Roger Williams, a theologian, independent preacher, and linguist, had in 1636 founded a colony on land gifted by the Narragansett sachem Canonicus.

Fleeing from religious persecution in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Williams had agreed with his fellow settlers on an egalitarian constitution providing for majority rule "in civil things" and liberty of conscience.

He had named the colony Providence Plantation, in recognition of agriculture as the basis of its economy and believing that God had brought him and his followers there.

Williams had named the other islands in the Narragansett Bay after virtues: Patience Island, Prudence Island and Hope Island.

The Baptist leader Anne Hutchinson had purchased land on Aquidneck Island from the Native Americans in 1637, settling in Pocasset, now known as Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

With her had come her husband, William Coddington and John Clarke, among others.

Other neighboring settlements of refugees had followed, which all form a loose alliance.

They had sought recognition together as an English colony in 1643, in response to threats to their independence.

The revolutionary Long Parliament in London had in March 1644 granted a charter.

The colonists had refused to have a governor, but set up an elected "president" and council.

The second of the plantation colonies on the mainland (following Anne Hutchinson’s 1638 colony of Portsmouth and the 1639 colony of Newport founded by Coddington and Clarke; both on Aquidneck or Rhode Island) was Samuel Gorton’s Shawomet Purchase of 1642 from the Narragansetts.

As Gorton had settled at Shawomet, the Massachusetts authorities had laid claim to his territory and acted by force to enforce their claim.

After considerable difficulties with the Massachusetts Bay General Court, Gorton had traveled to London to enlist the sympathies of Robert Rich, the Second Earl of Warwick, Lord Admiral and head of the Parliamentary Commission on Plantation Affairs (responsible for managing the overseas plantation colonies).

Gorton had returned to his colony in 1648 with a letter from Rich, ordering Massachusetts to cease molesting him and his people.

In gratitude, Gorton had renamed Shawomet Plantation to Warwick Plantation.

The separate plantation colonies in the Narragansett Bay region are very progressive for their time, passing laws abolishing witchcraft trials, imprisonment for debt, most capital punishment, and on March 18, 1652, chattel slavery of both blacks and whites.

Most religious groups are welcomed, with only some restrictions on Catholicism.

William Coddington had in 1651 obtained a separate charter from England setting up the so-called Coddington Commission, which had made Coddington life governor of the islands of Rhode Island and Connecticut in a federation with Connecticut Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Protest, open rebellion and a further petition to Oliver Cromwell in London, lead to the reinstatement in 1653 of the original charter.