Williams was in the thirty-seventh or thirty-eighth year of his age at the time of his banishment. He fled to a wilderness inhabited only by savages. The two principal tribes--the Narragansets and Wampanoags--had, but a short time before he entered their country, been engaged in open hostilities. The government of Plymouth had on one occasion extended its aid to its early friend and ally, Massasoit, chief sachem of the Wampanoags. This interference had smothered, but not extinguished the flame. With these warring tribes, one of which (the Narragansets) was a very martial and numerous people, and exceedingly jealous of the whites, Williams was under the necessity of establishing relations of amity. He himself says that he was forced to travel between their sachems to satisfy them and all their dependent spirits of his honest intentions to live peaceably by them. He acted the part of a peace-maker amongst them, and eventually won, even for the benefit of his persecutors, the confidence of the Narragansets. It was through his influence that all the Indians in the vicinity of Narraganset bay were, shortly after his settlement at Mooshausick, united, and their whole force, under the directions of the very men who had driven him into the wilderness, brought to co-operate with the Massachusetts forces against the Pequots. [See Winthrop’s Journal, and a Sketch of the Life of Roger Williams, appended to the first volume of the Rhode Island Historical Collections, for the above extracts.] STANZA XII. _Much less my consort and these pledges dear._ Williams was the father of six children, viz: Mary, Freeborn, Providence, Mercy, Daniel, and Joseph. I am not able to determine their number at the time of his banishment. STANZA XLIII. _Thrice did our northern tiger seem to come._ Frequently called the Panther, the Cat of the Mountain, or Catamount. There is indeed no animal of America entitled to the appellation of the Panther; but this name is frequently applied to the animal mentioned, and is adopted in this production for that reason. STANZA LVIII. _’Twas Waban’s cry at which the monsters ran._ The Indians imitate very perfectly the cry of wild beasts, and use that art in conveying signals and for other purposes, during their hunts and other expeditions. The known antipathy between the wolf and the catamount or panther, and the superiority of the latter over the former, may justify the text. STANZA LXVI. _Where burning fagot nevermore shall glow, Fired by the wrath of persecuting men._ I know not that the fagot has been generally used in any protestant country for the extirpation of heresy, yet its very general application to that purpose by Roman Catholics has, by common consent, made it the appropriate emblem of persecution in all countries. STANZA LXIX. _Until Sowaniu’s breezes scatter flowers again._