the new dictatorship of the Independent Oliver Cromwell. The shift away from liberty in England was embodied in Cromwell’s brutal suppression of the Levellers, the leaders of libertarianism in the Revolution. With the mother country sliding away from liberty and into dictatorship, the aging Williams undoubtedly lost much of his previously firm grip on libertarian principle.

Williams’s shift from liberty was first revealed in 1655, when he suddenly imposed a system of compulsory military service on the people of Rhode Island. It was in reaction to this violation of all the libertarian traditions of Rhode Island that a vigorous opposition developed in the colony — an opposition that eventually polarized into outright individualistic anarchism.

Heading this move toward anarchism was the bulk of the Baptists of Rhode Island. Led byproceeded to aggrandize statism still further. The central government of the colony decided to bypass the home-rule right of the individual towns to finance the colony, and appointed central officials to levy general taxes directly upon the people. Laws against “immorality” were also strengthened, with corporal punishment to be levied for such crimes as “loose living.” The anti-immorality laws were probably a part of an attempt by Williams to curry favor with the Puritanical Oliver Cromwell. Most ominously, after Cromwell had ordered Rhode Island to punish “intestinal commotions,” the colony swiftly passed a law against “ringleaders of factions” who were thereafter to be sent to England for trial.

Baptist anarchism, however, continued to intensify in Rhode Island. One of the new adherents was none other than Catherine Scott, a