Roger Williams in England at the Peace Dale Museum of Art and Culture

In 2017 and 2019, Professor Charlotte Carrington-Farmer of Roger Williams University and Historian John McNiff retraced Roger Williams’ footsteps in England with groups of RWU students. At the Peace Dale Museum of Art and Culture, they presented highlights of those trips to a packed audience on December 11, 2019. Museum Board President Lisa Fiore welcomed a standing-room-only crowd to hear the presentation by Charlotte and John who have both presented at the Museum before. Charlotte and John described locations in Williams’ life, including the Smithfield district of London and Charterhouse School and Pembroke College that he attended and that they visited with the students. Both went into some detail about the instances when dozens of people were burned at the stake less than 100 yards from where Williams grew up in central London in the early 1600s as described in Thomas Fuller’s 1656 Church History of Britain. On the trips, they were able to locate and view original documents from Williams’ life, including an entry that he signed in 1623 while a student at Trinity College in Cambridge, England. Click here for a 73-minute video of their presentation.

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