Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations

The Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was an English colony on the eastern seaboard of North America, founded in 1636 on land of the Narragansett people by the Puritan minister Roger Williams after his exile from the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Williams believed in the separation of church and state so strongly that the colony's leadership had persecuted him for considering the Church of England irredeemably corrupt; he found refuge among the Narragansetts, negotiated with the sachems Canonicus and Miantonomoh for land, and named his settlement Providence Plantations as thanks for divine guidance. Three more settlements, Portsmouth, Newport and Warwick, soon joined on Narragansett Bay, and the colony became a haven for religious dissenters known for its freedom and self-governance. The four settlements formed a confederacy under the Parliamentary Patent of 1643 to 1644, and Charles II granted the fuller Royal Charter of 1663 which established the government and guaranteed the liberties. Rhode Island stayed self-governing until 1776, when it declared independence from Great Britain and became the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.