Notes Rev Roger Williams was a contemporary of Oliver Cromwell, John Milton and John Green (who later meets up with him in New England in 1635) while at Cambridge. He sailed to the New World in 1631 and became the first pastor of the Congregational church in Salem in 1629. He was formally tried in July 1635 by the Massachusetts General court for egregious “errors” such as his statements that “the civil power of the State could properly have no jurisdiction over the conscience of men” and that “the King's patent conveyed no just title to the land of the colonists, which should be bought from its rightful owners, the Indians.” Although he initially was sentenced to banishment in 1636, the Puritan's tried to deport him to England, but he escaped and fled to the wilderness of the Narragansett Indians to the south. There, in June 1636, he purchased land from the Indians and founded the new village of Providence. His Cambridge colleague, John Green, had come to the New World a year earlier, and in 1638, Roger deeded him land. William's granddaughter, Phebe, married Green's grandson, Job (source: [1]).