[ON HOLD] 1568 ROGER WILLIAMS. Legal Text Owned by Roger Williams, Baptist Pioneer & Founder of Rhode Island. Helped Form Ideas of Religious Liberty!

CURRENTLY ON HOLD An unusual opportunity for an institution or established collector to acquire a truly exciting, formative, and core piece of Americana; similar items are exceptionally rare on the market, and the present even more-so with its established provenance.  The present 1568 copy of the foundational legal text, The Institutes of Justinian, provides a vital link between the legal training of Roger Williams and his understanding of dissent, liberty of conscience, the rights of the populace, and Native American rights. His influence, and that of the State of Rhode Island which he would  found, would exert pressure to liberalize views of religious freedom from the narrower view of the influence of Scottish Covenanters and Puritans dominating Colonial religious power and would ultimately be formalized in the Constitution of the United States.  Roger Williams [1603-1683] began his early adult life as an apprentice to the jurist, Sir Edward Coke. This is not without import. There, h