Another "Solemn Public Lie"

When Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and the founder of religious toleration in what was to become the United States of America, examined the charter that King James I had given the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, he found in that document two significant misstatements. Williams first pointed out the falsity of the recital wherein the King "blessed God that he was the first Christian Prince that had discovered this land."' He then denounced the royal land grant to the Massachusetts Bay Company, because that land belonged, not to the King, but to the Native Americans who lived in that area. Accordingly, Roger Williams asserted that the monarch had told "a solemn public lie."