Part 19 (1/2)
[Footnote 9: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 144.]
[Footnote 10: Adams, _Three Episodes of Ma.s.s. Hist_., I., 339.]
[Footnote 11: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 239; Hutchinson, _Ma.s.sachusetts Bay_, I., 435.]
[Footnote 12: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 240-255; _Ma.s.s. Col.
Records_, I., 185.]
[Footnote 13: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 256-263.]
[Footnote 14: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 261-288.]
[Footnote 15: Ibid., 291-296.]
[Footnote 16: Hutchinson, _Ma.s.sachusetts Bay_, II., 423-447.]
[Footnote 17: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 296-312.]
[Footnote 18: Adams, _Ma.s.sachusetts: Its Historians and its History_, 57.]
CHAPTER XIV
NARRAGANSETT AND CONNECTICUT SETTLEMENTS
(1635-1637)
The island of Aquidneck, to which Mrs. Hutchinson retired, was secured from Canonicus and Miantonomoh, the sachems of the Narragansetts, through the good offices of Roger Williams, by John Clarke, William Coddington, and other leaders of her faction, a short time preceding her banishment, after a winter spent in Maine, where the climate proved too cold for them.[1] The place of settlement was at the northeastern corner of the island, and was known first by its Indian name of Poca.s.set and afterwards as Portsmouth. The first settlers, nineteen in number, const.i.tuted themselves a body politic and elected William Coddington as executive magistrate, with the t.i.tle of chief judge, and William Aspinwall as secretary.[2] Other emigrants swelled the number, till in 1639 a new settlement at the southern part of the island, called Newport, resulted through the secession of a part of the settlers headed by Coddington. For more than a year the two settlements remained separate, but in March, 1640, they were formally united.[3] Settlers flocked to these parts, and in 1644 the Indian name of Aquidneck was changed to Rhode Island.[4]
Not less flouris.h.i.+ng was Roger Williams's settlement of Providence on the main-land. In the summer of 1640 Patuxet was marked off as a separate towns.h.i.+p;[5] and in 1643 Samuel Gorton and others, fleeing from the wrath of Ma.s.sachusetts, made a settlement called Shawomet, or Warwick, about twelve miles distant from Providence.
The tendency of these various towns was to combine in a commonwealth, but on account of their separate origin the process of union was slow.
The source of most of their trouble in their infancy was the grasping policy of Ma.s.sachusetts. Next to heretics in the bosom of the commonwealth heretic neighbors were especially abhorrent. When in 1640 the magistrates of Connecticut and New Haven addressed a joint letter to the general court of Ma.s.sachusetts, and the citizens of Aquidneck ventured to join in it, Ma.s.sachusetts arrogantly excluded the representation of Aquidneck from their reply as ”men not fit to be capitulated withal by us either for themselves or for the people of the isle where they inhabit.”[6] And neither in 1644 nor in 1648 would Ma.s.sachusetts listen to the appeal of the Rhode-Islanders to be admitted into the confederacy of the New England colonies.[7]
The desire of Ma.s.sachusetts appeared to be to hold the heretics and their new country under a kind of personal and territorial va.s.salage, as was interestingly shown in the case of Mrs. Hutchinson and Samuel Gorton. Despite her banishment and excommunication the church at Boston seemed to consider it a duty to keep a paternal eye on Mrs.
Hutchinson; and not long after her settlement at Portsmouth sent an emba.s.sy to interview her and obtain, if possible, a submission and profession of repentance.
The bearers of this message met with an apt reception and returned very much disconcerted. They found Mrs. Hutchinson, and declared that they came as messengers from the church of Boston, but she replied that she knew only the church of Christ and recognized no such church as ”the church of Boston.” Nevertheless, she continued to be annoyed with messages from Boston till, in order to be quiet and out of reach, she removed to a place very near h.e.l.l Gate in the Dutch settlement, and there, in 1643, she, with most of her family, perished in an Indian attack.[8]
The authority of Ma.s.sachusetts over the banished was not confined to religious exhortations. Samuel Gorton, a great friend of Mrs.
Hutchinson, was in many respects one of the most interesting characters in early New England history. This man had a most pertinacious regard for his private rights, and at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Providence his career of trouble was very much the same. But he was not an ordinary law-breaker, and in Providence, in 1641, Gorton and his friends refused to submit to a distress ordained by the magistrates, for the reason that these magistrates, having no charter, had no better authority to make laws than any private person.[9]
The next year, 1642, thirteen citizens of Providence pet.i.tioned Boston for a.s.sistance and protection against him; and not long after, four of the pet.i.tioners submitted their persons and lands to the authority of Ma.s.sachusetts.[10] Although to accept this submission was to step beyond their bounds under the Ma.s.sachusetts charter, the authorities at Boston, in October, 1642, gave a formal notice of their intention to maintain the claim of the submissionists.[11] To this notice Gorton replied, November 20, 1642, in a letter full of abstruse theology and rancorous invective.
Nevertheless, he and his party left Patuxet and removed to Shawomet, a tract beyond the limits of Providence, and purchased in January, 1643, from Miantonomoh, the great sachem of the Narragansetts.[12] Gorton's letter had secured for him the thorough hatred of the authorities in Ma.s.sachusetts, and his removal by no means ended their interference.
The right of Miantonomoh to make sale to Gorton was denied by two local sachems; and Ma.s.sachusetts coming to their support, Gorton was formally summoned, in September, 1643, to appear before the court of Boston to answer the complaint of the sachems for trespa.s.s.[13] Gorton and his friends returned a contemptuous reply, and as he continued to deny the right of Ma.s.sachusetts to interfere, the Boston government prepared to send an armed force against him.[14]
In the mean time, a terrible fate overtook the friend and ally of Gorton, Miantonomoh, at the hands of his neighbors in the west, the Mohegans, whose chief, Uncas, attacked one of Miantonomoh's subordinate chiefs; Miantonomoh accepted the war, was defeated, and captured by Uncas. Gorton interfered by letter to save his friend, and Uncas referred the question of Miantonomoh's fate to the federal commissioners at Boston. The elders were clamorous for the death penalty, but the commissioners admitting that ”there was no sufficient ground for us to put him to death,” agreed to deliver the unhappy chieftain to Uncas, with permission to kill him as soon as he came within Uncas's jurisdiction. Accordingly, Miantonomoh was slaughtered by his enemy, who cut out a warm slice from his shoulder and declared it the sweetest morsel he had ever tasted and that it gave strength to his heart.[15] Thus fell Miantonomoh, the circ.u.mstances of whose death were ”not at all creditable to the federal commissioners and their clerical advisers.”[16]
Ma.s.sachusetts sent out an armed force against the Gortonists, and after some resistance the leaders were captured and brought to Boston.
Here Wilson and other ministers urged the death penalty upon the ”blasphemous heretics.” But the civil authorities were not prepared to go so far, and in October, 1643, adopted the alternative of imprisonment. In March, 1644, Gorton and his friends were liberated, but banished on pain of death from all places claimed to be within the jurisdiction of Ma.s.sachusetts.