Roger Williams, after being banished in 1636 from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for his religious views, had settled at the tip of Narragansett Bay, on land granted to him by the Narragansett tribe.

He called the site Providence and declared it a place of religious freedom.

Detractors of the idea of liberty of conscience sometimes referred to it as "Rogue's Island".

After conferring with Williams in 1638, Anne Hutchinson, William Coddington, John Clarke, Philip Sherman, and other religious dissidents had settled on Aquidneck Island (then known as Rhode Island), purchased from the local natives, who called it Pocasset.

The settlement of Portsmouth was governed by the Portsmouth Compact.

Disagreements among the founders had caused the southern part of the island to become the separate settlement of Newport.

Samuel Gorton had purchased the Native American lands at Shawomet in 1642, precipitating a military dispute with the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In 1644, Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport had united for their common independence as the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, governed by an elected council and "president".

Gorton had received a separate charter for his settlement in 1648, which he named Warwick after his patron.

In 1651, William Coddington had obtained a separate charter from England setting up the so-called Coddington Commission, which 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, led in 1653 to the reinstatement of the original charter.

Meanwhile, medical doctor and Baptist minister, John Clarke, a leading advocate of religious freedom in the Americas, had traveled to London in 1652 with Roger Williams to secure a new charter for the colony of Rhode Island.

Williams had returned to Rhode Island in 1654, but Clarke remains in England until the charter is granted.

After the overthrow of the English revolutionary government in 1660, it was necessary to gain a Royal Charter from the new king, Charles II of England.

Charles, a Catholic sympathizer in staunchly Protestant England, approves the colony's promise of religious freedom.

He grants the request on July 8, 1663, giving the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations an elected governor and legislature.