Why did Massachusetts Bay Colony kick Williams out?
A. Well, there’s some debate about that, and the debate goes back even to Williams’ time. Williams insisted that he was kicked out of the Bay Colony because of his religious views, specifically that he taught that the Church of England was an apostate (false) church and that the New England Puritans should publicly declare their separation from that institution. This “separatism” was a minority view in Puritanism and was seen as dangerous by those who ran the Bay Colony, because a rejection of the official English Church was a rejection of the king’s authority (since the king was the head of the church). While Williams thought he was banished because of his religious scruples, some Bay Colony leaders insisted that religion had little to do with his banishment. They argued that Williams was kicked out because of the seditious nature of his views on the authority of the state and his carping about the land rights of the Native Americans. (Williams insisted that the king had no right to c
