This "troubler of Israel," as Governor Winthrop termed him, wrote a pamphlet denying the right of the governor and assistants to call themselves "Scriptural Magistrates." Being questioned by the court, the captain made haste, according to the record, to desire that "the said book might be burned as being weak and oppressive." Still unsatisfied, the court ordered that for his said offence he should for three years be disabled from bearing any office in the colony.[1] The first great check which this religious despotism received proceeded from Roger Williams, who arrived in February, 1631, in the _Lyon_, which brought supplies to the famishing colonists of Massachusetts.

He was the son of a merchant in London and a graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he took the degree of master of arts in 1627.

In his mere religious creed Williams was harsher than even the orthodox ministers of Massachusetts.

Soon after his arrival he was invited to become one of the ministers of the Boston church, but refused because that church declined to make a public declaration of their repentance for holding communion in the churches of England while they lived in the home country.
He was then invited to Salem, where he made himself very popular by his talents and eloquence.

Nevertheless, within two months he advanced other "scrupulosities," denying the validity of land-titles proceeding from the Massachusetts government, and the right of the magistrates to impose penalties as to Sabbath-breaking or breaches of the laws of the first table.