American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans

by Eve LaPlante

This “Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations,” issued to Williams and the Reverend John Clarke, who had assisted Anne following her miscarriage, guaranteed religious freedom—in keeping with the predilections of its founders. “No person within the said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be any wise molested, 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…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.” This Rhode Island language leads directly to the Third Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which was approved by the First Congress in 1789: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These words and the underlying concept owe as much to the Hutchinsonians on Aquidneck as to Roger Williams in Providence Plantation—as well as to the 1634 charter of the colony of Maryland, the earliest such document in English North America to allow religious toleration.