8 July
1663 A.D. Repressive Anglican
King Charles 11 Grants Charter to Rhode Island:
Rhode Islanders Hade More Liberty
Than Charle 11’s Poor Englishmen Suffering Under Several Punitive Acts!!
Graves,
Dan. “Charles II Granted Rhode Island New Charter.” Christianity.com. Jul 2007. http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1601-1700/charles-ii-granted-rhode-island-new-charter-11630142.html. Accessed 7 May 2014.
For Baptist clergyman John Clarke, this day, July 8, 1663, spelled the end of a long
wait. Twelve years earlier, he had sailed to England from Rhode Island to lobby
the king in behalf of the plantation. Now, with a gracious gesture, King
Charles II granted the request.
No doubt John immediately opened his copy and read
again the words he had so fervently desired. The document was a new charter for
Rhode Island. In it, Charles II "informed, by the petition of our trusty
and well-beloved subject, John Clarke" granted the colonists a number of
rights.
Rhode Island had been founded by Roger Williams, an
advocate of "soul liberty" (freedom of conscience), after he fled
from religious persecution in Massachusetts. Charles commended the perseverance
of the Rhode Islanders.
The language throughout the charter was largely religious.
It recognized that the settlers had gone to America to pursue "with
peaceable and loyal minds, their sober, serious, and religious intentions, of
godly edifying themselves, and one another, in the holy Christian faith and worship, as they were
persuaded; together with the gaining over and conversion of the poor ignorant
Indian natives...to the sincere profession and obedience of the same faith and
worship..."
It invoked the blessing of God on their endeavors
and acknowledged the colonists' claim that "true piety, rightly grounded
upon gospel principles, will give the best and greatest security to
sovereignty, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to
true loyalty."
But the paragraph that must have meant the most to
John Clarke, lay further down in the document. In 1651, he had been seized in
Massachusetts and told he must pay a £ 20 fine or be whipped. The reason? He
had taught things that did not agree with official state doctrine.
Under this charter, that sort of thing should never
happen in Rhode Island. For Charles declared that it was his royal will and
pleasure "that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter
shall be any wise molested [harassed], 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
concernments, throughout the tract of land hereafter mentioned, they behaving
themselves peaceable and quietly..."
The Rhode Islanders now had more liberty of
conscience than Englanders themselves. This was a red letter day in the history
of religious freedom, for the freedoms of Rhode Island gradually came to be the
norm in all of the United States. Curiously enough, Rhode Island operated under
this charter for almost two hundred years, even after the close of the
revolutionary war.
Bibliography:
1. Covey, Cyclone. The Gentle
Radical; Roger Williams. New York: Macmillan, 1966.
2. Gaustad, Edwin S. Liberty of
Conscience; Roger Williams in America. Library of Religious Biography. Grand
Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1991.
3. Roger Williams: Freedom’s
Forgotten Hero (Video) Freedom Research Productions Fair Oaks, California.
4. Kunitz, Stanley. American
authors, 1600-1900: a biographical dictionary of American literature. New York:
The H. W. Wilson company, 1938.
5. Miller, Perry. Roger Williams,
His Contribution to the American Tradition. New York: Atheneum, 1962.
6. "Williams, Roger."
Dictionary of American Biography. New York: Scribner, 1958 - 1964.
7. Wood, James E. editor. Baptists
and the American Experience. Judson Press, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1976.
Last updated June, 2007
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