Episcopal Diocese of Rhode Island

Episcopal worship in Rhode Island dates to 1635 with the arrival in what is now Cumberland of the Rev. William Blackstone, an Anglican priest from Boston. An itinerant preacher, Blackstone preached regularly to Indians and settlers in a field beneath the "Catholic Oak" in Lonsdale . He also traveled astride a large white bull from settlement to settlement, stopping to preach and administer the sacraments whenever requested to do so. Blackstone built no churches, however, and Anglicans in Rhode Island continued to rely on itinerant priests to minister to their needs for the remainder of the seventeenth century.

It was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that the first Anglican Church was built in Rhode Island. In 1698, a small congregation in Newport petitioned Lord Bellomont, the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, to assist it in obtaining a permanent minister. The application was approved and Trinity Church was built in 1701. It was followed shortly by St. Paul's in Narragansett (1707), St. Michael's in Bristol (1720), and King's Church, now St. John's, Cathedral, in Providence (1722).

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