“Cromwell was one of the predecessors of our American founding fathers for religious freedom.”
Good point considering the personal connection between Cromwell & Roger Williams:
1) Oliver Cromwell (25 April 1599 – 3 September 1658) was an English military and political leader best known in England for his involvement in turning England into a republican Commonwealth and for his later role as Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland. Events that occurred during his reign and his politics are a cause of long lasting animosity between Ireland and the United Kingdom.
He was one of the commanders of the New Model Army which defeated the royalists in the English Civil War. After the execution of King Charles I in 1649, Cromwell dominated the short-lived Commonwealth of England, conquered Ireland and Scotland, and ruled as Lord Protector from 1653 until his death from a combination of malarial fever and septicemia in 1658.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_cromwell
2) Roger Williams (circa 1603 – between January and March 1683) was an American Protestant theologian, and the first American proponent of religious freedom and the separation of church and state. In 1636, he began the colony of Providence Plantation. which provided a refuge for religious minorities. Williams started the first Baptist church in America, the First Baptist Church of Providence, before leaving to become a Seeker. He was a student of Native American languages and an advocate for fair dealings with Native Americans.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roger_Williams_(theologian)
3) “As family chaplain, Williams lets his heart go out to one of his employer’s relatives, Jane Whalley, and his early writings concern her. Lady Joan Barrington, her aunt — and also that of Oliver Cromwell — will not tolerate Williams’s thoughts of love and marriage for her niece. In the spring of 1629, Lady Joan ends the whole matter abruptly.
On realizing that he and Jane will never be married, Williams writes, “We hope to live together in the heavens, though ye Lord have denied that union on earth.” By year’s end, he finds another love, Mary Barnard. They marry, and within a year they have set sail on the Lyon for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. On Feb. 5, 1631, Gov. John Winthrop greets the Lyon in Nantasket, south of Boston, after a 57-day voyage. Winthrop’s greeting is mostly for the cargo of salt pork and salt beef. Still, he notes in his journal that among the 20 passengers there are “a godly minister” and his wife. Roger was 27; Mary, 21.”
http://www.rootcellar.us/wightman/9misc.html
4) “At the return of Charles II, regicides who had had the good fortune to die in peace during the Commonwealth were condemned posthumously, their bodies exhumed and abused, and their heirs’ property confiscated. Of the living, twenty-four vanished into royal dungeons or were executed with the cruelty reserved for traitors: a mere dozen escaped abroad. The three who fled to the American colonies have written a dramatic page in our history.
Among those who dared to kill a king on that fateful day in 1649 were Edward Whalley, William Goffe, and John Dixwell. “
“Whalley, Oliver Cromwell’s cousin [& brother of Roger Williams’ one time romance Jane Whalley], had thrown himself into the civil war at the first rattle of sabers”
http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/ah/1964/1/1964_1_26.shtml
Thank you for the information in regards to Roger Williams and descendants. ...another little fact. At the time of the American Revolution, Catholics comprised about 1.6% of the population in the thirteen colonies.
Cromwell's model of forceful dispossession of land and killing of the holy men, "perfected" in Ireland, became the model for the westward movement of the murderous English.
You need look no further than the looting, burning, murder and kidnap accomplished by John Endicott (an affiliate of Williams, both of whom were students of Coke) on Block Island at the beginning of the Pequot War, a task that would later win Endicott the Massachusetts Bay Colony Governorship. Thus, it seems no coincidence that upon his later return to England in 1643, during the English Civil War, that Roger Williams secured a charter, calling his settlement "Providence Plantation." cf "Plantation" in Ireland.
Likewise, the sistered notion that only some were permittted the rights of "Englishmen" took firm and evil root in 1643 when the United Colonies accepted slavery (Setting the stage much later for the mass enslavement of Africans). Clearly, the views of Williams did not prevail at this time, in that Pequots and others had been captured and sold into slavery to the West Indies for more than a decade, a practice that no doubt that led to the bording of John Oldham's ship in Block Island and the killing of him and his crew. With the Pequots out of the way, the drive to the west begins.
One may only ask who were the savages.