Part 2

Gorton and his companions were summoned to Boston to make answer to Pomham’s claim.[31] Denying the jurisdiction of Massachusetts, in a spicy correspondence, Gorton refused to obey the summons. Increase Nowell, Secretary of the Colony, and the Boston Elders, discovered no less than twenty-six instances of blasphemy, “or thereabouts,” in the terms of Gorton’s epistle. The Gortonists were warned that if they continued contumacious they would be regarded as “fitted for the slaughter,”[32] and would be peremptorily dealt with by force of arms. A company of twenty white men and an equal number of Indians, under the command of Captain Cook, was dispatched to seize them and bring them to Boston for trial. On their approach, the Gortonists sent their women and children across the bay, retired to their block-house on Conimicut Point, and awaited the invading force of the enemy. A company of peace-makers from Providence[33] demanded a parley, and proposed the arbitration of the matters in dispute, to prevent the shedding of blood. The Gortonists appealed to the King and were willing to arbitrate, but the proposition was sternly rejected by Gov. Winthrop. “You may do well to take notice,” he said, “that besides the title to land between the English and the Indians there, there are twelve of the English that have subscribed their names to horrible and detestable blasphemies, who are rather to be judged as blasphemous than they should delude us by winning time under pretence of arbitration.”

The Gortonists stood siege for a day and a night,[34] and repelled the attempt of the men of Massachusetts and their savage allies to set fire to the block-house; then, to save bloodshed, under promise that they would be treated as neighbors, and that their claims would be submitted to fair judgment in Massachusetts, they surrendered to superior force, and were taken to Boston for trial.[35] They speedily found, however, that they were regarded as prisoners and not as “friends and neighbors” seeking a just and amicable settlement of civil disagreements. The soldiers, Gorton says, were ordered to knock down any one who should utter a word of insolence, and to run any one through who might step aside from the line of advance. When they arrived in Boston, “the chaplain (of their captors) went to prayers in the open streets, that the people might take notice that what they had done was done in a holy manner, and in the name of the Lord.”[36]

There was no pretence of a judicial consideration of their rights as settlers at Shawomet. They were regarded as criminal offenders, and were examined and convicted on the charge of blasphemy. Gorton was placed on trial for his life before the General Court and Convocation of Elders. Four queries, referring to statements in his vigorous rejoinder to the summons of the Massachusetts authorities, were propounded, and upon his replies the decision of the Court was to be rendered:[37]

“1. Whether the Fathers, who died before Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, were justified and saved only by the blood which hee shed, and the death which hee suffered after his incarnation?

“2. Whether the only price of our redemption were not the death of Christ on the cross, with the rest of his sufferings and obediences, in the time of his life here, after hee was born of the Virgin Mary?

“3. Who was the God whom hee thinks wee serve?

“4. What hee means when hee saith, wee worship the starre of our God Remphan, Chion, Moloch?”

The latter question may well have piqued the curiosity of the elders. The others were evidently framed to secure conviction. His replies were as wise and conciliatory as perfect sincerity would admit, but it was foreordained that they should be unsatisfactory to his judges. All but three of the elders voted for the penalty of death. The representatives of the people, however, to the honor of Massachusetts, refused to assent to this verdict[38]. Gorton suffered imprisonment in Charlestown, with a ball and chain attached to his ankle; the other accused persons were incarcerated in irons in other towns of the Colony. The next General Court, some months later, set them at liberty,[39] but banished them from all places within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts—the intention being to include the disputed territory at Shawomet, which Massachusetts claimed under the deed of Pomham.

As they went forth from their prison houses, the Gortonists recited their wrongs in the public streets in Boston and elsewhere to crowds of willing listeners and ready sympathizers. Palfrey admits that a majority of the people in Massachusetts were to be counted in this category.[40] The sufferings of these martyrs were the seeds of a new Commonwealth, from which the persecuting spirit was at last eliminated. The Indians, also, even in the vicinity of Boston, received them gladly. Cutshamekin, the chief sachem of the neighborhood, to whose wigwam the liberated men accidentally strayed, when asked by Gorton whether Capt. Cook, the commander of their captors, was a good captain, replied, “I can not tell; but the Indians regard those as good captains when a few stand out against many.”

Their chief grievance during imprisonment seems to have been that they were compelled to attend the Sunday services in the churches, and be “preached at” by the Puritan ministers. “They brought us forth unto their congregations to hear their ministers,” says Gorton, with a grim humor, illuminated by some knowledge of natural history, “which was meat to be digested, but only by the hearte or stomacke of an ostrich.”[41] Pastor Ward, of Ipswich, who visited one of them—Richard Carder, an old neighbor of his in England—while in prison, and urged him to recant his heresies, said by way of encouragement, “it shall be no disparagement to you, for here is our revered elder, Mr. Cotton, who ordinarily preacheth that publickely one yeare, that the next yeare hee publickely repents of, and shows him selfe to bee very sorrowful to the congregation.”[42] As his sly dig at Mr. Cotton would indicate, Pastor Ward was entirely sound in his own theology. This appears also in his “Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” where, with a spicy use of capitals, and vigorous if not elegant English, he denounces the brains of those who advocate “Libertie of Conscience in matters of Religion,” as “parboiled in impious ignorance.”

V

SHAWOMET BECOMES WARWICK

After his release, in the spring of 1643-44, Gorton returned through Shawomet, where he was forbidden to linger, to Portsmouth, where he and his friends were received with open arms, and where he was shortly elected to a magistracy on the very scene of his former persecutions.

Thus far the Atherton Company appeared to have made substantial progress in its efforts to obtain possession of the Shawomet lands, and Massachusetts seemed likely to succeed in throwing a girdle of unfriendly possessions around the Providence Plantations, thereby separating them from the Aquidneck settlements, and securing a permanent control over Narragansett Bay. By the submission of Arnold and the malcontents of Providence, they had obtained a show of authority over the Pawtuxet or Popaquinepaug territory. Winthrop had secured possession of Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay by purchasing the half originally owned by Roger Williams,[43] and now with a marvellous inconsistency, held the whole by a title derived solely from Miantonomi, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts. If he could maintain his denial of the rights of Gorton to the Shawomet lands claimed by even a stronger title, he would succeed in his efforts to divide the Narragansett settlements and establish the claims of Massachusetts. With this end in view, the Massachusetts authorities built a block-house for Pomham on Warwick Neck, and temporarily succeeded in excluding the Gortonists from their Shawomet possessions.

Gorton, however, was not idle. He had no thought of permanently relinquishing the claim for which he had contended so bravely, and to which he was justly entitled. Within forty days of his release from prison, by a masterly piece of strategy and statesmanship, he inaugurated measures which completely check-mated his opponents, and gave him a permanent advantage in the contest for supremacy. On the 19th of April, 1644, by the earnest advice and solicitation of Gorton, the Narragansett Indians, in solemn conclave, constituted their “trusty and well-beloved friends,” Samuell Gorton, John Wickes, Randall Holden and John Warner, commissioners to convey their submission to the British Government. The deed of submission, signed by the sachems Pessicus, Conanicus, Mixan, Awoshosse and Tomanick, is preserved in the Historical Cabinet at Providence. The tragical death of the head sachem, Miantonomi, in the previous September, at the hands of his bitter enemies, the Mohegans, with the consent of the Boston elders—a story so well told by Dr. Fiske in his “Beginnings of New England” that I need not repeat it here,—as well as the revolt of Pomham and Soccononocco, were powerful arguments with the Narragansetts in favor of seeking the protection of the British Government; while the return of Gorton and his companions, unscathed, from the prisons of Massachusetts, convinced the Narragansetts that the power of the Mother Country was on their side, and had stood between them and their oppressors.

In August, 1645, the Commissioners of the United Colonies, in session in Boston, declared war against the Narragansetts, and dispatched a military force to Rhode Island; at the same time warning the General Assembly of Providence Plantations, then in session at Newport, that if they adhered to their declared determination of maintaining a position of neutrality they would be regarded as enemies. They also forbade them to exercise the powers of government under the charter obtained by Roger Williams.

In response to this threatening action of “the Massachusetts,” Gorton, Greene and Holden set sail, after vexatious delays, under authority of Providence Plantations, from the Dutch settlement at Manhattan for Holland, whence, after more delay, they obtained transportation to England. The exact time of their arrival at London is unknown, but they had been preceded by the agents of Massachusetts, and were compelled to meet the charges already formulated by their enemies. Their answer, prepared by Gorton in “Simplicities Defence,” was published in London on the 3d of August, 1646. Soon after,[44] a patent was issued to Gorton and his colleagues which granted the Shawomet lands to them and their successors forever, and guaranteed them protection against all other claimants. In the troublous times between the King and Parliament the formal submission of the Narragansetts which Gorton had conveyed to England, could not be delivered to King Charles in person, and Gorton accordingly caused it to be published in London. By this admirable piece of strategy and statesmanship he forever blocked the movements of Massachusetts Bay for the control of the Narragansett country. Gorton received safe-conduct from the Earl of Warwick, on his return, through the domains of the enemy.[45]

Roger Williams, who had finally accepted Gorton’s theory of the true foundations of the new government, had preceded him to England, and on the 14th of March, 1643-44, had obtained a charter for the Colony which united the northern and southern towns in one Commonwealth. Owing to the opposition of the Coddington faction, government was not completely organized under this charter until May, 1647.[46] In the same year, town government was organized at Shawomet, the Town, in honor of its patron, receiving the name of Warwick. Some further futile attempts were made by Massachusetts to enforce her claims, but the Gortonists thereafter retained possession, which gave them “nine points of the law,” and finally complete victory. Pomham, for whom Massachusetts had erected a block-house on Warwick Neck, lingered in the neighborhood a few years, but at last saw that the “Gortonoges” had triumphed in their long contest with the “Wattaconoges,”[47] and in 1665 sold out his dishonored claim for £30 in peage,[48] paid him by Gorton and his associates. The new Commonwealth was fairly launched upon the sea of History; the town of Warwick and its founder were to play an honorable part in the story of its beginnings.

VI

SAMUELL GORTON’S LATER CAREER

During the succeeding quarter of a century Samuell Gorton was active and influential in shaping the destinies of the growing State. He occupied the highest places of honor and responsibility at the gift of his fellow-citizens, and was habitually called into service when sound judgment, prompt and courageous action, and literary ability were requisite. He represented Portsmouth in the Assembly at Newport in 1645. He was chosen one of the Commissioners of the town of Warwick to the General Assembly on his return from England, and served therein a greater part of the time for the next two or three decades. He was placed on the most important committees, and his pen was frequently called into requisition to prepare State papers, and letters to the magistrates of other Colonies, and to the representatives of the new Commonwealth in England. Though absent in the Mother Country during the first year of Colonial Government under the charter of 1643-44, his political views were embodied in the remarkable Code of 1647, passed by the first General Assembly of the United Colony, one of the earliest compilations of law in American history. In the construction of this Code, care was taken to avoid the errors of which Gorton had complained, in the judicial procedure of the other Colonies, by making each section conform to existing English law,[49] reference to the corresponding English statute being placed at the end thereof.[50]

The provision respecting witchcraft is especially noteworthy as indicating a prevailing scepticism in Rhode Island at a time when Massachusetts was under the spell of the delusion, soon to break forth in an appalling epidemic of persecution. The object of its introduction is evidently the set purpose of conforming to English precedents rather than a conviction of the legislators that the statute was demanded by any real public necessity. The section reads:

“Witchcraft is forbidden by this present Assembly to be used in this Colonie; and the Penaltie _imposed by the authoritie that wee are subjected to, is felonie of death_.—I Jac. 12.”[51] The Code of 1647 also forbade imprisonment for debt, and is otherwise in advance of most contemporary legislation. The temper of the Colony on the subject of witchcraft is still further evidenced in the testimony of their opponents,[52] who complained in an anonymous letter addressed to the agent of Massachusetts in England a few years later, that the new government was ignoring the English law. This epistle especially stigmatized “some of them at Shawomet that cryeth out much against them that putteth people to death for witches, for they say there be no other witches upon earth, nor devils, but your own pasters and ministers, such as they are.”[53] There was apparently never a prosecution in Rhode Island under the statute against witchcraft.

Samuell Gorton’s literary style is clearly evident in the remarkable statute against negro slavery, passed by the General Assembly in 1652—the first legislative edict of emancipation ever adopted in America. This statute was passed during the Coddington secession of 1651-54, and consequently voices officially only the sentiment of Providence and Warwick. Roger Williams was in England at the time of its passage, and there can be little doubt that Samuell Gorton was its author and principal advocate. Though it subsequently became a dead letter, it was apparently never repealed, and merits perpetuation in the annals of the anti-slavery conflict. It reads as follows:

“Whereas there is a common course practised amongst English men to buy negers, to the end that they may have them for service or slaves forever; for the preventinge of such practices among us, let it bee ordered, that no blacke mankinde or white, being forced by covenant bond or otherwise, to serve any man or his assigns longer than ten yeares, or untill they come to bee twentie four yeares of age if they bee taken in under fourteen, from the time of their cominge within the liberties of this Collonie. And at the end or terme of ten yeares to sett them free as the manner is with the English servants. And that man that will not let them goe free, or shall sell them away elsewhere to that end that they may bee enslaved to others for a long time, hee or they shall forfeit to the Colonie forty pounds.”[54]

Samuell Gorton was elected General Assistant, a position corresponding with that of Lieutenant Governor, in 1649, and in 1651, during the Coddington secession, he was chosen to the highest position at the gift of the Commonwealth—he became its President. During the following year, he was Moderator or Speaker of the General Assembly, and he several times subsequently served as General Assistant. He was also active in the affairs of the Town of Warwick, being for many years a member of the Town Council, and holding other positions of honor and responsibility. “After the venerable founder of Providence,” says his biographer,[55] “no man was more instrumental in establishing the foundations of equal civil rights and ‘soul liberty’ in Rhode Island than Samuell Gorton.” He was especially active in assuring the protection of the Colony for the persecuted Quakers.[56] He sent them messages of sympathy when they were in prison in Massachusetts, and was authorized by the General Assembly to reply to the epistles of the Massachusetts authorities protesting against their finding an asylum in Rhode Island. When Massachusetts appealed to England, Samuell Gorton was designated to prepare a letter on behalf of the Rhode Island Government to John Clarke, the representative of the Colony in the Mother Country, to be presented to the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. He requests Clarke “to plead our case in such sorte as wee may not bee compelled to exercise any civill power over men’s consciences, so long as humane orders in poynt of civility are not corrupted and voyalated, which our neighbors aboute us doe frequently practise, whereof many of us have large experience, and doe judge it to bee no less than a poynt of absolute crueltie.”[57]

On the collapse of the Puritan Commonwealth in England, Samuell Gorton was appointed on a Committee to select agents of the Colony in England, and prepare an address to his Majesty, King Charles the Second.[58] As a result of this action, and of the wise intercession of John Clarke, then representing the Colony in England, the Charter of 1663 was secured, in which Samuell Gorton was named as one of the incorporators of the new Commonwealth. In 1663 he was also appointed by the Town Council “overseer” of the will of John Smith, Deputy from Warwick, under the curious provision by which the towns in Rhode Island made wills for persons dying intestate, dividing their property according to the communal sense of justice. In 1666, after the purchase of Pomham’s claim, Mr. Gorton was assigned ten shares in Warwick Neck, and was still further recognized in another division in the following year.[59] In 1675, during the storm and stress of King Philip’s war, tradition says that Samuell Gorton’s life was saved by friendly Indians, who rowed him across the Bay to a place of safety. He was always on amicable terms with the aborigines, treating them justly, teaching and exhorting in their settlements, and wisely advising them in various emergencies.

Warwick suffered severely in the contest with King Philip, which would doubtless have been prevented had the policy of Roger Williams and Samuell Gorton in dealing with the Indians been generally adopted. The town was depopulated, the houses and barns were burned, and the cattle driven into the wilderness. A pitched battle was fought in an open cedar swamp in Warwick between the Indians under Canonchet and a company of men from Plymouth.[60] Many of the colonists took refuge on Aquidneck, the waters around which were patrolled night and day by a flotilla of four boats, filled with armed men.

Judge Staples tells us that John Wickes, the friend and colleague of Samuell Gorton, trusting too implicitly to the friendship of the savages, remained and was slain; his head being set upon a pole as a warning to others. In this, he must be mistaken, however, since the will of John Wickes, dated the second day of March, 1688, and signed by himself, though written and witnessed by Samuell Gorton, the younger, may be seen to-day in the library of the Historical Society in Providence. This interesting document also contains the signatures of two others of the founders, of Warwick,—Randall Holden, the justice before whom it was proved, and John Greene, who signs in behalf of himself and the other members of the Town Council.

On the fourth day of June, 1677, probably the year of his death, Samuell Gorton, Senior, was elected “to the Towne Counsell for the ensuing yeare,” as the ancient records tell us, and his son, Capt. Samuell Gorton, was at the same time chosen Town Treasurer. On the 20th of July the father signed a deed of lands owned by him in the Narragansett Country to his sons, his six daughters and their husbands also being remembered in the disposition of this property; and on the 27th of November of the same year, by another deed, he divided his entire remaining estate among his three sons, Samuell, John and Benjamin.[61] To the former, who was evidently a man after his own heart, and who had aided in supporting the family, he gave his homestead at Old Warwick, his household furniture, library and most precious literary possessions. He also committed to him the care of his mother during her widow-hood, providing that she should be maintained with convenient housing and necessaries, and that means should be furnished for her “recreation in case she desires to visit her friends.”[62] His lands at Coweset, beyond the boundaries of the Shawomet grant, he gave in equal possession, undivided, to his three sons. The document attesting the final division of these lands by the surviving sons, Samuell and John, bears date on the town records, Dec. 4, 1699, being executed, as it says, “according to the expressed wish of our Ancient and Honored ffather, Mr. Samuell Gorton, one of the first settlers of this Plantation of Warwick in New England.” His son Benjamin, then deceased, had been one of the founders of the new town of East Greenwich, the organization of which dates from the year of the original bequest.

VII

SAMUELL GORTON’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY