Transcriber’s Note

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Where a single note is referred to multiple times, the link from the note to its references will always return to the first instance.

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STATUE OF ROGER WILLIAMS.

A
SHORT HISTORY
OF
RHODE ISLAND,

BY

George Washington Greene, LL.D.,

Late Non-Resident Professor of American History in Cornell University; Author of “The Life of Major-General Nathanael Greene;” “Historical View of the American Revolution,” etc., etc.

PROVIDENCE:
J. A. & R. A. Reid, Publishers,
1877.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1877, by

ANNA MARIA GREENE,

in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

TO
Anna Maria Greene,
My Dear Mother:

You bear your ninety-three years so lightly that i invite your attention to a new volume of mine with as much assurance of your sympathy as when i crowed and wondered over my first picture book an infant on your knee. For your sympathy is as quick and as warm as it was then, and your memory goes back with unerring certainty to the men and the scenes of almost a century ago. Your eyes have looked upon Washington, and your tenacious memory can still recall the outline of his majestic form.

The first time that i ventured to send forth a volume to the world, i set upon the dedication page the name of my father. He has been dead many years. You still linger behind, and long may you linger. Long may those fresh memories which give such a charm to your daily life continue to cheer you and instruct those who have the privilege of living with you. They have seen life imperfectly who have not seen what a charm it wears when the heart that has beat so long still lends its genial warmth to the still inquiring mind.

Reverentially and affectionately your son,
GEORGE W. GREENE.

Preface.

There are two classes of history, each of which has claims upon our attention peculiarly its own. One is a sober teacher, the other a pleasant companion. One opens new paths of thought, the other throws new light upon the old, and both agree in making man the chief object of their meditations.

Nearly two thousand years ago a Roman historian likened the life of his country to the life of man. Time has confirmed the parallel. Nations, like men, have their infancy and their youth, their robust manhood and their garrulous old age. Their lives like the lives of men are full of encouragement and of warning. Interpret them aright and they become trusty guides. Misapply their lessons and you grope in the dark and stumble at every step.

And both states and men have their special duties and were created for special ends. The God that made them assigned to each its problem, and to work this out is to work out His will. Of this problem history is the record and the interpreter. It tells us what man has been, and thereby aids us to divine what he yet may be.

If with the philosopher history reveals the laws of life, with the poet she recalls the past and stirs human sympathies in their profoundest depths. Man follows man on her checkered stage; nations rise and fall; mysteries enchain us; imagination controls us; reason guides us; conscience admonishes and warns; and first and foremost of all our stimulants to action is our sympathy with our fellow-man.

I have attempted in the following pages to tell what the part of Rhode Island has been in this great drama. A talent was entrusted to her. Did she wrap it in a napkin? To those who are familiar with the accurate and exhaustive work of Governor Arnold, it will be needless to say that but for the aid of his volumes, mine would never have been written.

GEORGE W. GREENE.

Windmill Cottage,
East Greenwich, R. I., April 8th, 1877.

Analytical Table

A Short History of Rhode Island.

CHAPTER I.

CONDITION OF AFFAIRS IN MASSACHUSETTS BAY AND PLYMOUTH COLONIES.—ARRIVAL AND BANISHMENT OF ROGER WILLIAMS.

The nations of antiquity, unable to discover their real origin, found a secret gratification in tracing it to the Gods. Thus a religious sentiment was connected with the foundation of states, and the building of the city walls was consecrated by religious rites. The Christian middle ages preserved the spirit of Pagan antiquity, and every city celebrated with solemn rites the day of its patron saint. The colonies, which, in the natural progress of their development, became the United States of America, traced their history, by authentic documents, to the first Christian cultivators of the soil; and in New England the religious idea lay at the root of their foundation and development. In Plymouth it took the form of separatism, or a simple severance from the Church of England. In Massachusetts Bay it aimed at the establishment of a theocracy, and the enforcement of a rigorous uniformity of creed and discipline. From the resistance to this uniformity came Rhode Island and the doctrine of soul liberty.

On the 5th of February, 1631, the ship Lyon, with twenty passengers and a large cargo of provisions, came to anchor in Nantaskett roads. On the 8th she reached Boston, and the 9th, which had been set apart as a day of fasting and prayer for the little Colony, sorely stricken by famine, was made a day of thanksgiving and praise for its sudden deliverance. Among those who, on that day, first united their prayers with the prayers of the elder colonists, was the young colonist, Roger Williams.

Little is known of the early history of Roger Williams, except that he was born in Wales, about 1606; attracted, early in life, the attention of Sir Edward Coke by his skill in taking down in short hand, sermons, and speeches in the Star Chamber; was sent by the great lawyer to Sutton Hospital, now known as the Charter House, with its fresh memories of Coleridge and Charles Lamb; went thence in the regular time to Oxford; took orders in the Church of England, and finally embraced the doctrine of the Puritans. Besides Latin and Greek, which formed the principal objects of an University course, he acquired a competent knowledge of Hebrew and several modern languages, for the study of which he seemed to have had a peculiar facility. His industry and attainments soon won him a high place in the esteem of his religions brethren, and although described by one who knew him as “passionate and precipitate,” he gained and preserved the respect of some of the most eminent among his theological opponents. The key to his life may be found in the simple fact that he possessed an active and progressive mind in an age wherein thought instantly became profession, and profession passed promptly into action.

When this “godly and zealous young minister” landed in Boston, he found the territory which has long been known as Massachusetts in the possession of two distinct colonies, the Colony of Plymouth, founded in 1620, by the followers of John Robinson, of Leyden, and known as the colony of separatists, or men who had separated from the Church of England, but were willing to grant to others the same freedom of opinion which they claimed for themselves; and the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, founded ten years later by a band of intelligent Puritans, many of them men of position and fortune, who, alarmed by the variety of new opinions and doctrines which seemed to menace a total subversion of what they regarded as religion, had resolved to establish a new dwelling place in a new world, with the Old and New Testament for statute book and constitution. Building upon this foundation the clergy naturally became their guides and counselors in all things, and the control of the law, which was but another name for the control of the Bible, extended to all the acts of life, penetrating to the domestic fireside, and holding every member of the community to a rigid accountability for speech as well as action. Asking for no exemption from the rigorous application of Bible precept for themselves, they granted none to others, and looked upon the advocate of any interpretation but theirs as a rebel to God and an enemy to their peace.

It was to this iron-bound colony that Roger Williams brought his restless, vigorous and fearless spirit. Disagreements soon arose and suspicions were awakened. He claimed a freedom of speech irreconcilable with the fundamental principles of their government; and they a power over opinion irreconcilable with freedom of thought. Neither of them could look upon his own position from the other’s point of view. Both were equally sincere. And much as we may now condemn the treatment which Williams received at the hands of the colonial government of Massachusetts Bay, its charter and its religious tenets justified it in treating him as an intruder.

The first public expression of the hostility he was to encounter came from the magistrates of Boston within two months after his arrival, and, on the very day on which the church of Salem had installed him as assistant to their aged pastor, Mr. Skelton. The magistrates were a powerful body, and before autumn he found his situation so uncomfortable that he removed to Plymouth, where the rights of individual opinion were held in respect, if not fully acknowledged. Here, while assiduously engaged in the functions of his holy office, he was brought into direct contact with several of the most powerful chiefs of the neighboring tribes of Indians, and among them of Massasoit and Miantonomi, who were to exercise so controlling an influence over his fortunes. His fervent spirit caught eagerly at the prospect of bringing them under Christian influences, and his natural taste for the study of languages served to lighten the labor of preparation. “God was pleased,” he wrote many years afterwards, “to give me a painful, patient spirit to lodge with them in their filthy holes, even while I lived at Plymouth and Salem, to gain their tongue; my soul’s desire was to do the natives good.”

This was apparently the calmest period of his stormy career. It was at Plymouth that his first child, a daughter, was born. But although he soon made many friends, and had the satisfaction of knowing that his labors were successful, his thoughts still turned towards Salem, and, receiving an invitation to resume his place as assistant of Mr. Skelton, whose health was on the wane, he returned thither after an absence of two years. Some of the members of his church had become so attached to him that they followed him to the sister colony.

And now came suspicions which quickly ripened into controversies, and before another two years were over led to what he regarded as persecution, but what the rulers of the Bay Colony held to be the fulfillment of the obligation which they had assumed in adopting the whole Bible as their rule of life. In 1635 he was banished from the colony by a solemn sentence of the General Court, for teaching:

“1st. That we have not our land by Pattent from the King, but that the natives are the true owners of it, and that we ought to repent of such receiving it by Pattent.

2d. That it is not lawful to call a wicked person to swear, to pray, as being actions of God’s worship.

3d. That it is not lawful to heare any of the Ministers of the Parish Assemblies in England.

4th. That the civil magistrates power extends only to the Bodies and Goods and outward state of man.”

For us who read these charges with the light of two more centuries of progress upon them, it seems strange that neither the General Court nor Williams himself should have perceived that the only one wherein civilization was interested was that to which they have assigned the least conspicuous place.

CHAPTER II.

SUFFERINGS OF ROGER WILLIAMS IN THE WILDERNESS.—FOUNDS A SETTLEMENT ON THE SEEKONK RIVER.—IS ADVISED TO DEPART.—SEEKS OUT A NEW PLACE, WHICH HE CALLS PROVIDENCE.

When the sentence of banishment was first pronounced against the future founder of Rhode Island, his health was so feeble that it was resolved to suspend the execution of it till spring. This, however, was soon found to be impracticable, for the affection and confidence which he had inspired presently found open expression, and friends began to gather around him in his own house to listen to his teaching. Lack of energy was not a defect of the government of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and learning that rumors of a new colony to be founded on Narragansett Bay were already afloat, it resolved to send the supposed leader of the unwelcome enterprise back to England. A warrant, therefore, was given to Captain Underhill, a man of doubtful character in the employment of the Colony, with orders to proceed directly to Salem, put the offender on board his pinnace, and convey him to a ship that lay in Boston harbor ready to sail for England with the first fair wind. When the pinnace reached Salem, he found only the wife and infant children of the banished man, and a people deeply grieved for the loss of their pastor. Williams was gone, and whither no one could say.

And whither, indeed, could he go? The thin and scattered settlements of the northern colonies were bounded seaward by a tempestuous ocean, and inland by a thick belt of primeval forest, whose depths civilized man had never penetrated. If he escaped the wild beasts that prowled in their recesses, could he hope to escape the wilder savage, who claimed the forest for his hunting grounds? “I was sorely tossed,” Williams writes in after years, “for fourteen weeks in a bitter winter-season, not knowing what bread or bed did mean.” The brave man’s earnest mind bore up the frail and suffering body.

And now he began to reap the fruit of his kind treatment of the natives, and the pains which he had taken to learn their language. “These ravens fed me in the wilderness,” he wrote, with a touching application of Scripture narrative. They gave him the shelter of their squalid wigwams, and shared with him their winter store. The great chief Massasoit opened his door to him, and, when spring came, gave him a tract of land on the Seekonk River, where he “pitched and began to build and plant.” Here he was soon joined by some friends from Salem, who had resolved to cast in their lot with his. But the seed which they planted had already begun to send up its early shoots, when a letter from his “ancient friend, the Governor of Plymouth,” came, to “lovingly advise him” that he was “fallen into the edge of their bounds;” that they were “loth to displease the Bay,” and that if he would “remove but to the other side of the water,” he would have “the country before [him] and might be as free as themselves,” and they “should be loving neighbors together.” Williams accepted the friendly counsel, and, taking five companions with him, set out in a canoe to follow the downward course of the Seekonk and find a spot whereon he might plant and build in safety. As the little boat came under the shade of the western bank of the pleasant stream, a small party of Indians was seen watching them from a large flat rock that rose a few feet above the water’s edge. “Wha-cheer, netop?—Wha-cheer?—how are you, friend?” they cried; and Williams accepting the friendly salutation as a favorable omen, turned the prow of his canoe to the shore. Tradition calls the spot where he landed, Slate Rock, and the name of Wha-cheer square has been given in advance to the land around it. What was said or done at that first interview has not been recorded, but the parting was as friendly as the meeting, and Williams resuming his course, soon found himself at the junction of the Seekonk and Mooshausick. Two points mark the intermingling of the two streams, and in those days the waters must have spread their broad bosom like a lake, and gleamed and danced within their fringe of primeval forest. Williams, following, perhaps, the counsel of the Indians, turned northward and held his way between the narrowing banks of the Mooshausick, till he espied, at the foot of a hill which rose shaggy with trees and precipitate from its eastern shore, the flash and sparkling of a spring. Here he landed, and, recalling his trials and the mighty hand that had sustained him through them all, called the place Providence.

CHAPTER III.

WILLIAMS OBTAINS A GRANT OF LAND AND FOUNDS A COLONY.—FORM OF GOVERNMENT IN THE COLONY.—WILLIAMS GOES TO ENGLAND TO OBTAIN A ROYAL CHARTER.

The territory which now forms the State of Rhode Island, with the exception of Bristol County, in which lay Mount Hope, the seat of Massasoit, chief of the Wamponoags, was held by the Narragansetts, a tribe skilled in the Indian art of making wampum, the Indian money, and the art common to most barbarous nations of making rude vessels in clay and stone. They had once been very powerful, and could still bring four or five thousand braves to the warpath. Their language was substantially the same with that of the other New England tribes, and was understood by the natives of New York, New Jersey and Delaware. With this language Roger Williams had early made himself familiar.

It was labor well bestowed, and he was to reap the reward of it in his day of tribulation. The chiefs of the Narragansetts when he came among them were Canonicus, an “old prince, most shy of the English to his latest breath,” and his nephew, Miantonomi. Their usual residence was on the beautiful Island of Conanicut; and when Williams first came he found them at feud with his other friend, Ossameguin, or Massasoit, Sachem of the Wamponoags. His first care was to reconcile these chiefs, “traveling between them three to pacify, to satisfy all these and their dependent spirits of (his) honest intention to live peaceably by them.” The well founded distrust of the English which Canonicus cherished to the end of his life did not extend to Williams, to whom he made a grant of land between the Mooshausick and the Wanasquatucket; confirming it two years later by a deed bearing the marks of the two Narragansett chiefs. This land Williams divided with twelve of his companions, reserving for them and himself the right of extending the grant “to such others as the major part of us shall admit to the same fellowship of vote with us.” It was a broad foundation, and he soon found himself in the midst of a flourishing colony.

The proprietors, dividing their lands into two parts, “the grand purchase of Providence,” and the “Pawtuxet purchase,” made an assignment of lots to other colonists, and entered resolutely upon the task of bringing the soil under cultivation. The possession of property naturally leads to the making of laws, and the new colonists had not been together long before they felt the want of a government. The form which it first assumed amongst them was that of a democratic municipality, wherein the “masters of families” incorporated themselves into a town, and transacted their public business in town meeting. The colonists of Plymouth had formed their social compact in the cabin of the Mayflower. The colonists of Providence formed theirs on the banks of the Mooshausick. “We, whose names are hereunder,” it reads, “desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for public good for the body, in an orderly way, by the major assent of the present inhabitants, masters of families, incorporated together into a town fellowship, and such others as they shall admit unto them only in civil things.”

Never before, since the establishment of Christianity, has the separation of Church from State been definitely marked out by this limitation of the authority of the magistrate to civil things; and never, perhaps, in the whole course of history, was a fundamental principle so vigorously observed. Massachusetts looked upon the experiment with jealousy and distrust, and when ignorant or restless men confounded the right of individual opinion in religious matters with a right of independent action in civil matters, those who had condemned Roger Williams to banishment, eagerly proclaimed that no well ordered government could exist in connection with liberty of conscience. Many grave discussions were held, and many curious questions arose before the distinction between liberty and license became thoroughly interwoven with daily life; but only one passage of this singular chapter has been preserved, and, as if to leave no doubt concerning the spirit which led to its preservation, the narrator begins with these ominous words: “At Providence, also, the Devil was not idle.”

The wife of Joshua Verin was a great admirer of Williams’s preaching, and claimed the right of going to hear him oftener than suited the wishes of her husband. Did she, in following the dictates of her conscience, which bade her go to a meeting which harmonized with her feelings, violate the injunction of Scripture which bids wives obey their husbands? Or did he, in exercising his acknowledged control as a husband, trench upon her right of conscience in religious concerns? It was a delicate question; but after long deliberation and many prayers, the claims of conscience prevailed, and “it was agreed that Joshua Verin, upon the breach of a covenant for restraining of the libertie of conscience, shall be withheld from the libertie of voting till he shall declare the contrarie”—a sentence from which it appears that the right of suffrage was regarded as a conceded privilege, not a natural right.

Questions of jurisdiction also arose. Massachusetts could not bring herself to look upon her sister with a friendly eye, and Plymouth was soon to be merged in Massachusetts. It was easy to foresee that there would be bickerings and jealousies, if not open contention between them. Still the little Colony grew apace. The first church was founded in 1639. To meet the wants of an increased population the government was changed, and five disposers or selectmen charged with the principal functions of administration, subject, however, to the superior authority of monthly town meetings; so early and so naturally did municipal institutions take root in English colonies. A vital point was yet untouched. Williams, indeed, held that the Indians, as original occupants of the soil, were the only legal owners of it, and carrying his principle into all his dealings with the natives, bought of them the land on which he planted his Colony. The Plymouth and Massachusetts colonists, also, bought their land of the natives, but in their intercourse with the whites founded their claim upon royal charter. They even went so far as to apply for a charter covering all the territory of the new Colony.

Meanwhile two other colonies had been planted on the shores of Narragansett Bay: the Colony of Aquidnick, on the Island of Rhode Island, and the Colony of Warwick. The sense of a common danger united them, and, in 1643, they appointed Roger Williams their agent to repair to England and apply for a royal charter. It has been treasured up as a bitter memory that he was compelled to seek a conveyance in New York, for Massachusetts would not allow him to pass through her territories. His negotiations were crowned with full success. In 1644 he was again in the colonies, and the inhabitants of Providence, advised of his success, met him at Seekonk and escorted him across the river with an exultant procession of fourteen canoes.

To defray the expenses of his mission he taught Latin, Greek and Hebrew—counting “two sons of Parliament men” among his pupils—and read Dutch to Milton.

CHAPTER IV.

SETTLEMENT OF AQUIDNECK AND WARWICK.—PEQUOT WAR.—DEATH OF MIANTONOMI.

I have said that two other colonies had been founded in Rhode Island. Like Providence, they both had their origin in religious controversy. Not long after the return of Roger Williams there came to Boston a woman of high and subtle spirit, deeply imbued with the controversial temper of her age. Her name was Anna Hutchinson, and she taught that salvation was the fruit of grace, not of works. It is easy to conceive how such a doctrine might be perverted by logical interpretation, and religious standing made independent of moral character. This was presently done, and Massachusetts, true to her theoretic system, banished Anna Hutchinson and her followers as she had banished Roger Williams. In the autumn of 1637, nineteen of these Antinomians, as they were called to distinguish them from the legalists or adherents of the law, took refuge in Rhode Island, where they were kindly welcomed; and, soon after, purchasing the Island of Aquidneck, through the intervention of Williams and Sir Henry Vane, laid the foundation of a new town at Pocasset, near the north end of the Island. Their leaders were William Coddington and John Clarke, under whose wise guidance the little Colony made rapid progress, and soon began another settlement at Newport, in the southern part of the island. Here, breaking roads, clearing up woods, exterminating wolves and foxes, opening a trade in lumber, engaging boldly in building ships, and above all forming a free and simple government, with careful regard to religion and education, they soon found themselves in advance of their elder sister, Providence. In both colonies the principle of religious liberty formed the basis of civil organization. On Rhode Island, however, it was confined to Christians—a step greatly in advance of the general intelligence of the age. But in Providence Roger Williams went still further, and, meeting the wants of all future ages, proclaimed it the right of every human being.

The other Colony, as if to illustrate the varieties of human opinion, was founded by Samuel Gorton, one of those bold but restless men who leave doubtful names in history because few see their character from the same point of view. In Gorton’s religious sentiments there seems to have been a large leaven of mysticism, and the writings that he has left us are not pleasant reading. But the practical danger of his teaching lay in his denial of all government not founded upon the authority of the King or of Parliament. Massachusetts was a legitimate government within her own bounds. But unchartered Rhode Island had no legal existence. At Pocasset Gorton soon came into collision with the civil authorities and was banished. In Providence he presently raised such dissensions that Williams almost lost heart, and began to think seriously of withdrawing to his little Island of Patience, in Narragansett Bay. At last Gorton with eleven companions bought Shawomet of its Indian owners and established himself there. This brought him into open hostility with Massachusetts, which having already cast longing eyes upon the commercial advantages of Narragansett Bay, was secretly endeavoring to establish a claim to all the land on its shores.

Hostile words were soon followed by hostile acts. Gorton and his companions were besieged in their house by an armed band, compelled to surrender, carried by force to Massachusetts, tried for heresy, and barely escaping the gibbet, condemned to imprisonment and irons. A reaction soon followed. Public sentiment came to their relief. They were banished indeed from Massachusetts, but they were set at liberty and allowed to return to Rhode Island. At Aquidneck they were received with the sympathy which generous natures ever feel for the victims of persecution, and Gorton was raised to an honorable magistracy in the very colony wherein he had been openly whipped as a disturber of the public peace. It was not till the claims of Massachusetts had been virtually set aside by the charter which Roger Williams obtained for his Colony that Gorton returned to Shawomet, and set himself to rebuild the Colony of Warwick.

Meanwhile great changes had taken place in the relations of the white man to the red. I have told how kindly the natives received Roger Williams, and how justly he dealt by them. I will now tell, though briefly, with what a Christian spirit he used the influence over the Indians, which his justice had won for him, to protect the white men who had driven him from amongst them. On the western border of the territory of the Massachusetts dwelt the fierce and powerful Pequots. No Indian had ever hated the whites with a hatred more intense than they, or watched the growth of the white settlements with a truer perception of the danger with which they menaced the original owners of the soil. They resolved upon war, and to make their triumph sure, resolved also to win over the Narragansetts as active allies. Tidings of the danger soon reached the Bay Colony, and Governor Vane appealed to Roger Williams to interpose and prevent the fatal alliance. Not a moment was to be lost. The Pequot embassadors were already in conference with Canonicus and Miantonomi on Conanicut. Forgetting his personal wrongs, and barely taking time to tell his wife whither he was going, he set forth alone in his canoe, “cutting through a stormy wind and great seas, every minute in hazard of life.”

Greater hazard awaited him on shore. English blood had already been shed by the Pequots, and knowing their fierce nature, he “nightly looked for their bloody knives at his own throat also.” For three days and three nights he confronted them face to face, and so great was the control which he had gained over the Narragansett chiefs that he succeeded in “breaking in pieces the Pequot negotiation and design, and made and finished by many travels and charges the English league with the Narragansetts and Mohegans against the Pequots.” The war came. The Narragansetts were on the side of the English; fearful massacres were committed; the Pequots were rooted out from their native soil forever; Massachusetts was saved; but the Christian, forgetting of injuries wherewith Williams had come to her aid in the critical moment of her fortunes, was not deemed of sufficient virtue to wash out the stain of heresy, and the sentence of banishment was left unrepealed on the darker page of her colonial records.

The Pequots were crushed. The turn of the Narragansetts came next. It was the fate of the red man to everywhere give way as a civilization irreconcilable with his habits and his beliefs advanced, and it is for the good of humanity that it is so. But it is sad to remember that the Christian, with the Bible in his hand, should have sought his examples in the stern denunciations of the Old Testament, rather than in the injunctions to love and mercy of the New. Six years after the formation of the league against the Pequots, a war broke out between Sequasson, an ally of Miantonomi and the Mohegans. The Narragansett Sachem, trusting to the good faith of his adversary, the powerful Uncas, was betrayed in a conference, and his followers, taken by surprise in open violation of the laws of even Indian warfare, were put to flight. The unfortunate chief fell into the hands of his enemy, who, fearing the English too much to put an ally of theirs to death, referred the question of his fate to the Commissioners of the United Colonies—Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven—who were about to hold a conference in Boston. Rhode Island, which had been excluded from the league, had no voice in this outrage, and Williams, whose remonstrances might have been of some avail, was in England. To give greater solemnity to their deliberations the Commissioners called to their aid “five of the most judicious elders,” and by their united voices Miantonomi was condemned to die. The execution of the sentence was entrusted to Uncas, and the only condition attached to the shameful act was that the generous friend of the white man should not be tortured. His people never recovered from the blow. In the very next year they placed themselves by a solemn resolution under the protection of the King, and appointed four commissioners, one of whom was Gorton, to carry their submission to England.

CHAPTER V.

CHARTER GRANTED TO PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.—ORGANIZATION UNDER IT.—THE LAWS ADOPTED.

We have seen that in 1643 Roger Williams had been sent to England as agent to solicit a charter for the three colonies of Narragansett Bay. He found the King at open war with the Parliament, and the administration of the colonies entrusted to the Earl of Warwick and a joint committee of the two Houses. Of the details of the negotiation little is known, but on the 14th of March of the following year, a “free and absolute charter was granted as the Incorporation of Providence Plantations in Narragansett Bay in New England.” It was not such as Charles would have given. But one fetter was placed upon the free action of the people—“that the laws, constitutions, punishments for the civil government of the said plantation be conformable to the laws of England”—and that was made powerless by the qualifying condition that the conformity should extend only “so far as the nature and constitution of that place will admit.” Civil government and civil laws were the only government and laws which it recognized; and the absence of any allusion to religious freedom in it shows how firmly and wisely Williams avoided every form of expression which might seem to recognize the power to grant or to deny that inalienable right. The regulation of the “general government” in its “relation to the rest of the plantations in America,” was reserved “to the Earl and Commissioners.”

Yet more than three years were allowed to pass before it went into full force as a bond of union for the four towns. Then, in May, 1647, the corporators met at Portsmouth in General Court of Election, and, accepting the charter, proceeded to organize a government in harmony with its provisions. Warwick, although not named in the charter, was admitted to the same privileges with her larger and more flourishing sisters.

This new government was in reality a government of the people, to whose final decision in their General Assembly all questions were submitted. “And now,” says the preamble to the code, “sith our charter gives us powere to governe ourselves and such other as come among us, and by such a forme of Civill Government as by the voluntairie consent, &c., shall be found most suitable to our estate and condition:

“It is agreed by this present Assembly thus incorporate and by this present act declared, that the form of Government established in Providence Plantations, is Democratical; that is to say, a Government held by y^e free and voluntairie consent of all or the greater part of the free Inhabitants.”

In accordance with this fundamental principle all laws were first discussed in Town Meeting, then submitted to the General Court, a committee of six men from each town freely chosen, and finally referred to the General Assembly. The General Court possessed, also, the power of originating laws, by recommending a draft of law to the towns, upon whose approval the draft obtained the force of law till the next meeting of the General Assembly.

The first act of this first Colonial Assembly was to organize by electing John Coggeshall Moderator, and secure an acting quorum by fixing it at forty. It was next “agreed that all should set their hands to an engagement to the Charter.” Then, after some provision for the union of the towns, the formation of the General Court and the adoption of the laws “as they are contracted in the bulk,” Mr. John Coggeshall was chosen “President of this Province or Colonie; Wm. Dyer, General Recorder; Mr. Jeremy Clarke, Treasurer, and Mr. Roger Williams, Mr. John Sanford, Mr. Wm. Coddington and Mr. Randall Holden, Assistants for Providence, Portsmouth, Newport and Warwick” respectively. Then, entering boldly upon its independent existence, the little Colony—a State in all but the name—proceeded to examine the body of laws which had been prepared for its acceptance. One of the most significant of them, as indicating their commercial aspirations, was their adoption of the laws of Oleron for a maritime code; and another, as illustrating their consciousness of their perilous position in the midst of savages, still able to strike sudden blows, though no longer strong enough to wage long wars, the revival and extension of “the Statute touching Archerie,” and the enactment of a stringent militia law. The laws against parricide, murder, arson, robbery and stealing, show that there were men in the community who were believed to be capable of these crimes. The law against suicide, and still more the law against witchcraft, are too much in harmony with the general spirit of the age to warrant a severe condemnation. The punishment provided against drunkenness reads as though it were not an infrequent offence. Marriage was regarded as a civil contract. The law of debt was wise and humane, forbidding the sending of the debtor to prison, “there,” it says with simplicity and force, “to lie languishing to no man’s advantage, unless he refuse to stand to their order.” The character of the whole code was just and benevolent, breathing a gentle spirit of practical Christianity and a calm consciousness of high destinies. “These,” it says, “are the laws that concern all men, and these are the Penalties for the transgression thereof; which by common consent are Ratified and Established throughout this whole Colonie; and otherwise than thus what is herein forbidden, all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, every one in the name of his God.”

By the same Assembly it was ordered, “that the seale of the Providence shall be an anchor.” A free gift, also, of one hundred pounds was made to Roger Williams, “in regarde to his so great travaile, charges, and good endeavors in the obtaining of the Charter for this Province.” This sum was “to be levied out of the three towns;” and how far the island was in advance of the main-land may be seen by the distribution of the levy which assigns fifty pounds to Newport and thirty to Portsmouth, while Providence was held at twenty. Of Warwick, still poor and weak, nothing was asked.

The spirit of this first legislation may be comprised in four articles: the first of which provides for the protection of the citizen against the government by guaranteeing liberty of property and person, and restricting criminal suits to the violation of the letter of the law. The second forbids the assumption of office by any who are not legally chosen, and the extension of official action beyond its prescribed bounds. The third by making the charter and acts of the Assembly the sources of law, secures the rights of minorities. And the fourth, displaying a comprehension of the true principles of public service which succeeding generations would do well to study, required that every citizen should serve when chosen to office or pay a fine, and that his service should receive an adequate compensation. The engagement of state and officer was reciprocal—the officer binding himself to serve the state faithfully, and the state to stand by her officers in the legitimate exercise of their functions.

CHAPTER VI.

FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC TROUBLES.—UNSUCCESSFUL ATTEMPT AT USURPATION BY CODDINGTON.

And now, just as the new Province was entering upon that chartered existence which was to lead to such brilliant results, the wise and peaceable Canonicus died, closing in humiliation and sorrow a life which had begun in strength and hope. He had seen the first foot-prints of the stranger; had aided him in his weakness; had resisted him in his strength; had lived to see his destined successor fall victim to an unholy policy, and his people, impoverished and enfeebled, vainly strive to avenge the murder on their adversaries; and thus with a heavy heart he passed away from the scene of his early glory and his long humiliation. We shall see bye and bye the miserable end of the great Narragansetts.

The new Colony entered upon its career with two great problems before it. The first was almost solved. An experience of eleven years had demonstrated the possibility of soul liberty, which had taken a hold upon the hearts of the colonists too strong to be shaken. But did it leave the needed strength in the civil organization to bear “a government held by the free and voluntary consent of all, or the greater part, of the free inhabitants?” Thus the reconciliation of liberty and law formed from the beginning the fundamental problem of Rhode Island history.

At first there were great and frequent dissensions. There were dissensions between Newport and Portsmouth. There were still greater dissensions in Providence. Enemies exulted, foretelling an early dissolution of the feeble bands which held the dangerous Colony together. Friends trembled lest their last hope of the reconciliation of liberty and law should fail them. But still the great work of solution went on, each new dissension revealing some new error, or aiding in the demonstration of some new truth. It would take us far beyond our limits were we to attempt to follow up the history of these dissensions in detail, even if the materials for a full narrative of them had been preserved. There were other difficulties, also, which demand more than a passing allusion.

Massachusetts had not yet renounced her designs upon the territories of the heretical Colony. A party in Pawtuxet which had put itself under the protection of the Bay Colony had opened the way for action, and the dispute with Shawomet had enlarged it. Gorton was in England in 1647, exerting himself to answer the assertions of the Massachusetts agent, Winslow. Three years later the question became so complicated and the danger so imminent that Roger Williams was asked to go again to England on behalf of the Colony. Meanwhile there were menacing indications of an Indian war, and a serious effort was made on the part of the Island towns to obtain admission to the New England confederation. The application was refused unless on terms equivalent to the surrender of all right to independent existence. The time for justice and a clear comprehension of the common interest was not yet come. Especially strong was Massachusetts’ dread of the Baptists, who were becoming a powerful body in Rhode Island, and three of the prominent members of that communion, among whom was John Clarke, one of the most illustrious of the colonists, were seized at Lynn—whither they had been summoned to give comfort and counsel to an aged brother—cast into prison, fined, and one of their number, Obadiah Holmes, cruelly scourged with a three-corded whip.

Another danger menaced the Colony. William Coddington, who had been chosen President, but had never taken the legal engagement, had gone to England, and, as was soon ascertained, with the design of applying for a commission as Governor of the Island. For two years he was unable to obtain a hearing. The new government of England was too busy with its own concerns to lend an ear to the agent of a distant and humble Colony. At last the favorable moment came, and, on the 3d of April, 1651, he received a commission from the Council of State, appointing him Governor for life of Rhode Island and Connecticut. By what representations or misrepresentations he obtained the object of his ambition, history does not tell us. A council of six, nominated by the people and approved by him, were to assist him in the government. The charter government was apparently dissolved.

But the men of Providence and Warwick did not lose heart. Roger Williams, who had already given proof of his diplomatic skill at home by his successful negotiations with the native chiefs, and in England by obtaining a charter, was still with them, and to him all turned their eyes in this hour of supreme danger. It was resolved that he should repair to England without delay, and ask for a confirmation of the charter in the name of Providence and Warwick. To provide money for the support of his family during his absence he sold his trading-house in Narragansett, and, obtaining a hard-wrung leave to embark at Boston, set forth in October, 1651, upon his memorable mission. In the same ship went John Clarke, as agent for the Island towns, to ask for the revocation of Coddington’s commission. On the success of their application hung the fate of the Colony. Meanwhile the Island towns submitted silently to Coddington’s usurpation, and the main-land towns continued to govern themselves by their old laws, and meet and deliberate as they had done before in their General Assembly.

It was in the midst of these dangers and dissensions that on the 19th of May, in the session of 1652, it was “enacted and ordered ... that no black mankind or white being forced by covenant, bond or other wise shall be held to service longer than ten years,” and that “that man that will not let them go free, or shall sell them any else where to that end that they may be enslaved to others for a longer time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Colonie forty pounds.” This was the first legislation concerning slavery on this continent. If forty pounds should seem a small penalty, let us remember that the price of a slave was but twenty. If it should be objected that the act was imperfectly enforced, let us remember how honorable a thing it is to have been the first to solemnly recognize a great principle. Soul liberty had borne her first fruits.

In the same month of May the embarrassments of the Colony were increased by the breaking out of a war between England and Holland, which interrupted the profitable commerce between Rhode Island and the Dutch of Manhattan. But welcome tidings came in September, and still more welcome in October. Williams and Clarke, who went hand in hand in their mission, had obtained, first, permission for the Colony to act under the charter until the final decision of the controversy, and a few weeks later the revocation of Coddington’s commission. The charter was fully restored. Williams had again proved himself a consummate diplomatist, and Clarke had proved himself worthy to be his colleague. We shall soon see him using his newly acquired skill under more difficult circumstances.

CHAPTER VII.

MORE FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC TROUBLES.—CIVIL AND CRIMINAL REGULATIONS OF THE COLONY.—ARRIVAL OF QUAKERS.

And now it seemed as though the little Colony might peaceably return to its original organization and devote itself to the development of its natural resources. But the spirit of dissension had struck deep. The absolute independence which was claimed for religious opinion, led some to claim an equal independence for civil action. If conscience was to be the supreme test in the relations between man and God, why should not conscience decide between man and man? Roger Williams addressed a letter full of calm wisdom to the Town of Providence, explaining, under the figure of a ship, the distinction between civil obedience and soul liberty. A few years later an able advocate of the opposite opinion was found in William Harris; and for a long while an unhealthy agitation pervaded the community, justifying, in appearance, the unfriendly prophecies of the early enemies of Williams and his doctrines.

There was still another ground of contention. Who should take the lead in restoring the charter government? The Island towns claimed it on the ground of superior wealth and population, the main-land towns because they had always held fast to their charter. There were double elections and two Assemblies, and the dispute grew so warm as to threaten a permanent division. At the same time the Island towns entered zealously into the Dutch war, issuing letters of marque and making captures which led to new controversies with the United Colonies. Williams became alarmed, and leaving Mr. Clarke in charge of their common business hurried back from England to meet the danger. Sir Henry Vane, who had already been a firm friend of Rhode Island, wrote in a public letter, “Are there no wise men among you? no public, self-denying spirits who can find some way of union before you become a prey to your enemies?”

At last, in August, 1654, a full Court of Commissioners met at Warwick, and on the 31st set their hands to articles of reunion. To meet the difficulties that arose from the different acts of independent assemblies, it was agreed that all such acts should be held good for the towns and persons who originally took part in them. Then the charter was once more made the fundamental law of the land, and finally the General Assembly recognized by fixing the number of delegates from each town at six for all purposes except the election of officers. Two days were then devoted to general legislation, and among other acts the delicate question of a Sunday law was reconciled with the distinguishing principle of the Colony, by referring the matter to the several towns under the head of a day “for servants and children to recreate themselves.”

As the danger of civil commotions passed away, came the danger of an Indian war. The Narragansetts had old quarrels with the Indians of Long Island, and in 1654 a new quarrel broke out between them. For the Colony itself there was nothing to fear from the Narragansetts with whom it had always maintained friendly relations. But should the Long Island Indians prevail, an inroad upon the main would bring them dangerously near to the new towns. The United Colonies, proceeding as usual with a high hand, summoned Ninigret, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts, to Hartford. He refused to go, saying that the enemy had slain a sachem’s son and sixty of his people—all he asked of the English was that they would let him alone. “If your Governor’s son were slain,” he said, “and several other men, would you ask counsel of another nation how and when to right yourselves?” The spirit of the Narragansetts was not yet broken. Williams, who was then President, wrote to the government of Massachusetts defending the Indians, asserting that the war was a war of self-defence, and that the Narragansetts had always been true to the English. But the Commissioners were resolved upon war, and without listening to his remonstrances sent Captain Willard with a body of troops to seize the refractory chief. The wily Indian took post in a swamp where the troops were unable to reach him. The Commissioners were sorely annoyed, but Massachusetts, listening, perhaps, to the energetic representations of Williams, refused to sanction the war, and without her coöperation it could not be carried on.

There were still dissensions and jars, but the Colony throve and grew in industry and strength. Newport above all increased in wealth and population. In estimating the population, however, we must bear in mind that not every inhabitant was a freeman, nor every resident a legal inhabitant. A probationary residence was required before the second step was reached and the resident became an inhabitant with certain rights to the common lands, the right of sitting on the jury and of being chosen to some of the lower offices. This, also, was a period of probation, and it was only after it had been passed to the satisfaction of the freemen that the name of the new candidate could be proposed in town meeting for full citizenship. Even then he had to wait for a second meeting before he could be admitted to all the rights and distinctions of that honorable grade.

As a picture of the times it deserves notice that there was still a struggle with crime which called for stocks and a jail; that the sale of liquors was regulated by a license, and the number of taverns that could be licensed in a single town limited to three; that the bars were closed at nine in the evening; that a fine of ten pounds or whipping, “accordinge as y^e court shall see meete,” was the penalty of giving a blow in court; that malicious language was treated as slander and made ground for legal prosecution. The Assembly seldom sat beyond three or four days, and six in the morning was the usual hour of entering upon the business of the day. Absence from roll call was punished by a fine of a shilling. As an illustration of the degree in which the idea of the duties of citizenship prevailed over the idea of the dignity of office, it deserves to be recorded that when the first justices’ court was established in Providence for the hearing of cases under forty shillings, Roger Williams though President of the Colony was appointed one of the justices, and of the other two Thomas Olney was assistant for Providence, and Thomas Harris a member of the Assembly. The principle of the reciprocal obligation of citizen and state seems, as we have already observed, to have found early acceptance. High treason was recognized as a great crime and provision made for sending the accused to England for trial—a dangerous measure even in that early day, and which in the following century became a just ground of alarm. But now, even Coddington not only came off unharmed from his daring usurpation, but appears again in 1656 as member of the Court of Trials. A written submission and a fine for refusing to give up the public records were the only penalties that he paid for his offence. Early provision was made for the protection of marriage, and to give it that publicity which is essential to security the bans were announced in town meeting, or at the head of a company on training days, or by a written declaration signed by a magistrate and set up in some place of common resort. If objections were made the parties were heard by a tribunal of two magistrates, or for final decision by the Court of Trials. Freedom in the young society was always connected with morality.

There were still questions to arrange with Massachusetts, which had not yet given up the hope of enlarging her territory at the expense of her diminutive neighbors. The Pawtuxet controversy which began almost with the beginning of the Colony, was a fruitful source of anxiety till 1658, when it was finally settled by the acknowledgment of the claims of Rhode Island, Roger Williams again appearing in his favorite character of mediator. Hog Island, at the mouth of Bristol harbor, gave rise to other disputes which extended through several years. In the original purchase of Aquidneck the grass only had been bought. To secure the fee of the land itself a second purchase was required. Other purchases also were made, which gave rise to long and vexatious disputes. Small as it was, it was almost inch by inch that Rhode Island won its narrow territory.

From time to time, also, there were alarms of Indians. In 1656 their movements excited so much apprehension in Providence, that a fort was built on Stamper’s Hill for the protection of the town. In this same year the fundamental principles of the governments of Rhode Island and of Massachusetts were brought into striking contrast by the arrival of the Quakers. In Massachusetts they were imprisoned, scourged, mutilated, put to death, and with the increase of persecution increased in numbers. In Rhode Island they were allowed to follow their own convictions and became useful and industrious citizens. And when the United Colonies urged the General Assembly, not without threats, to join in the persecution, it appealed to Cromwell, asking “that it might not be compelled to exercise any civil power over men’s consciences so long as human orders, in point of civility, are not corrupted or violated.”

In these days great changes were taking place in England. Cromwell was dead. Richard Cromwell soon resigned the Protectorate. A general reaction for royalty followed, and Charles II. was received as King with general satisfaction. How would the young and dissolute monarch look upon the claims of Rhode Island? It was well for her that at this perilous moment she was represented at the new court by so earnest, clear-headed, and dexterous a diplomatist as John Clarke. By his exertions a new charter was obtained, and, on the 24th of November, 1663, accepted “at a very great meeting and assembly of the Colony of Providence Plantations, at Newport, in Rhode Island, in New England.” With the adoption of this charter begins a new period in the history of Rhode Island.

CHAPTER VIII.

TROUBLES IN OBTAINING A NEW CHARTER.—PROVISIONS OF THE CHARTER.—DIFFICULTIES CONCERNING THE NARRAGANSETT PURCHASE.—CURRENCY.—SCHOOLS.

The charter of Charles II. was a practical recognition of the right of self-government. The government which it established, like that instituted by the colonists in their first organization, was a pure democracy, emanating from the people and framed for their good. In form it consisted of a Governor, a Deputy-Governor, ten assistants, and a House of Deputies, six of whom represented Newport, four Providence, four Portsmouth, four Warwick, and two each other towns. The first appointments of Governor, Deputy-Governor, and assistants, as preparatory to a permanent organization, were made by the King. The organization once effected, they were chosen annually at Newport, on the first Wednesday in May. The deputies were elected by the people in their respective towns. Thus election day became the great civil festival of the year, bringing the inhabitants of the towns together to interchange thoughts and feelings, and make merry with their wives and children in the chief town of the Colony.

Although the new charter was negotiated by John Clarke, it is impossible not to recognize in it the spirit of Roger Williams. The original right of the natives to the soil was acknowledged, practically, in other colonies; but it was acknowledged as subordinate to the right of the King. The royal grant preceded the actual purchase. But in Rhode Island the royal grant followed the Indian title-deed, and was never accepted as sufficient of itself to justify the occupation of Indian territory. This doctrine, so widely at variance with the received doctrine of the age, stood first in the list of heresies for which Massachusetts had driven Roger Williams into exile.

No less prominent in the second charter was that great principle which had formed the leading characteristic of the first. “Noe person,” it says, “within the sayd colonye, at any tyme hereafter, shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any difference of opinion in matters of religion which doe not actually disturb the civill peace of our sayd colonye; but that all and everye person may, from tyme to tyme and at all tymes hereafter, freelye and fullye have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concernments, through the tract of lande hereafter mentioned, they behaving themselves peaceablie and quietlie, and not using this libertye to licentiousness, and profaneness, nor to the civill injurye or outward disturbance of others.”

There was much work for the new Assembly to do, and it addressed itself promptly to the task. The statute book contained laws which, arising from circumstances no longer existing, were “inconsistent with the present government.” To weed these out and replace them by others better suited to the new order of things, was an early object of attention. Hitherto the assistants had not been vested with legislative authority. They now held it by the charter, and henceforth acted in conjunction with the deputies, a change which at a later day led to the division into two houses. The increase of population brought with it an increase of litigation. The original courts were not sufficient to meet the demand for legal protection. They were reorganized.

There were two general courts of trials, composed of the Governor, with or without the aid of the Deputy-Governor, and of a body of assistants whose number was never less than six. Their place of meeting was Newport, the seat of government and largest town, and their regular sessions were held in May and October. Providence and Warwick had each a court of trials—Providence in September and Warwick in March. But in these, as if in indication of their subordinate authority, neither the Governor nor the Deputy-Governor had a seat, and the number of assistants absolutely required to give validity to its acts was reduced from six to three. To complete their organization twelve jurors were added, six from each town. Their decision, however, was not final, and the cases which they had tried could be carried by appeal to the General Court. To quicken the tardy steps of justice any litigant who was willing to bear the expense, might, with the sanction of the Governor or Deputy-Governor, have a special court convened for the immediate decision of his cause.

The grand and petty jurors were chosen from the four towns, five of each from Newport, three from Portsmouth, and two from Providence and Warwick respectively. The same superiority was accorded to Newport in the apportionment of state officers, five of whom were required to live there. In this, however, Providence outranks Portsmouth, having three allotted to her for her portion, while Portsmouth had but two. The duties of coroner were performed by the assistant “nearest the place occasion shall present.”

Another grave question met them on the threshold of their work of organization. The charter left a doubt concerning the manner of choosing the state magistrates. Should they be elected by the freemen in town meeting, or by the General Assembly? The democratic instinct prevailed, and the choice was left to the freemen.

There was a still graver question to be decided, requiring firmness, self-control and skilled diplomacy. Rhode Island had never been looked upon by Massachusetts with friendly eyes. That a banished man should have become the founder of a new colony close upon her borders was irritating to her pride. That his success as a colonizer should have cut her off from the beautiful Narragansett Bay was humiliating to her ambition of territorial aggrandizement. That a freedom of conscience subversive of her theological dogmas should have been the fundamental principle of the new government was irritating to her bigotry. Thus, although she did not hesitate to avail herself of the good offices of Roger Williams to avert a dangerous war, she did not scruple to forbid the sale to citizens of Rhode Island of the powder and arms which they needed for their own protection, and exclude them from the league which the other colonies of New England had formed for their common defence. When, in 1642, four of the principal inhabitants of Pawtuxet factiously put themselves under her protection, she greedily seized the opportunity of securing for herself a foothold in the coveted territory. It was not till 1658 that this dangerous dispute was settled and the perpetual menace of mutilation removed from the northern district of the Colony soon to reappear in the southern. Amid the fresh recollections of this contest, the General Assembly passed a law forbidding, under the penalty of confiscation, the introduction of a foreign authority within the limits of the Colony. Both Massachusetts and Connecticut laid claim to Narragansett, a valuable tract in the southern part of the Colony and controlling the communication with the bay of that name. The claim of Rhode Island was founded upon purchase, and although her physical inferiority left her no hope of success except through an appeal to the King, she was none the less vigilant in defending her rights. The necessity of this watchfulness was soon made manifest, for scarce a year had passed from the passage of the prohibitory law, when, in direct violation of its provisions, a company of aliens purchased Quidneset and Namcook, two large and valuable tracts on Narragansett Bay. It was like throwing down the gauntlet to the little Colony, for it was only by supporting the pretensions of Massachusetts or Connecticut that the purchasers could hope to make their title good. An artful attempt was made to obtain the sanction of Roger Williams’s name by offering him, under the title of interpreter, a liberal grant of land. But the loyal old man refused to connect himself in any way with the illegal act, and warned the company of the dangerous ground whereon they were treading.

The warning was not heeded, and Humphrey Atherton, John Winthrop and their associates, completing their bargain with the Indians, claimed the tracts as theirs by lawful purchase. New complications followed. The very next year the Commissioners of the United Colonies, following up their aggressive policy towards the Narragansetts, imposed upon the feeble remnant of the once powerful tribe a heavy fine for alleged injuries to the Mohegans, and compelled them to mortgage their whole territory for the payment of it. Atherton paid the fine, and held that his claim was strengthened by this act of unjustifiable violence.

For a time hopes were entertained of inducing the company to accept the jurisdiction of Rhode Island, but they were futile. The attempt of either party to exercise legal authority in the disputed territory was a signal for the active intervention of the other. It was soon evident that the decision must be referred to England. Fortunately for Rhode Island, John Clarke was still there.

Agents from Connecticut, also, were there petitioning for a new charter, and their petition was enforced by the wise and virtuous John Winthrop. Court favor came to his aid, and he used it judiciously. The venerable Lord Say and Seal lent him the influence of his name, and the skillful negotiator dexterously reviving the memory of the intercourse between his father and Charles the First, succeeded in touching for a moment the callous heart of Charles II. In the season of that intercourse Charles had given Winthrop a curious and valuable ring, and now when the son of the subject came before the son of the King as a suppliant for a charter for his distant home, he bore that ring in his hand as a record of kind feelings on one side and reverential observance on the other. The plea was successful, and, on the 30th of May, 1662, a charter was granted. In this charter the eastern boundary of Connecticut was extended to Narragansett River, and Narragansett River it was claimed was Narragansett Bay.

Great was the indignation of Rhode Island when the tidings of this arbitrary mutilation of her territory reached her. It was like introducing a foreign jurisdiction into the heart of the Colony, and stripping it by a stroke of the pen of some of the chief advantages which it had promised itself from its long and painful labor of colonization. There was but one hope left, and that lay in the wisdom and firmness of John Clarke. The trust was well placed. Not for a moment did the brave man lose heart or suffer himself to grow weary in his difficult task. Of the details of his negotiations no accurate record has been preserved, but we know that, possessing no means of corruption, even if his noble nature could have stooped to it, he placed his confidence in the justice of his cause. In negotiating for a charter he had presented two elaborate petitions to the King, giving a rapid sketch of the origin and principles of the Colony, and asking for “a more absolute, ample, and free charter of civill incorporation,” as for men who “had it much on their hearts (if they may be permitted) to hold a lively experiment, that a flourishing free state may stand, yea, and best be maintained, and that among English spirits, with a full liberty in religious concernments.”

The question of a charter was for the King to decide, and we have already seen how he decided it. But the question of boundaries was within the competence of the agents of the two colonies. After much discussion it was decided to refer it to arbitration. Four arbitrators were chosen, and on the 7th of April, 1663, they rendered their award in four articles, by one of which the Pawcatuck River was made the eastern boundary of Connecticut. The Atherton company was left free to decide under which of the two jurisdictions it would live.

As long as Winthrop remained, although Clarke had much to apprehend from his open opposition, he had nothing to fear from secret intrigues or willful misinterpretation. But not all the advocates of the Atherton purchase were like John Winthrop. False claims will always find base agents, and no sooner was Winthrop gone than one of these willing instruments of wrong pressed eagerly forward to his loathsome office. His name was John Scott, and the record of his meanness has been preserved in his own hand. “Mr. Winthrop,” begins his confidential correspondence with Captain Hutchinson, the corresponding agent of the company, “was very averse to my prosecuting your affairs, he having had much trouble with Mr. Clarke whiles he remained in England; but as soon as I received intelligence of his departure from the Downes, I took into the society a Potent Gentleman and prepared a Petition against Clarke, &c., as enemyes to the peace and well being of his Majestye’s good subjects, and doubt not effecting the premises in convenient tyme, and in order to accomplish y^r businesse, I have bought of Mr. Edwards a parcel of curiosityes to y^e value of sixty pounds; to gratifye persons that are powerfull, that there may be a Letter filled with Awthorising Expressions to the Collonyes of the Massachusetts and Connecticut, that the proprietors of the Narraganset countrye, shall not only live peaceably, but have satisfaction for Injuryes already received by some of the saide Proprietors and the power y^t shall be soe invested (viz) the Massachusetts and Connecticut by virtue of the saide letter will joyntlye and severallye, have full power to do us justice to all intents, as to our Narraganset concernes.”

For a moment it seemed as though this vile intrigue were about to succeed. A letter from the King to the United Colonies was obtained, recommending the interests of the Atherton company to their protection. John Scott’s “curiosityes” had done their work. The “Potent Gentleman” had not failed him. The little Colony lay unarmed at the feet of its powerful enemies. But the triumph was short. John Clarke was carefully bringing his negotiations for a new charter to a close. Surrounded by bitter and unscrupulous adversaries he still kept his own counsel, kept the object of his mission constantly in view, and, after much weary waiting and watching, came out triumphant. The charter of Charles the Second, as I have already stated, which so long served the Colony as a constitution and exercised such a controlling influence upon her development, passed the seals on the 8th of July, 1663. By this charter the western boundary line was fixed at Pawcatuck River, “any Grant or Claim in a late Grant to the Governor and Company of Connecticut Colony in America to the contrary thereof in any wise notwithstanding.” Thus the Pawcatuck River was henceforth to be held as the same with the Narragansett River, and the question of western boundary decided in accordance with the agreement, which, “after much debate,” Clarke and Winthrop had both signed in the names of their respective colonies. It is evident that there was much ignorance, and no very firm principle of action with regard to the colonies in the cabinet of the second Charles.

While these events were passing an important change took place in the commercial medium of the country. When the colonists first began to trade with the natives, they found them already advanced in their buyings and sellings from the primitive barter of product for product to the use of a fixed medium of exchange. This medium, indeed, was of a purely conventional character. There were neither mines of gold, nor mines of silver, nor mines of copper to perform the office of money. But the waters of their rivers and bays yielded an abundant supply of shells, and these they wrought with much ingenuity into beads; the periwinkle furnishing the material for the lower values, six of its white shells being held at an English penny, while the dark eye of the quahog or round clam, smoothed by grinding, and polished and drilled, was rated at twice the value of the white shell. Both were known as wampum or peage. As money belts of wampum were counted by the fathom, three hundred and sixty of the white passing for five shillings sterling, and a fathom of the black being worth twice as much as a fathom of the white. Like the metallic medium of other countries they served also for personal decoration, supplying the Indian belles and beaux with their necklaces and bracelets, and princes with the most valued ornaments of their regalia. When used for this purpose they were wrought into girdles, or worn as a scarf about the shoulders, great pains being taken and not a little skill displayed in arranging the colors in various figures. The mints in which this primitive money was coined were on the sea-shore, where shells were found in great abundance, and so well was this simple article adapted to the wants and the tastes of the aborigines that it passed current six hundred miles from the coast, and was used by the colonists in all their bargains with the natives. But shells like metals and paper are subject to the same inexorable laws of trade. When beaver skins became plenty in the colonial market and wampum was made in larger quantities, it fell from ten shillings a fathom to five, and the Indian hunter thought it hard that an equal number of furs should bring him but half as much wampum as before. Like all money, also, wampum was liable to be counterfeited, and even in that rude commerce there were men who preferred the ill-gotten gain of the counterfeiter to the fruit of honest industry. Fortunately for the native he was quick in detecting the fraud, and never failed to exact full compensation. But wampum, like the race for whom it was made, was unable to hold its ground against the advancing civilization. We have seen it reduced to half its original value by overissues and the increasing supply of furs in the colonial market. Gradually it began to disappear. Rhode Island continued to use it long after it had ceased to be current in colonies where the intercourse with Europe was more direct. Massachusetts had begun to coin silver in 1652, but Rhode Island continued to accept wampum as a legal tender for ten years longer, when it reached its lowest point, and, like the Continental money of a century later, was abolished by statute. Thenceforth all taxes and costs of court were exacted in “current pay” in sterling that is, or in New England coin of thirty shillings New England to twenty-two shillings sixpence sterling.

Nothing has been said thus far of the measures taken by the young Colony for the establishment of schools. Newport, though only in the second year of her settlement, took the lead in 1640, by “calling Mr. Robert Lenthall to keep a school for the learning of youth, and for his encouragement there was granted to him and his heirs one hundred acres of land, and four more for a house lot.” In the same meeting it was voted: “That one hundred acres should be laid forth and appropriated for a school, for the encouragement of the poorer sort, to train up their youth in learning, and Mr. Robert Lenthall, while he continues to keep school, is to have the benefit thereof.” The wise example was followed by Providence in 1663, and at May town meeting a hundred acres of upland and six acres of meadow were reserved for the support of a school.

But in nothing perhaps does the character of the Colony appear to more advantage than in the law of oaths. “Forasmuch,” reads the statute, “as the consciences of sundry men, truly conscionable, may scruple the giving or the taking of an oath, and it would be no wise suitable to the nature and constitution of our place, who profess ourselves to be men of different consciences, and not one willing to force another, to debar such as cannot do so, either from bearing office among us, or from giving in testimony in a case depending; be it enacted by the authority of this present Assembly, that a solemn profession or testimony in a court of record, or before a judge of record, shall be accounted throughout the whole colony, of as full force as an oath.” So strong was the hold which the principle of soul liberty had taken of the public mind.

CHAPTER IX.

TERRITORY OF RHODE ISLAND IS INCREASED BY THE ADDITION OF BLOCK ISLAND.—DISPUTES BETWEEN BLOCK ISLAND AND THE OTHER COLONIES SETTLED BY ROYAL COMMAND.—STATE OF AFFAIRS IN THE COLONY IN 1667.

The charter came at a fortunate moment, for petition and remonstrance had reached their utmost, and it is difficult to see how the little Colony could have preserved the integrity of its territory much longer against two such powerful neighbors but for the intervention of an authority that was recognized by all. The services of John Clarke must be estimated by the imminence of the danger, and his skill by the difficulty of the negotiation. Meanwhile the territories of Rhode Island were enlarged in another direction.

Block Island has already been mentioned in connection with the Pequot war. In 1658 it was granted by Massachusetts, in whose hands the war had left it, to Governor John Endicott and three others, as a reward for their public services. Endicott and his associates sold it to Simon Ray and eight associates, who, in 1661, entered upon their work of colonization by liquidating the Indian title with a reservation in favor of the natives, and setting apart one-sixteenth of the lands for the support of a minister forever. The new settlement had not yet reached its third year when it passed under the jurisdiction of Rhode Island, and, in the May session of the General Assembly for 1663, was summoned to appear at the bar of the house and be regularly received into the Colony. At the appointed time three messengers presented themselves, bringing the submission of the inhabitants to “his Majesty’s will,” and a petition of householders for the freedom of the island. Three select men were chosen to govern it with power to “call town meetings,” hear causes under forty shillings, and where a greater amount was involved, grant appeals to the General Court of Trials, and “issue warrants in criminal cases.” Their representation in the Assembly was fixed at two, and their attention was called to the clause in the charter declaring freedom of conscience. The question of a harbor for the encouragement of the fisheries soon attracted the attention of the Assembly, and, as early as 1665, we find John Clarke with the Governor and Deputy-Governor examining this important subject on the spot. But it was no work for a feeble Colony, and it was not till two hundred years later and under a rich and powerful national government that it was begun. Meanwhile the population grew and throve under colonial protection. Nine years after its first civil organization Block Island was incorporated under the name of New Shoreham, “as sign,” say the petitioners, “of our unity and likeness to many parts of our native country.”

The conflict of patents did not end with the promulgation of the second charter. Massachusetts and Connecticut still persisted in their claims, and Rhode Island in her resistance. Fortunately for her the final decision lay with the Crown, and, although both of the intruding colonies made repeated attempts to set up governments of their own within the limits of the disputed territory, they were restrained from persistent violence by the knowledge that Rhode Island claimed and was prepared to exercise the right of appeal. An opportunity soon offered of making an important step towards decision. Four Commissioners—Colonel Richard Nichols, Sir Robert Carr, George Cartwright and Samuel Maverick—were ordered to proceed to America, reduce the Dutch provinces, and decide all questions of appeal, jurisdiction and boundary between the colonies. On their arrival in New York harbor, where they made the British fleet their headquarters, Rhode Island sent a deputation of three, with John Clarke at their head, to welcome the Royal Commissioners in the name of the Colony.

They set themselves promptly to their work. The first question that came up for decision was the boundary line between Rhode Island and Plymouth. This they were unable to settle, and reserved it for reference to the King. Next came the vexed question of Narragansett. The submission of the sachems was confirmed, an annual tribute of two wolf-skins imposed, and the right to make war and sell land reserved to the authorities set over them by the Crown. A new division of the territory followed, all of the land west of the Bay, the southern half of the present Kent County, being set apart as King’s Province, under the administration of the Governor and Council of Rhode Island, as magistrates of King’s Province. Last came the bitter Warwick question, which had almost led to bloodshed. This was decided in favor of Rhode Island, upon the ground that no colony had a right to exercise jurisdiction beyond its chartered limits. It would have been well for the three colonies if the dispute had ended here. But neither Massachusetts nor Connecticut was satisfied. It was hard to give up the beautiful Narragansett Bay, “the largest,” say the Commissioners, “and safest port in New England, nearest the sea and fittest for trade.”

The Indian was fast disappearing, and sometimes under circumstances which awaken a natural regret that where adverse civilizations met so little could be done for the individual. The old Sachem Pumham still clung to his home in the woodlands of Warwick Neck, encouraged, it was believed, by the hope of support from Massachusetts. John Eliot, the translator of the Bible, interceded for him. Roger Williams asked for a little delay till the harvest was in. But twenty years experience had shown that his residence there was incompatible with the peace of the Colony. Sir Robert Carr, the Royal Commissioner, met Eliot’s intercession by sending him copies of all the papers relating to the question, and so far satisfied the scruples of Williams as to secure his hearty coöperation in the removal of this thorn from the side of the struggling Colony. Thirty pounds were paid into the hands of the old chief, a large sum for those days of general poverty, and he removed forever beyond the limits of King’s Province.

The Royal Commissioners on their arrival in Rhode Island had laid before the Assembly five propositions as “the will and pleasure of the King:”

“1st. That all householders inhabiting the Colony take the oath of allegiance, and that the administration of justice be in his Majesty’s name.”

This brought up the delicate question of oaths, which, recurring from time to time, was gradually shaped by successive modifications so as to meet the demands of government without infringing upon the principle of soul-liberty.

“2d. That all men of competent estates and of civil conversation, who acknowledge and are obedient to the civil magistrate, though of different judgments, may be admitted to be freemen and have liberty to chose and to be chosen, officers, both military and civil.”

This was accepted and the mode of admitting freemen prescribed.

“3d. That all men and women of orthodox opinion, competent knowledge and civil lives, who acknowledge and are obedient to the civil magistrate and are not scandalous, may be admitted to the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, and their children to Baptism, if they desire it, either by admitting them into the congregations already gathered, or permitting them to gather themselves into such congregations where they may enjoy the benefit of the Sacraments, and that difference of opinion may not break the bonds of peace and charity.”

If we interpret the word orthodox according to the Rhode Island standard of theological interpretation, this was already Rhode Island doctrine and required no deliberation.

“4th. That all laws and expressions in laws derogatory to his Majesty, if any such have been made in these late and troublesome times, may be repealed, altered and taken off the files.”

This, also, was accepted, and a revision of the laws ordered for that purpose.

“5th. That the Colony be put in such a posture of defence that if there should be any invasion upon this island, or elsewhere in this Colony (which God forbid) you might in some measure be in readiness to defend yourselves, or if need be to relieve your neighbors, according to the power given you by the King in your charter and to us in the King’s commission and instructions.”

This, also, struck a familiar cord. Provisions for self-defence had already been made as circumstances called for them. A new militia law was now passed, requiring six trainings a year under heavy penalties, and allowing nine shillings a year for each enlisted soldier. Every man was to keep on hand two pounds of powder and four of lead, and each town was required to maintain a public magazine. To defray the expenses of these magazines Newport was taxed fifty pounds, and the other three towns twenty pounds each.

The Royal Commissioners were well satisfied with the conduct of Rhode Island, and Rhode Island, surrounded by powerful enemies, had every reason to be well satisfied with the Commissioners. Still the encroachments and aggressions of Massachusetts and Connecticut continued. As a prospective means of defence against them John Clarke was again asked to carry the complaints of the suffering Colony to England, and John Greene was chosen to accompany him. In 1672 a new claimant appeared in the lists.

The Council of Plymouth had been lavish of its gifts of land, and in its ignorance of American geography had formed a perplexing map of conflicting claims. In one of its grants it had given the greater part of Maine, together with Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard, Long Island and the adjacent islands, to the Earl of Stirling. The Earl of Stirling sold his grant to the Duke of York, already proprietor by royal gift of the recently conquered province of New Netherlands. The term adjacent islands would have included Acquidneck and the other islands of Narragansett Bay. Prudence, one of the pleasantest and most valuable of them, had been bought of the Indian proprietors by Roger Williams and John Winthrop. In the course of time it passed by regular sale to John Paine, a Boston merchant, who had won the favor of the Duke of York by contributing liberally to the rebuilding of Fort James, in New York harbor. Governor Lovelace, the Duke’s attorney, felt that such liberality was deserving of a signal reward. Paine was already the owner of Prudence. Lovelace resolved to make it a free-manor by the name of Toply manor, and confer the governership for life on Paine. By a second grant the original quit-rent of two barrels of cider and six pairs of capons was remitted, and this territory of seven miles in length became an untaxed and independent government.

But Rhode Island was an uncongenial soil for feudal tenures. Paine was arrested, indicted and convicted under the law of 1658 against the introduction of a foreign jurisdiction, and Prudence without any formal act of adjustment returned to its original position as a part of Portsmouth.

Thus the Rhode Island Colony grew apace. From time to time questions of practical government arose, to be worked out and solved by experience. It was not easy to make citizens feel their duty to the State. More than once the Assembly failed in attendance, to the serious detriment of the public. Fines were imposed, and that some inducement to greater regularity might be held out, a small pay of three shillings a day, which was soon reduced to two, was attached to the function of delegate. To facilitate the expression of opinion voting by proxy was permitted, and to secure the election of the most acceptable candidate it was enacted, “that whereas there may happen a division in the vote soe that the greater half may not pitch decidedly on one certaine person, yett the person which hath the most votes shall be deemed lawfully chosen.” The laws of the Colony had been the growth of circumstances, expressing new wants and representing a progressive society. Committees were appointed on several occasions to revise and harmonize them. On the committee of October, 1664, we find Roger Williams and John Clarke.

The progress of society has established a fundamental distinction between legislative, executive and judicial powers, which was not known to ancient publicists. The Court of Trials was composed of members of the Assembly, and thus the whole body of law-makers was gradually led to exercise judicial authority.

The Colony was poor, and the persecutions of Massachusetts and Connecticut compelled it to incur expenses greatly beyond its means. When Roger Williams went on his second mission to England he sold part of his estates in order to raise the money for his expenses. When John Clarke was sent to negotiate the second charter he was obliged to burthen his estate with a mortgage. The whole sum due him by the Colony was but three hundred and forty-three pounds, and yet so hard was it to collect the tax by which this sum was to be paid that it was not until twenty years after his death that the mortgage was lifted.

Internal dissensions and the alarm of foreign war troubled the Colony in 1667. Two names long prominent in Rhode Island, Harris and Fenner, appear at the head of two hostile factions in Providence and continue for a while to disturb the public peace. England, whose wars now found a reëcho in the colonies, was again at war with France and Holland. Efficient measures were taken to put the Colony in a state of defence, and thus new burthens were imposed. A council of war was organized in each town. Ammunition was collected. Officers were commissioned. Cannon were mounted at Newport. Cavalry corps were formed in the towns. The Governor and Council met in frequent deliberations. The Indians were disarmed and sent off the Island. A line of beacons was established from Wonumytomoni Hill, near Newport, to Mooshausick Hill, in Providence. Abundant proof was given of the energy and good statesmanship of the Colony. But the day of real trial was not yet come.

The question of taxation was an early cause of difficulty. The poorer towns felt themselves aggrieved, and often put insuperable obstacles in the way of the collector. Even the tax for the payment of John Clarke was disputed, and Roger Williams drew upon himself a severe condemnation from Warwick by a letter wherein he urged its payment. At last, in 1672, the Assembly took the matter seriously in hand and passed a bill declaring, “that whoever opposed by word or deed, in town meeting or elsewhere, any rate laid, or any other of the acts or orders of the General Assembly should be bound over to the Court of Trials, or imprisoned till it meet, at the discretion of the justice, for high contempt and sedition; and if found guilty, should be fined, imprisoned or whipped, as the court might adjudge.”

It was not altogether without reason that this stringent act was passed, for the aggressions of Connecticut and the alarm of an Indian war made it necessary to strengthen as far as possible the hands of government. But there was a danger in this legislative omnipotence which the people quickly perceived, and the new Assembly of May undid by a comprehensive repeal the work of its predecessor of April.

CHAPTER X.

KING PHILIP’S WAR.

I have now reached the story of the longest and bloodiest war which the colonists had yet waged with the Indian. It is known in colonial history as King Philip’s war, and belongs more to the histories of Massachusetts and Connecticut than to that of Rhode Island, although two of its bloodiest battles were fought on Rhode Island soil. Like all wars with barbarians it is filled with strange mixtures of barbarism and heroism, the savage warrior often rising in the pursuit of his ideal to a moral grandeur which his civilized antagonist failed to attain. And although like the war with the Pequots it was fatal to those who began it, it has left one of great names of Indian history, and brought into play some of the greatest traits of Indian character.

First and most faithful of the allies of the English was Massasoit, Sachem of the Wamponoags. A pestilence too malignant to be controlled by the medical science of the natives had decimated his tribe and exposed him to the ambition of the Narragansetts, his immediate neighbors, a little before the arrival of the Pilgrims. Perceiving only the present danger, he looked upon the advent of the white man as a means of preserving his independence, and eagerly made a covenant with him which he faithfully kept to the end of his life, (1661). At his death his eldest son, Wamsutta, or Alexander as he was called by the English, succeeded to his authority, but not to the confidence of his allies. Suspicion arose; he was accused of plotting against the colonists, and though an independent chief, summoned to appear at the General Court at Plymouth. Disobeying the summons, he was threatened with personal violence, and reluctantly yielding set forth with his warriors and women, some eighty in all, under the escort of a small body of troops commanded by Major Winslow. The indignity was too great for the unfortunate chief. Winslow saw that he was sinking under fatigue—for the weather was very hot—and wounded pride, for wrong was hard to bear. “Take my horse,” he said, touched with compassion. “No!” replied the chief with a last touch of pride, “there are no horses for my wife and the other women.” When they reached Winslow’s house, which was on the way he sickened, and though allowed to turn back, quickly died. Deep was the indignation of the Indians at this treatment of their sachem, and even some of the colonists felt that they had gone too far.

But there was one among them into whose breast the wrong sank deepest, for it called him to avenge not only a chief but a brother. That brother was known in colonial history as Philip of Pocanoket. The story of Philip has been variously told, some looking upon him as a crafty savage loving the wiles and cruelty of Indian warfare and fighting with no other object than immediate success; others as an Indian patriot contending for the independence of his country. In either case, if we judge him by the standard of his own people, he was a great ruler in peace and a valiant leader in war.

We are told that it was a sore grief to the young sachem to see the white man daily taking a firmer hold of the soil, and the red man melting before him. But how could the march of the invader be stayed? The arrow was a feeble weapon with which to oppose the firelock, the tomahawk even in the strongest hand was no match for the sabre. The foresight, judgment, method and power of combination of the white man enabled him to provide for the future while making wise provision for the present. While he was well supplied with food, the Indian was starving. While he was warmly clad, the Indian was exposed almost naked to the rudest blasts of winter. Philip saw the danger and resolved to face it.

His first step was to secure allies by winning over the neighboring tribes. It was a broad field for diplomacy, wherein Indian not Christian ethics prevailed, and was well suited to his bold and wily nature. Yet with all his wiles he could not so completely cover his track as not to excite the suspicions of the English. He was summoned to Plymouth and closely questioned. But the hour for action was not yet come and he succeeded in allaying suspicions by giving up his arms.

But treason beset his path. A “praying Indian,” as the converts of Eliot were called, who had lived some years with Philip as secretary and counselor, betrayed the secret of the sachem’s preparations. The betrayal cost him his life but saved the Colony by compelling Philip to begin his outbreak before his preparations were completed. It is said that when he saw the necessity he cast himself upon the ground and wept bitterly.

But there was no escaping it, and collecting his forces he fell upon the settlements with fire and sword, and what was still more dreaded, the scalping knife and tomahawk. The first to feel his fury was the border town of Swanzey, where houses and barns were burnt and nine of the inhabitants put to death and seven wounded. Succor came promptly from Plymouth and Boston. The Indians fell back upon Mount Hope, Philip’s favorite seat. Mutilated corpses and burning dwellings marked the track of the pursued. The pursuer looked round him in vain for an enemy. A few dogs prowled round the deserted wigwams, but not an Indian was to be seen.

And here comes into view one of the boldest leaders of the colonists in their wars with the natives, Benjamin Church, of Plymouth, a man skilled in all the arts of Indian warfare, and in whose ardent nature a sound judgment and self-control were combined with intrepidity and enterprise. He pressed close upon the track of the enemy, crossed the bay to Aquidneck, and after a six hours’ fight with a superior force was compelled to take refuge on board a sloop just as his ammunition began to fail.

The war was fairly begun, and for over a twelvemonth raged with various fortunes but unabated fury. Plymouth and Massachusetts suffered most, but it left bloody traces in Rhode Island also.

For unfortunately for Rhode Island, Philip’s favorite seat was that beautiful range of hills, some twelve miles long, which separates the Taunton River and Mount Hope Bay from Narragansett Bay, thus bringing him within the limits of the present Town of Bristol. Tradition still points to a rock on the southernmost hill where the “noble savage” loved to sit and gaze on the waters as they held their way to the Atlantic, revolving, perhaps, in his embittered mind, a bloody vengeance upon his arrogant foe. It was from Mount Hope that he set forth to strike his first blow, and thither that he returned to fall by the hand of a traitor. “But a small part of the domain of my ancestors is left,” he said to his friend, John Borden. “I am determined not to live till I have no country.”

Part only of the bloody record as I have already said belongs to Rhode Island. In the modern Town of Tiverton, known in those earlier colonial days as Pocasset, there was a swamp—seven miles in length—one of those difficult spots wherein Indian warriors love to concentrate their forces in the hour of danger. Here, amidst intricate paths and trembling morasses Philip first awaited the assault of the enemy. The colonists came up bravely to the charge, but were bravely repulsed with the loss of sixteen men. Then they resolved to take possession of the avenues to the swamp and starve the Indians into surrender. But the wily Philip after standing a siege of thirteen days made good his escape by night and took refuge on the Connecticut River, where he was joined by the Nipmucks, a Massachusetts tribe which he had won over to his fortunes. Surprises, pursuits, gallant stands, fearful massacres follow. At Brookfield it is an ambush followed by a siege. At Deerfield there was a battle in which the Indians were worsted, then a second trial of strength in which the town was burnt. At Hadley the enemy came while the inhabitants were in the meeting-house engaged in their devotions. For a while the men, who had brought their arms with them and were well trained to the use of them, thus held their ground firmly. But the surprise had shaken their nerves, and they were beginning to cast anxious glances around them, when suddenly in their midst appeared a venerable man clad in the habiliments of another age and with a sword in his hand. With a clear, firm voice he roused the flagging courage of the villagers, reformed their ranks and led them to the charge. A Roman would have taken him for one of the Dioscuri—a Spaniard for St. Jago. What wonder that the Hadleyites thought him a divine messenger, and if with such a proof of God’s favor to inspirit them, they sprang forward with dauntless hearts and drove their enemy before them. When the victory was won, the same clear voice bade them bow their heads in prayer, and when they raised them again the mysterious speaker was gone. None but the village preacher knew that it was Goffe, the regicide.

A surprise and massacre have left their name to Bloody Brook. Springfield was burned. But at Hatfield Philip received a check, and having laid waste the western frontier of Massachusetts, turned his steps toward the land of the Narragansetts. For the success of the war depended mainly upon the decision of that still powerful tribe. In the beginning a doubtful treaty had been patched up between them and the English. But their hearts were with their own race, and when Philip came they resolved to cast in their fortunes with his. The colonists prepared themselves sternly for the contest. Fifteen hundred men were enlisted in Massachusetts, Plymouth and Connecticut; a body of friendly Indians joined them, and though it was mid-winter, thinking only of the necessity of striking a decisive blow they began their march. Volunteers from Rhode Island joined them on the way, but Rhode Island as a colony was not consulted.

The Narragansetts were on their own ground and had chosen the strongest point for their winter quarters. It was an island of between three and four acres in the midst of a vast swamp in the southwestern part of the State, three or four miles from the present village of Kingston. To the trees and other natural defences the Indian chief had added palisades and such appliances as his rude engineering suggested. Here he had built his wigwams and stored his provisions, and prepared to pass the winter.

Towards this fated spot at the dawn of a December Sabbath the little army of Puritans took their way. The snow was falling fast and the wind dashed it in their faces, but bated not their speed. By one they were in front of the stronghold, and though weary with the long march and faint with hunger they pressed eagerly forward. The only entrance was over the trunk of a tree. The Indian guns and arrows covered every foot of the way. The colonists undaunted rushed on—officers in the van. First to feel the murderous Indian aim was Captain Johnson, of Roxbury. Captain Davenport, of Boston, fell next, but before he fell penetrated the enclosure. More than two hours the battle raged with unabated fury. At one time the English made their way into the fort, but the Indians rallied and forced them back again. But over-confident in the natural strength of their fortress they had neglected to secure with palisades a strip which they had thought sufficiently guarded by a sheet of water. The English discovered it, and crossing took the astonished natives in the rear. At the same time some one shouted, “Fire their wigwams.” The fatal flame caught eagerly the light boughs and branches of which the frail tenements were made, and in a few moments the fort was all ablaze. Imagination shrinks appalled from the scene that followed. Night was coming on. The snow storm had set in with fresh violence. A thousand Indian warriors lay dead or wounded within the fort. Five hundred wigwams were burning within the same narrow compass—consuming alike the bodies of the wounded and the dead. The women and children, like their protectors, perished in the flames. Eighty of the English, too, were killed—a hundred and fifty were wounded. Had the wigwams been spared there would have been food and shelter for the victors. But victors and vanquished were driven out into the bleak night, weary and spent with long marching and fasting—the Indian to crouch in an open cedar swamp not far from the fort—the English to return to the spot from whence they had set out in the morning for this dreadful victory—Smith’s plantation, near the present village of Wickford. Several of the wounded died by the way.

Even after this blow Philip succeeded in arousing the Maine and New Hampshire tribes to his support, and the war still raged for a while through the New England settlements. Rhode Island suffered severely. Warwick was burned, and the cattle driven off. Tradition says that when the enemy approached Providence, Roger Williams, now a very old man, went out to meet them. “Massachusetts,” he said, “can raise thousands of men at this moment, and if you kill them, the King of England will supply their places as fast as they fall.” “Let them come,” was the reply, “we are ready for them. But as for you, brother Williams, you are a good man; you have been kind to us many years; not a hair of your head shall be touched.” Fifty-four houses in the northern part of the town were burned, but the fearless old man was not harmed.

Many of the colonists took refuge on Aquidneck, where the inhabitants of Newport and Portsmouth received them with great kindness. To protect the island a little flotilla of four boats, manned each by five or six men, was kept sailing around it day and night. There was no rest for old or young. April opened a brighter prospect. Canonchet, chief of the Narragansetts was taken prisoner. A young Englishman attempted to examine him. “You much child; no understand matters of war. Let your brother or your chief come. Him I will answer,” was his haughty reply. He was offered his life if his tribe would submit, but refused it. The offer was renewed and he calmly said, “Let me hear no more about it.” He was sent to Stonington, where a council of war condemned him to death. “I like it well,” said he; “I shall die before my heart is soft, or I have said anything unworthy of myself.” That as many as possible of his own race should take part in his execution Pequots were employed to shoot him, Mohegans to cut off his head and quarter him, and the Niantics to burn his body. When all this had been done, his head was sent to the Commissioners at Hartford as “a taken of love and loyalty.”

Throughout the spring and early summer the war still raged with unabated violence. The Rhode Island Assembly was so hard pushed that it was compelled to repeal the law exempting Quakers from military service. A few days before the capture of Canonchet he had surprised a party of Plymouth men near Pawtuxet. A battle was fought in an open cedar swamp in Warwick. But at last fortune seemed to turn towards the English. Philip’s allies began to fall from him. His wife and children were taken prisoners. Captain Church with a chosen band was on his trail. Hunted from lair to lair he sought refuge at Mount Hope. A few followers still clung to his fortunes. His mind was harassed by unpropitious dreams, and in his weariness his pursuers came upon him unawares. As he rose to flee he was shot down by a renegade Indian. The victors drew his body out of the swamp, cut off his head, and dividing the trunk and limbs into four parts hung them upon four trees. The head was sent to Plymouth where it was hung upon a gibbet. One hand was sent to Boston where it was welcomed as a trophy, and the other was given to the renegade who shot him, by whom it was exhibited for money. His son was sold into West India servitude.

With the death of Philip the war ended, although there were occasional collisions and bloodshed. For two members of the New England confederacy it had been a war of desolation. Connecticut, the third, escaped unharmed. Rhode Island, which had never been a member of it and had never been consulted concerning the war, although some of its leading incidents occurred within her borders, suffered most. Her second town was burned, her plantations laid waste and the inhabitants of her main-land driven for shelter to the island.

With the vanquished it went hard. Many were killed in battle, some were shot in cold blood by the sentence of an English court-martial. Many were sold into slavery—with this distinction in favor of Rhode Island, that while the other colonies sold their prisoners into unqualified servitude, she established for hers a system of apprenticeship by which the prospect of ultimate freedom was opened to all.

CHAPTER XI.

INDIANS STILL TROUBLESOME.—CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE.—TROUBLES CONCERNING THE BOUNDARY LINES.

War was followed by pestilence, which moves so fatally in her train. Of this pestilence we only know that it ran its deadly course in two or three days, and left its traces in almost every family. Meanwhile the legislature was sedulously repairing the breaches of the war. Laws passed in order to meet an urgent want were repealed, and chief among them as most repugnant to the tolerant spirit of the Colony the law of military service. The farmers returned to their desolate fields—citizens to the ruins of their hamlets. “Give us peace,” they may have said, “and we will efface the traces of these ruins.”

But it was long before real peace returned. The Indians though subdued were still turbulent. Active measures were required to prevent them from passing on and off the Island at will, and building their wigwams and mat-sheds on the commons and even on private lands. Rumsellers were found ready to sell them rum, and at Providence parties were sent out to scour the woods and guard against surprises. As an encouragement to the men engaged in these duties their wounded were nursed at public expense.

There was more serious danger from another quarter. Connecticut had not renounced her designs against Rhode Island territory, nor was she slow in declaring her intentions. The first step was an order of the Council at Hartford forbidding every one, whether white man or Indian, to occupy any lands in Narragansett without its consent. The Assembly met this order by a counter prohibition. No jurisdiction was to be exercised there but that of Rhode Island.

This declaration of claims was promptly followed by action. Three planters who had returned to their plantations in Warwick were seized by the Connecticut authorities and sent to Hartford. They appealed to their own Governor, Governor Clarke for protection. One of the most important measures of the Rhode Island government was the reëstablishment of King’s Province. Full power of protection was conferred upon a court of justices to be held in Narragansett. No one was allowed to enter the Province without permission from the Assembly. Ten thousand acres of land were set apart for new settlers at the rate of a hundred acres to each man—the new settlers to be approved by the Assembly. Rhode Island threatened to appeal to the King. Connecticut declared that she was ready to meet the appeal. Attempts at compromise were made by both parties. Connecticut proposed to fix the line at Coweset, the modern East Greenwich. Rhode Island offered to allow Connecticut to dispose of half the unpurchased lands in the Province if the settlers would accept the jurisdiction of Rhode Island. The loss of King’s Province would have imperilled the future independence of Rhode Island, and therewith the great principle on which it was founded. Connecticut could not renounce her last hope of securing a part of Narragansett Bay. Neither offer was accepted, and it soon became evident that no decision could be reached except by appeal to the King. Peleg Sandford and Richard Bailey were chosen agents, and two hundred and fifty pounds voted for their expenses. The money was to be raised by the sale of ten thousand acres of lands in Narragansett at the rate of a shilling an acre.

Meanwhile the Assembly was very active. A party change took place at the election of 1677—Governor Arnold was chosen in place of Governor Clarke. This was equivalent to a triumph of the war party. The militia law was again revised, care still being taken to protect the rights of conscience. How jealously these were guarded appears also in the unwillingness to multiply oaths of office. Five years before an act had been passed requiring deputies to take an engagement on entering upon the duties of their office. This law met with great opposition at its original passage, and its repeal was hailed with general satisfaction. Every freeman, it was said, made an engagement of allegiance on receiving the rights of citizenship. An oath is too solemn a thing to be lightly taken—why should we use it? So reasoned those conscientious men. By another act, also, they showed how fast they held to this fundamental principle.

Another sect, the Sabbatarians or Seventh-Day Baptists, had taken root and begun to flourish in the free air of Rhode Island. In 1667 they were sufficiently numerous to justify them in asking that market day might be changed from Saturday, their Sabbath, to some other day. Without breaking in upon an old custom by changing the day, the Assembly added Thursday as another market day and thus quieted the scruples of honest and useful citizens.

We have seen how promptly and firmly the Assembly met the encroachments of Connecticut. Their remonstrances were followed up by spirited and judicious action. The surest way to strengthen their hold upon the disputed territory was by peopling it. Among the coves and inlets which give such quiet beauty to Narragansett Bay there is none more beautiful than that broad sheet of navigable water which still retains in part its original name of Coweset. Here it was resolved to plant a colony and build a town. Five hundred acres were set apart in lots on the bay for house lots—four thousand five hundred in farms of ninety acres, which were distributed among fifty men on condition of building within a year and opening roads from the bay into the country. To guard against rash speculation no colonist was to sell his land within twenty-one years unless with the consent of the Assembly. Thus on the verdant hill-side at whose foot a ripple from the Atlantic mingles with the inland murmur of Mascachugh was built the pleasant hamlet of East Greenwich.

Another bitter controversy arose concerning the limits and extent of the original Providence and Pawtuxet purchase—a question of great local interest, and which lost none of its heat from having for opposite leaders Roger Williams and William Harris. Several difficult questions were mixed up with it, greatly disturbing the harmony of the northern section of the Colony. Williams had shown himself to be an inaccurate conveyancer in the drafting of the original deed. This was purely a question of title. A still more difficult one arose when Warwick was colonized. Agents were sent to England to ask for the appointment of commissioners to decide the controversies which the local tribunals were unable to decide effectually. John Greene and Randall Holden were the agents for Warwick; William Harris for Pawtuxet. This William Harris, as we have already seen, was a bold thinker and an energetic actor. He made several voyages to England in defence of his party, and followed up with great energy every advantage that he gained before the tribunals at home. On his last voyage he fell into the hands of Barbary corsairs, and though ransomed after a year of captivity died soon after his redemption. The controversy did not cease with his death. Other voyages were made to England and other decisions obtained. But it was not till many years later that the unwise contest was settled. Then, in 1696, the line between Providence and Warwick was settled by the Assembly, with the Pawtuxet River for boundary. That between Providence and Pawtuxet was continued till 1712 and then settled by compromise.

CHAPTER XII.

DEATH OF SEVERAL OF THE MOST PROMINENT MEN.—CHANGES IN LEGISLATION.

The woes of Rhode Island begin anew. Scarcely had the war ceased when Connecticut as we have already seen renewed her claim to Narragansett. Massachusetts soon followed in the name of the Atherton company. And presently Plymouth joined herself to the roll of Rhode Island’s enemies by advancing a claim to Aquidneck itself. Connecticut sought to strengthen her pretensions by asserting that the disputed territory was now hers by right of conquest. Thus far the sturdy little colony had held its ground and grown and prospered in the midst of enemies. Would she continue to hold it? Humanity itself was concerned in the answer, for of all the powers and kingdoms of the earth she alone was founded upon the principle of perfect toleration. The contest was a long and a weary one, too long for the purpose of this volume, for it is a history of seventy years of discussion and aggression, of bitter attack and firm resistance, terminating at last in the triumph of the weak and single-handed. Rhode Island not only preserved her original territory but added to it from that of two of her enemies. I shall select a few incidents to illustrate the progress of the contest.

It was to be waged for the most part by a new generation. The great men of the foundation were passing away. John Clarke, who had thrown the mild lustre of his purity over the first half of the life of the Colony, died in 1676, leaving a deep longing, or rather a sore need of his civil virtues and diplomatic skill. Samuel Gorton, whose tenacious convictions made him stern and intolerant in public life though gentle and attractive in private intercourse, and whose vigorous and subtle intellect led him to rejoice in the bitterness of controversy as the swift horse rejoices in the dust of the race-course, died the year after. Roger Williams was spared a few years longer—bold, ardent, disputatious, resolute, sincere and earnest to the last. But the young of his middle age were growing old, and the companions of his active years were falling around him. His colony had thriven and flourished. The five men who followed him from Salem had become “a thousand or twelve hundred men able to bear arms.” In spite of the threatening of the political horizon his strong faith told him that the being in whom he had put his trust thus far would stand by him still. And thus he laid his head upon his last pillow, a satisfied and happy man.

Another man of bold, original type—William Harris—had run his active career, and died with his hands and heart still full of unfinished work. We have seen to what length he carried his doctrine of individual right to free action. We have seen him wage a bitter controversy with Roger Williams. Time after time he crossed the Atlantic as agent of the great boundary questions which fill so large a space in the Rhode Island history of this period; the last time, and from which he was never to return, as agent for Connecticut. A deep presentiment of disaster seems to have filled his mind as he was preparing himself for this voyage, and not satisfied with making his will he presented it for probate with his own hands. The presentiment was well founded. On the outward passage he was taken by a Barbary corsair and sold into slavery. By the exertion of friends he was ransomed after a year’s captivity and made his way through Spain and France to England. But the year of slavery had told hard upon him, and three days after his arrival he died. It has been remarked by a profound thinker that while Williams’s more comprehensive mind could embrace both the practical and ideal in their mutual relations, the moment that Harris touched the ideal he became a radical. It does not seem to have struck his cotemporaries as it does us to see him accepting the agency of Connecticut in her controversy with Rhode Island. But he has a definite place in Rhode Island history and did her good service through his long and somewhat turbulent career.

William Coddington, who had been an eminent man in Massachusetts before he became a very eminent man in Rhode Island, lived to take an active part in the controversy, and died in 1678, while holding for the time the office of Governor. His temporary usurpation had been forgiven and forgotten, and men remembered only that he had sincerely renounced his hostile designs and become a loyal and useful citizen.

Such were some of the men who bore the largest part in moulding the original character of Rhode Island. Talent and character like theirs was required to guide the little Colony through the dangers that surrounded it. But before we return to the external history of these days we will gather from the acts of the Assembly a few records of the moral and intellectual life of the Colony and its progress to a higher civilization.

The publicity of the laws is a question of deep interest in every stage of society, but particularly interesting in small communities. In the early days of Rhode Island they were published by beat of drum under the seal of the Colony. The violation of a law found no excuse in the plea of ignorance.

The sessions of the Assembly were held in a tavern or sometimes in a private house, always beginning, as the Roman assemblies did, at a very early hour. We have already seen that early attempts were made to allure the members to their duty by payment. It was still some time before this became a fixed law. In 1679 a resolution was passed for paying the board and lodging of the members of the Assembly and of the Court of Trials. In the May session of 1680 a definite sum was fixed upon—seven shillings a week. The true nature of the reciprocal obligation of the citizen and the State was not yet fully understood.

The frequent appeals to England which the aggressions of the other New England colonies made necessary, made it also necessary to keep resident agents at the English court. Thus the increased expenditure of the Colony kept pace with the increase of her resources.

In 1678 a tax was laid which enables us to form a tolerably accurate idea of the financial condition of the Colony. Its full amount was three hundred pounds. “Of this sum Newport was assessed one hundred and thirty-six pounds, Portsmouth sixty-eight, New Shoreham and Jamestown twenty-nine each, Providence ten, Warwick eight, Kingston sixteen, afterwards reduced to eight, East Greenwich and Westerly two each.” As the greater part of this tax was commutable, we are enabled to form a pretty accurate idea of the price of living just after the war. “Fresh pork was valued at twopence a pound, salted and well packed pork at fifty shillings a barrel, fresh beef at twelve shillings a hundred weight, packed beef in barrels thirty shillings a hundred, peas and barley malt two and sixpence a bushel, corn and barley, two shillings, washed wool sixpence a pound, and good firkin butter fivepence. The quarter part of this tax was paid in wool at the rate of fivepence a pound.” If we compare these prices with those of 1670, we shall see that war had proved here as everywhere a great scourge.

In the law by which this tax was levied we find a practical illustration of the principle which less than a century later became the fundamental principle of colonial resistance to the mother country. None but a complete representation of all the towns could levy a tax, or as it was formulated by James Otis—taxation without representation is tyranny.

It is also worthy of observation that there was a tendency to extend the usage of election to direct choice by vote of the freemen. The office of major which at its first institution during Philip’s war was filled by vote of the militia, passed, in 1678, to the whole body of freemen. The necessity of a distinction between martial and civil law seems, also, to have made itself more sensibly felt at the same period, and a permanent court-martial was formed for the trial of delinquent soldiers. As the commercial spirit of the Colony increased the necessity of a bankrupt law was felt, but on trial it was found to be premature and repealed. An attempt was also made to avoid the conflict of land titles in Narragansett, where the interest of townships as well as of private individuals was involved. To correct this evil which struck at the root of social organization the Assembly ordered that the disputed tracts should be surveyed and plats made of them. For the more efficacious protection of this fundamental interest it was ordered that all who held by Indian titles “should present their deeds to be passed on by the Assembly.” Descending to minuter particulars, we find a law against fast riding—first, in “the compact parts of Newport,” and not long after, of Providence, also. We find it also ordered that a bell be provided and set up in some convenient place for calling the Assembly and courts and council together. Of deeper interest was the act appointing a committee to make a digest of the laws, “that they may be putt in print.” Only part, however, of this resolution was carried out, and it was not till 1719 that the laws were put into a permanent form.

Not the laws only but the language in which they were expressed attracted attention. We now meet for the first time in the enacting clause of a law, “and by the authority thereof be it ordained, enacted and declared.” Instead of executor administrator was written, “it being in that case the more proper and usual term in the law.” In one act we find an instance of grim humor. The accounts of a general sergeant were found to be in inextricable confusion. The auditing committee resolved to call them square “and voted that by this act there is a full and fynal issue of all differences relative to said accounts from the beginninge of the world unto this present Assembly.”

In some instances the public mind was not made up concerning a law, and one Assembly would undo the work of its predecessor. One of the most important acts of this class was an act denying the revisory power of the Assembly over decisions of courts of trials. In the August session of 1680, after two years of experiment, the act was repealed.

The existence of a law proves, also, the existence of an evil. In the May session of 1679, we find an act for the protection of servants, whom “sundry persons being evil-minded” were in the habit of overtasking at home, and then hiring others to let out for work on Sunday—thus infringing the law which practically made Sunday a holiday. This is not a pleasant picture, but the action of the Assembly forbidding the abuse shows that public opinion was sound. We find, also, that then as now sailors were more or less at the mercy of sailor landlords. The Assembly took up their defence. Those who trusted a sailor for more than five shillings without an order from his captain forfeited their claim. Another law bearing directly upon navigation was passed in the May session of 1679. “The master of every vessel of over twenty tons burthen was required to report himself to the head officer of the town upon arrival and departure, and if over ten days in port, then to set up notice in two public places in the town three days before sailing.” In this last act we see the influence of the navigation act which was so long held to be the guardian genius of England’s commercial prosperity, and which was communicated to all the colonies by royal edict in 1680.

And here, as illustrative of border life when Rhode Island was a border colony, comes the story of John Clawson’s curse. This John Clawson was a hired servant of Roger Williams, who, at the instigation of a desperate fellow by the name of Herendeen, was attacked in the night from behind a thicket of barberry bushes, near the old north burial ground by an Indian named Waumaion. The Indian, who was armed with a broad axe, split open Clawson’s chin at the first blow. The wound was mortal, but the wounded man lived long enough to utter his curse—that “Herendeen and his posterity might be marked with split chins and haunted with barberry bushes” forever. The malediction, legend says, was fulfilled, and the descendants of the murderer were still distinguished in the last century by a furrowed chin, and fired up with indignation at the mention of a barberry bush.

CHAPTER XIII.

COURTS AND ARMY STRENGTHENED.—COMMISSIONERS SENT FROM ENGLAND.—CHARTER REVOKED.

Disputes of title fill, as we have seen, a full but monotonous chapter in this part of our history. Among them was the dispute for Potowomut, a neck of land on Coweset Bay which had been purchased of the Indians by order of the Assembly as early as 1659. Bitter disputes soon followed, Warwick claiming it, and individuals both English and Indians disputing the claim. At last the question was disposed of, as was supposed, finally, at a town meeting in 1680, in which it was divided “into fifty equal lots or rights, and the names of the proprietors were inserted on the records.” But the very next year we meet it again as a contest between Warwick and Kingston. At last the Assembly interposed, forbidding all occupancy of the land till further orders, warning off intruders, but permitting the Warwick men to mow and improve the meadows as heretofore.

Among the questions brought before the Assembly in the time of these disputes, was the question of the power of the Town Council to reject or accept new citizens. The question was brought up by Providence and decided in the affirmative. The form of application for leave to reside has been preserved: “To y^e Towne mett this 15th of December 1680. My request to y^e Towne is; that they woold grant the liberty to reside in y^e Towne during the Townes Approbation, behaving myselfe as a civill man ought to doe, Desireing not to putt y^e Towne to any charge by my residing here; and for what y^e Towne shall cause farther to enquire of me, I shall see I hope to give them a true and sober Answer thereunto. Y^or friend and servant Tho. Waters.”

One of the lessons of the war had been the importance of cavalry, and in 1682 a company was raised in the main-land towns consisting of thirty-six men, exclusive of officers. To put them on the same footing with the infantry they were allowed the same privileges, and held to the same obligation of exercising six days in the year. Not long after the number of majors was doubled, and John Greene appointed for the main-land and John Coggeshall for the island. Measures were also taken to give greater efficiency to the courts, and it was decided that the October sessions should be held in Providence and Warwick annually. That there might be no delay in the execution of sentences, each of these towns was required to furnish a cage and stocks. Thus surely but gradually the resolute Colony went on in its work of organization. But perilous days were at hand.

The appeals of the colonies to England had attracted her attention to these distant domains, which but for that might long have continued to grow and prosper in obscurity. But when called upon to grant privileges she naturally began to examine into the nature of her rights, and interpreted them not by the genius of the colonies, but by the commercial interests of the mother country. The act of navigation, which had its origin in English jealousy of Holland, bore hard from the beginning on the commercial industry of the colonies. Although first passed by the republican Parliament of 1651, it did not become an efficient act until the first Parliament of Charles II. in 1660, when it was formally proclaimed in all the colonies by beat of drum. Custom-houses with all their parapheranalia followed close in its track. The burthen was soon felt, and smuggling, the natural relief of overtaxed commerce, became general. The bays and inlets of New England afforded great facilities for illicit trade, and the public conscience could not long resist the temptation. We shall see before another century is over to what England’s narrow policy led.

Questions relating to the colonies were generally referred to the Board of Trade. In 1680 came a letter from the board containing twenty-seven queries concerning Rhode Island. The agents in England also went prepared to give all the information that was required for the understanding of the claims and condition of the Colony. As long as Charles, the grantor of the charter lived, there was nothing done to excite alarm. But no sooner did his bigoted brother ascend the throne, than it became evident that an entire change was to be made in colonial policy. Rhode Island was quick to feel the blow. A commission of nine was appointed to settle the vexed question of King’s Province. Head of the commission was the notorious Cranfield, who had made himself a bad name by his tyrannical government of New Hampshire. Next came Randolph, detested in Massachusetts for his oppressive administration of the acts of trade. These names excited gloomy anticipations which were presently fulfilled.

And here let us pause a moment to observe the exact situation of Rhode Island at this critical emergency. Having had her origin in a practical appeal from the intolerance of Massachusetts, she had never been admitted to the confederation which gave unity and strength to the other New England colonies. Her doctrine of soul-liberty was a stench in their nostrils, and her possession of the broad and beautiful Narragansett Bay so favorable for maritime and internal commerce, was, as we have seen, a constant subject of bickering and envy. Massachusetts laid claim to Pawtuxet and Warwick, and a Massachusetts company to part of Narragansett; Connecticut to a large portion of the remainder of Narragansett, Plymouth to Aquidneck and other islands of the Bay. Little was left to Rhode Island but the plantations on the Mooshausick. All of these claims were enforced by all the means and arts within the command of the stronger colonies except actual war, and resisted with admirable resolution and perseverance by the weaker colony. We have seen how agents were sent to plead her cause at the court of their common sovereign, how every attempt to establish jurisdiction had been promptly resisted and every intrusion instantly repelled. In the darkest hour she never lost heart nor bated one jot her rights. But the darkest hour of all was at hand.

Cranfield and Randolph set themselves zealously to their congenial task. The Assembly met for theirs. The Commissioners refused to establish their position by showing their credentials. The Assembly refused to recognize them officially without credentials. The rupture was open and violent. The Assembly appointed new agents to repair to court and lay the evidence in behalf of the Colony before the King. A tax of four hundred pounds was imposed to meet their expenses. Much importance was attached to an address to the King drawn up by Randall Holden and John Greene. Meanwhile the Commissioners on their part were not idle. Cranfield wrote to the Board of Trade that the colonies were disloyal. “It never will be otherwise,” he added, “till their charters are broke and the college at Cambridge utterly extirpated, for from thence these half-witted philosophers turn either Atheists or seditious preachers.” He was right, for it was at Cambridge that Otis and Quincy and Warren and the two Adamses imbibed the principles which led to independence.

It was in 1684, in the midst of these struggles, that a petition of the Jews for protection was presented to the Assembly and granted—Rhode Island remaining true to the last to the principle of her origin.

The decision of the Royal Commissioners was unfavorable to Rhode Island, and it is hard to see how she could have escaped mutilation. But she was menaced by a still greater danger. In 1684 Charles the Second died, and his brother James ascended the throne, bringing with him a narrow mind and a bad heart. To establish an arbitrary government and restore the supremacy of the Romish Church were the cardinal points of his policy. The American colonies afforded a favorable field for the trial. It began by the revocation of their charters, and was speedily followed up by putting the government of the New England colonies under one head.

Rhode Island found herself where she stood at the beginning, a government of towns. Her original four towns had united under one government for self-defence, and now that they were arbitrarily separated by a power too great to be resisted they naturally fell back upon their original municipal institutions. This closing scene is not without its dignity. The Assembly met at its accustomed time. The Governor, Walter Clarke, solemnly called upon the freemen for counsel. The whole question of dangers and difficulties was discussed, and wisely preferring petition to resistance, it was resolved to address a solemn appeal to the King for the preservation of their charter. Then all returned to its original order. The freemen met and discussed their town interests in their town meetings. Town officers elected by their townsmen performed their accustomed duties. The tradesman and the farmer went on in his chosen calling and the towns throve and prospered, still looking with unwavering trust to a day of redemption.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHANGES IN FORM OF GOVERNMENT.—SIR EDMOND ANDROS APPOINTED GOVERNOR.—HE OPPRESSES THE COLONISTS AND IS FINALLY DEPOSED.

Thus a provisional government took the place of the charter government under which New England had grown so rapidly. A great and successful experiment in political science was suddenly checked, and hopes which had led so many devout and earnest men to renounce the conveniences of home for the perils and discomforts of a wilderness were rudely crushed at the very moment when they seemed nearest their fulfillment. The same blow which fell upon Rhode Island fell with equal fatality upon Massachusetts and Connecticut. The government by charter ceased. The two most active agents of James in this remoulding of the government of the colonies were Dudley, President of the Council, and Randolph, the Secretary, whose despotic conduct in Boston has already been mentioned. Here was a broader and more congenial field.

It was resolved as has been seen to address the King in behalf of the Colony, and John Greene, venerable by years and illustrious by public services, was appointed to carry the address to England and advocate it as agent for the Colony. He had watched over the cradle of the Colony—who so fit to stand by its grave.

Unfortunately, party had lost none of its virulence even in this supreme hour, and a small minority of dissentients was found to the sober and judicious conduct of the Assembly. Among them were members of the Atherton company, and among their methods of attack were bitter aspersions upon the personal character of the colonial agent. The provisional government found enough to do in preparing the colonies for their new life, and one of their earliest measures was a final organization of King’s Province. Among the changes that they made was the changing of the names of its three towns. Kingston, the largest, was called Rochester, Westerly, the next in size, became Haversham, and East Greenwich, the smallest, took the name of Dedford. The western boundary of Haversham was Pawcatuck River. Dedford was extended on the north to Warwick, and enlarged by the peninsula of Potowomut. Part of the actual settlers were living on land to which they had no legal claim. Preëmption rights were granted them and time given them to “arrange with the owners by rent or purchase.”

At last, on the 20th of December, 1686, the Royal Governor, Sir Edmond Andros, arrived in Boston. He came in a ship of the royal navy and brought with him two companies of the royal army, the first regular troops that had ever been seen in Massachusetts. He had already been in the colonies and knew the spirits with whom he would have to deal. Rhode Island, like her sisters, had everything to fear from his arbitrary will. But she had treated him with respectful consideration on his former visit, and was now treated by him with less than his usual harshness.

He entered at once upon his welcome task, the transformation of a constitutional government into a despotism. Massachusetts came first in order, and the very first blow was a deadly one, an outrage upon her convictions and a deep humiliation to her pride. Her Puritan theocracy, which had penetrated every part of her civil polity, was overthrown, and the service of the church of England was openly celebrated. In this Rhode Island had no change to fear, for freedom of conscience was, till other ends were accomplished, the doctrine of the King himself. In all other things all the colonies fared alike.

We have seen how watchful Rhode Island was of the taxing power, and how nearly she had reached the great fundamental principle that taxation and representation go together. Andros sent out his tax-gatherers without consulting the tax-payers. His object was to raise money, no matter how. Farming the revenue, always a favorite device of despotism, offered facilities which he promptly turned to account. The augmentation of fees was an abundant source. Those of probate were increased twenty-fold. Writs of intrusion opened another channel for organized robbery. No one could tell how soon he might be compelled to buy his farm over again. Even marriage afforded a field for the display of arbitrary power. Necessity at first compelled the government to recognize the validity of civil marriages. But as the transformation of laws and usages progressed, no marriages were recognized as valid which were not celebrated according to the rights of the Church of England. To feel the odious tyranny of this law it should be remembered that there was but one Episcopal clergyman in the Colony. Another oppressive act was the introduction of passports, whether for the fees they brought in or in order to throw obstacles in the way of a free communication among the colonies, it would be difficult to tell.

Andros’s commission gave him the power to appoint and remove his counselors at will. The council consisted of nineteen members, five of whom were from Rhode Island. One of them, John Greene, was absent on his agency in England. Their first meeting was held at Boston. In this the usual oaths of allegiance and office were taken, the two Quaker members from Rhode Island being allowed to make their affirmation. All officers in commission were continued in office during the Governor’s pleasure, and all laws that did not clash with the laws of England, were retained. The first was the only full meeting of this impotent board, which only met to confirm the resolves of an arbitrary Governor.

In substance Andros had his own way, though not without occasional opposition and now and then humiliation. In Rhode Island the charter was adroitly put out of his reach by Governor Clarke and not reproduced till he had left Newport. In Connecticut it was hidden in the hollow of an oak. The seal of Rhode Island was broken. The members of the council were constantly changing, and few of them, according to Randolph, cared for the King. “His Excellency has to do with a perverse people.”

We meet some of the questions of our own day. Licenses for the sale of liquor were granted in Newport, but no liquor could be sold in King’s Province. How well the prohibition was obeyed it is impossible to say. Poor laws also appear in the guise of taxes for the support of that perplexing part of the population. It would be tedious and useless to follow the despotic Governor through all the changes of his administration of two years and four months. Suffice it to say that he had fully imbibed the spirit of his master, and did all that he could to reduce the colonies to servitude. A few provisions, however, may be mentioned as illustrating the condition of the country. With the growth of the towns fires became sources of danger. To enforce watchfulness the person in whose house a fire broke out was fined two and sixpence, and for still greater security every householder was required to set “a ladder reaching to the ridge pole, to every house that he owned.” Attention was called to the fishing in Pettaquamscot pond and an order passed for encouraging it. A tax was laid for the extermination of wolves, which seem still to have been very numerous.

In April, 1688, Andros’s commission was enlarged so as to comprise New York and the Jerseys, all under the general appellation of New England. Enlarged powers and minute instructions accompanied the new commission, and among the former was the subjection of the press to the will of the Governor.

But another change was drawing nigh. There was nothing in common between James the Second and the New England colonist, and Andros represented his master too faithfully not to be bitterly hated. Even Thanksgiving, that thoroughly New England festival, was neglected when announced by his proclamation. Some spoke out their detestation openly to his face. “I suppose,” he said one morning to Dr. Hooker, the great clerical wit of Hartford, “all the good people of Connecticut are fasting and praying on my account.” “Yes,” replied the Doctor, “we read, ‘This kind goeth not out but by fasting and prayer.’”

Rhode Island suffered less at his hands than any other colony. The enforced toleration which excited such strong feelings in Massachusetts met with no opposition in a territory where Baptists and Quakers and Puritans and Separatists worshipped according to their own convictions. John Greene soon became aware that there was no prospect of a return to the free life of the charter so long as James held the throne. Therefore, without renouncing the hope of a better future, he confined his negotiations for the present to questions of minor, though important bearing. Chief among them was the putting an end to the intrusions of the outside claimants to Narragansett. This brought up all the unsettled claims which had been so pertinaciously enforced and so firmly resisted. The Atherton claim was thrown out by the Commissioners as extorted from the Indians by fear. The Connecticut claim was repudiated upon grounds set forth in the Rhode Island charter. Several individual titles, both Indian and English, were considered, and after careful examination, the right of Rhode Island to King’s Province was confirmed for the third time—“against Connecticut in point of jurisdiction, and against the so-called proprietors in point of ownership.” This report was met in England by a petition of Lord Culpepper in behalf of the Atherton company for grants of land not already occupied and the bass ponds, upon such quit rents as might seem good to the King. The petition was granted in part and Andros was intrusted to “assign them such lands as had not already been occupied—at a quit rent of two and sixpence for every hundred acres.”

Thus far Rhode Island has come off with honor in her contests with her neighbors. There was one, however, in which she won no honor. A party of unfortunate Huguenots had established themselves in King’s Province, forming a little settlement of their own and paying honestly for their lands. But the French name was not loved in the colonies and their Protestant neighbors persecuted them away. Traces of them may still be found in the neighborhood where they settled, which bears to this day the name of Frenchtown.

Meanwhile great changes were taking place in England, where James was rapidly running his career of bigotry and oppression. Slow as the communications between the mother country and her colonies were there was still communication enough to enable the latter to form some conception of the state of public feeling in the former. The new government had never acquired any stability in New England. The Council was constantly changing, and after the first meeting never all met together again. The public mind was ripe for revolution, and when the first tidings of the fall of James reached New England she was prepared to accept them with all their consequences. Unfortunately for Andros he was in Boston at this critical moment, and Boston was ready to act with her wonted vigor. The Governor was summoned to surrender his authority, and refusing, was thrown into prison. Massachusetts made haste to reörganize her government, but her charter was gone.

CHAPTER XV.

CHARTER GOVERNMENT AGAIN RESUMED.—FRENCH WAR.—INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.—CHARGES AGAINST THE COLONIES.

Rhode Island had never hated Andros as bitterly as the other colonies had hated him, for the freedom of conscience which he endeavored to force upon them was in her a fundamental principle. But she loved her charter and rightly believed that it was the only sure pledge of her liberties. Therefore, when Dudley, the Chief-Justice, undertook to open his court, he was seized and put in jail. This was a bold casting off of the new government. The next step was a cautious return to the old. A letter from Newport came out calling upon the freemen of Rhode Island to meet there “before the day of usual election by charter,” to take counsel together concerning public affairs. When the day came the freemen met, and doubtless with all their usual freedom of debate, prepared a statement of their reasons for resuming their charter government. Party lines were already sharply drawn. On one side were the Royalists, led by the rich merchant, Francis Brinley, who opposed the resumption of the charter, and called for a general government by immediate appointment of the King. On the other were the Republicans, stronger both by number and by fervor of opinion. Their boldness secured the freedom of the Colony. In an address to “the present supreme power of England,” they gave their reasons for returning to their charter, and asked to have their action approved. Deputy-Governor Coggeshall, with several assistants, resumed their functions, but Governor Clarke, whose characteristic trait was caution, declined and the Colony was ten months without a governor.

Still, in May, all the old officers were reinstated and “all the laws superseded in 1686” resumed their place on the schedule. “The charter was produced in open Assembly” and then restored to Governor Clarke for safe keeping. When the question of the legality of the resumption of charter government came before the King, he approved it upon the written opinion of the law officers of the crown that “the charter, never having been revoked, but only suspended, still remained in full force and effect.” Heartily must Rhode Island and Connecticut have rejoiced that theirs had been so successfully guarded. In May came the welcome tidings that William and Mary had been acknowledged in England. They were promptly and joyfully acknowledged in the colonies. Dr. Increase Mather, a great name in Massachusetts, was in London on behalf of the colonies when the revolution broke out. He obtained an early audience of William and pleaded for the recall of Andros. The recall was granted, and after ten months of confinement the crestfallen Governor was sent to England for trial. But his conduct was viewed in a different light in the mother country from what it had been in the colonies. “The charges against him were dismissed by the royal order, on the ground of insufficiency—and that he had done nothing which was not fully justified by his instructions.” As a compensation for his long imprisonment, he was presently made Governor of Virginia.

In February, 1689–90, the Assembly met for the first time in four years and entered upon the work of organization. Seventeen deputies, together with the officers chosen in May, were present. Absentees were summoned. Clarke refused to serve as Governor. Christopher Almy also declined. The bold but aged Henry Bull was chosen in his stead. After some hesitation Clarke gave up the charter and other official papers. Funds which had been appropriated to the building of a Colony House were held by Roger Goulding, who promptly paid them over. Andros had broken the original colonial seal. A new seal, Hope with her anchor, was procured. Rhode Island’s exposed situation laid her open to attacks by sea, and thus imposed the necessity of new expenses. War had broken out between England and France, and the colonies were to come in for their share of war’s sufferings. Some fear was felt of the colony in Frenchtown, and the few survivors of the unfortunate settlement were required to repair to the office of John Greene, in Warwick, and take the oath of allegiance to the King.

Thus the government was regularly organized and public business began to move on in its accustomed track. At the May session of 1690 Governor Bull declined a reelection, and John Easton was chosen in his place. John Greene was chosen Deputy-Governor. One more was added to the list of assistants, who thus became ten. Here ends the probation of Rhode Island.

Poor and weak, through toil and sacrifice, in spite of internal dissensions and external enmities, calumniated for the great truth on which she was founded, coveted for the beautiful territory which she had redeemed from the wilderness, she had solved the problem of self-government and proved that the religious virtues may flourish without the aid of civil authority. The struggle for existence is over. She now enters through industry upon the path to wealth and culture.

The sessions of the Assembly had been held hitherto in taverns or private houses. But now a proper edifice, the town house, is built for public use and the public meetings are held in it. Thus far, also, the governor, the deputy-governor and the assistants have received no compensation for their services. They are henceforth exempted from the Colony tax. War with the French and Indians was raging all along the northern frontier. New York was the colony most exposed. Leister, her Governor, called on the other colonies for aid. Rhode Island, whose extensive water fronts left her open to attacks by sea, could not send men, and therefore taxed herself three hundred pounds to send money. The wisdom of this course was soon apparent. Seven French privateers made a descent upon the islands on the coast, committing horrible excesses. Bonfires were kindled at Pawcatuck to alarm the country, and a sloop well manned sent out from Newport to reconnoitre. A night attempt was made upon the town but failed. One upon New London was repulsed. Two sloops carrying ninety men were sent out under Thomas Paine and John Godfrey to fight the enemy. A bloody battle which lasted two hours and a half followed, and the French were driven off with the loss of half their crews and a valuable prize. Block Island was particularly exposed during this war. Four attacks were made upon it, the inhabitants ill treated and their cattle driven off. In the last invasion the privateersmen were defeated in “an open pitched battle.”

The war pressed so heavily on the commercial interests of the community that it was found necessary to lay a tonnage duty of a shilling a ton upon the vessels over ten tons burthen of other colonies that broke bulk in Newport harbor. The payment might be made in money or in powder, at the rate of a shilling a pound, and the products of the duty were employed in keeping up a powder magazine on the island. Rhode Islanders had not yet learnt to pay their taxes promptly, and more than once the Assembly was called together to devise the means of collecting sums already voted. The tonnage duty was a welcome, though a small contribution, to the scanty resources of the little Colony. A few years later a new source was opened by the levy of a duty upon foreign wines, liquors and molasses—that upon molasses being a half-penny a gallon. In the August session of 1698 an elaborate tax law in twelve sections was enacted, and a tax of eight hundred pounds currency was voted. By this act a poll tax of a shilling a head was imposed upon all males between sixteen and sixty. But this, also, was not easily collected, and years passed before an adequate method of taxation was devised and applied.

Shortly after the return to the charter the small-pox broke out. “Rhode Island is almost destroyed by the small-pox,” says a cotemporary letter. When the Assembly met they were unable to open the session with the prescribed formalities, for the only copy of the charter was in the keeping of the recorder, who was sick with the dreaded disease, and the reading of the charter was the first step towards organization. When the pestilence was passed, the attention of legislation was directed to the militia laws, which were revised and brought more into harmony with the material wants of the Colony. In this connection it may not be out of place to remember that the town house was enlarged and a belfry added to it. Government was gradually putting on the external forms of authority.

In 1691 a change occurred on the eastern border which threatened her inter-colonial relations. Plymouth was merged in Massachusetts, which was thus brought into larger contact with Rhode Island. Sir William Phipps, a native of Massachusetts, was appointed Governor, with a commission which gave him command over all the forces of New England, by land and by sea—a flagrant violation of the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut, and which was vigorously repelled. Older grievances were not entirely healed. Some Pawcatuck men asked to be placed under the laws of Connecticut. The leaven of the Atherton company dispute had not yet spent its force. But the change of tone in the language of the correspondence shows that the bitterness which had distinguished its early stages was gradually passing away.

This (1692) was the time of the witchcraft trials in Massachusetts, a delusion in which Rhode Island did not share, for though she gave witchcraft a place on her statute books as a tribute to a superstition of the age, she never brought it into her courts. She was busied with more important questions.

Phipps was urging his claim to command the New England forces. John Greene, now Deputy-Governor, went to Boston with one of the assistants to discuss the matter. They got no satisfaction from the aspiring governor, either upon the question of command or upon the equally important question of the boundary line. The whole matter was referred to the Board of Trade and by them to the Attorney-General, who decided in favor of Rhode Island. A distinction, however, was made between peace and war. In time of war the commander-in-chief might, in conjunction with the governor, call out the quota prescribed by the Board of Trade. Rhode Island’s quota for service under the Governor of New York was forty-eight men. The eastern boundary question was referred to the New York Council as being disinterested and near the spot. The Narragansett dispute though so often decided in favor of Rhode Island, still reappeared from time to time. Several years were yet to pass before the boundaries both on the east and the west were definitively settled and the stout little Colony secured in the possession of her own territory. I shall no longer attempt to follow the story through its obscure ramifications. It has served thus far to illustrate colonial life, and show with what tenacity of purpose and devotion to a great principle Rhode Island followed up her labor of organization. It was the border war of our colonial history.

The necessity of regular communication between the colonies began to be seriously felt, and part of John Greene’s mission to Boston in 1692 was to negotiate the establishment of a post office. Early in the following year Thomas Neale, acting under patent from the King, established a weekly mail from Boston to Virginia. Rhode Island came in for her share of the advantage. The rate of postage upon a single inland letter from Boston to Rhode Island was sixpence. And thus was woven one of the first links in the chain which, before another century was passed, had bound all the colonies in an indissoluble union.

We have seen a gradual approach towards a just comprehension of the relations of the state to its officers. The decisive step was taken in 1695, when a salary of ten pounds was voted to the governor, six pounds to the deputy-governor, four pounds to the assistants and three shillings a day to the deputies while in session. Absentees forfeited twice their pay.

In the following year an important change was made in the organization of the Assembly, the deputies becoming a separate house coordinate with the assistants, each house occupying a separate room and having a veto upon the action of the other. It will help to form a correct idea of daily life in the country if I add that a bounty of ten shillings was paid for killing old wolves, and of the seaports and sea coast that privateers were fitted out from them with very irregular commissions. Blackbirds fared hard in Portsmouth, where every householder was required to kill twelve before the tenth of May, under penalty of two shillings, and with a premium of a shilling a head for all over twelve. This was to serve as a protection for fields. But the serious danger was from the Indians, for the treaty of Ryswick gave for sometime but an imperfect peace to the colonies. Inroads of Indians were frequent and sudden. Never had the councils of war been more active or more constantly in session, and never had the men who were fit for service been more constantly under arms. Scouting parties of ten men were sent out every two days to serve beyond the limits of the plantations. Such were the trials of the second generation of colonizers.

The violation of the acts of trade and lax dealing with privateers became so flagrant that the home government after many vain complaints resolved to establish courts of admiralty in all the colonies. The attorney-general was consulted and said there was nothing in their charters to prevent it. The colonial agents, exerted themselves earnestly to ward off the blow, but without success, and when the Rhode Island agent, Jahleel Brenton, returned in December, 1697–8, he brought a commission to Peleg Sandford as Judge, and to Nathaniel Coddington as Register. Governor Clarke opposed it and tried to induce the Assembly to join in the opposition. Brenton advised that he should be impeached, whereupon Clarke resigned in favor of his nephew, Samuel Cranston.

The Colony was entering upon a new period of trial and danger. The enemies of her chartered rights were numerous and powerful, and unhappily for her were supported in their charges by a dangerous array of specious evidence. The rival interests were represented by men admirably fitted for their respective tasks. The Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Lord Bellemont, a man of singular ability and strength of character, represented the party that would have made New England a vice-royalty. Cranston, firm, resolute and self-possessed, held that Rhode Island under the protection of her charter had fully proved her capacity for self-government.

The great interest at stake was the interest of trade. Domestic trade was fostered and protected. Peddling was prohibited as injurious to regular traffic. Pains were taken to secure uniformity of weights and measures. In all this no power was assumed which the spirit if not the letter of the charter did not fully grant. But the act of navigation had raised up an enemy to foreign trade which in time of war encouraged privateering and in time of peace led to piracy. The treaty of Ryswick left many hardy spirits afloat, greedy for gold and unscrupulous in their pursuit of it.

The American coast offered great facilities for smuggling, and it was only as smugglers that pirates or privateersmen could convert their prizes into money. Much of this money it is said was buried in retired nooks of the inlets and bays along the coast. The royal revenues suffered greatly by this illicit trade, and the royal agents accused the colonists of openly favoring it. “The people of New York,” wrote Lord Bellemont to the Board of Trade, “have such an appetite for piracy and unlawful trade that they are ready to rebel as often as the government puts the law in execution against them.” Rhode Island was held to be a favorite resort of these bold adventurers. Both Cranston her Governor, and John Greene her Deputy-Governor were accused of favoring them. Greene, who had been elected ten years in succession, was dropped in 1700, but Cranston was reëlected from year to year, thirty years in succession.

Meanwhile Bellemont, whose hostility was embittered by the instigations of Randolph, went on collecting document upon document, till the formidable list amounted to twenty-five heads of accusation—chief of which was connivance with pirates—and, as he wrote to the Board of Trade, “making Rhode Island their sanctuary.” Should the Board of Trade accept these accusations, what could preserve the Colony from a quo warranto? Nothing did save her but the death of the Royal Governor.

To this period belongs the story of Captain Kidd, long the subject of many a fearful tradition and all the more widely known from having exchanged an admiral’s flag for the black flag of the corsair. After a wild and adventurous career in the Indian ocean he came to the American coast, and showing himself boldly in the streets of Boston was arrested, sent to England for trial and hanged.

CHAPTER XVI.

COLONIAL PROSPERITY.—DIFFICULTIES OCCASIONED BY THE WAR WITH THE FRENCH.—DOMESTIC AFFAIRS OF THE COLONY.

If we may judge the prosperity of the Colony by the increase of taxation—and taxes it must be remembered were self-imposed—we shall find that Rhode Island at the beginning of the new century had made real if not rapid progress in all the branches of national prosperity. Her population in 1702 was estimated at ten thousand, exclusive of Indians. She drew supplies from foreign ports in bottoms of her own, and raised the staples of life on her own farms. Her citizens were merchants, farmers, fishermen and sailors. There was a beginning, also, of manufactures—to the sore displeasure of the Board of Trade.

We perceive, also, by the same test that Providence had regained the relative position which she had lost during Philip’s war, and was once more the second town of the Colony.

The soul liberty of which I have spoken so often had borne rich fruits. Baptists, Quakers, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Puritans and Sabbatarians had their respective places of worship and their independent pastors. Among the Baptist pastors we find John Clarke. Among the Congregationalists Samuel Niles, a native of Block Island, and the first Rhode Islander that graduated at Harvard. In 1704 the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts sent out James Honeyman to build up an Episcopal church in the southern part of the Colony. He found much to do as rector of Trinity, in Newport, and missionary to Freetown, Tiverton and Little Compton on the main. His memory is still preserved in Episcopal traditions and Honeyman’s Hill, the highest land in the southern extremity of the island, is a familiar name to the inhabitants of Newport. In 1706 an Episcopal society was founded in Kingston, with Rev. Christopher Bridge for rector. So well was the work on the church done, that after remaining where it was built ninety-three years, it was removed to Wickford, where it is still used under the name of the Church of St. Paul. One of the most interesting of these denominations was that of the Sabbatarians, or Seventh-day Baptists, who had also a flourishing church in Westerly. To meet their peculiar views two weekly market days were, set apart for them.

The meetings and acts of the Assembly still continue to form the principal record of our history. The Assembly itself claimed equal rights with those exercised by Parliament over its own members, and at a special session in 1701, suspended an assistant who had married a couple illegally and refused to acknowledge his error. The Board of Trade had more than once called for a printed copy of the laws of the Colony, and as a proof that they were regularly administered Governor Cranston sent a full statement of the mode of procedure in all the courts. I have already spoken of Lord Bellemont’s plan for the formation of a great vice-royalty over all the colonies, including the Bahama Islands. After his death this wild scheme, fatal to the freedom and prosperity of British America, was revived by Dudley. The irregular administration of the navigation laws was the chief pretext, and it probably was held to be a sufficient concession to freedom that the local government was left in the hands of the colonial assemblies. A bill for this purpose was drawn up near the close of William’s reign and brought forward early in that of Anne.

But the rights of the colonies were boldly and ably defended by Sir Henry Ashurst, the agent of Connecticut, and the fatal bill rejected after a full discussion. Dudley himself, however, was in high favor. He was appointed Governor and Vice-Admiral of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and what was still more objectionable Vice-Admiral of Rhode Island and King’s Province, a fruitful source of jealousies and bickerings.

Meanwhile the Assembly went on in its work of legislation, taking advantage of its experience to correct old errors, and gradually adapting the laws to the increasing wants of society. At the May session of 1701 we find justices of the peace first mentioned in connection with a general election. Thirteen were then appointed. In the same session a resolution for the reörganization of the militia law was again brought forward and the law of marriage revised and made more stringent. New powers were given the governor for enforcing the navigation act. Progress had been made towards a correct estimate of the obligations of society to its officers. The governor’s salary was raised to forty pounds—a sum much increased during the year by special gratuities. The recorder was forbidden to practice at the bar except in cases which concerned himself or the town or Colony. Protection against vagrants was sought in a rigid vagrant act, extending to comers from other colonies, deserters from the King’s service and “passengers brought in by sea and landed without consent of the authorities.”

The short lived treaty of Ryswick was broken, and in the May session of 1702 preparations were made for the defence of Newport harbor by building a fort on Goat Island. In the town itself a battery was erected near the ground now occupied by the Union Bank. The funds for these defences were to be drawn from “forfeitures to the treasury and the gold plate and money taken from convicted pirates.” The pay of the garrison at the fort was fixed at twelve pounds a year, with rations. Scouts, that essential element of every good army, but especially necessary where the enemy were part Indians, received three shillings a day while in active service. The spirit of adventure was awakened. Captain William Wanton, of Portsmouth, took out a commission as privateersman and brought in several valuable prizes.

In September Dudley undertook to take command of the Rhode Island troops—about two thousand men in all, and coming to Newport directed that they should be called out in his name. The calm but firm resistance of Governor Cranston and Major Martindale thwarted his usurpation, and he left the town in disgust.

In 1703 the long boundary line contest between Rhode Island and Connecticut was brought to a close, and Rhode Island confirmed in the jurisdiction over Narragansett which had been assigned to her in the arbitration of Clarke and Winthrop. Much of this was owing to the staunch loyalty of the men of Westerly, where its good effects were immediately felt. Yet so little were the true interests of the colonies understood by their transatlantic rulers, that it was not till twenty-three years later that the decision of the Commissioners was formally approved by the King.

This failure to comprehend the character and interest of the colonies showed itself in various ways, but in none more offensively than in the attempt of the Board of Trade to make Dudley Governor of Rhode Island by royal appointment. But fortunately for Rhode Island, the powerful William Penn had been enlisted on her side, and the Queen’s Council refused to accept the recommendation of the Board of Trade.

Another question which menaced serious danger to the Colony by placing it in a false position towards the mother country arose from the war. How far was she bound to send troops to the support of her sister colonies? Dudley claimed them for the defence of the Massachusetts frontier, Lord Cornberry for that of New York. Rhode Island pointed to her long water front, broken by bays and coves and constantly exposed to the fleets and privateers of the enemy, and claimed that she needed her men for her own protection. As a proof, however, of her willingness to do all that could justly be asked of her, she appealed to her past conduct and to the fact that during the last seven years she had spent nearly a thousand pounds a year for military purposes.

The war bore hardly upon the resources of the Colony. A French fleet was expected on the coast. Scouts were constantly on the look-out. Block Island was garrisoned. The fleet did not come, but one incident occurred which, though upon a small scale, brought out in strong colors the maritime spirit of the Colony. A French privateer in a cruise off Block Island took a sloop laden with provisions. The news reached the Governor the next day. In two hours two sloops, manned by one hundred and twenty volunteers, and commanded by Captain John Wanton, were on their way in pursuit of the enemy, and in less than three hours more took her, recaptured her prize and brought both safe into Newport.

The current of our history still continues to flow in a narrow channel. Each new session of the Assembly added to the body of the laws and met new wants. Newport had no charter. One was granted her by special statute. The other towns held theirs by grants of the Assembly. The subject of a court of chancery began to attract attention in 1705, but was held to be premature, and its duties were still left for the present with the Assembly.

Boundary questions still continued to occupy the Assembly and annoy the inhabitants of the border. The northern boundary brought Rhode Island into direct collision with Massachusetts, which was now the heiress of the claims of Plymouth. Commissioners were appointed who made no report, and it was only by slow steps that the Colony assumed its permanent form and dimensions.