These all be corder; and Jeremy Clarke, Treasurer. longed to Newport. The first Assistants were Roger Williams, for Providence; John Sanford, for Portsmouth; William Coddington, for Newport; and Randall Holden, for Warwick. The inferior position assigned to Williams and to Coddington may be a symptom of the jealousy between, or the party spirit within, the towns of which they were respectively the founders. The scheme proved a failure. The people were not yet ready for a government. The machinery had taken Its failure and dissolution. 1648. May 16. some three years to construct and set a-going, after its construction had been authorized by the patent. In three years more it ran down. Three only of the proposed annual Assemblies were held. At the first, the Frame of Government was so far amended as to constitute a lawful General Court on a basis of representation, instead of an assemblage of the whole eople. "Six men of each town," so the Order provides, "shall be chosen, in whom the General Court shall continue; and each town here shall have the choice of their men, if they please; or, if any town. refuse, the Court shall choose them for them; if any else beside will tarry, they may, whose help is desired."2 At the second annual Assembly, some cases of fraudulent voting having become known, precautions were adopted against a repetition of the abuse; and it was ordered that persons refusing to take public office should be subject to fines.3 Tokens of the indifference of the people to their government, and of the early derangement into which it had fallen, appear in measures which the third annual Assembly found 1649. May 22. 1650. May 23. 1 R. I. Rec., I. 148. Ibid., 209.- September 23d of this year, Williams wrote to the younger Winthrop: "Our neighbor, Mr. Coddington, and Captain Partridge, ten days since returned from Plymouth with propositions for Rhode Island to subject to Plymouth, to which himself and Portsmouth incline. Our other three towns decline." (Mass. Hist. Coll., XXIX. 271.) 8 R. I. Rec., I. 217, 218. 1649. March. itself obliged to take for filling the places of absent Representatives, and vacating the places of Representatives unfit for their trust. Two special meetings of that body were also held. At the former, a municipal incorporation was granted to the town of Providence, and probably also to the other towns. At the latter, which was the expiring spasm of the sickly body politic, there was some miscellaneous revision of 1650. the laws, and it was "ordered, that a letter be Oct. 26. sent to Mr. Williams to capitulate about his going to England; and it is ordered also that the State is willing to pay the hundred pound that is due to him, and a hundred pound more; and, if he refuse, Mr. Balston [of Portsmouth], Mr. John Clarke [of Newport], and Mr. Warner [of Warwick] are nominated, for two of them may go."1 Williams was to be "capitulated" with about going to England, in order that he might do over again that work of his which was now undone. The story of the incapacities, and quarrels, and factions, which brought about the dissolution of the government, has been only partially preserved. We know that Coddington was chosen President of the Colony at the second election; that he did not accept the place; that it was supplied by the appointment of Mr. Jeremy Clarke to be "President Regent;" that at the same time there were "divers bills of complaint exhibited against Mr. Coddington;" that "the President elect did not attend the Court for the clearing of the accusations charged upon him;" that eight months later he sailed for England; and that two months after his departure, at the first of the special Assemblies which have been mentioned, Roger March. Williams, as "Deputy President," was substituted for him at the head of the government. Williams, who was then 1 R. I. Rec., I. 214-232. — A gratuity of a hundred pounds had been voted to Williams for his services in obtaining the charter (Ibid., 151, 152); but it 1649. had remained unpaid. The Colony had no money. (Ibid., 222.) 2 Ibid., 208, 210, 211, 213, 214. William Dyer was Coddington's ac at his retreat among the Narragansetts, did not want the office. He hoped that it might be offered to John Winthrop the younger, who had lately made a plantation in the Pequot country.1 Had Winthrop been invested with it, it is bewildering to conjecture how different might have been the later history of Rhode Island. But he was probably as little prepared to accept, as the electors were to confer it upon him; and it was bestowed upon John Smith of Warwick, and in the followMay 23. ing year upon Nicholas Easton, of Newport.2 At Providence, Williams, faithful to his favorite office of promoting good-will, had obtained seven signatures December. besides his own to an agreement to "cover in the grave of oblivion what causes of difference had heretofore been given, either by word or misbehavior, in public or private," and to proceed thenceforward, "in words and behavior, so moderately and orderly as the cause should permit." May 22. 1650. 1647. 1648. At the beginning of the new organization, some questions had arisen between Newport and Portsmouth relating to its effect upon the combination that had for seven years subsisted between them. Williams wrote August. a letter proposing that arbitrators should be chosen, three by Portsmouth, and one by each of the other towns, to determine the conditions of a reconciliation; but there is no evidence that his advice was taken.3 cuser, or one of his accusers. (Ibid., 219.) — Williams was chosen Deputy President in his absence. (Williams to Winthrop, in Knowles, 230.) "I wrote to them about an act of oblivion," says the good and sanguine man," which, blessed be the God of peace, they have passed." (Ibid.) See his letters to John Winthrop, Jr., dated " Caucaumsqussick, 1, 48, so called" (March 1 and May 3, 1649), in Knowles, Memoir, 230, 234. R. I. Rec., I. 216, 220. "Upon discharge of my service, we chose Mr. Presently afterward, Coddington, in behalf, as he alleged, of "the majority of the people of Rhode Island," applied to the Commissioners of the Four Colonies, for their admission into the Confederacy. But this, he was told, the islanders could not obtain except by placing themselves under the government of Plymouth, which had a patent right to jurisdiction over their territory.1 September. Whatever confidential communications may have passed between the Federal Commissioners at their early meetings, the chief business exhibited in the records concerned those relations of the Colonies to the French and Dutch which have been already described, and their relations to the Indians. During the three or four years of Gorton's absence in England, his friends the Narragansetts you have propounded either by speech or writing, and find your present state full of confusion and danger, having much disturbance amongst yourselves and no security from the Indians; they desire therefore in several respects to afford both advice and help; but, upon the perusal of the ancient patent granted to New Plymouth," &c. — Coddington was earnestly desirous to effect some arrangement to relieve himself from the discomforts of his present position. It is probable that he was altogether dissatisfied with the proceedings, which, under the patent obtained by Williams, had been had for a junction of the towns under one government, and that he considered both the obtaining of the patent, and the arrangements which had followed, as having been without good authority or good reason; and the companionship into which he had been brought was altogether distasteful to him. Four months before his application to the Commissioners, mentioned above, he had written to Winthrop: "Sir, this bearer [Captain Partridge] and Mr. Balston, and some others of this island, are in disgrace with the people in Providence, Warwick, and Gorton's adherents on this island, for that we will not interpose, or meddle at all in their quarrels with the Massachusetts and the rest of the Colonies, and do much fear that Gorton will be a thorn in their and our sides, if the Lord prevent not." (Hutch. Coll., 224, 225; comp. Mass. Hist. Coll., XXIX. 271.) It is not precisely known when Gorton went to England. In the Parliamentary Commissioners' Order of May 15, 1646, they say that he had delivered to them a complaint "some months" before; and he publishes (in Simplicitie's Defence, 94) a letter addressed to him from America, November 20, 1645. On the other hand, that, as late as August, 1644, he had no intention of immediately leaving Rhode Island, may be inferred from Coddington's letter, quoted above (139, note 3); and Winslow (83) mentions him as being still there in November of the same year. It follows that he made his voyage some time between November, 1644, and November, 1645. had experienced some ill consequences of the confidence which they had reposed in him. The resistance to the colonists, which he had encouraged, proved a losing game. The royal protection which he had promised, was not afforded. Hostile movements of the Narragansetts. 1645. July 28. In the spring after the truce which they had been persuaded to make, a force of Narragansetts, said to amount to a thousand men, and to have as many as thirty muskets, fell upon the Mohegans, who again defeated them, but not without considerable loss.2 An occasion was thought to have thus arisen for an extraordinary meeting of the Federal Commissioners, who accordingly came together at Boston. Thence they despatched messengers to the hostile sachems, requiring their presence in person, or by ambassadors, "to declare and prove upon what occasions and grounds the war was broken out, and . . . . . to treat and conclude, as occasion should require,. I to restore and confirm peace." In case of a refusal on the part of the Narragansetts, the messengers were to "acquaint them that the English were engaged to assist against these hostile invasions, and that they had sent of their men to defend Uncas." The messengers returned, bringing the defiance of the Narragansett chiefs; and "Mr. Williams, by the messengers, wrote to the Commissioners, assuring them that the country would suddenly be all on fire by war;" and "that the Narragansetts had been with the plantations combined with Providence, and solemnly treated and settled a neutrality with them." "The premises being weighed, it clearly appeared that God called the Colonies to a war." The call was promptly answered. It was determined to issue a "Declaration" of "the grounds and justice" of the measure; to keep 1 See above, p. 139. * Winthrop, II. 245; comp. the letter of Thomas Peter to Winthrop. (Ibid., 464.) * The "Declaration" recites all the occasions of complaint against the Narragansetts since the time of the conquest of the Pequot country, and con |