To the religious dissensions which distracted Massachusetts, and to the rigour with which conformity was exacted, is to be attributed the first settlement of the other colonies of New England. As early as the year 1634, Roger Williams, a popular preacher at Salem, who had refused to hold communion with the church at Boston, because its members refused to make a public declaration of their repentance for having held communion with the church of England during their residence in that country, was charged with many exceptionable tenets. Among several which mark his wild enthusiasm, one is found in total opposition, to the spirit of the times and to the severity of his other doctrines. He maintained, that to punish a man for any matter of conscience is persecution, and that even papists and Arminians are entitled to freedom of conscience in worship, provided the peace of civil society be secured. The divines of Massachusetts, in opposition to this doctrine, contended that they did not persecute men for conscience, but corrected them for sinning against conscience; and so they did not persecute, but punish heretics. This unintelligible sophism not convincing Williams, he was, for this, and for his other heresies, banished by the magistrates, as a disturber of the peace of the church, and of the commonwealth.
[Illustration: Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1622
_Here, under Governor Bradford, who directed their destiny for a precarious quarter of a century, the Pilgrim Fathers strove desperately to maintain a foothold in America, and several times were on the point of abandoning the enterprise. To such straits were they reduced, in 1622, a year after the death of Governor Carter, that half rations were doled out, and when, in May of that year, a ship arrived from England bearing encouraging letters to the Pilgrims, but no substantial supplies, Governor Bradford remarked bitterly: "All this is but cold comfort to fill hungry bellies."_]
Many of his disciples followed him into exile, and, travelling south until they passed the line of Massachusetts, purchased a tract of land of the Narraghansetts, then a powerful tribe of Indians, where, in 1635, they made a settlement to which they gave the name of Providence. After fixing the place of their future residence, they entered into a voluntary association, and framed a government composed of the whole body of freemen. After the manner of Massachusetts, they created a church by collecting a religious society; but, as one of the causes of their migration had been the tenet that all were entitled to freedom of conscience in worship, entire toleration was established. The new settlers cultivated with assiduity the good will of the natives, with whom a long peace was preserved.[64]