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April 13, 2006: Rare Roger Williams Book Resurfaces in Rhode Island
"In 1644 Roger Williams, original theorist of the separation of church and state, traveled to London to print his classic call for religious toleration, The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution. Parliament ordered copies of the book burned, but Williams saved some and brought them back to Rhode Island."
"This August, when Phoebe Simpson, a librarian at the Rhode Island Historical Society, opened some other historical writings on a shelf with rare books, she discovered one of the few 1644 editions of Bloudy Tenent that remain (only five other copies of this edition are known to exist). 'I just broke out in goose bumps," Simpson said in an interview. "It was the pure excitement of touching something that Roger Williams touched.'"
