WILLIAMS. 



publicly preached against the patent from the king, 

 under which they held their lands, on the ground 

 that the king could not dispose of the lands of the 

 natives without their consent. He reprobated the 

 " calling of natural men to the exercise of those 

 holy ordinances of prayers, oaths, &c." ; but what 

 rendered him most obnoxious, undoubtedly, was his 

 insisting that the magistrate had no right to punish 

 for breaches of the first table, or, in other words, 

 "to deal in matters of conscience and religion." 

 These causes, conspiring with others of less im- 

 portance, finally occasioned a decree of banishment 

 against him, in the autumn of 1635, and he was 

 ordered to depart the jurisdiction in six weeks, but 

 was subsequently permitted to remain until spring, 

 on condition that he did not attempt to draw any 

 other to bis opinions; but "the people being much 

 taken with the apprehension of his godliness," in 

 January following, the governor and assistants sent 

 an officer to apprehend him, and carry him on board 

 a vessel then lying at Nantasket, bound to England; 

 but before the officer arrived, he had removed, and 

 gone to Rehoboth. Being informed by governor 

 Winslow, of Plymouth, that he was then within 

 the bounds of the Plymouth patent, in the spring 

 he crossed the river, and commenced the settlement 

 of Providence. He afterwards embraced some of 

 the leading opinions of the Baptists, and, in March, 

 1639, was baptized by immersion, at Providence, 

 by Ezekiel Holliman, whom he afterwards baptized. 

 He formed a society of this order, and continued 

 preaching to them for several months, and then 

 separated from them, doubting, it is said, the vali- 

 dity of all baptism, because a direct succession 

 could not be traced from the apostles to the offici- 

 ating ministers. In 1643, Williams went to Eng- 

 land, as agent for the colonies at Providence, 

 Rhode Island, and Warwick, to solicit a charter of 

 incorporation, which he finally procured, and re- 

 turned in September, 1644. In 1651, serious dif- 

 ficulties having been raised in the colony, by Cod- 

 dington's procuring a charter, which gave him 

 almost unlimited authority over the islands of Nar- 

 ragansett bay, Williams and Clarke were despatched 

 agents of the colony to procure a revocation of it. 

 This they effected in October, 1652. Williams 

 returned in 1654; but Clarke remained in England, 

 and procured a second charter in 1663. He was 

 several times, both before and after this period, 

 elected to the office of president or governor of this 

 colony. He died in April, 1683, at Providence. 

 Very few incidents in his life are to be collected 

 from his writings; and the prejudices of contem- 

 porary, and even later historians, who have men- 

 tioned him, render it difficult to form a true esti- 

 mate of his character. He appears to have been a 

 man of unblemished moral character, and of ardent 

 piety, unyielding in opinions which he conceived to 

 be right, and not to be diverted from what he be- 

 lieved to be duty, either by threats or flattery. 

 After he was banished, though he conceived him- 

 self to be an injured man, he gave his persecutors 

 information of the Indian plot, which would have 

 destroyed their whole settlement, and concluded 

 treaties for them, which insured their peace. He 

 is accused, and not unjustly, of frequent changes in 

 bis religious sentiments ; but these changes should 

 be ascribed to conviction, for they militated against 

 his worldly interest. He was at all times the un- 

 daunted champion of religious freedom ; and, 

 strange as it may seem, this was probably the first 

 thing that excited the prejudices of the Massachu- 



setts and Plymouth rulers against him. He was 

 accused of currying this favourite doctrine so far as 

 to exempt from punishment any criminal who 

 pleaded conscience ; but this he expressly denied. 

 Of the publications of Williams that have reached 

 us, the first, in order of time, is his Key into the 

 Language of America, republished in 1827. This, 

 it would seem, was composed during his voyage to 

 England, in 1643, and was printed at London soon 

 after his arrival. It preceded Eliot's works on 1 1n- 

 same subject. Very few copies of the original edi- 

 tion are now extant. The one belonging to the 

 Massachusetts historical society is the only one 

 known to be in America. His next work was 

 his Bloody Tenent, written in answer to Cotton's 

 treatise, which upheld the right and enforced tin- 

 duty of the civil magistrate to regulate the doc- 

 trines of the church. This called forth a reply 

 from Cotton, entitled the Bloody Tenent Washed 

 and made White in the Blood of the Lambe ; and 

 this was followed by a rejoinder from Williams, 

 entitled the Bloody Tenent yet more Bloody, by 

 Mr Cotton's Endeavour to Wash it White. In 

 these works of Williams, the doctrine of religious 

 liberty and unlimited toleration are illustrated in 

 strong language, and supported by stronger argu- 

 ments arguments that preceded those of Locke, 

 Bayle and Furneau. In 1672, Williams had a con- 

 troversy with the Quakers. He maintained a public 

 dispute with them at Newport and at Providence, 

 in August, 1672, and afterwards published his 

 George Foxe digged out of his Burrowes, in answer 

 to a work of Fox. This is a rare book. 



WILLIAMSBURG; the seat of justice for 

 James City county, Virginia, twelve miles west of 

 Yorktown; population about 1500. It was for- 

 merly the metropolis of the state, but has greatly 

 declined. The college of William and Mary un- 

 founded here in 1693,' in the time of king William, 

 who gave it an endowment of 2000 and 20|l)00 

 acres of land, together with a revenue of ;i IH 

 pound on tobacco exported to the plantations from 

 Virginia and Maryland. To these, other endqw- 

 ments were added ; and the whole annual income 

 of the college was formerly estimated at 3000. 

 The income has greatly diminished, and its accom- 

 modations are poor. 



WILLIAMSON, HUGH, was born December of 

 1735, in Chester county, Pennsylvania, and gradu- 

 ated at the college of Philadelphia, May 17, 1757. 

 He early showed much fondness for mathematics. 

 He studied theology, and was licensed to prfiach ; 

 but the infirm state of his health induced him to 

 relinquish the pulpit, and to turn his attention to 

 the study of medicine. From 1760 to 1763, he 

 was professor of mathematics in the college of Phil- 

 adelphia. In 1764, he went to Edinburgh to pursue 

 his medical studies. He next proceeded to London, 

 where he studied twelve months, and then repaired 

 to the university of Utrecht. After his return to 

 Philadelphia, he practised for some years with much 

 success, but, at length, gave up the profession on 

 account of the weak state of his health, and re- 

 mained a number of years devoted to literary and 

 philosophical pursuits. In 1769, he was appointed 

 by the American philosophical society a member of 

 the committee to observe the transit of Venus and 

 Mercury over the sun's disk, which occurred in that 

 year. The results of the observations made by him 

 are contained in the first volume of the Transac- 

 tions of the society. In 1773, he was appointed, 

 in conjunction with doctor Ewing, to make a tour 



