USA > Rhode Island > Kent County > Warwick > Report on the settlement of Warwick, 1642: and the seal of the R.I. Historical Society > Part 1
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Gc 974.502 W26e 1774628
M. L
REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
1
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01067 6697
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2015
https://archive.org/details/reportonsettleme00elyw_0
REPORT
ON THE
SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK, 1642 :
AND THE
Seal of the R. I. Historical Society.
BY
WILLIAM D. ELY,
Chairman.
REPRINTED FROM PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY.
168770
1774628
-
Ely, William Davis, 1813-190S.
F 84592 Report on the settlement of Warwick, 1642: and the seal of .26 the R. I. historical society. By William D. Ely, chairman. Re- printed from Proceedings of the society. Providence, J. A. & R. A. Reid, printers, 1887 ? .
3S p. 21cm.
Report signed : William D. Ely, John A. Howland, committee.
KELF CAMP 1. Warwick, R. I .- Hist. 2. Shawomet, R. I .- Hist. I. Rhode Island historical society. I. Howland, John Andrews, 1809- joint author.
3-21707
Library of Congress
FSO. W2ES [a31c1]
B 10870
-
J. A. & R. A. REID, PRINTERS, PROVIDENCE, R. 1.
REPORT
ON THE
SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK, 1642:
AND THE
SEAL OF THE R. I. HISTORICAL SOCIETY.
As our measurements of space and quantity are but approximations to absolute truth, so it is with those of time. The Julian Calendar, or Old Style, dating from about forty-five years before Christ, is avowedly incorrect, though still used by several prominent na- tions of the world. =
The Gregorian year, or New Style, as reformed by Gregory XIII., merely minimizes the errors of " Old Style" and is but a close approximation to time which is truly true, while with gross inconsistency it retains the Latin numerals in the names of the seventh, eighth, ninth and tenth months of "Old Style," to designate, erroneously, what are now the ninth, tenth,
4
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
cleventh and twelfth months of the year. So, too, our revered " Christian Era," not invented by Dionysius Exiguous till about five hundred and thirty years after the death of our Lord, and not much used till it re- ceived the sanction of the venerable Bede as late as the eighth century, is acknowledged by eminent au- thority to be four years in error as to the date of Christ's birth, its assumed starting point .*
So, too, the time of the landing of the Pilgrims still furnishes occasion for discussion, and though most agree to its celebration on the 22d of December, the descendants of Pilgrims and Puritans scem unable to settle, beyond question, its true and real date.
And even as to the exact date of the original charter of Rhode Island, there was a difference of opinion among various writers, until Arnold, more than two hundred years after it was granted, ascer- tained from the official manuscripts in the State Paper Office in London, that its true date was the 14th of March, 1643.1
In view of such facts and of the multitude of errors
* Modern authority places the actual date of the birth of Christ, on Friday, April 5, B. C. 4. Townsend's " Dictionary of Dates," 58.
t Hist. R. I., I., 114.
5
QUESTION AS TO TIIE SEAL.
in dates, from writing, printing, transcribing and reprinting figures, which meet us on every hand where we look for exact statements, an historical society may admit the possibility of error in any recognized date. It may even question the time of its own birth, and allow a grave inquiry as to the truth or reasonableness of any and every device on its cor- porate seal.
In this regard, the question has been recently raised whether "Shawomet, 1642," is a proper or truthful device for this Society's scal.
This question, submitted to your committee, is one to which, with some care and examination of author- ities and records within their reach, they have directed their attention, but the paucity of records and of clear statements, and the meagre history of the transactions of the first few years of the settlements at Providence and Warwick must be their apology for treating in what may seem a somewhat desultory manner, a question whose satisfactory solution depends so much on the course of events in Massachusetts and Rhode Island immediately preceding and following the purchase of Shawomet, and on the doings of a few
6
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
weeks, nearly two centuries and a half ago, in the daily life of Samuel Gorton and John Greene.
The records of the Society as to the adoption of the seal and the action of its " Board of Trustees" in all matters relating to the seal, may be briefly stated as follows :
On the 27th of May, 1831, the Society appointed Joseph L. Tillinghast, Albert Gorton Greene, and Thomas H. Webb, a committee to procure a suitable seal to be cut for the Society, a device for which was submitted to " the Board."
July 5th, 1831, the committee reported that they " had engaged Mr. W. D. Terry, of Providence, to cut the seal, which is in a state of forwardness." July 19th, 1831, the seal was reported complete. Subse- quently, the Board and the Society passed a resolution formally adopting it as the common seal of the Society, and gave the device. They also reported that the design and device for the seal originated with Albert Gorton Greene, Esq.
A description of the seal gives the design and de- vice as an equilateral triangle within a circle, on the several sides of which are the following inscriptions,
7
DESIGN OF THE SEAL.
viz. : On the base, "Mooshassuck, 1636"; on the right side, " Aquidneck, 1638"; on the left side, " Shawomet, 1642." Within the triangle is a " foul anchor." Around the circle, within raised bands, is the name of the Society with the figures "1822," the year in which it was founded.
As the records, however, are silent as to the pur- port and significance of the several devices, your com- mittee have been obliged to look for their probable origin and import to the main facts which appear in the founding of the Colony and the State, while giving some degree of consideration to special facts and dates which must have been impressed on the mind of Albert Gorton Greene, from his antiquarian tastes and relationship to John Greene, one of the first six settlers, as well as one of the thirteen original pro- prietors of Providence,* and one of the first settlers of Warwick.
From this general view of the seal, it seems very evident, --
First, that the central emblem, the anchor, was taken from the State arms, to indicate the relation of the Society to the State.
* Colonial Records of R. I., 20, 21.
8
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
Second, that the triangle was as evidently adopted to keep in memory the three-fold origin of the Colony and also of the State, a unit formed from that trinity of independent settlements established and developed at Providence, on the island of Rhode Island, and at Warwick,- names, cach of which suggests a history of its own, and which at the time the Society's seal was adopted, had been in use for nearly two hundred years to designate those three principal historical and geographical divisions of this Commonwealth.
Third, that the Indian names adopted on the scal, as another clement of the device, were intended to desig- nate these three original divisions. In respect to them, the Indian nomenclature was happily chosen (as it would doubtless be again, were the question submitted to the Society to-day), Indian names being less common-place, falling on the car not only with the more striking sound of a foreign tongue, but also carrying with them the prestige of an unknown, if not unlimited antiquity.
To Providence, the northern division, was given the name " Mooshassuck," that of the river on whose banks the settlement of Roger Williams was made.
9
NAMES OF THE SETTLEMENTS.
To the settlement on the island of Rhode Island, the southern division, was given the name of " Aquid- neck," the original name of the island itself .*
To Warwick, the western division, was given the name "Shawomet," the name of a sachem-wick in that division of the State, the most conspicuous of all, from the character and conduct of its settlers, as well as the nucleus of that broad township of multitudin- ous villages, which the devotion of those settlers pre- served to the Colony and to the State.
In fact, from the time of the first charter, ; Shaw- omet was synonymous with Warwick, the two names being used interchangeably both by the men of War- wick and their enemies of " the Bay." But at the time the Society adopted its scal, nearly two centuries afterwards, Shawomet had in the light of history be- come a name not only memorable, but consecrated by the heroism, the sufferings, and the christian patience of Samuel Gorton and his companions.
This small but indomitable band, with the laws of
* The name of Rhode Island, in place of Aquidneck, adopted 1644. R. I. Col. Rec., I., 127.
+ March 14, 1643.
10
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
God in one hand and the laws of England in the other, withstood all the efforts of the Government of Massachusetts Bay, by soldiers and savages, by pris- ons and fetters and worse than inquisitorial cruelties, to force on them a Puritan hierarchy and a foreign jurisdiction, each as merciless in its tyranny as it was regardless of law .*
Desperate as the contest seemed, Gorton and his companions triumphed at last. Rhode Island owes their memory a heavy debt. Never were men's mo- tives so aspersed, their names so unjustly branded with infamy, their characters so foully traduced, and this not for a time merely, but from age to age ; and we may be excused for saying, that in the history of New England can scarcely be found a more dramatic scene than the trial of Gorton before the assembled magistrates and elders of "the Bay," when, guiltless
1
* " For ten years after the settlement of Massachusetts Bay, the clergy and their aristocratic allies refused either to recognize the Common Law, or to enact a Code."
" From the outset, lawyers were excluded from practice, so the magistrates were nothing but common politicians who were nominated by the priests."
" The assembled elders, acting in their advisory capacity, constituted supreme tribunal of last resort, wholly superior to carnal precedent and capable of evolving whatever decrees they deemed expedient from the depths of their consciousness. - See Gorton's case. Winthrop, II., 146." - Adams' " Eman- cipation of Massachusetts," 2S9-291.
11
DESIGN ON GORTON'S LIFE.
of any illegal act and a betrayed prisoner of war,* he is first ordered on peril of his life, to answer within fifteen minutest in writing over his own hand, to the satisfaction of his enemies, four most obscure and crafty questions # of their theology, contrived . (as those of the Pharisees to our Saviour,) "that they might entangle him in his talk," and thus compass his death.
For Miantonomi, Chief of the Narragansetts, hav- ing been disposed of in September, by what Arnold calls a " clerico-judicial murder," § the chance offered to "the Bay" of securing absolute control of the entire Narragansett country, through their allies Pomham
* R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 115, 120, 203.
+ R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 126.
# " The questions," writes Gorton, " were these that here follow, not a word varying in any one of them : "
"1. Whether the Fathers who died before Christ was born of the Virgiu Mary, were justified, and saved only by the blood which he shed, and the death which he suffered after his incarnation? "
" 2. Whether the only price of our redemption were not the death of Christ upon the cross, with the rest of his sufferings and obedience in the time of his life here, after he was born of the Virgin Mary? "
"3. Who is that God whom he thinks we serve? "
"4. What he means when he saith, We worship the star of our God Rem- phan, Chion, Moloch?" R. I. Hist. Soc Co!l., II., 125 6.
§ Hist. R. I., I., 117.
12
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
and Sacononoco,* by a similar dispatch of Gorton and his companions in October, was too tempting for them to forego. Apparently, as Winthrop previously expressed it, in reference to their motives and aims in that direction, " they thought it not wisdom to let it slip." +
The plot, however, failed. As Gorton says : " When by all their examinations in Court, interrogatories in prison, and public preaching they could find nothing against us for the transgression of any of their laws, they then proceeded to cast a lot for our lives, putting it to the major vote of the Court whether we should
* In a letter to the Massachusetts, Gorton pictures with some humor these two petty renegade sachems, its allies :
" Indeed, Pomham is an aspiring person, as becomes a prince of his profes- sion,- for having crept into one of our neighbor's houses (in the absence of the people) and feloniously rifled the same, he was taken coming out again at the chimney-top."
" Sacononoco, also, hath entered in like manner into one of our houses, with divers of his companions, and, breaking open a chest, did steal out divers par- cels of goods."-R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 267.
The same letter says : " Mr. Winthrop and his co-partner Parker may not think to lay our purchased plantation [ Warwick] to their island [ Prudence] so near adjoining, for they come too late in that point, - though Benedict [Arnold] hath reported that Miantonomi, one of the sachems of whom we bought it, should lose his head for selling his right thereof to us."
" As also a minister affirmed, that Mr. Winthrop should say to him that we should either be subjected unto you, or else removed hence, though it should cost blood."- R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 265.
+ Savage's Winthrop. 1I., 102.
13
DECISION OF THE GENERAL COURT.
live or die; which was so ordered by the providence of God, that two votos carried it on our side."*
Yet, though " the Governor [Winthrop] told Gorton that they were one with him in those answers," f hc and his companions were imprisoned at hard labor, "in fetters and irons," through the rest of the autumn and a long winter,-" as blasphemous enemies to the truc religion of our Lord Jesus Christ and all his holy ordinances, and also to all civil authority among the people of God, and particularly in this jurisdiction."}
* Mr. Savage says, " three of the magistrates rejected the horrible judgment of the Elders that the [alleged] offences deserved death."-Savage's Winthrop, II., 177.
+ R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 132-4.
+ R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll. 1I., 134, 5, 6, 7.
Chief Justice Story says : " The arm of the civil government was constantly employed in support of the denunciations of the Church : and without its forms, the Inquisition existed in substance, with a full share of its terrors and vio- lence."- Story's Miscellanies, 66.
Mr. Charles Deane, in his Memoir of Samuel Gorton, while stigmatizing " the whole conduct of the Massachusetts towards Gorton as atrocious," erroneously states that Gorton was released in January. On the contrary, even the order of the General Court for his release was not dated till " the 7th day of the first month [ March] 1643 or 16.14."-Some Notices of Samuel Gorton, 17.
Gorton was brought to Boston as a prisoner of war, Oct. 13, 1643. Savage's Winth., II .. 171. " A great triumph," he says, " for a whole country [by three officers and forty trained soldiers with Pomham and his savages] to carry away eleven men and that upon fair composition also, if they had kept touch with us, for one of us was dead before by hardship and but ten of us that handled arms." -R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 119.
He was sentenced November 3, 1643; released March 7, 1643-4.
Winthrop's cruel order (notwithstanding the fourteen days allowed by the
14
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
Such rigor shocked even the Presbyterian Baillie,* but as a son of Massachusetts has said,-" the clergy held the State within their own grasp, and shrank from no deed of blood to guard the interests of their order."}
Scattered in the different towns of the Massachu- setts, the knowledge of their sufferings and their purity of character i could not be entirely hid, till at last, public opinion and a sense of danger to their own power, forced the Puritan dynasty to set them free. §
General Court), for his expulsion from the town of Boston-" before noon this day"-is dated " the 10th of the first month [March] 1643."-R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 148-9.
* Letters II., 17, IS.
t Adams' "Emancipation of Massachusetts," 40-41.
The manly utterances of Savage, Deane and Adams stand in refreshing contrast to the Jesuitical apologies of Palfrey, for not only the cruelty but all the illegality and hypocrisy, which he evidently recognizes, in the proceedings against Gorton.
# " And whereas you say, I am become a sordid man in my life; I dare be so bold as to lay my conversation among men to the rules of humanity, with any minister among you, in all the passages of my life which God hath brought me through from my youth unto this day, that it has been as comely and in- nocent as his."-Gorton to Nathaniel Morton, R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 247.
" I have been silent to cover other men's shame, and not my own."
" It should be a crown, yea, a diadem upon my grave, if the truth in more public or more private agitation, were but in prose and not in poetrie, as it was acted by me in all the places wherein you seek to blemish me." -- Letter to Nathaniel Morton, R. I. Hist. Tracts, No. XVII., 56.
§ Savage's Winth., 11., 17S-9.
15
APPEAL TO THE CROWN.
Then Gorton, Greene and Holden made their strong and solemn appeal to the State of Old England. They procured at the same time and also bore with them to England, a formal deed of submission from the power- ful Narragansett Tribe, of themselves and their whole territory to King Charles .*
The justice of their claims could not be denied. The laws and the throne of England asserted their su- premacy. England upheld both the men of Shaw- omet and the Narragansetts against the usurped juris- diction of " the Bay," which in her humiliation was forced to call upon the Commissioners of the United
* R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 158-60.
That acute historian, Palfrey, recognizes the deep significance of this trans- action. He says :
"The next step showed their resolution, their capacity for business, and that power of theirs which it had been thought so important to subdue." " They succeeded in concluding a treaty with Canonicus, Mixan and Pessicus to no less effect than a complete cession of the Narragansett people and terri- tory, unto the protection, care and government of that worthy and royal prince. Charles, King of Great Britain and Ireland, his heirs and successors forever." They then notified the authorities of Massachusetts of this cession, and " threatened them with the vengeance of the King and of the Mohawks should they presume to interfere." Palfrey's Hist. N. E., II., 136-7.
By this transaction, completed within forty days after their release from prison, they gave the death-blow to the usurpation of Massachusetts. She struggled against it for years; through the changes of the Civil War -- the Commonwealth and the Restoration - sent in her soldiers, - annexed the coun- try, by vote, to the County of Suffolk, -- but the coveted territory she never secured.
16
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
Colonies for aid against " opposition from Warwick.""
Thus Gorton's successful appeal and the stern re- buke it brought to the assumption and tyranny of the Puritan Hierarchy, with the adoption of the Narragan- setts by King Charles as wards and subjects of the State, preserved in a momentous degree the whole Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, and led not merely to its final emancipation from the usurpations of Massachusetts Bay, but to its eventual establishment as an independent State.
To the theocracy of the Bay, the order of May 15, 1646, by the Governor-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral and Commissioners, for Foreign Plantations, came like a judgment call .; It declared, with no uncertain sound,-" We find the tract of land called Narragan- sett Bay wholly without the bounds of the Massachu- setts Patent "; - and we -- " require you to permit and suffer the petitioners and all the late inhabitants of Narragansett Bay, with their families and all such as shall hereafter join with them, freely and quietly to live and plant upon Shawomet," etc.,-" without
* R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 221.
+ R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 196-7.
.
17
JUDGMENT AGAINST MASSACHUSETTS.
extending your jurisdiction to any part thereof, or otherwise disquieting in their consciences, or civil peace."
" We do also require, that you do suffer the said Mr. Gorton, Mr. Holden, Mr. Greene and their com- pany with their goods and necessaries to pass through any part of that territory which is under your juris- diction, towards said tract of land without molesta- tion, any former sentence of expulsion, or otherwise, notwithstanding."
But to return to our immediate subject : the names on the scal being thus accounted for, it is next in order to consider the question of the dates. With regard to these, while records are infrequent, and dates often obscure even where records are found, it appears to your committee that " the Board " in- tended in fixing the dates, to specify the earliest as- certained year of a definite purchase by the English for settlement, or of the actual establishment of a per- manent community or settlement, within each of the three several divisions of the colony, that is, Provi- dence, Rhode Island and Warwick.
As to Providence, they adopted the unquestioned
18
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
date of Roger Williams' settlement there, in 1636, " two years," as he says, " before a deed was given." *
As to Rhode Island, they adopted the date of 1638, the year in which an actual settlement was made on the island at Pocasset, now Portsmouth, pursuant to the compact between the settlers there, signed pre- viously at Providence .;
As to Warwick, they adopted the date of 1642, the recorded date of John Greene's purchase, and of Gorton's, Greene's and their companions' purchase, within the limits of Warwick .¿ To this date your at- tention is especially directed, that you may decide whether it is right or wrong.
When, then, was the earliest purchase for a settle- ment, or first actual settlement, within the limits of historic Warwick, made ? - meaning by Warwick, the territory northerly of Potowomut River and southerly and outside of all that debatable ground (claimed as and called Providence), involved in the Providence
* Deed to Roger Williams, March 24, 1637. Staples' Annals, 26.
Col. Rec., I., 52; Arnold, Hist. R. I., I., 70, 71 ; Deed of R. I., March 24, 1637.
+ R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 253-4.
19
JOIIN GREENE'S PURCHASE.
purchase of " the meadows up stream without limits " on the Pawtuxet River .*
Here, happily, on the territory known as, and called Warwick, for nigh two centuries and a half, nothing seems better established than that the first purchase by the English in these parts was made by John Greene, to whom was deeded on the first day of Octo- ber, 1642, the tract of land called Occupessuatuxet, by Miantonomi, Chief Sachem of the Narragansetts, and Sockononoco, the local sachem of Pawtuxet.
That he bought it for a settlement, a plantation and a home, seems abundantly evident, for Judge Staples states that on the 25th of September, 1644, he was actually residing there.f How much carlier he had established himself on the land does not appear. But he and his family held it as a home for more than a hundred and forty years, and there, doubtless, he himself was, as certainly successive generations of his descendants were, laid to rest.
This John Greene, an English surgeon, was the founder of a family than which none has been more
* Staples' Annals of Providence, 26, 27.
+ R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll., II., 89, Note.
-
20
THE SETTLEMENT OF WARWICK.
prominent or more honored in the annals of the State. The mention of a few names will suffice. It gave to the Colony two governors, and to the Stato a lieuten- ant-governor ( all named William Greene),-to this His- torical Society two presidents, Albert Gorton Greene and Samuel Greene Arnold,- to the army of the Rev- olution Colonel Christopher Greene and Major-Gen- 4 eral Nathanael Greene, -- and to the United States forces in the Rebellion, Major-General George Sears Greene and his two gallant sons. In this connec- tion it is well worthy of notice that all these, without exception, were also lincal descendants of Samuel Gorton.
Now Albert Gorton Greene, who designed the scal of the Society, a trustee from its foundation, and vice-president and president for twenty-five years, being a lineal descendant of this John Greene as well . as of Samuel Gorton, and this deed of October 1, 1642, having been preserved, it is morally certain that it was neither overlooked nor disregarded by this most active and influential member of "the Board," and that he was perfectly familiar with its bounds and date.
1
21
SAMUEL GORTON'S PURCHASE.
And it appears to your committee that these well established facts attending John Greene's purchase, were of themselves a sufficient warrant for the in- scription of the date of 1642 upon the scal of the So- cicty, as the carliest date in which " Shawomet, alias Warwick,"# first began to pass permanently under English control.
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