Master Roger Williams: A Biography by Ola Elizabeth WinslowReview by: Raymond P. StearnsThe Mississippi Valley Historical Review, Vol. 45, No. 1 (Jun., 1958), pp. 120-121Published by: Organization of American HistoriansStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1886704 .

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120 THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY HISTORICAL REVIEW

seems unduly concerned with Arminianism as a cause of the Puritans' dislike of episcopacy. Puritan objections to bishops antedated the Synod of Dort and the consequent Anglican reaction against Calvinism. In the dramatic narrative of the Hutchinson trial, the author unfortunately repeats the error which equates the victim's heresy with antinomianism, an error clearly perceived by Charles Francis Adams. In the discussion of the emer- gence of bicameralism, we miss reference to "that sow business," which Winthrop himself so faithfully recorded. More serious than these minor objections is the author's inclination to overlook some of the more unsavory aspects of the incidents under discussion. To be sure, he does not present Winthrop as wholly blameless and frankly recognizes that the Hutchinson trial was "the least attractive episode" in his career, but nothing is said, for instance, about the purge of the court which tried the so-called "Antino- mian." In connection with the Child affair, there is no mention of the disingenuous response of the General Court to the Remonstrance. One wonders whether the author, perhaps hard pressed to keep his book within a certain length, has not now and then presented Winthrop in too favorable a light. Finally, one must lament the lack of documentation, a fault common to the entire series, but especially unfortunate in this volume, for Mr. Morgan has used some interesting quotations.

In spite of these relatively minor objections, the author has produced a fine work which should prove of interest not only to historians but also to students of American culture and of the history of Christian ethics.

The City College, New York EMIL OBERHOLZER, JR.

Master Roger Williams: A Biography. By Ola Elizabeth Winslow. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1957. xiv + 328 pp. Illustrations, facsimiles, notes, bibliography, and index. $6.00.)

"To assume, as later generations have sometimes done, that Roger Williams was a headstrong, impulsive young rebel in 1635, was already the man to whom those same later generations call themselves deeply in- debted . . . is to read history backward" (p. 121). With this statement, Miss Winslow sounds one of the more appealing chords in this biography. There is no reading history backward. Rather, Roger Williams is presented as an earnest, hard-working, selfless teacher, with no evident sense of high destiny. "Throughout his life there was to be no settled plan working itself out by carefully ordered steps"; he was, rather, "something of an opportunist as to the where and what of his life. Looked back upon, his life shows no central unity of place or profession, but of an idea alone" (pp. 93-94). Precisely what this idea may have been, however, is not wholly clear. Implicitly, the reader can guess that it was "soul-liberty," separation of church and state, or conversion of the Indians - certainly all of these

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BOOK REVIEWS 121

"ideas" governed Roger Williams' thoughts and actions for the major part of his long life.

It is refreshing to read a historical biography of Roger Williams - one that recognizes that The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution was not the first appeal for soul-liberty (p. 203); one that states flatly that in Williams' time "Providence was not the democracy it has sometimes been asserted to have been, nor was such a way of government intended" (p. 138); in short, one that does not seek to trace embattled elements of twentieth-century American democracy back to Roger Williams and his Providence Plantation. It becomes the more satisfying to see these things done without lessening the stature of Roger Williams and without any intent, or effect, of "de- bunking." Here is a well-based, well-written, straightforward biography which presents a convincing portrait of its subject. Nowhere does the reader feel that the "lady doth protest too much." Even in the Epilogue, the author judiciously remarks of Williams: "His matter was not new to his age.... The times were not yet ready to accept what he had to offer by way of remedy, but the time to voice the protest was at hand. In a very explicit sense, he was not ahead of his day, not an inch."

Unhappily, at least in this reviewer's opinion, the format and typography of the book scarcely equal the contents, although a few illustrations, especially of persons and scenes, are good. There is, I believe, a misprint on page 162, where "1653" is given when "1643" is intended. Ordinarily, it would be of little importance, but in this instance it dates Williams' Key into the Language of America a decade too late.

The author may puzzle the reader who compares the account of Williams' banishment from the Bay Colony as interpreted on page 124 with that of page 256. In the former, she is cognizant of both civil and religious factors; in the latter, she states that "In the Massachusetts edict against him, there had been a relation between heresy and security, but a security against error in religious belief." Is the author overlooking the dangers to the Massa- chusetts patent'? A minor query arises from the author's citation in the "Bibliographical Statement" of Mrs. S. C. Lomas' edition of Cromwell's Letters and Speeches instead of the more complete edition of Wilbur Cortez Abbott. And this reviewer laments that Miss Winslow, after having pre- sented a most judicious biography found that "Limitations of space forbid even a selection of critical comment as to Roger Williams and his significance, as it has been evaluated over the years" (p. 316). May we hope that such a "critical comment" will yet come from Miss Winslow's pen'

University of Illinois RAYMOND P. STEARNS

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