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 27
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While this waiting policy of self-defense and neutrality was
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HISTORY OF NEWPORT COUNTY.
being adopted at Providence, the general assembly, as they con- tinued to call themselves, which met at Newport on the same day, May 17th, and had the usual election of president and other officers, proceeded at once to active measures. " Three men. Mr. William Dyre, Mr. John Sanford [the newly elected president ] and Mr. Nicholas Easton were chosen to see that the order of the Right Honorable the Council of State be attended to. namely in looking and taking care that the State's part in all prizes be secured and account kept." This was the first court of admiralty in Rhode Island. The next day, on the ad- vice of a committee, upon which each town was represented by two members (Newport by Nicholas Easton and John Easton), it was agreed to help their countrymen on Long Island either by defending them against the Dutch or by offensive war, and to lend them two great guns and other arms, and the aid of twenty volunteers.
For the trial of prizes brought in, the general conrt, with three jurors from each town, were authorized. Commissions were granted to Captain John Underhill and Mr. William Dyre, and one to Edward Hull to go "against the Dutch or any enemies of the Commonwealth of England." Captain John Underhill was from Long Island, where he settled after the Massachusetts banishment, and had the Puritan hatred for Dutch and English alike. Ile did famons service in the Pequot war. Some of the freemen of the towns of Providence and Warwick attended this assembly and concurred in its resolu- tions. The commissioners for Providence and Warwick met again at Providence in June and adopted a "brief remon strance," in which, after setting forth their grievances and claim to anthority under the old charter, and admitting the validity of the council of state's direction to " offend the Dutch as they shall think necessary," they protest against the com- missions issued to Underhill, Hull and Dyre. declare that they will not be forced into engaging in the said commission, but will use their endeavor to " free themselves from all illegal and un- just proceedings, and finally order that no inhabitants of the colony that do own the validity of the commissions granted to Underhill, Hull and Dyre in the name of the Providence Planta" tions shall thenceforth have liberty to act in government until they have given satisfaction to the respective towns of Provi- dence and Warwick."
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This subject has been treated at length, as the action of New- port at this time is a point of departure in the history of the colony between the policy of peace, held to by the Roger Wil- liams plantation of Providence, and the more warlike tendency of the seaport town.
In the course of the summer Captain Hull captured and brought in a French ship in a manner that Massachusetts pro- tested against as unlawful. In the autumn Massachusetts was still further aggrieved, and sent a special messenger to remon- strate against the act. This was the seizure by Captain Baxter, under a Rhode Island commission, of the " Desire," of Bara- stable, in Hampstead Harbor, an English settlement under Dutch jurisdiction, with stores on board. To the complaint of the agent of Massachusetts, President Easton answered that he had issued the letter of marque under the authority of the council, to whom he had sent a report of the case. Baxter next capinred a Dutch vessel near New York, and was chased to Fairfield harbor by two Dutch men of-war. To this act the commissioners of the united colonies answered with a pro- hibition of Dutch vessels from entering any of the English- American ports. The cause of this lukewarmness of the United Colonies in this struggle with Holland must be sought in their sympathies with parties in England. They no doubt sided with those who disapproved of the breach of the old alliance of England and Holland against the House of Bourbon. In May, 1654, the vessel " Deborah " was commissioned to defend her- self. This was, probably, the last letter of marque issued, as peace with the Dutch had been already signed by Cromwell, April 15th, 1654. The records of the Rhode Island court of admiralty no doubt give the details of the prizes taken during the war. That the profits were considerable appears from the proceedings before the court of commissioners in May, 1658, wherein it is stated that there was "remaining in the hands of Mr. Nicholas Easton a considerable sum of money or estate, which was committed to him by order of court in 1652 (or '53), which estate is dnly appertaining to the use of his Highness, the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, and the colony is accountable therefor when his Highness shall please to call for an account of those passages, viz. concerning the State's part of prizes taken in the time of the differences in the colony with the Dutch." Suits were brought both against
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Easton and William Dyre, the latter of whom declined to give any account. The cases were still pending in 1660.
The unhappy influence of this legalized freebooting on the morals of the inhabitants of the colony is shown by the act which the court of commissioners found it necessary to pass in 1658, four years after the close of the war, on the information of " several considerable members of the colony of the inordi- nate desires and mischievous conducts and endeavours of ill- disposed persons pretending to make prize of such Dutchmen as come to trade with the English in this colony." All such persons were warned not to be " so hardy as to attempt or put in practice any such design of seizing any either Dutch goods or vessels that shall arrive or be brought into this colony to be sold to the English here, unless by express commission from the State of England or an order of the law making Assembly of the Colony under pain of felony."
PRIVATEERS AND PIRATES, 1653-1690 .- This isolated case, un- der the very eyes of the staid authorities of Rhode Island, is but a feeble expression of the license of sea-faring adventurers. The contest of the two great maritime powers of the world for colonial dominion was the opportunity of the freebooter-an opportunity which the dismantling of posts, the weakening of defenses and the aggregation of protecting vessels in large fleets for concerted action greatly increased. Nor was it much more than the extreme of that domineering spirit, that love of con- quest and adventure which animated Raleigh and Drake and a hundred other kindred spirits a century before ; only that their successors were not always disposed to inquire into the nation- ality of their prizes, and often captured the vessels of their own flag with as little ceremony as those of their traditional enemies.
In 1683 the grievance had reached its height. The American coast swarmed with privateers, and this lax commerce soon de- generated into uncontrolled piracy. The vessels were often owned by honest gentlemen, whose sense of morals was dnlled by heavy profits, and who rarely inquired closely into the con- duct of captain or of crew. The West Indies, with their easy coast, became the field, and Jamaica the center of the lawless traffic, but the vessels occasionally entered, on one or another pretence, into the north Atlantic ports. In July, 1683, Captain Thomas Paine arrived at Newport with a privateer ship from Jamaica. The deputy collector of Boston came down to seize
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her. The captain showed Jamaica papers, which satisfied Gov - ernor Coddington, who refused to give her up. The Boston of- ficer claimed that the papers were forged, and sent down from Boston a pass of the Jamaica governor to prove the forgery. It would seem that Paine was a Rhode Island man.
In March, 1684, the home government sent orders to Jamaica, and later to all the American colonies, to take measures against privateering and piracy and the harboring of suspicious craft. In Inne following a letter from the king, together with one from Sir Leoline Jenkins, Que of his principal secretaries, en- closing a proclamation for the suppressing of privateers and pirates, reached the assembly, and was forthwith published in the town of Newport by beat of drum, and read by the recorder at three of the most public places in the town, and the same day an act for the restraining and punishing privateers and pirates was passed. The serving, without a special license from the colony, was made felony, with the proviso that any persons belonging to the colony who were then serving any foreign prince, state or potentate, who should return before the end of December next following and surrender himself should be exempt from pursuit under the law, and commissioners were appointed under the king's seal, subject to the judges of ad- miralty in the colony, to hear and determine al! matters of treason, felony, piracy, etc., committed on the sea, or in any haven, creek or bay.
WAR WITH FRANCE. KING WILLIAM'S WAR, 1689-1697 .- The revolution which drove out James the Second, and brought William and Mary to the throne January 22, 1689, was wel- come to the New England colonies. The new sovereigns were proclaimed in Newport in May. The policy of English sub- serviency to France came to an end and William, whose views of state craft extended far beyond the limits of his new king- dom, was not slow to throw the weight of its arms into the struggle of the Protestant nations to maintain the balance of power in Europe. Louis XIV. had made a war unavoidable by sending troops into Ireland to aid in the reinstatement of King James, and parliament heartily pledged themselves to Wil- liam's support.
The king's declaration of war was proclaimed in Newport by beat of the drum by the clerk of the assembly, in " solemn sanner," in March, 1690. The rumor had already come in of a
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raid of the French and Indians from Canada on one of the towns above Albany, and soon after the proclamation news ar- rived of a French fleet off the coast. In May seven sail of French privateers swept the coast from Cape Cod to New London. Ves- sels were sent out in pursuit, and again on subsequent similar oc- casions, but there is no record of letters of marque being issued. It is known, however, that in 1696 a Rhode Island privateer brought in the "Pelican," a vessel which the French had taken on her voyage from Boston to London, armed and fitted as a privateer. She was coasting on the banks of Newfoundland when she was fallen in with and again captured.
That there were letters of marque issued from the Rhode Is- land colony and that some of those persons to whom they were granted were not over-scrupulous in their proceedings, is cer- tain from the nature of an order of the assembly called by Gov- ernor Clarke on special occasion in July, 1696, when it was voted that "considering of the many great complaints that sev- eral vessels have been fitted out of this colony and by all likeli- hood and circumstances are upon some unlawful design which is to the great dishonor of his Majesty and this his Majesty's Government ; and for the prevention of such proceedings for the future be it enacted by this Assembly that there be no per- son or persons commissionated from this government but shall first give bond of one thousand pounds with good securities that they shall not proceed upon any unlawful act as aforesaid ; except such vessels as shall be sent out by the authority of this Colony for the defence of his Majesty's interests against a com- mon enemy ; any act to the contrary notwithstanding."
There was no court of admiralty provided under the royal charter, but the general council of the colony passed an admir- alty act in Jannary, 1694, as appears from a document in the British State Paper office, which vested the authority, with the approval of the assembly, in itself. The occasion of its passage was the arrival of the Dublin frigate, of Jamaica, with a French prize, the first which had been brought in since the declaration of war. This seems to have given an immediate impulse to a movement for privateering in Newport.
In December following the home government took perhaps the most effectual measure to check these illegal and irregular acts by the establishment of courts of admiralty in all the col- onies, and in June, 1697, the High Court of Admiralty of Eng-
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land issued commissions to Peleg Sanford as judge of the court of admiralty in the colony of Rhode Island. and to Nathaniel Coddington as register of the same. The governor, Walter Clarke, refused to recognize the commissions, holding them to be a violation and infringement of the charter rights of the col- ony, and informed the assembly that if they allowed them he would leave the seat of governor, in which case there would be no more choice or election according to their charter. But the assembly not taking that view of the matter, Clarke pocketed the commission and dissolved the assembly. Clarke appears soon after to have resigned his office.
He was sneceeded by his nephew. Samuel Cranston, who also refused to administer the oath of office to the judge in admiral- ty, and withheld from him his commission. The records men- tion no inauguration of the court, but that it was established is certain from Bellomont's commission to its members, Brinley, Sanford and Coddington, to collect evidence in 1699 against the pirates and to secure the confederates of Kidd; a difficult matter because of the sympathy everywhere felt for the freebooters.
The war closed with the treaty of Ryswick in September, 1697. All Europe was once more at peace. A printed proclamation was issued in England in October, and despatched to America with orders to put a stop to all privateering against the French. It reached New England in December and was formally pub- lished.
While refusing to recognize the persons appointed in admir- alty, yet no longer venturing to act as such themselves, by their governor, in defiance of royal authority, the assembly of Rhode Island passed a severe law for the seizing and seenring of any per- sons that" may be suspected of having been upon the seas unon such wicked designs as piracy and robbing, ordering that every person that had or should thereafter bring into the colony any foreign coin, gold, bullion, silver, merchandise and other treasure supposed to be taken in and upon the seas shall be apprehend- ed and made to show cause how he came by the same."
King William left the colony in no doubt as to his intentions. He addressed a letter by the hand of Lord Shrewsbury to Rhode Island on the general subject of the trade, and immedi- ately after the signature of the peace a second letter by the hand of the same lord, bis principal secretary of state, com- manding diligence in the obedience to his proclamation order-
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ing the seizure of all pirates and in especial manner of Henry Avery (the captor of the Mogul's ship). These later documents reached the colony two days after the adjournment of the as- sembly but were all published together with a proclamation of the assembly as of the date of its session, May 4th, 1698, in every town of the colony by beat of the drum.
The extent to which privateering had been carried on under the unrestricted roving commissions, appears in the records of the years 1698-9 in the representations to the king about the irregu- larities in the government of Rhode Island, the instructions of the board of trade and plantations to Bellomont on the one hand and the letter of Governor Cranston, Clarke's nephew and successor, to the board of trade and their instructions to Bellomont on the other. The earl of Bellomont, commander- in-chief of the king's province of the Massachusetts Bay, New York and New Hampshire, etc., was instructed to make special inquiries into the misdemeanors of Rhode Island and to put cer- tain queries to Clarke, the late governor. From these it seems that he was charged with having granted commissions without taking security, to sundry persons named, some of whom were notorious pirates; one, William Mayes, was charged with having assisted Avery in taking the Mogul's ship " Gunsway," to which Cranston replied that " Mayes had his clearings from the Cus- tom House at Rhode Island to go on a trading voyage to Mada- gascar with a lawful commission from the government to fight the French, his Majesty's enemies."
William Mayes lived at Portsmouth. The general assembly adjourned to meet at his house there in 1682. He does not seem to have returned from his voyage, and it is supposed that Avery murdered him and his whole company. He was the only per- son ever commissioned by Rhode Island, says Cranston, that " has been to the southward of Cape Good Hope."
In a letter to the board of trade Cranston gives information of a ship scuttled on the coast a month before-a bagboat of four hundred tons belonging in London, bound for Borneo island. On the island of Polonoys, near Sumatra, the crew took ad- vantage of the captain's being on shore and ran away with the ship. One of the men was caught at Newport and the rest in the neighboring governments, and their money, about twelve hundred pounds, taken from them.
Bellomont visited Rhode Island in September, 1699, with a
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number of the council of Massachusetts, and met the Rhode Is- Jand authorities at Governor Cranston's house. Inquiry and examination were made, when it appeared that one Gillam, a notorious pirate who came from Madagascar to Rhode Island with Captain Kidd, had been entertained in Newport at the house of the deputy collector. To sum up this curious matter John Russell Bartlett, editor of the Rhode Island Records, adds in a note that there are various documents preserved among the papers of Mr. John Carter Brown, copied from the state pa- per office at London, " which corroborate in a measure the serious charges contained in the report of the earl of Bellomont against Rhode Island. It does not appear, however, that there was any complicity between the authorities of the colony and those en- gaged in piracy, as might be inferred from Lord Bellomont's report." But it is not so clear that there were not some, indeed many who were engaged in privateering between which and piracy the line was narrow; and Mr. Bartlett admits " that the facility with which commissions for letters of marque were ob- tained during the wars with France and Spain induced many adventurers to resort to Rhode Island for that purpose; while the advantages of the fine harbors of Narragansett bay led these privateers to fit them out as well as to return here with their booty. The notorious Captain Kidd was within our waters where he landed portions of his goods and ill-gained treasures, as appears from the testimony above referred to. Several of his companions charged with piracy also took refuge here and on the east end of Long Island, where they were sought by the authorities at the instigation of Lord Bellemont."
The British cabinet in November, 1699, issued an order to the governors of all the colonies to arrest Kidd, should he appear in their waters. He was taken in Boston and with his associ- ates, by a ship sent out for the purpose, was carried to England where he was exeented for crimes in the results of which many a man of station in the colonies had his profit. It is a curious instance of the temper of the time that commissions to privateers should have been issued by such men as Walter Clarke without, as he himself admits, any thought of taking security for a faith- Sul discharge of this, the most dangerous of trusts.
Neither royal orders, colony proclamation nor beat of drum are much restraint upon men who have once acquired a taste for blood and plunder, and it is not surprising to find, in the journal
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of an English Friend who was at Block Island on a religious errand in 1702, that most of the able bodied men on the island had gone off in privateers.
DEPREDATIONS BY FOREIGN PRIVATEERS. - At the time (1680) that the inquiries of the board of trade were submitted to the Rhode Island anthorities, England was at peace and there could be no excuse for the appearance of privateers on the waters of the American colonies, but the seventh question of the board shows that there were such rovers under the pre- tence of commission or in defiance of the law of nations abroad on the high seas. The answer of Rhode Island was that "our coast is little frequented and not at all at this time with privateers or pirates." This happy state of affairs was not of long duration. In 1682 the first of these freebooters made their appearance on the coast and hardy ruffians they were. Their bark, the " White Wood," was captured and the crew brought into Newport. Some of them broke jail and plotted to murder Sanford, the governor of the colony. One of them, a negro, betrayed the design and in reward, at his own request, was held under guard while the privateers, John Smith and his associates, were sent to Virginia for trial. The articles seized from the men, moneys, plate, clothing, guns, servants and boats, were taken possession of by the governor and recorder, who were ordered to account to the assembly.
The war began by France to re-establish James the Second on the throne of England was marked by unusual activity on the part of that continental power on the seas. Proclaimed in in the spring of 1690, at Newport, the English settlements were thrown into consternation in July by the descent of a fleet of seven French privateers on the coast of New Eng- land, which captured Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard and Block Island. An armed sloop was sent ont from Newport to watch their movements. Some of the French vessels attempted a sur- prise of the town but, finding it on guard, withdrew and sailed through the sound to New London, where they were driven off; bonfires lighted along the shore from Pawcatuck having given warning of their approach. They landed at Fisher's island and burned the only house on it. This party were surprised by some Stonington men, and their guide, a renegade Englishman, who had led them to Block Island, was killed. For eight days they hung abont the neighborhood.
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On the 25th of July the governor and council commissioned Captain Thomas Paine (himself a privateer and later one of Kidd's friends), Captain John Godfrey and others to pursue the enemy. Two sloops and ninety men, Captain Paine command- ing, fell in with five sail of the French near Block Island. The enemy numbered two hundred men and were commanded by Captain Pekar, who had sailed some years before under Paine in privateering expeditions. After a severe fight in which the French were worsted, they put to sea. Chased by Paine, they sank one of their prizes laden with wines and brandies. Paine returned to Newport but the people were so alarmed that many removed their valuables to the interior.
Block Island, from its exposed position now became, as during the Indian wars, a favorite point of surprise. In May, 1691, a night attack was made upon it and cattle were carried off. In the summer of 1692 the British frigate " Non- such," cruising at the month of the sound, sighted a French privateer which had already plundered Block Island and, giving chase, captured it in Monument bay, near Elizabeth islands, and bronght it into Newport. After the "Nonsuch " left the harbor another French privateer seized several ves- sels, one of which, JJohn Godfrey master, belonged to Rhode Island. Governor Easton at once sent out a brigantine un- der command of Captain Peter Lawrence, who returned after a fruitless search. A fourth attack on Block Island was repulsed by the settlers in an "open pitched battle." The Rhode Island authorities, in an address to the king this summer (1692) liken their position to that of a border post, "being frontiers at sea as your Majesty's fort at Albany is by land" and therefore as "very great charge by watching and warding," and not suitably fortified. These were the last of the French descents. Now for a time Block Island, Conanicut and even Rhode Island became the quiet refuge of English and American freebooters. Block Island has been searched for Kidd's treasures and there is a tradition that the cave in the cliffs at Ochre point was the favorite landing place of this famous " pirate king."
The peace of Ryswick was but a lull in the great European struggle. Four years later (1702) the war of the Spanish suc- cession began. Queen Anne's declaration of hostilities against France and Spain was proclaimed in May. The news of a strong
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French fleet cruising in the West Indies again alarmed Rhode Island and stimulated every measure of defense. The coast was watched by sconts and a garrison established on Block Island. In June a sloop laden with provisions was taken by a French privateer. Within twenty-four hours an expedition of two sloops was sent out after the intruder and the vessel and prize brought back in trinmph by Captain John Wanton. The next day the general assembly voted the governor a gratuity of tive pounds for his extraordinary trouble in setting out the sloops in the expedition, and empowered him to take up and improve any vessels to send out in case of invasion, and upon any sudden invasion within the precincts of the colony to press any vessel or vessels for the colony's service. In 1708 French privateers again made their appearance, this time at Martha's Vineyard, when they took two prizes. Again within three hours after the news came into Newport Major William Wan- ton and Captain John Cranston went ont in pursuit with two sloops. The French destroyed their prizes but escaped after a twenty-four hours' chase.
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