TO MR. WILLIAM RICHARDS.

VERY DEAR SIR,

Middleborough, April 9, 1799.

Your's of March 19, 1798, I never received till yesterday, under cover from DR. ROGERS, of Philadelphia. I wrote a letter for you the Fall before last, and carried it to Boston, but hearing that you were gone to Wales, and not knowing how to send it, I brought it home, and now send it with this account.

As you still desire my help about writing the life of ROGER WILLIAMS, I shall do what I can in the

case.

The tradition at Providence is, that MR. ROGer WILLIAMS was born in Wales, but brought up in England, under the patronage of Sir Edward Coke, the famous lawyer, which might help him to many ideas about government and liberty, of which he made so good a use. It is said that, when he was a boy, Sir Edward observed him in the Meeting taking notes of the sermon, which he afterwards desired to see, and, on perusing them, was so well pleased therewith, that he took young Williams to himself, and did much towards his education.

Our late friend, Joshua Thomas, of Leominster, wrote to me, that Anthony Wood mentions him as one who was educated in OXFORD university. Governor Winthrop says, "Feb. 5, 1631, the ship LYON, Mr. William Pierce, master, arrived at Nantasket. She brought Mr. Williams, a godly man,

with his wife." (Winthrop's Journal, p. 23.) Mr. Hubbard copied from Winthrop, as many others have done from both of them. See my first volume, p. 53. By p. 421, his age appears. WILLIAMS went to Salem in the spring of 1631, where the court wrote against him, and he went to Plymouth, where he preached till August, 1633, when he removed again to Salem, and the sentence of banishment was passed against him in October, 1635, and executed in January, 1636.-P. 70.

In those times the Narragansets and Pequots, the two most powerful tribes of INDIANS in New England, were often at war with each other. In April, 1632, the Narragansets had a number of INDIANS from near Boston, to assist them against the Pequots; and in August following, Niantonomo, with his wife, and about twelve men, came to Boston to cultivate friendship with the English. In 1633, some Indians came down from Connecticut to Plymouth and Boston, to get the English to go and trade or settle there; because Sassums and other Pequots, who resided where Stanington and Grotan now are, had violently invaded their rights. Accordingly several went to trade there, that fall and the next year. But for this the Pequots murdered Captain Stone and his crew, and burnt his vessel, in 1634, in Connecticut river.

In 1635, a church and minister went up and settled at Windsor, and another company built a fort at Say-brook, at the mouth of the river; and in June, 1636, Mr. Thomas Hooker, and Mr.

Samuel Stone, with their church, went by land, from Cambridge, and settled at Hartford, the capital of Connecticut.-Winthrop's Journal, p. 34, 41, 51, 53, 74, 86, 90.

Mr. John Haynes was chosen governor of the MASSACHUSETTS, in 1635, and he pronounced the sentence of banishment against MR. WILLIAMS, in October, but he removed to Connecticut, in 1637, and confessed his fault to him, and therefore, as we shall soon see, Sir Henry Vane was governor in 1636, who was WILLIAMS's great friend afterwards. He wrote to WILLIAMS about the Indians, as related in my first volume, p. 75.

Captain John Mason, who was the chief commander in taking the Pequot Fort, in May, 1637, afterwards major-general of the militia in Connecticut, and also their deputy governor, was a good friend to WILLIAMS, and when Connecticut proposed to send to England to get Rhode Island Charter altered about the bounds between them, WILLIAMS wrote to Mason about it, June 22, 1670, and the letter was published by the Historical Society in BOSTON, in 1792, in which WILLIAMS says,~

"1. When I was unkindly and unchristianly, as I believe, driven from my house and land, Wife and Children, at Salem, in the midst of a New England winter, that ever-honoured governor, Mr. Winthrop, privately wrote to me to steer my course to the Narraganset Bay and Indians, for many high, heavenly, and public ends, encouraging me from the freeness of the place from any English claims and

patents. I took his prudent motion as an hint and voice of God, and waving all other thoughts and motions, I steered my course from Salem unto those. parts wherein I may say PENIEL, that is, I have seen the face of God.

"2. I first pitched, and began to build and plant, at Seawork, now Reobolt, but I received a letter from my ancient friend, Mr. Winslow, then governor of Plymouth, professing his own and others love and respect to me, yet lovingly advising me, since I was fallen into the edge of their bounds, and they loth to displease the Bay, to remove but to the other side of the water, and then (he said,) I had the country before me, and might be as free as themselves, and we should be loving neighbours together. These were the joint understandings of these two eminently wise and Christian governors, and others in their day, together with their counsel and advice, as to the freedom and vacancy of this place, which in this respect, and many other Providences of the MOST HOLY and ONLY WISE, I called -PROVIDENCE.

"3. Sometime after, Plymouth Great Sachem (Osamaquin), upon occasion affirming that Providence was his land, and therefore Plymouth's land, and some resenting it, the then prudent and godly governor, Mr. Bradford, and others of his godly council, answered, that, if after due examination, it should be found true what the barbarian said, yet having, to the loss of a harvest that year, been now (through their gentle advice) as good as banished from Ply

mouth as from the Massachusetts, and I had quietly departed from them, at their motion, to the place where I now was- -I should not be molested and tossed up and down again, while they had breath in their bodies; and surely between those my friends of the Bay and Plymouth, I was sorely tossed up and down for FOURTEEN WEEKS, in a bitter winter season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean; beside the yearly loss of no small matter in trading with English and natives, being debarred from Boston, the chief mart and port of New England. God knows, that many thousand pounds cannot repay the very temporary losses I have sustained! It lies upon the Massachusetts and me, yea, and other colonies joining with them to examine, with fear and trembling, before the eyes of flaming fire, the true cause of all my sorrows and sufferings. It pleased the Father of Spirits to touch many hearts, dear to him with some relentings, among which that great and pious soul, Mr. Winslow, melted and kindly visited me at PROVIDENCE, and put a piece of gold into the hand of my wife, for our supply.

"4. When, the year after my banishment, the Lord drew the bow of the Pequot war, against the country in which, sir, the Lord made yourself with others, a blessed instrument of peace to all New England, I had my share of service to the whole land in that Pequot business, inferior to very few that acted.

"For, 1. Upon letters received from the governor and council at Boston, requesting me to use my