay. And he refused to let anyone else pay. The Governor of Rhode Island, John Jenckes, described what happened on 5 August 1651: ‘Mr Holmes was whipped thirty stripes, and in such an unmerciful manner that for many days, if not some weeks, he could take no rest but as he lay upon his knees and elbows, not being able to suffer any part of his body to touch the bed whereon he lay.’^[10]Rees, Stephen, ‘Obadiah Holmes: Pioneer of Religious Freedom’, Westminster Conference Papers 2011, Freedom, Courage and the Truth, p57.

Holmes later became pastor of the Particular Baptist Church in Rhode Island. He played a key part in building good relations with the local North American Tribes. His ten children became leaders in many different fields. Abraham Lincoln was a direct descendant.

Obadiah Holmes is remembered today because his case became the cause célèbre that would be used to argue for religious liberty. In the cemetery at Middletown, Newport County, Rhode Island, there is a memorial plaque in honour of Obadiah Holmes. It reads: ‘Eminent citizen, champion of soul liberty, persecuted at Whipping Post, Boston, Massachusetts, for his religious faith.’

Within the culture of the day, his case caused so many ripples, partly because he was a man of a good family, who had worked hard to establish himself in society. He had influential connections back in England. He was not outside mainstream belief. He was not a Quaker, or even an Arminian! He was Calvinist in conviction. He was blameless in his life. Yes, he was Baptist by conviction, but in Cromwell’s England that no longer carried the stigma which it had done even fifty years earlier. 

A Puritan in England called Richard Saltonstall, wrote to John Cotton and Rev Wilson, the two preachers in Boston:

‘Reverend and dear Sirs, whom I unfeignedly love and respect: It does not a little grieve my spirit to hear what sad things are reported daily of your tyranny and persecutions in New England, as that you whip, fine, and imprison men for their consciences. Truly, friends, this your practice of compelling any in matters of worship to do that whereof they are not fully persuaded is to make them sin, for so the Apostle (Romans 14:23) tells us, and many are made hypocrites thereby, conforming in their outward man for fear of punishment.’^[11]John Adair, Founding Fathers: The Puritans in England and America (First edition 1982, rep. Grand Rapids, Baker, 1986), p240.

In reply, John Cotton defended the public whipping of Obadiah Holmes, and said it was better to make men hypocrites, than allow them to continue as profane persons.^[12]Adair, Founding Fathers, p242.

Independents back in England were horrified to hear what had happened.  Cromwell himself took a strong personal interest in Holmes’s case. After the Restoration, Pastor Clarke appealed directly to King Charles II. Charles II granted a Royal Charter to Rhode Island in 1663. It included these words:

‘No person within the said Colony … Shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, who do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said Colony; but that all and every person and persons may … freely and fully have and enjoy, his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments.’^[13]Rees, Stephen, ‘Obadiah Holmes: Pioneer of Religious Freedom’, Westminster Conference Papers 2011, Freedom, Courage and the Truth, p62.

This was a charter for complete religious liberty, unparalleled anywhere else in the world. These radical ideas would eventually be accepted throughout America. Stephen Rees writes:

‘The principles for which Roger Williams, Obadiah Holmes, John Clarke and many others suffered, were ultimately to sweep away the whole idea of a national church within America. What had once been [seen as] the mad view of a handful of strange sectaries was ultimately to be written into the constitution of the United States: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”’^[14]Rees, Stephen, ‘Obadiah Holmes: Pioneer of Religious Freedom’, Westminster Conference Papers 2011, Freedom, Courage and the Truth, p63.

Today, whatever our disagreements about either baptism, or the established church, we would surely all agree on the need for freedom of conscience. What even the Pilgrim Fathers shrank away from, we have embraced. Looking back down through the centuries, we can now admire those such as Roger Williams and Obadiah Holmes who were willing to follow Scripture and conscience to reach those convictions about religious liberty which we affirm today.

Literature used for this article includes:

John Adair, Founding Fathers: The Puritans in England and America (First edition 1982, rep. Grand Rapids, Baker, 1986).

William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (Dover Publications, 2006). (Republication of Bradford’s History of the Plymouth Settlement, 1608-1650, first published 1920.

John Brown, The English Puritans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911).

Nick Bunker, Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World (Vintage Books, 2010).

Faith Cook, Anne Bradstreet (Darlington, EP Books, 2010).

Paul Cook, ‘The Puritans: The Complete Story’ (review of John Adair, Founding Fathers), Banner of Truth magazine, February 1984, pp. 24-28.

Ian Cooper, The Pilgrim Fathers, The Promise and Price of Religious Freedom (Day One, 2015).

Robert Tracy McKenzie, The First Thanksgiving: What the Real Story tells us about Loving God and Learning from History (IVP Academic, 2013).

Tom Nettles, The Baptists: volume 2: Beginnings in America (Fearn: Christian Focus, 2008).

Meic Pearse, The Great Restoration: The Religious Radicals of the 16th and 17th Centuries (Paternoster Press, 1998).

Stephen Rees, ‘Obadiah Holmes: Pioneer of Religious Freedom’, Westminster Conference Papers 2011, Freedom, Courage and the Truth.

Jesper Rosenmeier Fletcher, Spiritual Concupiscence: John Cotton’s English Years (Richard Kay Publications, 2012).