USA > Rhode Island > Newport County > History of Newport County, Rhode Island. From the year 1638 to the year 1887, including the settlement of its towns, and their subsequent progress > Part 17
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Notwithstanding the many expressions of confidence and promises of money to Mr. Clarke, it appears by the record that he had still an outstanding claim against the colony of £450 sterling, which the general assembly, "considering that the said Mr. Clark hath received already a great sum," seemed to consider an over weighty charge. A letter was ordered to be written to Mr. Clarke, and the answer to be reported to the next assembly. Nothing further appears on the record until October, 1676, when Mr. Clarke's executor pre- sented a paper demanding one hundred pounds, current money
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of England, as dne to Mr. Clarke. The matter was referred to a committee for inquiry, but the records are thereafter silent as to the final settlement. It is said that in order to meet his ex- penses to England he was obliged to mortgage his Newport estate.
In justice to the Rhode Island authorities, however, it must be stated that they claimed that Mr. Clarke had made "show- ing that he had occasions of his own to go to England which was not the Colony's business," and intimate that some of these expenses might be transgressions against the king or the laws of the colony. As to his business in London there is a curious intimation in the protest of the " pestilent people of Warwick" against the payment of the sum assessed upon them in 1664 for the agent's services. They say "Wee know that Mr. Clarke did publiqnly exercise his ministry in the Word of God in London as his letters have made report, as that being a cheefe place for his profitte and preferment which we doubt not brought him in good means for his maintenance; as also he was much employed about modelizing of matters concerning the affairs of England as his letters have declared; in which noe doubt he was incouradged by men of noe small estates who in all licklyhood did communicate liberally unto him for such labors and studies."
Mr. Clarke's estate was appraised at the time of his death at £1080.125. To the Baptist church he left a lot of land in Tanner street, known as the Clarke burial ground. The re- mainder of his estate he left in perpetual trust, the income to be distributed for " the relief of the poor or the bringing np of children into learning." Mr. Clarke had three wives, but left no children. He died on the 20th of April, 1676, in the 67th year of his age. The only literary work he left behind him was his narrative entitled "Ill News from New England," which was printed in London in 1652 and has since been re- printed by the Massachusetts Historical Society Coll., Series 4, Vol. 2.
JEREMY CLARKE .- The name of this one of the founders of Newport does not appear among those of the Aquidneek in- corporators at Providence. He was present at the meeting January 2d, 1638-9, at Portsmouth, when the form of govern- ment was agreed upon. He was one of the nine subscribers to the agreement at Pocasset for th eNewport plantation. No rela-
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tionship is known to have existed between this family and that of John Clarke, the founder. Nothing is known of the life of Jeremy Clarke in England nor is there (on the authority of Doctor Turner) any mention of a settlement by him in the Massachusetts or Plymouth Bay colonies to be found in their records, and in fact but meagre materials for any account of him whatever. He was evidently a man of consideration as he was named not only constable in 1639, but appointed to the place of Mr. Jeoffrey, the treasurer of the Aquidneck Company during his absence among the Dutch that year. In 1640 he was again appointed constable and one of the three persons selected to lay out the Newport lands among the proprietors, of whom he was one. In 1642 he was elected lientenant and in 1644 captain of the trains band; in 1647 he was chosen treasurer of the colony; again in 1648 both assistant and treasurer; and at the same election, Coddington having declined to qualify as governor, Jeremy Clarke, who is charged with having led the cabal against him, was by the court established governor in his place until Coddington should be cleared of the charges against him or another president be elected or installed.
Clarke is styled in the record of the assembly the " President Regent of the colony." His name last appears as witness to the deed of Misquamacock (Westerly) by Socho, the Indian sachem of the Niantics, to William Vaughn and others in 1661. He died in this year. He married Frances, daughter of Lonis Latham and widow of Thomas Dongan. After Clarke's death she was married (for the third time) to the Reverend William Vanghn, the first pastor of the Second Baptist church in New- port. Walter Clarke, son of Jeremy, was later governor of the colony.
THOMAS HAZARD. - Of the antecedents of this one of the nine founders of the town of Newport we know nothing. His name first appears as one of the subscribers at Pocasset. He was one of those appointed to lay out the lands within the cirenit and bounds of the town after the rate and proportion of twenty cows' meat to a division of three hundred acres of upland. He does not appear to have served. He was present at the general court of election in March, 1640, which established the govern- ment of the colony. In 1655, when the roll of the freemen of the colony in every town was taken, he appears at Portsmouth, after which there is no further mention of him on the records.
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HENRY BULL was either maimed or had not yet learned the art of writing when the Providence compact for the Aquidneck settlement was signed, for he is recorded as affixing his mark. He first appears at the meeting at Portsmouth June 27th, 1638, and on the 24th of January, 1638-9, was chosen sergeant of the commonwealth.
He was one of the nine subscribers to the Pocasset agreement to plant the town afterward named Newport, but neither at Portsmonth nor there does he appear as one of the landed pro- prietors. On the organization of the government he was again chosen sergeant, and in 1641 and 1642 again elected. He is styled sergeant attendant ; he had now a companion in the office. The duties of the sergeants were in 1638 defined to be to attend all meetings of the judge and elders and to execute the sen- tences of the conrt. In 1642 they were granted the fees al- lowed by order of law for arrests and summons. The laws es- tablished in 1647 included the office of general sergeant, and required that he should be "an able man of estate, for so ought a sheriff to be whose place he supplies."
Mr. Bull was a commissioner for Newport at the court held at Providence in 1655, and in that year also one of the men chosen for his town to fix the rates on the towns for the build - ing of sufficient prisons in each. In 1657 he was a commissioner for Providence. In 1666 he was deputy for Newport, and again in 1673 and 1674 ; in 1680 and 1681. In 1685 William Codding- ton (second son of the old governor) was re elected governor, and declining to give the engagement to the office, Henry Bull was chosen in his place. James the Second had just inherited the crown of England. In February, 1689-90, William and Mary coming to the throne, there was great confusion in the colony. Walter Clarke, the governor of Rhode Island, being re-elected and declining to act, Christopher Almy was elected ; but he also refusing to serve, Mr. Henry Bull was chosen by the assembly and engaged. Clarke refused to let the charter go unless the committee of the assembly should forcibly open the chest and take it. It was surrendered to Governor Bull two months later.
In May, 1690, it was ordered by unanimous vote that Walter Clarke, the late governor, and all the officers of the colony in 1686, at the coming over of Sir Edmund Andros, be confirmed and established in their respective places. The old charter was
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resumed. This was at a meeting of the general assembly at Newport, on the 1st of May, 1690, yet on the 6th of the same month Mr. Bull presided as governor at a meeting of the assem- bly, and on the 7th of May, at a second meeting, he acted as moderator, and was again elected governor, but probably re- fused to serve, as did Mr. JJohn Coggeshall, next chosen ; where- upon Mr. John Easton was elected and engaged. What became of the reinstated officers the record does not inform us, nor yet Arnold in his history of Rhode Island.
Henry Bull died in 1693, and was buried in the old Quaker cemetery on Farewell street, where there stands a square low pillar of granite, with cornice and pediment, bearing the in- scription : "Here lyeth the body of Henry Bull. Esqr., late governor of this colony, who died January 23, 1693, aged 85."
WILLIAM DYRE, one of the founders, and the first clerk of the Aquidneek company and colony, came to Boston from Eng- land about " 1627 or 1629." He married his cousin, Mary, who is described as a " person of no mean extract or parentage, of an estate pretty plentiful, of a comely stature and countenance, of a piercing knowledge in many things, of a wonderful sweet and pleasant discourse :" and no less an authority than John Winthrop describes her in his Journal of 1638 as a "very promp and fair woman of very proud spirit ;" testimony which must be accepted, for these early Paritan fathers were good judges of the things of the flesh as well as of the spirit. William Dyre and Mary, his wife, united with the Boston church, of which the Reverend John Wilson was pastor, and the following March. 1656, was admitted freeman of Boston. Like Coddington and Coggeshall, who were members of the same congregation, Dyre was attracted by the preaching of Wheel- wright and the no less persuasive eloquence of Anne Hutchin- son, and warmly espoused the Antinomian cause and signed the remonstance or petition to the general court against its con- demnation of Wheelright, and was one of those proscribed and disarmed by the decree of November, 1636, to use his own words, " because his hand was to the seditious writing and de- fended the same."
Whether he was one of the little party which John Clarke led into the cold wilds of New Hampshire that autumn or early winter is not known. Mary Dyre, his wife, was not less earnest in her faith in the new doctrine, and her devotion to Anne
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Hutchinson. She must have remained in Boston as late as March, 1638, when her husband had already joined the expe- dition of Clarke and Coddington. The examination of Mrs. Hutchinson before the church and her defense of five examples selected from twenty-nine theses was had before the Boston church March 15th, 1638. When she was cast out of church Mrs. Dyre walked with her. This is Governor Winthrop's own testimony. He adds that she was not afraid to "show her colors." William Dyre signed the original Aquidneck com- pact at Providence, and was at this, its first meeting, appointed clerk of the "Body Politicke," as they styled themselves. William Aspinwall was appointed secretary.
Dyre appears as attending all the meetings at Pocasset, and also as clerk to the nine associates, of whom he was one, who made the second plantation at Newport. To this office of clerk he was continuously chosen until 1640, when he became secre- tary for the colony, and so continued till 1643, and no doubt till the new charter was received. For his services he was voted £19 in 1640 and also ten acres of land. In the records of the original grants of lands to the Newport settlers it appears that at that time he had given full satisfaction for seventy-five acres. This, with ten acres allowed by the town's order for travelling about the island, made eighty-seven acres, more or less. This land lies on the bay, opposite Coaster's Harbor is- land, at what was then known as Coddington's corner, and since as Coddington's point. Here is still the old burial place of the Dyres.
On the organization of the colony in 1647 under the first patent, William Dyre was chosen general recorder by the as- sembly, the first to fill that office. Notwithstanding this he was chosen clerk of the next assembly which met in May, 1648, and at which the Coddington troubles began. In those Dyre took an active part against the governor, with whom he was in con- stant quarrel. In 1648 he appears in the record in a snit against him. In 1654 he was very much troubled by Mr. Coddington's alleged infringement upon the highway which led to their farms. In 1667 Mr. Dyre's temper led him into trouble with the author- ities. He had killed a mare belonging to Coddington, who ob- tained judgment against him. Dyre appealed to the general assembly which, however, sustained the verdict. But the royal commissioners being then engaged in the affairs of the colony,
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Dyre appealed to them. The commissioners referred the sub- ject back to the assembly and the execution of the judgment was stayed. Coddington thereupon demanded the service of the execution. But the assembly did not stop here. Dyre was summoned to appear before them and " make a recantation un- der his hand of the wrongs he had done the colony " in his pe- tition. Dyre's humble recantation appears at length upon the records as well as the pardon of his offense.
Copies of the papers were sent to the commissioners. These gentlemen, however, had recommended that Dyre's petition, which was a complaint against the jury in the case, be consid- ered by the assembly. The assembly endeavored to persuade the parties to a composition but without snecess, and at the next session of the court they were referred to the processes of law for their relief. Mr. Coddington, however, insisted on the execution of the judgment and the court finally issued the or- ders to the sergeant. The sturdy Coddington was a hard an- tagonist.
It does not appear that Dyre ever had any legal training be- yond that he gained in the long exercise of his duties as clerk to the assembly, which of course brought a perfect knowledge of the affairs of the colony. In 1650 he was deputed general at- torney for the colony. The duties of the several officers were de- fined at this meeting of the general court. The attorney-gen- eral "to have full power to implead any transgression of the laws of this state in any courts of this state * * and be- cause envy the cut throat of all prosperitie will not faile to gal- lop with its full careere let the sayd attorney be faithfully en- gaged, and authorized and encouraged."
This appointment was made after Coddington's departure. When the stout old governor returned with his commission as governor of the colony, Dyre's name disappears from the rec- ords. Whether he went to England with John Clarke in No- vember, 1651, when that gentleman was dispatched as agent of a number of the inhabitants of Providence and Newport to so- licit a repeal of Coddington's commission, is not known, but it is certain that he was in England with Clarke, and that he brought home in February, 1653, and deposited with the town clerk of Newport an order from the council of state to the sev- eral towns to go on under the charter, which was held to be equivalent to a revocation of Coddington's commission. It
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seems also that on his arrival Dyre took letters to Providence and Warwick, naming a day at which he would meet at Ports- mouth all the freemen of the colony to communicate to them the orders of the council. On the 1st of March, 1653, an assem- bly of the colony at Portsmouth met to receive these orders, and reinstated all officers who had been onsted by Coddington, and Dyre it is presumed returned to his post of attorney general.
In May of this year (1653) war having broken out between England and Holland, warlike measures were taken in the Rhode Island colony, and in obedience to the orders of the En- glish council of state that the state's part in all prizes be se- enred and accounted for, three persons were appointed for this purpose, of whom Mr. Dyre was the first named. It may be here stated that in 1659 Mr. Dyre was called on to give account of his action and declined, but was held on his bond and the case sent before the next court. The day after his appointment to look to the state's share in prizes he, with Captain John Under- hill, received a commission to serve, no doubt, though it is not so stated, with the volunteers against the Dutch.
In the court of commissioners which met at Portsmouth in 1655 he sat for Providence. In 1660 he appears at Newport as third named in the office of general recorder and second also in that of general attorney ; in 1662 he was commissioner for New- port and again deputy in 1666, and the same year chosen solici- tor for the colony. In 1664 the royal commissioners, Nicolls, Carr, Cartwright and Maverick, having captured New York and nearly completed the conquest of the Dutch possessions in North America, Clarke, Cranston and Dyre were delegated to carry a letter from the Rhode Island authorities with thanks to his majesty for the charter and congratulations to the commis- sioners for their success. The name of William Dyre appears on the records in a public capacity as deputy for Newport Oc- tober 31st, 1666, and again on an order to pay him three pounds for a claim for services rendered by him while secretary to the general council. In May, 1669, it is recorded that Mr. William Dyre, secretary of the council "resigned up unto the council the books and papers which belonged to them and also the seals."
While the name of Dyre will always be held in grateful re- membrance by the colony for many services, it goes down in the
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history of New England with sad and sombre recollections. When William Dyre went over to England at the time of the Coddington troubles, he took his wife, Mary Dyre, Anne Hutchinson's early convert, with him. On his return, uncer- tain no doubt as to his reception in the colony, he left her be- hind him. After a stay there of five years she returned to the colonies and landed at Boston, from which she was forever ban- ished in 1856. While in England she had become converted to the new Quaker doctrines, and joined the Society of Friends. These new doctrines had scandalized the good people of Massa- chusetts, who enacted a series of laws inflicting penalties, from fines and whipping, to banishment and death, upon those who held to them.
On her arrival at Boston Mary Dyre was seized and sent to prison, but on the personal intervention of William Dyre, who was not of the new faith, was released and permitted to go on to Rhode Island on his entering into bonds " not to lodge her in any town of the colony, nor to permit any to have speech with her on her journey.". Mary Dyre could not long stay at home, and returned again to Boston to cheer her suffering com- panions in the faith. llusbands never had much control over wives in the free community of Rhode Island. The "inward call" was supreme over all other voices. She was again ar- rested in Boston, and sentence of death pronounced against her by that most ernel, most bigotted of all Puritans that was ever landed on these shores, Governor Endicott. Taken to the gal- lows with her companions she saw them executed, but, after her face was covered and the noose set about her neck, was re- prieved, much it must be said to her dissatisfaction.
She was put on horseback and carried off toward Rhode Is- land, from which, home having apparently little attraction for her, she went to Long Island. The next spring, again " called," she went back to Boston, where the cruel Endicott, unable to bring her into subjection by his state and grandeur and self- sufficient conceit, again ordered her to execution. She was led through the city to Boston Commons, drums beating. She died "requiring her blood of the hands of those who did the deed in wilfulness," a wish which it is at least some satisfaction to think was not unheard at the judgment seat.
It is said that in the last days William Dyre pleaded earnestly
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with the general court for clemency. It has been claimed that this judicial murder was the immediate canse of the stoppage by Charles the Second, of these atrocious acts in Massachusetts, and of the liberal terms of the Rhode Island charter. We find no further mention of William Dyre beyond an indenture in 1670 of two of the sons to make certain payments of money to their sisters within three years after the death of their father. The second son, William Dyre, Jr., went to Delaware about the time of his mother's death. Samuel Dyre, the eldest son, mar- ried a daughter of Edward Hutchinson and granddaughter of Anne Intchinson.
The records of the Dyre family above quoted state that one William Dyre was collector of customs at New York for the Duke of York in 1680, and a letter written by him to Samuel Pepys from that town on the 4th of January of that year, is printed ; and this William Dyre, who is named as Captain Dyre in London, in 1679, is supposed to be the old secretary. As his first child was baptized in 1635, he could not have been at that time less than sixty-six years of age, and there is probably some confusion of persons. It is only known that Dyre's death occurred before that of Roger Williams, which took place in 1683.
SAMUEL GORTON, though not a founder, was the central figure in the long bitter struggle between the colonies of Massa- chusetts Bay and New Plymouth on the one hand, and that of Providence Plantations and Rhode Island on the other, for ju- risdiction over an important part of the Narragansett territory. The eastern colonies were eager and persistent in their attempts to gain a foothold in the magnificent bay, the Rhode Island set- tlers stubborn in their resistance to the entrance of the aggres- sive wedge, the near consequences of which were easily fore- cast.
Of no man in New England's history have there been so many and discordant opinions as of Sammel Gorton. The early Mas- sachusetts writers, whose judgment is invariably found to be biassed by a religious prejudice, concur in styling him "heter- odox, turbulent, pestilent." The milder form of judgment from their successors is that he was an eccentric person, a no- torions disturber of the peace. Arnold considers him "one of the most remarkable men that ever lived." He certainly ap-
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pears as one of the strongest types of individualism in a day when marked personal character was the rule rather than the exception. In his printed works and the legal documents which he signed he styled himself by turns, " Citizen of London, Clothier," "Gentleman," "Professor of the Mysteries of Christ."
He was born in England abont 1600 and landed in Boston in 1636. Thenee he soon went to Plymouth where he fell into trouble with the church elders and was brought before the court, where he carried "so mutinously and seditiously that he was for the same and for his turbulent carriage toward both magistrates and ministers in the presence of the court sentenced to find sureties for his good behaviour during the time he should stay in that jurisdiction, which was limited to fourteen days, and also amerced to pay a considerable fine."
From Plymouth he went to the favorite place of refuge for the afflicted and oppressed and the generally discontented, the new plantation in Narragansett bay. He joined the Aquidneck settlement and on the division of the island into the towns of Portsmouth and Newport he remained in the former. His name is found second in order and next to that of William Hutchin- son among those who at Portsmouth. April 30th, 1639, "ac- knowledge ourselves the legal subjects of his majesty King Charles and in his name do hereby bind ourselves into a civil body politic;" and his name again appears as Mr. Samuel Gorton, one of the four to whom the honorable prefix is given, in the " catalogue of such persons who [at Newport Ist, 8th month, 1639] by the General Consent of the Company were ad mitted to be Inhabitants of the island now called Aquidneck." According to Staples he was never, however, received as a pur- chaser or admitted as a freeman.
He was not happier in his relations with the Aquidneck set- tlement than he had been at Plymouth. Like many an English- man then and since, he had contempt for all authority except that of the king. He says himself that he was obedient " so far as it became me," because they were duly commissioned by an anthority which he reverenced, but that Rhode Island had no authority but the blessing of a clergyman, and that he held himself as fit and able to govern himself and family as any that were then upon Rhode Island. With these views noisily main-
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tained and sturdily preached, he soon came into antagonism with his fellows at Portsmouth and was publicly whipped and put off the island.
From Aquidneck he went up to Providence where he no doubt put the patience and charity and liberal principles of Roger Williams and his companions to a severe test. Nor yet here was he received as an inhabitant. On the 8th of the first month, 1640, Williams wrote to Governor Winthrop that " Mas- ter Gorton having abused high and low at Aquidneck is now be- witching and bemadding poor Providence." Williams was shocked by his "foul censures of all the ministers of this coun- try " (Rhode Island) and " withstood his inhabitation and town privileges," but found the tide so strong against himself that he had serious thoughts of leaving Providence and taking refuge on "little Patience," an island in the bay next to that of Prov- idence, which he had procured for Winthrop.
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