more civilized portions of the Protestant world; but it is needless to say that they were not the views of the seventeenth century, in Massachusetts or elsewhere.  For declaring such opinions as these on the continent of Europe, anywhere except in Holland, a man like Williams would in that age have run great risk of being burned at the stake.  In England, under the energetic misgovernment of Laud, he would very likely have had to stand in the pillory with his ears cropped, or perhaps, like Bunyan and Baxter, would have been sent to jail.  In Massachusetts such views were naturally enough regarded as anarchical, but in Williams’s case they were further complicated by grave political imprudence.  He wrote a pamphlet in which he denied the right of the colonists to the lands which they held in New England under the king’s grant.  He held that the soil belonged to the Indians, that the settlers could only obtain a valid title to it by purchase from them, and that the acceptance of a patent from a mere intruder, like the king, was a sin requiring public repentance.  This doctrine was sure to be regarded in England as an attack upon the king’s supremacy over Massachusetts, and at the same time an incident occurred in Salem which made it all the more unfortunate.  The royal colours under which the little companies of militia marched were emblazoned with the red cross of St. George.  The uncompromising Endicott loathed this emblem as tainted with Popery, and one day he publicly defaced the flag of the Salem company by cutting out the cross.  The enemies of Massachusetts misinterpreted this act as a defiance aimed at the royal authority, and they attributed it to the teachings of Williams.  In view of the king’s unfriendliness these were dangerous proceedings.  Endicott was summoned before the General Court at Boston, where he was publicly reprimanded and declared incapable of holding office for a year.  A few months afterward, in January, 1636, Williams was ordered by the General Court to come to Boston and embark in a ship that was about to set sail for England.  But he escaped into the forest, and made his way through the snow to the wigwam of Massasoit.  He was a rare linguist, and had learned to talk fluently in the language of the Indians, and now he passed the winter in trying to instill into their ferocious hearts something of the gentleness of Christianity.  In the spring he was privately notified by Winthrop that if he were to steer his course to Narragansett bay he would be secure from molestation; and such was the beginning of the settlement of Providence. [Sidenote:  From religious dissensions; Roger Williams]