Gorton refused to leave, insisting that he was not a guest, but a lessee. The court thought otherwise; and, 1638. at the same time that this question went against Dec. 4. him, he compelled them to take up other matter. In court, he called the Assistant, who was examining him, Satan, and bade him "come down from Jehoshuah's right hand;" and, on the whole, "carried so mutinously and seditiously, as that he was, for the same, and for his turbulent carriages towards both magistrates and ministers in the presence of the court, sentenced to find sureties. for his good behavior during the time he should stay in the jurisdiction, which was limited to fourteen days, and also amerced to pay a considerable fine." This was a strong measure for the usually long-suffering Colony of Plymouth.

1639.

April.

After some wanderings unexplained in his narrative, he appeared in the new settlement at the north end of Rhode Island, where he immediately took a part in the movement for the deposition of Coddington, and where, notwithstanding the local theory of the largest freedom of speech and action, he managed 1640 or before long to get himself punished by whipping.*

1641.

1 Morton, Memorial, 203; comp. says nothing here of his having been Plym. Rec., I. 100, 105, 106.— Wins- at Plymouth between his coming to low (Hypocrisie Unmasked, 66-68) Boston and his residence in Rhode tells the story of Gorton's behavior in Island. full. As to the fine, he says, "Being but poor and low in his estate, we took not above eight or ten pounds of it, lest it might lie too heavy upon his wife and children."

In this part of his story, as too commonly elsewhere, Gorton uses a remarkable looseness of statement. The confiding reader imagines that repeated "confinements, imprisonments, chains, whippings, and banishment out of their jurisdictions," were already accumulated in the hardship of his lot. (Simplicitie's Defence, pp. 3, 4.) He

R. I. Rec., I. 70.

"Lately [after the union between Newport and Portsmouth] they whipped one Master Gorton, a grave man, for denying their power, and abusing some of their magistrates with uncivil terms, the Governor, Master Coddington, saying in court, 'You that are for the King, lay hold on Gorton ;' and he again on the other side called forth, 'All you that are for the King, lay hold on Coddington."" (Lechford, Plaine Dealing, 41; comp. Hypocrisie Unmasked, 54, 55.) The mode of punishment has

Next he betook himself to Providence, where, after making himself a nuisance to Williams and his friends, he helped in fomenting the disorders which occasioned the appeal to Massachusetts that has been mentioned.

The cautious answer to that appeal having done nothing towards mending affairs, the aggrieved residents resolved on the same step, which, under similar circumSurrender of stances, had not long before been taken by the Pawtuxet to New Hampshire towns.3 "Upon their petition," they were "taken under the government and Sept. 8. protection" of Massachusetts; four of their num

"to

ber were designated" to keep the peace in their lands;" and the Magistrates sent a notice to Gorton's party that the earlier inhabitants, having placed them- Oct. 28. selves under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, were to be maintained by her "in their lawful rights," and that the new-comers must desist from violent proceedings, and might try any claim of theirs in her courts, where they were assured of having "equal justice." 2 This was a month after that visit of Miantonomo to Boston, which was last mentioned.

Gorton's party sent a long answers to the commu

1 Mass. Rec., II. 26, 27; comp. Win- his brains." (Staples in R. I. Hist. throp, II. 84. Coll., II. 55.) Ingenium perfervidum!

* Simplicitie's Defence against SevenHeaded Policy, 6.

It covers twenty quarto pages of "Simplicitie's Defence." (9-31; comp. Hypocrisie Unmasked, 9-27.) Supposing its sole aim to be to exasperate, it could not have been better executed for that purpose. Of the twelve persons whose names are subscribed, Gorton, Greene, and Holden have already been particularly mentioned. — John Weeks was in Plymouth in 1637 (Morton, Memorial, 202), and probably with Gorton, whom at that place he had befriended, came to Rhode Island, where we find him in April, 1639, in the party of the Hutchinsons. (R. I. Rec., I. 70.) Before 1643 he had been sent away from the island. (Ibid., 123.) — John Warner, who had been among the earliest at Providence, and much esteemed and trusted there (R. I. Rec., I. 14, 24, 27), afterwards fell under the displeasure of his friends at Warwick for various misdemeanors; among others, "for calling the whole town rogues and thieves;" for "threatening the lives of men;" for "threatening to kill all the mares of the town;" for "threatening an officer of the Colony in open court, that, if he had him elsewhere, he would beat out

VOL. II.

-

11

Robert Potter, in 1634, was in Massachusetts (Mass. Rec., I. 369), where, in 1638, he fell under censure (Ibid., 224, 229), and in April of the next year we find him in Hutchinson's party on Rhode Island. (R. I. Rec., I. 70.) — Richard Carder was in Massachusetts in 1636 (Mass. Rec., I. 372), and was among the Boston men disarmed in 1637. (Ibid., 212.) He was a member of the original company on Rhode Island (R. I. Rec., I. 52), and sided with Hutchinson at the division. (Ibid., 100.) Potter, Carder, and Sampson Shotton (of whom nothing is known previous to his appearance as one of the anti-Coddington party in 1639) had been disfranchised and disarmed at Newport at the same time with Holden. (R. I. Rec., I. 111.) — Richard Waterman, who had been at Salem as early as 1629, in which year he was sent out by the Company in England to the settlers "to get them good venison' (Mass. Rec., I. 394), was one of the Antinomians who went away in 1638 (Ibid., 233) to Williams's settlement at Providence, where he had before secured a grant of land. (R. I. Rec., I. 15, 17; comp. 20, 24.) — Francis Weston (one of the four persons mentioned in

Nov. 20.

nication from Massachusetts, composed in the most elaborate style of insulting invective and menace. It must have satisfied the Magistrates that, if they did not abandon the purpose they had announced, their authority would have to be asserted by ungentle means; nor, especially, could they have overlooked intimations which were given of hope of support from the other side of the water. The writers, judging it at Shawomet not prudent to await, so near at hand, the rebound of their defiance, removed to the southern side of the river Pawtuxet, where, at a place called Shawomet, they bought lands of Miantonomo.2

Sale of lands

by Mianto

nomo to

Gorton.

1643.

Jan. 12.

the complaint to Massachusetts) was also an Antinomian of Salem (Mass. Rec., I. 223), from which town he had been one of the two earliest Deputies (Ibid., 117), and a committee-man on the subject of the defacing of the colors by Endicott. (Ibid., 145.) He was one of the earliest grantees of land at Providence. (R. I. Rec., I. 15, 17, 24.) William Waddell was another of the Boston Antinomians disarmed in 1637. (Mass. Rec., I. 212.) — Of Nicholas Power I know nothing of earlier date than his signature to the reply to Massachusetts, in November, 1642.

1 Simplicitie's Defence, 62, 80. 2 My learned and sagacious friend, the editor of Winthrop's Journal, thinks that this sale of lands to Gorton was the great cause of the displeasure of Massachusetts against Miantonomo. (Winthrop, II. 133, 134.) To me it is quite clear that the objection to Gorton's occupation of the lands, apart from its injustice to the native owners, arose from his being regarded as the formidable tool or prompter of the Indian chief. Winthrop, it is true, (II. 84, comp. 59,) assigns as one of the reasons for accepting the submission of Arnold and his friends, that it was

"partly to draw in the rest in those parts, either under ourselves or Plymouth, who now lived under no government, but grew very offensive, and the place was likely to be of use to us.” But when the Massachusetts Magistrates, desirous of quiet, proposed to the vexed persons a surrender to some well-regulated adjacent Colony, they mentioned that of Plymouth as promptly as their own. They desired to turn over the place to Plymouth, if Plymouth would but engage to keep it in order. (Winthrop, II. 59; comp. Hazard, II. 200.) An extreme greed of territory in that quarter is scarcely to be laid to their charge by one who remembers that they took no steps towards indulging it when they became able to do so under what might be esteemed the highest sanction of English law. In the year after the transactions above related, Massachusetts received from the Parliamentary Commissioners for the Colonies a grant of the unoccupied country about Narragansett Bay, which was perhaps capable of being interpreted so as to include even the plantations of Coddington and Williams. The General Court sent notice of it, and of their right under it, to Williams. (Mass.

The right of Miantonomo to dispose of the tract then came into question. Pomham, a petty chief whose followers dwelt upon it, insisted that it was his alone, denying that claim of Miantonomo to sovereignty over him, on which depended the validity of the sale. Accompanied by Sacononoco, another Sachem of Pawtuxet, who for himself made the same pretension of independence, he came to Boston, where both chiefs of fered to submit themselves and their lands to the government of Massachusetts, and solicited its protection against the intruders.1 Their interpreter was Benedict Arnold, of Providence, one of the recent petitioners to Massachusetts for protection against the misconduct of Gorton and his companions.

May.

Whether the head of the Narragansett tribe had any rights over these petty chiefs, or, especially, whether he had such rights as authorized him to alienate their lands, was a question which now there are not so good means of solving as there were when these circumstances presented it for the consideration of Massachusetts. It was her policy, determined alike by duty and by interest, to protect the Indians in their property; for overreaching on the part of any of the white race would provoke an undiscriminating resentment towards all. She believed the alleged purchase to be a fraud upon the rightful proprietors; and she became satisfied that it was so, after a deliberate investigation of the Rec., III. 49; R. I. Rec., I. 133.) But four signatures, besides those of the no further proceeding was had. The Earl, would have been enough to sole object of Massachusetts in giving give it validity. (Hazard, I. 534.) the notice seems to have been to keep her rights safe, in case of any necessity for using them by reason of intolerable disturbances. The patent, dated December 10th, 1643, is in the Massachusetts archives (LXXXVII. 185). It is signed by the Earl of Warwick, and eight other Commissioners. By the Ordinance of Parliament,

1 Winthrop, II. 120; Mass. Rec., II. 38, 40; Hypocrisie Unmasked, 2. Pomham had signed the deed of sale; but he persisted that he had done so under compulsion and fear, as well as under the promise of a payment which had not been made.

8

Hypocrisie Unmasked, 69, 70.