Return of
Gorton to
America.

1648.

May.

themselves peaceably, and do not endanger any of the English colonies by a prejudicial correspondence with the Indians, or otherwise; wherein if they shall be faulty, we leave them to be proceeded with according to justice."1 Despairing of success with the Commissioners, Gorton set his face homeward. He arrived at Boston, where, when about to be apprehended, he produced a letter from the Earl of Warwick, "desiring only that he might have liberty to pass home." Upon this, "the Court recalled their former order, and gave him a week's liberty to provide for his departure. This was much opposed by some; but the most considered that, it being only at the Earl's request (no command), it could be no prejudice to our liberty; and, our Commissioner being still attending the Parliament, it might much have disadvantaged our cause and his expedition, if the Earl had heard that we should have denied him so small a request. Yet it was carried only by a casting voice." No inconvenience followed for the present. Gorton had come home a sadder and more peaceable, if not a wiser, man. Several of his old friends had re-assembled at Shawomet, which place, since that time, has borne the name of Warwick, given it in commemoration, or in hope, of favor from the noble head of the Parliamentary Commission. They had no sooner learned from their emissary the position of their affairs, than they "sent two of their company to petition the General Court," then in session at Boston, and "make their peace." Hearing, when they reached Dedham, that the Court had adjourned, the messengers wrote to Winthrop, in terms not so much deferential as abject, asking leave to wait upon him with the "humble request" which they had in charge. What answer the Governor made does not appear. While the people at Warwick should

Plantations.

1644.

March 14.

refrain from offence, as they had lately done, and as there was now an increased probability that they would continue to do, Massachusetts had no desire to disturb them. Several months before Gorton left America, Roger Williams had returned, after an absence of a year and a half. He had been favorably introduced by Sir Henry Vane, and had obtained from the Parliamentary Commissioners a patent, which associated "the towns Patent of the of Providence, Portsmouth, and. Newport" in Providence one community, "by the name of the Incorporation of Providence Plantations, in the Narragansett Bay, in New England." It prescribed no criterion of citizenship, and no form of organization. It simply invested the "inhabitants" of the towns with "full power and authority to rule themselves, and such others as should hereafter inhabit within any part of the said tract of land, by such a form of civil government as, by voluntary consent of all or the greater part of them, they should find most suitable to their estate and condition; and for that end, to make and ordain such civil laws and constitutions, and to inflict such punishments upon transgressors, and, for execution thereof, so to place and displace officers of justice, as they, or the greatest part of them, should by free consent agree unto; provided, nevertheless, that the said laws, constitutions, and punishments for the civil government of the said plantations, should be conformable to the laws of England, so far as the nature of the case would admit."2

With this instrument Roger Williams arrived in Boston, fortified by a letter to the Magistrates, in which

1

Winthrop, II. 193; see Vol. I. 609. * The instrument is in Hazard, I. 538, and in R. I. Rec., I. 143.-The "said tract of land" is described as "bordering northward and northeast on the patent of the Massachusetts, east and southeast on Plymouth pa

tent, south on the ocean, and on the west and northwest by the Indians called Nahigganneucks, alias Narragansetts; the whole tract extending about twenty-five miles into the Pequot river and country."

Return of

America.

September.

66 pro

"divers Lords and others of the Parliament "1 « fessed their great desires" that he might have Williams to friendly treatment. Hastening towards his home, he was met at Seekonk by his friends, who in fourteen canoes had come out from Providence to offer their welcome, and conduct him on his way. To a sanguine temper, such as his, it may be supposed that the moment was one of exultation as well as of hope. "Being hemmed in, in the middle of the canoes, he was elevated and transported out of himself.” 2

But the exultation was premature, and the hope was destined to be long in suspense. It might seem that the terms of the patent of the " Providence Plantations" were easy enough to content minds not hard to be pleased; but the eccentric persons who had come into each other's neighborhood about Narragansett Bay were not prepared as yet to work together in any government. That pressure of encroachments from the adjacent Colonies, of which they complained, might alone have been supposed capable of uniting them for mutual security. Plymouth sent one of her Assistants to Rhode Island, "to signify to all that were interested in that newly erected government," that a great part of the territory claimed by them was within the patent limits of Plymouth, and would undoubtedly, on better information be acknowledged to be so by Parliament, and to warn them against exercising any act of government within

Nov. 8.

1 The letter is in Winthrop, II. 193. It does not purport to be from the Commissioners who signed the patent; and the names of only three of them (Holland, Wharton, and Corbet) are subscribed to it. Were the Commissioners cautious about compromising their dignity by demanding of Massachusetts what she was not unlikely to deny ? * Richard Scott's letter, in the Appendix to Fox and Burnyeat's "New

England Fire-Brand Quenched." Scott, as a Quaker, had become angry with Williams before he wrote (which was in 1677); and, with an anachronism of his emotions, he supposes himself to have been angry at the time when he assisted with his canoe in the aquatic procession. "I was condemned in myself, that, amongst the rest, I had been an instrument to set him up in his pride and folly."

that domain.1 The Secretary of Massachusetts informed Williams of the recent reception of "a charter from the authority of the High Court of Parliament," dated three months earlier than the patent of the "Providence Plantations," and giving to Massachusetts "the Narragansett Bay, and a certain tract of land wherein Providence and the island of Quidy [Aquetnet] were included." But a common danger did not yet avail to combine the Narragansett settlers for common action. With resolute perverseness they still stood apart, each settlement from

the other settlements, and parties within each settlement from other parties.

His removal

ragansett country.

Whether it was to escape the annoyances of a turbulent neighborhood, or merely with a view to push his fortune, Williams, soon after his return from into the Nar- abroad, withdrew from what was for him the natural scene of action, to a residence in the heart of the Narragansett country, where he established a traffic with the Indians. It seems, however, that his political relation to his former associates did not cease; for, when preparation had at length been made for an attempt to put in operation a government under the patent, we find him Moderator of a meeting held at Providence for that purpose. With nine other persons, among whom were Gorton's friends, John

1647.

May 16.

1 In his letters thence, Williams calls the place Cawcawmsqussick. It was in what is now the town of North Kingston. He there became the neighbor, and perhaps a sort of partner, of one Richard Smith, who was probably there three or four years before him. In a paper signed by Roger Williams, in 1679, which I saw in the State Paper Office in London, he says: "Richard Smith, senior, deceased, for his conscience towards God, left a fair possession in Gloucestershire, and adventured with his relations and estate to New England, and was a most acceptable and prime leading man in Taunton, in Plymouth county. For his conscience' sake (many difficulties arising) he left Taunton, and came to the Nahigansic country, where by the mercy of God, and the favor of the Nahigansic Sachems, he broke the ice at his great charges and hazards, and put up, in the thickest of the barbarians, the first house among them. I humbly testify, that about forty years from this date, he kept possession, coming and going, himself, children, and servants, and he had quiet possession of his housing,

land, and meadow, and then, in his own house, with much serenity of soul and comfort, he yielded up his spirit to God, the father of spirits, in peace.” Among the Colonial Papers there is also a petition of Smith's son (Richard Smith, Jr.) and others, in which they say (July 29, 1679) that he went to the Narragansett country about "fortytwo years " before that time. (Comp. R. I. Hist. Coll., III. 31-33; Callender, Hist. Disc., 92.)

An interesting series of letters from Williams to Winthrop the younger, dated in the Narragansett country, and extending from June, 1645, to October, 1651, the month before he sailed a second time for England, is published in Vols. XXIX. and XXX. of the "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society," and by Mr. Knowles in his “Memoir of Williams" (207-248). He occasionally visited Providence within this time. (Ibid., 224.) His tradinghouse at Narragansett yielded him

one hundred pounds' profit per annum" (Ibid., 247, note), — a liberal income for those days.