Robert Coles (settler)

Robert Coles (c. 1600 – 1655) was a 17th-century New England colonist who is known for the scarlet-letter punishment he received in the Massachusetts Bay Colony and his role as an original proprietor of Providence and co-author of the Providence Combination of 1640, which established the first secular, representative democracy in America.

Coles arrived in Massachusetts Bay in 1630 on the Winthrop Fleet where he became a first settler of the towns of Roxbury and Agawam, now Ipswich, and an early settler of Salem. After repeated fines for drunkenness, he was ultimately sentenced to wear a red letter "D" as a badge of shame for a year, an event that may have served as an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter.

He left Massachusetts Bay to join Roger Williams at Providence where he was one of the 13 original proprietors and a founding member of the First Baptist Church in America. He was a first settler of Pawtuxet and an early settler of Shawomet, now the Rhode Island towns of Cranston and Warwick.

The Providence Combination of 1640 was signed by both men and women in Providence and contained 12 articles that defined borders, created elected arbitrators, and affirmed liberty of conscience.

After Coles's death his family moved to Long Island, New York. Three of his sons founded the city of Glen Cove, New York, while three of his daughters married into the Townsend family who engaged in civil disobedience to promote the separation of church and state.