Rhode Island; its making and its meaning; a survey of the annals of the commonwealth from its settlement to the death of Roger Williams, 1636-1683
Richman, Irving Berdine, 1861-1938
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RHODE ISLAND ITS MAKING AND ITS MEANING A Survey of the Annals of the Commonwealth from its Settlement to the Death of Roger Williams 1636-1683 BY IRVING BERDINE r'TcHMAN WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY JAMES BRYCE, M.P., D.C.L. AUTHOR OF "the AMERICAN COMMONWEALTH*' VOLUME II G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK AND LONDON Cbe Iknicherbockec ipcess 1902 THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Twc CoP.Ef RtCEiVEO NOV. i^ 1902 pnovsiiiiHT ENTRY CLAS^C\.«XXc. No COPY A. ^ Copyright, 1902 BY IRVING BERDINE RICHMAN O Ubt ftnicberbocitec preee, t^ew tfovti CONTENTS IX. The Coddington "Coup d'Etat " . . 3 X. Relation of State to Town in Early Rhode Island ...... 43 the idea of individualism in politics, as corollary to that of freedom of con- science in religion, grasped by rhode island but not by roger williams. XI. Soul Liberty in Practice — the Baptists AND the Quakers . . . . -57 FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE IN RHODE ISLAND GRANTED FORMAL RECOGNITION BY THE ENG- LISH GOVERNMENT, BUT POLITICAL INDIVID- UALISM A T THE SAME TIME MADE SUBJECT BY RHODE ISLAND TO CERTAIN WHOLESOME RE- STRICTIONS. XII. John Clarke and the Charter of 1663 . 105 THE ARM OF RHODE ISLAND PARALYZED BY POLITICAL INDIVIDUALISM IN TIME OF PERIL FROM THE INDIANS. XIII. King Philip's War 149 THE EXISTENCE OF RHODE ISLAND, WITH ALL THAT EXISTENCE IMPLIED, MENACED BY WILLIAM HARRIS, AS ALSO BY MASSACHUSETTS AND CONNECTICUT, IN ATTEMPTS TO GAIN CON- TROL OF RHODE ISLAND TERRITORY. XIV. William Harris and the Pawtuxet Pur- chase : A XVII. Century Piece of Liti- gation ........ 197 y iv Contents CHAPTER PAGB Maps : territory involved in the pawtuxet land controversy . . . .197 boundary lines of rhode island . . 224 XV. The Struggle for Territorial Integrity. I. PLANTING OF NARRAGANSETT, AND THE PLYMOUTH LINE ..... 224 II. THE RHODE ISLAND-CONNECTICUT LINE, 1665-1675 244 III. THE RHODE ISLAND-CONNECTICUT LINE, 1675-1683 256 l'£tat, C'ETAIT LUt. XVI. Some Appreciation of Roger Williams . 273 Index , , . i t . . • 287 Political Individualism Granted Large Rec- ognition in the First Rhode Island Consti- tution, but Sought to be Checked in its Advance by William Coddington [Continued \ VOL. II.— I CHAPTER IX THE CODDINGTON " COUP d'eTAT " IN 1650, — the year in which the organization of Providence Plantations may be said to have been completed, — the condition of Providence itself was not materially different from what it had been a decade before. There had been some in- crease in population, but not much ; the total in- habitants were probably less than two hundred. Some new houses, log or rudely framed, had been erected on the town street, and the town mill had become a distinct public institution. The trades, however, were hardly represented at all, as may be gathered from Roger Williams's statement, in a letter written in 1649 ^^ John Winthrop, Jr., that the town had no smith. Nor can it with truth be said that the occupation of the people was in the ordinary sense agriculture. It was rather that of the herdsman or drover ; for, while cattle were scarce, and there were as yet few oxen and still fewer horses, of swine and goats there was a great abundance. Upon these, eked out by game and fish and Indian corn, the people subsisted ; and over these, as common depredators, the people wrangled. 3 4 Early Rhode Island With Aquidneck, or Rhode Island, in 1650, and particularly Newport, the situation was markedly more favorable. To begin with, the Island itself was (as it still is) a spot more salubrious, fertile, and fruitful than most parts of the Mainland. Says Edward Winslow, writing in 1646, "and for that little island of Rhode Island they [the Antinomians] were forced to shelter in, take notice 'tis 30 miles about, very fruitfull and plentifully abounding with all manner of food the Country' affordeth, and hath two Townes besides many great Farmes well stocked in the same." ^ Two of these farms, indeed — the one owned by Coddington and the one owned by William Bren- ton — were, even in 1650, magnificent estates. The former (comprising some seven hundred and fifty acres) was in two tracts. The first extended north- westward from Newport as far as Coddington Cove, and northeastward as far as Miantonomy Hill.^ It was diversified by upland and vale, mea- dow and wood ; possessed on the west of a wide bay frontage ; and stocked generously with horses, cattle, and sheep, — the latter the finest of English ewes and rams (black and white), and in a special sense the pride of their owner.^ Upon taking the estate into possession, Coddington built a house on ^Hypocrisy Unmasked, pp. 79, 80. The commissioners of Charles II., writing in 1665, state : " In this Province is the best English grasse and most sheepe, the ground very fruitfull ; . . . corn yields eighty for one, and in some places they have had corne twenty-sixe yeares together without manuring." — R. I. Col. Rec, vol. ii., p. 128. - Rider's Hist. Tract No. 4, p. 51. ^ Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th sen, vol. vi., p. 319, vii., p. 279. "^ The Coddington ''Coup d' Eta f 5 this tract at the cove. The second tract lay to the south of the town, and was more diversified and picturesque even than the first. Here were hills crowned by spruce, cedar, and hemlock trees, inter- spersed with oak and maple ; here were luxuriant valleys enshrining bright-eyed pools and ponds ; and here, too, were masses of rock, fantastic in out- line and hoary-headed, that ere long by sheer force of their presence dictated the bestowal of the appellation " Rocky Farm." The Brenton estate comprised some four hun- dred acres to the east of the first Coddinorton tract. Later on, Brenton purchased land near the present Fort Adams, where he built, with materials brought from Boston, a large brick house capped by four chimneys, and laid out the grounds in orchards and gardens. He named the place Hammersmith, in honor of Hammersmith, Middlesex, England, the home of his youth.' If the contrast between Providence and Aquid- neck be not already sufficiently indicated, it may be added that upon both the Coddington and Bren- ton farms, as upon other less opulent Aquidneck estates, good English wheat, oats, rye, barley, and peas were harvested, to say nothing of good hemp and flax, and good English apples ; while, as for cheese, butter, honey, venison, fowl and fish, wild strawberries and blackberries, hickory nuts and chestnuts, — all were to be obtained in ample measure.^ ' Elizabeth C. Brenton's Histo7-y of Brenton s Neck, pp. 4-7. ''J. O. Austin's Journal of William Jefferay, p. 29. 6 Early Rhode Isla^id But it is not only the environs of Newport at this period that merit our attention ; Newport has claims of its own. The settlement had been ordered to be pitched " by the seaside southward," or, more ac- curately, westward, and as quickly as possible the tangled swamp which hindered access to the beach had'' been cleared by help of the Indians.^ At the spot where "long wharf" reaches into the harbor there was a cove, and about the head of this, upon upward sloping ground and amid stately trees, the first street (Thames Street) had been run, and the first house-lots laid off ; very likely under the super- vision of William Brenton, for he was a skilled sur- veyor, and had brought with him from England a commission, stamped with the likeness and signa- ture of King Charles I., authorizing him to take a certain proportion to the mile of all the lands which he might survey in the New England colonies. As residents of Newport in 1650 (when all told the population may have been about three hun- dred"), we find the Eastons, the Bulls, the Dyers, 1 \ccording to a tradition (recorded by Elizabeth Brenton) Nicholas Easton William Brenton, and Thomas Hazard made a bargain with the Indians to clear the swamp for a coat with brass buttons. It was the but- tons however, rather than the coat that the Indians coveted, for on receiv- ing the garment they cut off the buttons and strung them for a necklace. « Something as to the relative population of Providence and Newport in 1650 may be gathered from the act passed in that year, that Providence should keep in its magazine " one barrell of powder, five hundred pounds of leade six pikes and six muskets" ; and Newport, "three barrells of powder, one thousand weight of leade, twelve pikes, and twentie foure muskets.' In 165 1 the number of freemen in Newport was sixty-five or seventy ; m 1655 the number of freemen in Providence was forty-two, and in Newport. ninety-six.-^. /. Col. Kec. vol. i., pp. 223. 299; Staples' "Annals of Prov.," R. I. Hist. Coll, vol. v., p. S2. The Coddington ''Coup d' EtaV' 7 the Hazards, the Clarkes, the Goulds, the Shear- mans, the Cranstons, the Jefferays, and the Cogge- shalls; and not only so, but William Coddington had built there a town house,^ and William Brenton had at least begun to improve his town allotment, ex- tending from the waterside to the present Spring Street, and bounded on the north by New Lane, now Mary Street. The company, it is needless to say, was distinguished. It was so in the threefold aspect of extraction, education, and wealth.^ In • Coddington, in a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., dated from New Lodge in Newport, February ig, 165 1, expressly mentions his " towne howse "; whether this was the house dismantled in 1835 is a question. Stephen Gould, writing to John Rowland on December 13, 1S35, states: "The House in Marlborough street once owned by the venerable Governor William Coddington is now taking down. ... It was built by Rowland Robinson who was the first of that name who settled in Newport, and was the first contract he made as builder on his removal from Boston. This in- formation I had from his grandson, the late Thomas Robinson. ... It is not in my power to state the year that it was built ; it is probable, how- ever, that it was erected from 1665 to 1670, as I find Rowland Robinson mentioned on Friends' records in that space of time. It has been told me that William Coddington's first residence was near what is called now Cod- dington Cove. — MS. in R. I. Hist. Soc. Cabinet ; see Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser., vol. vii., p. 283, for mention of the " towne howse." With regard to the houses of Newport in general, at this time, Mr. Aus- tin {yefferayi's yournal, p. 30) says : " Our houses are yet small, though a few have good ones (with some glass from England for their windows); and our furnishings of them are not like what we used in our old homes, but much poorer. Indeed, these two insular formations in Narra- gansett Bay, Aquidneck and Conanicut, were in a variety of respects strikingly adapted to the position and dignity of a miniature independent State. A was of Datchet, Buck's County, and held under both Charles I. and II. the office of Auditor-General of the Revenues. — R. I. Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. vi., p. 104. The descent of the Cranstons is traced in Narr, Hist. Reg., vol. vii., p. 305 etseq. ' Austin, yefferay's yournal, p. 28. 'On May 21, 1656, an order of court was made " touching some horses which Mr. William Coddington is reported to be transportinge to Bar- badoes."— R. J. Col. Rec, vol. i., pp. 337, 338. ' It would seem that in 1646 a ship for New Haven was built at Ports- mouth.— Weeden's Economic and Social Hist. New Eng., vol. i., p. 154. The Coddington '^Coup d' Etat'* 9 person of imagination — more particularly an Eng- lishman— might see in them an interesting epitome of Great Britain : with the township of Portsmouth for Scotland, the township of Newport for England, and with Conanicut, still barbarous and only par- tially subdued, for the Emerald Isle. Nor was such a person wanting at the time of which I write. William Coddington had for some years been meditating plans for making himself king of this lesser Britain, and in fact had put forth two distinct attempts in that direction, — the first in 1644, when he broached an alliance with the United Colonies, and the second in 1648, when he broached such an alliance once agfain. Both at- tempts had failed largely because the United Col- onies would receive the Island only as part of Plymouth or of the Bay ; but the second failure (September 7, 1648) had put Coddington upon his mettle, and, on the 31st instant thereafter, he wrote to John Winthrop, Jr., to whom he had sold some sheep : " I shall sudenly leave the Hand & I much desire you will send for your sheepe. ... I am for England by the next (if the Lord will) and shall be glad & redie to serve you ther & soe in hast."* In other words, our magnate had resolved to lay the case of the Island before the English Government, and to obtain for himself, if he could, recognition as proprietor and appointment as Governor. He evidently sailed for his destination the latter part of October, and from Boston, for, on October 14th, he again wrote to Winthrop : ' Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser., vol. vi.^ p. 321. lo Early Rhode Island " You may please to order me it [payment] in the Baye whither I now am hasting to take passage for England with my daughter." ^ So he was gone, and with motives upon the whole more to be condemned than applauded. As intimated in the last chapter, he had in high de- gree that aversion for Providence, Warwick, and the Gorton element in Portsmouth which wealth tinctured with aristocracy ever has for poverty and radicalism; but this maybe pardoned him. His aversion may even be admitted to have been not wholly ill-founded, for there certainly was danger that Providence Plantations would perish through excess of individualism. That for which he must be condemned is, first, his attempt — so wholly illegal as fairly to be termed treasonable — to erect Aquidneck into a separate commonwealth, in the face of the Patent of 1644, and under the shelter of the United Colonies; and, second, his attempt (successfully to be made) to have the Island, along with Conanicut, created a separate commonwealth by an Order in Council obtained largely through mis- representation. One quality, had Coddington pos- sessed it, might have served in a measure to rescue his disingenuousness from contempt, and that was masterfulness of spirit. But masterfulness, as it chanced, was the one quality which he conspicu- ously lacked, and which to lack was — as he quickly learned — fatal to any ambition to " stand forth in sudden purple." On reaching England, Coddington sought out ' Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser., vol. vii., p. 281. The Coddington '' Coup d' EtaV ii Sir Henry Vane. It is inconceivable that he could have let Vane into the secret of his mission, which was the overthrow of the patent which the latter had been chiefly instrumental in procuring, but he kept on excellent terms with him socially, dining at his house so often that he could allude to the circumstance as one " usall with me." He also saw Hugh Peters, then regularly established at White- hall as one of the preachers before the Council of State. " I was mery with him," he writes, " & called him the Arch B. B : of Canterberye in re- gard of his attendance by ministers & gentlemen & it passed very well." And, indeed, may not it have been that it was through the mediation of Peters that Coddington at length gained the ear of the council for his project ? The clergyman was an avowed enemy of the patent granted to Roger Williams (having been concerned, along with the Rev. Thomas Welde, in seeking to offset it by the Narragansett Patent), and any aid that he could render our magnate would no doubt have been in the line of his inclinations.^ But, be that as it may, on March 6, 1651, Cod- dington's petition was referred by the Council of State to the Committee of the Admiralty for their report. The averments and prayer of the petition are set forth in substance in the Calendar of British State Papers, Colonial, for 1651,- and are as follow : that the petitioner was one of ' It should, however, be noted, that in 1671 Roger Williams says that when he met Peters in London, the latter told him he was for "liberty of conscience and preached it." — Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 355. ^ Quoted in Rider's Hist. Tract No. 4., pp. 45-47- 1 2 Early Rhode Isla^id the first planters in New England ; that about thirteen years past he discovered two small is- lands called " Aquetnet, als Rhode Island, and Ouinunagate [Conanicut] lying within Narragan- sett Bay, which he purchased of the Indians and has quietly enjoyed ever since ; that, desiring to govern by English law and to have dependence on the Commonwealth, he prays for a grant of those islands from Parliament, with such im- munities as have been granted to others in like cases." Edward Winslow, as agent for Plymouth, was given notice of the pendency of the foregoing peti- tion, and, appearing in opposition thereto, set up a claim for his colony to the two islands in question. The claim, however, was disallowed, and in April the Admirality Committee reported favorably for Coddington. Accordingly a commission, bearing date April 3, 1651, and signed by John Bradshaw, was issued appointing him " Governor of Acquedneck alias Rhode Island and Ouinunnu- gate island." He was empowered to administer the law, " so far as the constitution of those places will permit, in the name of the keepers of the liberties of England by authority of Parliament ; to raise forces for defense ; to appoint an- nually not more than six Councellors, to be nominated by the freeholders of the towns of Newport and Portsmouth ; and to tender the engagement to councillors as well as electors." In case of his death, the council was authorized to choose a Governor until Parliament or the Council of State gave further order. Dr. Henry E. Tur- The Coddington ''Coup d' Etat" 13 ner, in his interesting pamphlet, WilliaDi Codding- ton in Colonial Affairs, calls merited attention to the disingenuousness of the claims preferred by the subject of his animadversions before the Council of State : as, for example, of the claim that he, the petitioner, had discovered the islands ; of the claim that he individually had purchased them of the Indians ; and of the claim, implied in the expres- sion of a desire to govern them by English law, that they had not hitherto been included in any ofrant. But Coddington had his commission, and with it in hand appeared in Providence Plantations some- time in August, 165 1. The reception accorded him was by no means flattering. In fact, no sooner did it become known that he had been made Gov- ernor of the islands for life, than a protest of in- dignation and consternation was raised throughout the colony. Our magnate on starting for England had had the fortune to leave behind him, in a sense both personal and political, a fair share of enemies. In 1648-49 he had quarrelled with William Dyer over " ten head of great cattle " which he alleged that Dyer had taken from Rocky Farm and " converted to his own use "; and we know from Roger Williams that the same year political dissensions, following the old line of religious cleavage noted by Win- throp, had broken forth upon Aquidneck, whereby there were arrayed in two camps the followers of Coddington and Partridge (the conservatives) and the followers of Easton and John Clarke (the 14 Early Rhode Island liberals).' Now, therefore, that the magnate had returned, his ancient foes were at his heels. Meet- ings were held at Newport, Portsmouth, and Provi- dence, and decisive action was planned. By the Providence meeting Roger Williams was earnestly- entreated to betake himself again to Westminster, and — on the assumption that the Patent of 1644 had been vacated by the grant to Codding- ton ^ — to procure if possible a separate charter for Providence and Warwick.^ " Much Honored," wrote William Arnold to Massachusetts from his Pawtuxet outpost, on September 1, 165 1, "Whereas Mr. Coddington has gotten a charter of Rhode Island and Canonicut Island to himself he has thereby broken the force of their charter that went under the name of Providence, be- cause he has gotten away the greater part of that colony. Now these company of the Gortonists that live at Shawomet and that company of Providence are gathering of JQ200 to send Mr. Roger Williams unto the Parliament to get them a charter of these parts ; they of Shawomet have given ;^ioo already and there be some men of Providence that hath given ;^ 10 and ;^2o a man to help it forward with speed. . . . It is a great pity and very unfit that such a company as these are, they all stand professed enemies against all the united colo- nies, that they should get a charter for so small a quantity of land as lieth in and about Providence, Shawomet, Pawtuxet and Coweset, all which now Rhode Island is taken out from it, is but a strip of land lying between the Colonies of Massa- chusetts Plymouth and Connecticut, by which means if they should get them a charter, of it there may come some mischief '^ Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser., vol. vi., p. 321; Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 166. *7?. /. Hist. Coll., vol. v., p. 89. 'As early as October 9, 1650, Williams writes : " Just now a letter from R. I. comes for my voyage to Eng: but as yet I resolve not." On October 6, 1651, he writes : " Being now bound, resolvedly, (if the Lord please) for our native country," etc. — Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., pp. 202, 228. The Coddington ''Coup d' Etat" 15 and trouble upon the country . . . for under the pre- tence of liberty of conscience about these parts there comes to live all the scum, the runaways of the country." And in a postscript Arnold repeats : " They are making haste to send Mr. Williams away. ... I humbly desire my name may becon- cealed lest they hearing of what I have herein written, they will be enraged against me, and so will revenge themselves upon me.'" Meanwhile upon the Island there was equal haste. The object here was to have Coddington's commission annulled, and forty-one of the freemen of Portsmouth joined with sixty-five of the free- men of Newport in soliciting John Clarke to go to England for that end. Moreover, William Dyer, seeing in this his opportunity to square ac- counts with his traducer reo^ardinof the " ten head of cattle," and having " maid over his estaite " in security for ready funds, placed himself at Clarke's disposal as coadjutor and private secretary. As for Roger Williams in this connection, failing of the ;^ioo which, according to the distempered imagina- tion of Arnold, Providence was " gathering," and likewise of the ;!^ioo which, according to the same imagination, the Gortonists had gathered already, he was forced to raise money for the trip by selling out his trading business, which he did to Richard Smith, his neighbor at Cawcamsqussick. By special permission of the Bay, Williams sailed from Boston in November, Clarke, it is said, going in the same ship.^ ' Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 229. ' Dr. Palfrey doubts this, suggesting that Clarke would hardly venture to sail from Boston so soon after the imposition upon him of the fine in the 1 6 Early Rhode Island Some interesting- events had occurred in the Old Home since the visit of WilHams in 1643-44, and with these — as, for instance, the execution of the King, the overthrow of Prince Rupert by Blake at sea, and the campaigns of Cromwell in Ireland and Scotland — our traveller had, as we know from his Winthrop letters, made himself familiar. It prob- ably, however, was only after landing that he learned of the battle of Worcester, fought on Sep- tember 3d.^ This victory by Cromwell had again raised the question which had been raised after Naseby, namely, the settlement of the nation ; and with this question Williams must have found both Vane and Cromwell intensely occupied. But de- spite occupation Sir Henr}^ received his friend with the old-time cordiality, making him welcome at Whitehall. He entered heartily into the work of undoing the grant to Coddington ; lending aid in preparing a petition to the Council of State, to which Clarke subscribed, and in securing action upon it afterwards. Still, various obstacles were encountered. Cod- dington had apprised his English agent of the effort to be made against him, and the latter had appealed to the council ; a proceeding in which he Witter affair — an incident to be related in these pages farther along. — Hist. A'ew Eng., vol. ii., p. 355, note. ' It was to Sir Thomas Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, captured at the battle of Worcester, that Roger Williams rendered the ser\'ice which is so handsomely acknowledged by the recipient in his Introduction to the Uni- versal Language, published in 1653. " He [Williams] did approve himself a man of such discretion," says Urquhart, "and inimitably-sanctified parts, that an Arcangel from heaven could not have shewn more goodness with less ostentation." — R. I. Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. viii., p. 135. The Coddington ''Coup d' Etaf' ly had the countenance and backing not only of the Plymouth and Connecticut agents, Edward Wins- low, Edward Hopkins ("both in great place"), and George Fen wick, but also of Arthur Haslerig, a leader in Parliament and Fenwick's father-in-law.^ But at length, on October 2, 1652, an order was obtained vacating Coddington's commission, and, for the present, authorizing the colony of Provi- dence Plantations to proceed with the administra- tion of government under the Patent of 1644.^ Armed with letters embodying this order, Dyer — no doubt to his great personal satisfaction — sailed for New England, arriving in Rhode Island in Februar)-, 1653. "I hope it may have pleased the Most High Lord of Sea and land," Williams wrote to Providence and Warwick, on April I, 1653, " to bring Captain Christen's ship and dear Mr. Dyre unto you, and w^ith him the Councill's letters . . . for the confirmation of the charter until the determination of the controversy." The controversy, however, hung on, and for the purpose of watching it, as well as for other purposes private in their nature, ' Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., pp. 236, 255. ^ " We have thought it necessary for the present, and until further direc- tion and order be given by the Parliament or this Council for settling that Colony, to authorize you and do hereby authorize you to take care for the peace and quiet thereof," etc. — Palfrey's New Eng., vol. ii., p. 557, note. Warwick (July 29, 1652) had been in favor of sending to England a joint commission from the Mainland and the Island to aid Williams in securing a renewal of the "former charter" ; as matters stood, he was authorized to act only for the Mainland. It was likewise to be the duty of the commission "to bring in the Narragansett Bay which Coweset men strive for." Providence, however, had preferred to let their agent do his work in his own way. VOL. II. — 2 1 8 Early Rhode Island both Williams and Clarke continued their stay- abroad.^ The former found much in which to take in- terest. The question of Freedom of Conscience, although not having the novelty, nor quite the bearing upon his mission, that it had had eight years before, was still to him a question of the highest moment for both Old England and New. He therefore busied himself in bringing out, in re- joinder to Cotton's Bloody Tenet Made White (published in 1647 in reply to his own Bloody Tenet^, his book The Bloody Tenet yet more Bloody, his Hireling Ministry None of Christ's^ and his Experiments of Spiritual Life and Health — the latter dedicated to Lady Vane. He also made a further direct appeal to Parliament — com- panion-piece to his Queries of Highest Considera- tion — in behalf of Toleration, in a preface to A Fourth Paper Presented by Major Butler i^ In- deed, his zeal for religious and political freedom, re-enforced by affection for the memory of Sir Ed- ' Clarke's object, in part at least, was to arrange for the collection of an annuity of £20 left to his wife by her father out of the manorial estate of Wreslingworth in Bedfordshire. The object of Williams, apparently, was also pecuniary in its nature, for, writing to Gregory Dexter, on September 8, 1652, from Mr. Davis's house at the Checkers in St. Martin's, he says : " When my public business is over, I am resolved to begin my old law-suit." — Backus, vol. i., p. 439; Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi. p. 236. ' This pamphlet was provoked by the question of tithes — or a State-paid clergy — which raged furiously during the time of Williams's stay in England. — MdiSsoWs Milton, vol. iv., pp. 514, 517, 567, 615. ^Professor Masson says with regard to Butler's " Paper" : " Evidently here was a protest in favor of absolute Voluntaryism and complete Tolera- tion. We have it on the authority of the persons who tendered the protest that they regarded Cromwell as essentially with them in the Tol- eration part of it." — Ibid., p. 393. The Coddington ''Coup d'Etat'' 19 ward Coke, his dead patron, led him at this time to address a beautifully worded note to Sir Ed- ward's daughter, Mrs. Anne Sadleir, living at Standon, Puckridge, and to send with the note a copy of his Experiments. But Mrs. Sadleir proved to be a reactionary of the bitterest type, and promptly returned the gift with the tart observation : " I have given over read- ing many books, and therefore with thanks have re- turned yours ; . . . for your new lights that are so much cried up, I believe in the conclusion they will prove but dark lanterns " ; and to a second kindly note from Williams, commending Milton's Eikonoclastes, the stern lady made retort : ** For Milton's book, if I be not mistaken that is he that has wrote a book of the lawfulness of divorce; and if report says true, he had at that time two or three wives living. This per- haps were good doctrine in New England; but it is most abominable in Old England. For his book that he wrote against the late king . . . you should have taken notice of God's judgment upon him who stroke him with blindness. . . . God has began his judgment upon him here, — his punishment will be hereafter in hell." * Despite the severity of Mrs. Sadleir's prediction for Milton, — then Latin Secretary to the Council of State, — Williams continued to profit by the ac- quaintance with him, reading to him in Dutch, and receiving in return help in the classic tongues. '^ He also came personally to know Cromwell, of ' Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., pp. 241, 251. Milton's first distinct premoni- tions of blindness seem to have come to him in 1648-49. He was totally blind by March or April, 1652. — Masson's Milton, vol. iv., pp. 80, 427, 428. * Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 262. 20 Early Rhode Island whom he speaks as pleased " to send for me and to entertain many discourses with me at sev^eral times," and upon whose sympathetic ear, we may be very sure, the claims of Soul Liberty were eloquently urged. Meanwhile our traveller was in receipt of a letter from Providence Plantations, dated October 28, 1652, thanking him for his "care and diligence to watch all oportunityes to promote our peace," and intimating that it would be a public advantage were the " honourable State of England ... to invest, appoint and empower yourselfe to come over as Governor of this Collony for the space of one yeare." But Williams wisely put this crown from him, and, war with Holland having broken out, and Sir Henry Vane " having the navy of England mostly depending on his care, and going down to the navy at Portsmouth," he accepted an invitation tendered him by both Sir Henry and Lady Vane, to pass some weeks at Belleau, Vane's Lincolnshire home. Hither he accordingly repaired, and here he was quartered while Blake and Van Tromp were cudgelling each other to admiration in the Channel, and while Cromwell, enraged, was turning Parliament out-of-doors with loud prayers to be delivered from Sir Henry Vane. The year 1653 (memorable for the installation of the Lord Protector) passed, and 1654 came, and still — what with Cromwell's reorganization of the Council of State and the retirement of Vane — no opportunity was given further to discuss the merits of the usurpation of Coddington. Williams, who was short of money, and who for some time had The Coddington ''Coup d'Etat" 21 been eking out a living by giving to the sons of members of Parliament private lessons in the lan- guages by the conversation method, and who withal had been receiving most disheartening reports of the bickerings in Providence Plantations, therefore decided to go home. He left John Clarke — who was without children, and whose wife was with him ^ — in charge of the affairs of the colony in England, and reached Boston about June or July, 1654; bringing word from Lord President Law- rence, of the council, delivered at the last moment at Portsmouth, that the board had " passed three letters as to our business : first, to encourage us ; second, to our neighbor Colonies not to molest us ; and third, that liberty of conscience should be main- tained in all American plantations."^ He also brought from the council a letter commanding the government of the Bay thenceforth to allow him free passage through its territory '^ ; and a letter from Vane to his own colony, couched in severe terms of rebuke for its contentiousness. To recur now to the course of events in Provi- dence Plantations immediately after the arrival of Coddington with his commission in August, 165 1. ' This is presumed from the circumstance that while Clarke was in Eng- land (May 12, 1656), he and his wife executed a joint power of attorney for the collection of the legacy to the latter from her father. — Backus, vol. i., p. 439- "^ Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 261. ^ It is interesting to note that the name of Sir William Masham — the same, probably, to whom Williams was private chaplain at the time he proposed for the hand of Lady Barrington's niece — is among those sub- scribed to this letter. 2 2 Early Rhode Island Hardly was Roger Williams en route by way of Boston for England, when (October 23d) the two towns of the Mainland met in Warwick/ chose Samuel Gorton President, and appointed commis- sioners to meet at Providence on November 4th. The commissioners assembled on the day named, and passed a resolution, that " whereas Mr. Nicholas Easton, formerly chosen President of Providence Plantations, hath of late deserted his office, and hee, together with the two towns upon Rhode Island, viz. Portsmouth and Newport, have declined and fallen off from the established order of civill government and incorporation amongst us, by means of a commission presented upon the sayd Island by Mr. William Coddington, Wee the rest of the Townes of the sayd jurisdiction . . . doe profess our- selves unanimously to stand imbodyyed and incorporated as before by virtue of our charter." "^ Samuel Gorton was then chosen moderator, and the usual business of a Court of Commissioners was transacted. Upon the Island, in the meantime, the new Gov- ernor found himself confronted by something like a small rebellion. Captain Richard Morris was, it seems, leader in the affair, breaking in upon the Island court, as it was sitting in Coddington's " towne howse," and Cromwell-fashion bidding it disperse. Nicholas Easton, too, played a part, for Coddington says (February 19, 1652) that" after this Mr. Easton delivered a profecye aginest my selfe, ^ Prov. Rec, vol. xv., p. 49. The Warwick meeting was evidently a Landsgemeinde ; it readopted for the Mainland the constitution hitherto in force for the whole colony. ^R. I. Col. Rec, vol. i., p. 233. The Coddington ''Coup d Etaf' 23 Capt. Partridge & the Dutch Governor's agents." ^ Just what the Dutch Governor's agents were doing on the Island at this juncture does not expHcitly ap- pear ; but their presence not improbably was con- nected with negotiations which our magnate was conducting with New Netherlands for the support of his tottering vicegerency by Dutch pikes and snaphances. The sequel is tersely related in the following communication from the Manhattoes to the States- General at the Hague : " I cannot omit stating here that the late Commissary, Adrian Keyser, and Augustin Herman going hence to Rhode Island in New England, on the 14th of April [1652, only two months after the trouble over the Dutch Governor's agents], Ensign George Baxter [an Englishman residing on Long Island] gave them a letter for William Coddington, Governor there, which letter the Court or Assembly of the people of Rhode Island intercepted and opened, accusing the bearers of it, with the Governor and Director [of New Netherlands, Peter Stuyvesant], and Baxter of conspiracy and treason against the State of New England, inasmuch as among other things the Director in said letter offered Governor Codding- ton some soldiers to be employed against the Inhabitants of Rhode Island, Wherefore the bearers of the letter were obliged to give bail in the sum of ^100 Sterling until their innocence should be proved.'"* ' Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser., vol. vii., p. 283. ^ Docs. Relating to the Col. Hist, of N. V., vol. i., p. 497. Coddington's attitude toward the Dutch had a good deal to do with the annulling of his commission. Thus the letter brought over by Dyer stated: "The con- sequence [of Coddington's course] hath been the bringing of things there into great disorders and extremities ... by means whereof the whole Colony is exposed as a prey to the Dutch the enemies of this Common- wealth."— Palfrey's New Eng., vol. ii., p. 557. 24 Early Rhode Island Nor was this the last of Coddlngton's trials during the spring of 1652, for, no later than March 1 8th, we find him appealing piteously to John Winthrop, Jr., " to come over unto mee & to bring some friend of yours with you." " I doe hope God hath reserved you to be a friend to me in this needfull tyme of trouble. Sir, be pleased to come before this day sennit, the souner the better." The occasion of this lament was that Captain Par- tridge had taken, upon civil execution, possession of a certain house, and that " the people " (with whom, it is evident, the captain was not a favor- ite), some twenty strong, " had come with guns and swords and stafs to dispossesse [him] " ; whence a conflict and bloodshed.^ We have no evidence that Winthrop heeded Cod- dington's appeal. In fact, about this time our mag- nate found it altogether expedient to quit the Island for Boston for a season ; and, before venturing to return, to set his hand (April 14th) to a paper re- citing that, "whereas the deed of sale of Aquidneck hath ever since its execution lain in the hands of William Coddington Esq., which being a great trouble to the . . . purchasers and freemen, I, the said William Coddington Esq., do by this writing promise to deliver the said deed to the purchasers, to- gether with what records are in my hands belonging to the said purchasers and freemen ; . . . and do hereby de- clare that I, the said William Coddington, Esq., have no more, in the purchase, of right than any other of the purchasers or ^ Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser. , vol. vii., p. 284. Partridge was captured by the enraged Islanders and hanged. 