Volume 1, Chapter 23, The Further Settlement of Rhode Island, The Odyssey of Samuel Gorton
In the meanwhile, religious liberty and hence diversity was flourishing in nearby Providence.
An Anglican minister who had been living in the vicinity before the Williams settlement
continued to preach there.
Baptists came also to the colony and exerted great influence.
The first Baptist minister was Dr. John Clark, a physician who had arrived in Massachusetts
from England just in time to join with Anne Hutchinson and leave for Quidnick. William
Harris also was a leading Rhode Island Baptist from the earliest days. The brilliant Baptist
leader and sister of Anne Hutchinson, Mrs. Catherine Scott, even succeeded in temporarily
Converting Roger Williams, along with many other leaders, to the Baptist faith in early
1639. The inveterate Baptist insistence on individual conscience and the right of religious
liberty was very close to Williams' views. In addition, each Baptist church was separate
and completely autonomous. The officers were democratically elected by the entire congregation.
In a few months, however, Williams shifted again to become a seeker, which he continued
to be for the rest of his life. Williams had arrived at the point of questioning the claims
of all churches to apostolic authority or to correctness of ritual.
In addition to religious liberty and apart from land allocation, the powers of government
in Providence were limited. Disputes were to be settled by arbitration, but the arbitration
was compulsory, enforced by the ruling disposers. And in contrast to Massachusetts, there was
no establishment of government schools. One of the most repeatedly and consistently persecuted
Americans of the 17th century was Samuel Gordon, an individualist and a free spirit who had
been a clothier in London. Gordon, a professor of the mysteries of Christ, challenged not
Not only the right of theocracy, but the wisdom of all priests and formal religious organizations.
Politically, this individualist argued that any transgressions of government beyond the
rights guaranteed by the English common law were impermissible.
Gorton also opposed theocratic laws against immorality and questioned the existence of
of Heaven and Hell, the Truth of the Scriptures, Baptism, and the Taking of Oaths.
Chafing at the restrictions of Anglican England, Gorton left London for Boston in 1636 to enjoy
liberty of conscience in respect to faith towards God. It did not take Gorton long to
see that he had only moved from the frying pan into the fire. He arrived just in time
to see the expulsion of the Reverend Wheelwright to Exeter, and he realized that if Massachusetts
would not tolerate the presence of the relatively orthodox Wheelwright, it could surely have
little place for the likes of him.
Gordon therefore left quickly for Plymouth, where he began to attract considerable following
for his views.
Adopting Anne Hutchinson's device of prayer meetings in his parlor, Gordon began to arouse
was the ire of the colony's oligarchs by making a convert of the wife of the Reverend
Ralph Smith, the respected retired Minister of Plymouth. Another inconvenient convert was
a sewing maid of the current Minister of the Colony, the Reverend Mr. Raynor. Reverend
Mr. Smith began a campaign to expel Gordon from the colony, and a suitable excuse came
came shortly to hand. Employed as Mrs. Gorton's serving maid, was a widow newly arrived from
England, Ellen Aldridge. Charges began to be whispered about Plymouth Colony that Ellen
had committed the grievous offense of smiling in church. Complaints were duly lodged against
her and the Plymouth Fathers summarily ordered Ellen to be promptly expelled from the colony
as a vagabond.
Gorton spoke upheatedly in protest over these high-handed proceedings for which high crime
Gorton himself was hauled into court in late 1638.
In a pre-trial hearing, Gorton accused one of the magistrates of lying, a charge which
only added to his crimes.
At this trial, Gorton denounced the grave violation of English common law in uniting
In the offices of prosecutor and magistrate in the same man, protesting against the injustice
of the trial, Gorton addressed the crowd, ye see good people how you are abused, stand
for your liberty, and let them not be parties and judges.
The frightened church elders, on hearing this plea, urged the court to inflict summary punishment
to remove this libertarian troublemaker from the colony.
Gorton was duly prohibited from speaking in his own defense and the court swiftly fined
Gorton and gave him fourteen days to leave Plymouth. Gorton was thereby forced to walk
through the wilderness in the snow and was barely able to finish the journey southwestward
to Portsmouth, where he settled. In Portsmouth, Gorton found political rule centered in William
Coddington, the sole magistrate. Joined there by his main Plymouth disciple, John Wicks,
Cottington promptly amassed a large following and formed an alliance with Anne Hutchinson
to overthrow Cottington's dictatorial rule and to repulse Cottington's armed attempt
to impose his rule in Portsmouth.
A year later, however, with Newport joined to Portsmouth, Cottington was back in command,
even though opposed by the majority of Portsmouth residents.
Again, Samuel Gorton, who had steadfastly refused to enter into the agreement to join
Newport, felt the lash of persecution, and again, Gorton's defense of someone in his
employ was the catalyst used. At the end of 1640, an old woman's cow invaded Gorton's
land. Coming after the cow, the trespassing old lady got into a fight with a serving girl
In the trial of Gorton's, after which the woman hauled the servant into court.
Gorton defended his servant and strongly protested the unfair trial, attacking the justices as
just asses.
He also denied the authority of the constituted court and government, since no royal charter
covered Rhode Island, it was free territory, and therefore no authority to set up a government
could exist.
Cottington, the Chief Justice at the trial, ordered Gorton arrested forthwith, crying out,
You that are for the King, lay hold on Gorton.
To which the defiant Gorton instantly riposted, All you that are for the King, lay hold on
Cottington.
A hand-to-hand fight ensued, with Cottington's armed guard gaining the victory.
Gorton was arrested, and John Wicks, who had also defended the servant, was put into the
stocks.
Gorton himself was soon whipped and banished from Aquidnic.
Wicks and several Gortonites were banished as well.
What next?
The only place left for Gorton to go was Providence, and so he and a dozen
families of disciples arrived there in the winter of 1640-41.
In Providence, Gorton found two major factions,
the owners of Patuxet, headed by William Arnold and William Harris,
and Providence Proper, led by Roger Williams.
The oligarchal Patuxet clique was particularly fearful that Gordon might convert a majority
of townsmen and overturn its rule, and so the Patuxet rulers refused to allow the Gordonites
to use the town commons.
The Arnold faction urged that the turbulent Gordon and his followers be expelled immediately
from the Settlement. But Gorton expanded his following and they soon became a third force
in the little colony. And what of Roger Williams? Enjoying increasing political power, Williams
was beginning to lose the edge of his libertarian principles. He became alarmed that Gorton,
far more individualist and libertarian than himself, was bewitching and bemaddening poor
for Providence with his unclear and foul censures of all the ministers of this country.
Williams tried to violate, sub rosa, his own principles of religious liberty by simply
excluding Gorton from Providence, an exclusion which was in the power of the landed oligarchy
of the town. Or rather, Williams, more moderate than Arnold, wanted to grant Gorton admission
only if he pledged to respect the authority of the government and if he abandoned such
uncivil protest as had gotten Gorton expelled from Portsmouth.
Finally in November 1641, some of the Patuxet faction seized some cattle owned by a Gortonite.
To satisfy a debt judgment, the Gortonites believed to be arbitrarily decreed by the
and Disposers. This led to a full-fledged riot between the two factions, the Gortonites
being led by Randall Holden and John Green, and the Gortonites managed to save their friend's
property from the cattle stealers. Because of the riot, thirteen of the Patuxent oligarchs
made a desperate and treacherous call for the Massachusetts government to intervene
and with force to expel the anarchist Gortonites. The oligarchs pulled out all the stops against
their enemies, accusing the Gortonites of being anarchist and leaning toward communism
and free love or familism. Their appeal to Massachusetts was a direct threat to all the
precious liberties that the men of Providence had fled Massachusetts to preserve, and thus
Thus began an active threat to Rhode Island liberty from Massachusetts that was to last
and be of great significance for the little settlements for years to come.
Massachusetts replied haughtily to the Patuxians that it would intervene only if Providence
would first submit to its authority, which Providence would not do.
Indeed, less than a third of the Providence citizens supported the Arnold Harris petition.
Williams, however, now joined the Patuxians in obtaining the expulsion of Gorton from Providence.
Gorton was now banished even from this relative haven of religious liberty.
His only consolation was that this time he wasn't whipped out of town.
Gorton and his followers now moved to West Patuxet,
an unused tract of land which Gorton had purchased the year before, but once again the alarmed
Arnold Harris forces in September 1642 requested coercive intervention by Massachusetts and
in return offered the submission of Patuxet to Massachusetts authority. Delighted, Massachusetts
is accepted with alacrity, and their declamations thoroughly alarm the Gortonites. Governor
Winthrop, for example, exalted that Samuel Gorton was a man not fit to live upon the
face of the earth, and Massachusetts troops made ready, it appeared, to put that harsh
value judgment into effect. There was, it seemed, no place in America that would tolerate
the existence of Samuel Gorton, not even the relatively free Providence and Equidnick settlements.
There was but one course left. Gorton determined to found an entirely new settlement of his
own. Gorton, a friend of the Indians and of Indian rights, moved with his flock south
of Providence to Purchase Indian Land and Found the Settlement of Shawamit in November
1642.
Tasting the Heady Wine of Freedom at Last, the Gortonites sent a defiant letter to the
Massachusetts authorities, which the diligent Boston Synod discovered to contain no less
than twenty-six blasphemies.
Massachusetts and its Patuxian underlings now formed a secret alliance with some marauding
Indian chiefs to lay claim to Shawarma territory in order to charge that the Gortonite land
purchase was null and void.
Massachusetts suddenly and for the first time championing Indian land rights and implicitly
In the summer of 1643, Massachusetts shamefully arranged the murder of the high Indian chief,
Myante Nomo, who had sold Shewamit to Gordon. Again, the Massachusetts General Court wrote
to the Shewamit family, saying that the court had ordered Gordon to appear before the Massachusetts
courts to defend his land claims. Gordon, of course, refused. In the summer of 1643,
in the Massachusetts General Court wrote to the Shawamit settlers, ordering them all to
appear at Boston, ostensibly to settle the land claims. Randall Holden wrote the defiant
reply for the Gordonites on September 15, a reply filled, of course, with what the Bostonians
called blasphemies. Addressing himself to the great and honored idol general, now set
Hop in the Massachusetts, Holden denounced the submitting Indian sacrams headed by Juan
Uncas as thieves, pointing out that Shawamit was outside Massachusetts jurisdiction and
proceeding to talk to the Massachusetts oligarchy at long last in terms which none had yet dared
to use, calling them a generation of vipers, murderers of Ann Hutchinson and companions
In the words of Judas Iscariot, Holden and the Gortonites heroically declared that they would henceforth treat Massachusetts, precisely as Massachusetts treated them.
According as you put forth yourselves towards us, so shall you find us transformed to answer you.
If you put forth your hand to us as countrymen, ours are in readiness for you.
To exercise the pen, accordingly do we become a ready rider. If your sword be drawn, ours
is girt upon our thigh. If you present a gun, make haste to give the first fire, for we
are come to put fire upon the earth, and it is our desire to have it speedily kindled.
To this valiant defense of the rights of shawamit, Massachusetts replied instantly in the way
by declaring the Gortonites fitted for the slaughter and by dispatching an armed troop.
The Massachusetts troop having laid siege to Shawarma, Gorton asked Massachusetts to
accept an offer of Providence ministers to arbitrate the dispute.
Winthrop quickly refused, charging that this was just a ruse to delay matters while Gorton
stirred up the Indians.
After the soldiers plundered the houses and seized the cattle off the Gortonites, the
settlers surrendered. But only on the pledge of the soldiers that they would be treated
en route to Boston as guests rather than as captives. As soon as the surrender was completed,
however, the Massachusetts soldiery reneged on the agreement and the Gortonites were marched
to Boston under orders that anyone who spoke on the way would be knocked down and anyone
Anyone who dared to step out of the column would be run through with a bayonet.
Arriving in Massachusetts, the Gorton Knights found that the colony had now conveniently
forgotten about the dispute over the Indian land claims.
With the Gorton Knights at last in its power, Massachusetts held them exultantly without
bail on charges of heresy, blasphemy, and opposition to the authority of Massachusetts.
According to now hallowed Massachusetts custom, it was not enough of a scourge upon the Gorton
Knights to be charged with heresy, blasphemy and treason.
In addition, they had to be constantly pursued and harassed by the church elders and ministers
trying to convert them to the Puritan faith.
Once, only once, was Gorton allowed to speak in a Massachusetts church to the great regret
of the Theocracy. Courageously, he proclaimed, in the Church now there was nothing but Christ,
as that all our ordinances, ministers, and sacraments, and others, were but man's inventions
for show and pump. On hearing this, some of the ministers urged the magistrates speedily
to hew Gorton in pieces.
The Reverend John Cotton urged death for the heretics.
Indeed, the cry for death was joined by all but three ministers of the colony.
Happily, the death vote lost by two votes in the general court, the supreme judicial
as well as legislative arm of the colony.
Not that the court's sentence was not severe.
On November 3rd, 1643, the general court condemned the Gortonites
to indefinite terms of hard labor in chains and forbade them to speak any of their blasphemous
and abominable heresies on pain of death. The indomitable Gortonites, however, did not
let their sentence phase them in the least. Working at hard labor rather than languishing
in prison meant that they traveled throughout the colony, working in different towns, defiantly
Simply ignoring the death threat, the Gorton Knights preached their view of the Gospel
wherever they went and made numerous converts all over the colony, especially among women.
Before long, a majority of the colony was at least sympathetic to their plight. Many
influential leaders, including former Governor John Endicott, urged death for the disobedient
Gordonites, and Reverend John Cotton recommended that they be starved into submission.
But finally, the alarmed and perplexed authorities decided that the safest course was to get
the resisting Gordonites out of the country.
They freed the prisoners, giving them 14 days to leave the colony on pain of death.
The Massachusetts authorities assumed that the banishment order covered Shawamat. Acting
on the technicality that the town was not explicitly mentioned in the order, the Gorton
Knights returned home to Shawamat. They were not long allowed to remain there, however.
On hearing of their return, Governor Winthrop ordered the Gorton Knights out and the hapless
settlers fled back to Portsmouth, where they rented houses and land, despite the opposition
Much as Roger Williams continued self-government free from English rule, the threat of Massachusetts
imperialism brought on by the Patuxet oligarchs had driven him to realize that it was now
necessary to gain an English charter to protect the Rhode Island settlement once and for all
from Massachusetts, Aggression. Sailing in 1643 for England, now in the midst of the
exhilarating ideological ferment of the Puritan Revolution, Williams persuaded Parliament,
in the spring of 1644, to grant Providence and Equidnic a charter as the United Providence
Plantations. While in England, Williams happily associated with the radical, liberal wing
of the Revolution, especially with Sir Henry Vane, the former ally of Anne Hutchinson
in Massachusetts, and with its struggle against any established Presbyterian or Puritan Church.
It was in England, indeed, that Williams was inspired to elaborate his Principle of Religious
Liberty and to publish his famous Bloody Tenant. His writings were hailed by the British liberals,
The New Rhode Island Charter was happily loose and vague, allowing any sort of self-government generally, and vaguely compatible with English laws.
On Williams's triumphal return to Providence in late 1644, the Colonies General Assembly met for the first time, and formed a loose and informal organization with Williams Chosen.
William Coddington, William Coddington, William Coddington
against the New Charter.
Forgetting his former fight for liberty alongside Anne Hutchinson, Cottington actually wrote
Winthrop that he believed wholeheartedly in the Massachusetts system, both in church and
commonwealth.
Samuel Gorton returned to Portsmouth just in time to throw himself into the defense
of the Charter against Cottington's attempted usurpation.
Gorton was in fact made a judge by the anti-contintonians of Portsmouth.
Despite the protective charter of 1644, Massachusetts continued in the next two years to claim authority
over all of the Rhode Island settlements.
Thus, in 1645, Massachusetts and its sister colonies of the United Colonies, or New England
Confederation, declared war against the peaceful Narragansett Indians and dispatched a military
force to Rhode Island.
Upon hearing of Roger Williams' negotiation of neutrality with the Narragansetts, Massachusetts
and Plymouth thundered to the Providence plantations that if they persisted in their neutrality,
They would be treated as enemies, and also forbade them to operate under their 1644 charter.
Moving specifically against the Gortonites, Massachusetts in autumn 1645 authorized a
group of families to settle at Shawarma, on the lands seized from the Gortonites.
Plymouth, however, felt that it too had a claim to the territory and warned off the
new settlers from Massachusetts.
The United Colonies of New England promptly proceeded to assume jurisdiction and presumed
to award the territory to Massachusetts.
Alarmed at the developing aggression of Massachusetts, Samuel Gorton decided to go to England to
seek definite English protection for his rights to Shawarma.
Holding also an impressive commission from his friends, the Narragansett Indians, who
Gordon, along with Holden and Green left for England in late 1645. After a decade of odyssey and persecution, it was highly gratifying for Samuel Gordon to arrive in England at the height of the great libertarian ferment spawned by the Levellers and other radical individualist groups.
and at the height of the great libertarian ferment spawned by the Levellers and other
radical individualist groups.
Gorton had the time of his life for two years, spoke throughout England, was widely hailed
and wrote and published two books, his literary output being inspired evidently by the radical
libertarian ferment in England.
In the fall of 1646, Randall Holden and John Green returned triumphantly to Boston, armed
with an order from the Earl of Warwick, head of the Commission for Foreign Plantations,
to allow the Shawam settlers to return home in freedom and to remain there without molestation.
The submission of the Narragansett Indians to England also successfully kept the potentially
The incensed Massachusetts authorities seriously considered jailing Holden and Greene and ignoring
Warwick and Parliament, but cooler heads finally prevailed and the two Rhode Islanders were
allowed to proceed on their way. Samuel Gorton himself exultantly returned to Boston in the
In the spring of 1648, the infuriated General Court of Massachusetts immediately decided
to lock up Gordon to prevent the infection of his pestilent doctrine, but Gordon triumphantly
produced a letter of safe conduct from the Earl of Warwick. The disgruntled General Court
had been stopped from arresting Gordon, but it gave him a week to get out of the colony.
One return to Shawamit was she gratefully renamed Warwick. William Arnold, the leading
Patuxet oligarch, continued to complain about Gorton to Massachusetts and urge intervention.
But Massachusetts was now chastened and decided at long last to leave the Gortonites alone.
The saga of violent Gortonite persecution was finally over. Shawamit and later Warwick
Ludwig had no government at all until it united with the other towns to form the colony of
Providence Plantations in 1648. Until then, the little settlement, in the words of Gorton,
lived peaceably together, desiring and endeavoring to do wrong to no man, neither English nor
Indian, ending all our differences in a neighborly and loving way of arbitration, mutually chosen
amongst us. But this anarchist idol soon came to an end. Beginning in 1647 and completed
the following year, the four Rhode Island towns of Providence, Portsmouth, Newport and
Warwick were united into the colony of the Providence plantations. From a persecuted
outcast, Samuel Gorton had now become a respected leader of the colony. As the undisputed leader
of Warwick, Gorton was chosen town magistrate and for numerous other posts, and he was Warwick's
main representative in the new colony.
The Code of the United Colony, drawn up in 1647, followed Gorton's insistence on conforming
judicial procedure to English law.
The Code had been largely drafted by Roger Williams, acting as moderator of the Providence
The only representative body was a General Court, a committee of six from each town, meeting in between the meetings of the larger General Assembly. Laws passed by the General Court were subject to the approval of the towns. If a majority of the towns approved, then the law would stand, but only until confirmation by the next General Assembly. Popular elections were held at the General Assembly.
were to be annual for all representatives and executive officers.
The duties of each official were carefully defined and every officer was warned not to go beyond his commission.
Wrongdoing by any official made him liable to impeachment and trial in the General Assembly.
In addition, the towns were empowered to make their own apportionment of the taxes levied upon them by the central government and to do their own collecting.
One of the crucial safeguards raised in the code against the central government was the guarantee of home rule to each town.
To guard against the supremacy of any one town, the general court and assembly were to rotate their meeting place among the towns.
Moreover, the code provided for initiative and referendum, and nullification by the towns.
Initiative permitted the agitation and passage of new legislation by a majority of the town meetings themselves, thus completely bypassing the general court.
The referendum and nullification provision forced the general court, as we have seen, to refer its enactments to the towns, a majority of which could veto any legislation.
In accordance with Rhode Island's role of providing asylum, there were, unlike Massachusetts, no stranger laws preventing persons or towns from receiving newcomers without the consent of the central government.
The Code also provided no mitigation of legal penalties for gentleman criminals, and there was no primogeniture in the law of inheritance.
In contrast to the brutal edicts of Massachusetts, punishments for crime were restricted and were far more proportional to the gravity of the crime.
Only once did Rhode Island under the code whip or brand anyone, and branding was abolished by 1656.
And in contrast to the scores of capital crimes in England and Massachusetts, Rhode Island listed only nine crimes as capital.
Capital. More important, only two criminals were executed in Rhode Island during Roger
Williams's long lifetime, and both of these were murderers. Religious liberty was guaranteed
in the Rhode Island Code, and the laws against personal immorality, though not completely
absent, were relatively mild. There was neither sumptuary legislation against unseemly adornment
adornment, nor any attempt to regulate a person's church life, though laws restricting drinking
and gambling were imposed. And while witchcraft was technically illegal, the law against supposed
witches was never enforced in Rhode Island. After several years of this system, the General
Assembly in 1650 dissolved itself, thereby ending the democratic veto of the Body of
of Freeman, a newly strengthened unicameral general court of six from each town now constituted
the legislature of the colony.
Provision for veto of any law by majority of towns was, however, retained.
In the new government, it might be added, Samuel Gorton was especially selected to serve
on committees of defense against Massachusetts encroachments, a task which Gorton was certainly
Let it not be thought, however, that Rhode Island was in any sense out of the woods.
For one thing, it still faced the Coddington threat.
Thwarted in his claim to unfettered rule in Equidnic, Coddington spurned Williams's offers
to arbitrate their differences and turned again to an outside colony to practice subversion,
this time to Plymouth.
The Quidnick would not agree to the scheme, however, and Coddington left for England in
late 1648 to plead his case there.
In the meanwhile, Massachusetts Bay continued its pressure on Rhode Island, and especially
on Warwick and the Gortonites.
Massachusetts and Plymouth stirred up the Indians to plunder Warwick, and then Massachusetts
returned to its imperialist course by meddling in behalf of William Arnold and the Patuxet
Oligarchy. Arnold embarked on an aggressive campaign of land grabbing and
forcibly seized the land of William Field of Patuxet. When Field sued in the
Providence courts, Arnold refused to appear and produced obviously mutilated
documents of title to try to prove that Providence had no jurisdiction. These
documents would in effect have ejected many Patuxians from their homes and
and Lands, which would then become the property of Arnold and his friends.
At this point, Spring 1650, Massachusetts suddenly intervened and ordered Rhode Island
to end its prosecution of this case, thus throwing its cloak of protection over the
land theft by William Arnold and his friends and moving to extend its suzerainty over Rhode
Island.
To add to Rhode Island's and Gorton's troubles, Massachusetts quickly followed this intervention
by granting to Arnold and his Patuxet friends the right to encroach on Gortonite land in
Warwick. It did this by decreeing the forced merger of Patuxet and Warwick into one county
of Suffolk. Shortly afterward, in the fall of 1650, Massachusetts troops arrived in Rhode
The Hammer Blows against Rhode Island and prevented the Warwick citizens from prosecuting Arnold.
Finally, to make the little colony's cup overflow, Coddington returned from England in the spring of 1651
with an astounding new charter granting Coddington the right to rule Quidnick Island
as its sole feudal lord and ruler for life, to be aided only by six appointed assistants.
The hammer blows against Rhode Island were now falling thick and fast. Massachusetts
sent an official warning to Roger Williams that any attempt to collect taxes from William
Arnold and his Patuxent oligarchs would lead the Bay Magistrates to intervene in such manner
as God shall put into their hands. And what is more, the United Colonies of the New England
and Confederation authorized Plymouth to assume complete jurisdiction over Warwick. Little
Rhode Island was clearly in desperate straits. Its plight was reinforced by Massachusetts'
persecution of the growing sect of Rhode Island Baptists. As early as 1646, the United Colonies
had ordered the vigorous suppression of Baptists for rejecting infant baptism. The Baptists
Massachusetts proceeded to aggravate the Puritan theocracy all the more by adopting the practice
of baptism by immersion. Dr. John Clark, the Baptist leader in Rhode Island, infuriated
the Massachusetts authorities by converting some citizens of Seekonk on the Plymouth side
of the border, and Massachusetts went so far as to threaten armed action against Plymouth
if it did not suppress the invading Baptist. By the fall of 1651, Massachusetts was negotiating
with William Coddington for forcible extradition of all those refugees from Massachusetts who
had found shelter at Equidnic, and it began to contemplate the invasion of Rhode Island
for the armed suppression of the Rhode Island Baptist. During this time, John Clark and
Obadiah Holmes, the successful Baptist missionaries to Seekonk, had fallen into the hands of the Massachusetts oligarchy.
Visiting a sick, old communicant at Lynn, Clark and Holmes were arrested and sentenced to a heavy fine.
The eminent Clark protested that Massachusetts proceedings violated traditional rights under English law.
The report of Governor Endicott held, characteristically, that Clark deserved death and was worthy to be hanged.
Obadiah Holmes refused to sanction the legitimacy of his sentence by not paying the fine,
at which point the enraged Reverend John Wilson, minister of the Boston Church, struck Holmes in a fury and called down the curse of God upon him.
Holmes received an extremely severe whipping of thirty lashes scarring him for life.
After this, additional fines were levied on the two men with promise of another severe whipping in case of default.
Roger Williams protested fervently against this brutal treatment but to no avail.
Deeply moved, Williams asked Massachusetts how it was that he that speaks so tenderly for his own
And, hath yet so little respect, mercy, or pity, to the like conscientious persuasions
of other men?
And Williams cried out, It is a dreadful voice from the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Endicott,
Endicott, why huntest thou me?
Why imprisonest thou me?
Why finest?
Why so bloodily whippest?
Why wouldst thou hang and burn me?
There was rising disgust in England as well. The English Puritans had come increasingly
under the influence of libertarian views emanating from the revolutionary ferment. As Massachusetts
tightened its theocratic rule, the English Puritans became more and more horrified. Sir
Richard Salton-Stall, himself a former Massachusetts oligarch who had long since returned to England,
wrote to Massachusetts in eloquent and aggrieved reaction to the prolonged whipping of holmes.
It doth not a little grieve my spirit to hear what sad things are reported daily of your
tyranny and persecutions in New England, as that you fine whip and imprison men for their
consciences. English Puritans, Saltenstahl reminded them, had hoped that you might have
have been eyes to God's people here and not practice those courses in a wilderness which
you went so far to prevent. Rhode Island was clearly hemmed in on every side with Plymouth
seizing Warwick, Coddington seceding to become sole overlord of Equitnik and align himself
with the colony's enemies in Plymouth and Massachusetts, assuming jurisdiction to protect
the Patuxent land grab and threatening suppression of Rhode Island Baptist, indeed the crushing
of the colony all together. It was more than high time for a final desperate attempt to
save the little colony. Obviously, the only thing to do was to send respected agents immediately
to England to try to obtain firm parliamentary protection for Rhode Island's charter. Samuel
John Gorton, now president of Providence Plantations, a truncated colony including only Warwick
and Providence, was the active force in raising 200 pounds to send Roger Williams to England.
The majority of citizens of Aquidneck, bitterly opposed to Coddington's usurpation, raised
the money to send Dr. John Clark of Newport, along with Williams, to represent the island.
The Gortonites quickly informed the United Colonies that Williams was going to England
on their behalf, among other things to detail the numerous wrongs they had been suffering
at the hands of Plymouth and Massachusetts.
Alarmed by this decision, the determined William Arnold pleaded with Massachusetts to send
troops immediately and take over Rhode Island before the opportunity was lost.
Arnold, not noted for his own personal piety, warned that should Rhode Island be allowed to continue in existence under the pretense of liberty of conscience, thee comes to live all the scum, the runaways of the country.
Arnold pointed to a horrible example. A man imprisoned in Connecticut, New Haven, for adultery, had escaped prison and fled to Rhode Island, where he was not executed, although the guilty woman, having failed to escape, was properly put to death.
Arnold also charged indignantly that some of the Gortonites cryeth out much against them that putteth people to death for witches, for they say there be no other witches upon earth but your own pastors and ministers.
Massachusetts, however, growing a bit cautious, did not take Arnold's tempting advice.
Instead, it went so far as to permit Williams and Clark free passage to Boston, where they set sail for England in November 1651.
With Williams gone, Samuel Gorton was the dominant force in the Providence Warwick government.
As president and then as moderator of the assembly the following year, Gorton was able to enact the outlawing of slavery in the colony,
and also to limit the term of any indentured service to ten years.
Unfortunately, the former law remained a dead letter, but it was the first act of abolition of slavery in American history.
Gorton also secured the elimination of imprisonment for debt.
Samuel Gorton had successfully completed his odyssey of persecution to become one of the foremost leaders of the colony.