Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 13

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 13

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Of the earliest proceedings in town meetings in Providence more information is found in a letter written by Roger Williams than in the fragmentary official records that have been preserved. Roger Williams wrote thus:

The condition of myself and those few families here planting with me, you know full well: we have no patent: nor doth the face of magistracy suit with our present condition. Hitherto the masters of families have ordinarily met once a fortnight and consulted about our common peace, watch, and planting ; and mutual consent has finished all matters with speed and peace.

Now of late some young men, single persons (of whom we have much need), being admitted to freedom of inhabitation, and promising to be subject to the orders made by the consent of the house- holders, are discontented with their estate, and seek the freedom of vote also, and equality, etc.

I have, therefore, had thought of propounding to my neighbors a double subscription

The first concerning ourselves, the masters of families, thus :

"We whose names are hereunder written . . . . do with frec and joint consent promise each unto other that . . . . we will from time to time subject ourselves in active or passive obedience to such orders and agreements as shall be made by the greater number of the present householders, and such others as shall hereafter be admitted by their consent into the same privilege and covenant in our ordinary meeting. "

Concerning those few young men, and any who shall hereafter . . desire to plant with us thus :

"We whose names are hereunder written, being desirous to inhabit in this town . . . . do promise to subject ourselves in active or passive obedience to such orders or agreements as shall be made from time to time, by the greater number of the present householders of this town, and such whom they shall admit into the same fellowship and privilege. .

"Heretofore we choose one (named the officer) to call the meeting at the appointed time; now it is desired by some of us that the householders by course perform that work, as also gather votes, and see the watch go on, etc."

RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

THE PROVIDENCE COMPACT-There is no evidence of record or otherwise that Roger Williams carried his plan for a double subscription, or seperate subscriptions, one for mar- ried men and one for single men, into effect. The first page of the earliest record book of the town of Providence carries this compact under date of August 20, 1637:

We whose names are hereunder, desirous to inhabit in the town of Providence, do promise to subject ourselves in active or passive obedience to all such orders or agreements as shall be made for public good of the body in an orderly way by the major consent of the present inhabitants, masters of families, incor- porated together into a town fellowship, and others whom they shall admit unto them only in civi! things.

This compact was signed by Richard Scott, William Reynolds, Chad Brown, John Warner, John Field, George Rickard, Edward Cope, Thomas Angell, Thomas Harris, Fran- cis Wickes, Benedict Arnold, Joshua Winsor, and William Wickenden. The fact that Roger Williams did not sign is interpreted as indicating that the compact was subscribed by late comers principally ; and the fact that it was signed by Thomas Angell and Francis Wickes, who were among the original companions of Roger Williams, is explained by the suggestion that both were minors in 1636, and had reached majority since then.

Whether or not there had been actually, as indicated by the plan outlined in the letter written by Roger Williams, an earlier compact by married men; and whether or not this was the original written agreement for government in Providence; and whether or not Roger Williams was the author of the compact, as suggested by its general similarity to the agree- ment proposed in his letter ; and whether or not Roger Williams was the author of only part of the Providence compact, and, as has been maintained vigorously, Richard Scott or some other of the signers inserted the words "only in civil things"-these matters of controversy for antiquaries yield in significance to the purport of the Providence Compact as the first social contract for government into which the principle of complete religious liberty was written. In this aspect the Providence Compact departed from precedent ; it was sui generis, original and unique. Its importance was fundamental and transcendental, and it marked the opening of a new era in the affairs of mankind. It attained to the complete separation of civil and ecclesiastical authority ; it abolished theocracy. It carried democracy in politics to completion in the limitation of the authority of the state to "civil things only." It was revo- lutionary, forecasting the destruction of older systems. It established the principle wanting in Greek democracy, in Roman republicanism, and in the freedom of mediaeval city states and city republics-the freedom of the individual from petty tyranny. It left the regulation of his private life to the citizen. It exalted the common man in its concession to his con- science. It forecasted the new nation "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." It contributed to American democracy the single new principle that has made it distinctive from the democracy of ancient civilizations. It originated with the people and it was carried into effect in Providence within a twelvemonth. On May 21, 1637, "it was agreed that Joshua Verein, upon the breach of a covenant for restraining of the liberty of conscience, shall be witheld from the liberty of voting till he shall declare to the contrary." The fact basis for the complaint against Joshua Verein, as disclosed by other sources of information than the Providence record, was his objection to his wife's attendance on religious meetings conducted by Roger Williams. The new freedom was already pro- ducing an unprecedented ferment in Providence, "men's wives and children and servants claiming liberty to go to all religious meetings, though never so often or though private, upon the week days."

That the indifference to political duties that leads citizens in modern states to refuse public office, to avoid service on juries, and to neglect to exercise suffrage is not new is demonstrated by early experience in Providence. Attendance at town meetings to participate in dispatching the business related to the common welfare became so irksome in practice that a fine was set

ORGANIZING A DEMOCRACY

for tardiness or absence; to prevent avoidance of the duties of "officer," the elective official whose duty it was to call meetings, it was proposed that the office follow a regular course among the inhabitants. By 1640 the business of the town, particularly that which had to do with ending disputes over titles and boundaries, had assumed such volume that relief from town meetings was sought through an agreement, drafted by a committee consisting of Rob- ert Cole, Chad Brown, William Harris and John Warner, to entrust routine matters to five freemen, chosen by the town in quarterly meeting, and a town clerk, elected annually. The new officers were called "disposers" and were to meet at least once each month. From any decision by the disposers an appeal could be taken to the town meeting; new freemen were to be admitted only after six days' notice, and subject to an appeal to the town meeting. The agreement of 1640, signed by thirty-nine freemen: (1) reaffirmed "as formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still, to hold forth liberty of conscience"; (2) established a bound- ary line between the Providence and Pawtuxet lands; (3) provided for grant of title in fee simple to proprietors by deeds from the town; (4) set up compulsory arbitration to quiet disputes. Fortnightly town meetings gave way to quarterly meetings. Other matters cov- ered by the agreement were public arbitration of cases involving private damages, this to avoid disturbance of the public peace by reprisals for revenge; general assistance by pursuit of offenders, with punishment for needless hubbub; and payment by each proprietor into the common town treasury of the balance remaining unpaid of the thirty shillings purchase price of home lots. The arrangement reduced itself practically into handling routine business by committee, with the provision for appeal by any freeman from any act of the disposers; in this there scarcely was the delegation of power that distinguishes representative government from direct government. The reaffirmation of "liberty of conscience" was significant; the new freedom in Providence might occasion disturbance, but those who had experienced soul liberty was not willing to abandon the "lively experiment."

THE SOURCE OF AUTHORITY-Disturbances occasionally attended the enforcement of the awards of arbitrators; in one instance in which Samuel Gorton and his followers, then seeking freemanship in Providence, aided the party against whom decision had been rendered, blood was shed. Thereupon a few in Providence asked protection by the Massachusetts authorities, and were advised to submit to "some jurisdiction, either Plymouth or our own." Indeed, the legal status of government under compact without royal sanction and within the dominion claimed by the King was a matter for serious consideration. Thus, when in August, 1638, an Indian was murdered near Providence by four Plymouth colonists, and the mur- derers, followed by Roger Williams and a posse, were arrested at Aquidneck, Roger Williams was in a quandary as to what should be done. Should the murderers be tried at Aquidneck, where taken; or should they be tried in Providence, near the place of the crime; or was it right to send them to Plymouth, whence they had come? Roger Williams favored Aquid- neck; the Aquidneck settlers favored Providence. Eventually three of the murderers, the fourth having escaped, were sent to Plymouth for trial and were hanged. Arnold, the his- torian, commenting upon this disposition of the matter, favored the view that the place of the crime should determine the jurisdiction for trial, following the provision to that effect in the bill of rights part of the Constitution of the United States. The essential difficulty in the matter, however, lay in the fact that the crime was committed beyond any legal jurisdiction established by royal sanction. With lawbreakers within their own boundaries Providence and Aquidneck might deal under the mutual agreements in their compacts; over lawbreakers not parties to the compacts and not submitting to the jurisdiction by entering it, their author- ity was more than doubtful. Had either had a royal patent, the murderers taken from places beyond any legal jurisdiction might be dealt with adequately, as are murderers at sea or pirates. The sending to Plymouth was amply justified in law, as the nearest legal jurisdic-

RHODE ISLAND -- THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

tion. But the incident, and others accumulating rapidly as Massachusetts displayed a dis- position to meddle in Rhode Island affairs,* indicated the need for a patent. So far as the record discloses, the initiative for the mission on which Roger Williams went to England to obtain a patent was taken by the General Court at Newport first on November 25, 1639, when Nicholas Easton and John Clarke were directed to correspond with Sir Harry Vane; and again on September 19, 1642, when a committee of ten was directed to move for a patent.

THE GOVERNMENT AT AQUIDNECK-The Island of Aquidneck was purchased by John Clarke, William Coddington and others with the purpose of establishing a new colony beyond the jurisdiction of any other ; with the purpose in view, as it had not been at Providence, the process of achieving organization and establishing a government at Pocasset was short. Under an agreement dated March 7, 1638, nineteen freemen incorporated themselves as a body politic, thus: "We whose names are underwritten do hereby solemnly, in the presence of Jehovah, incorporate ourselves into a body politic and as He shall help will submit our persons, lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of His given in His holy word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby." William Coddington was elected as "Judge" on the same day that the compact was dated, the organization in this respect following Old Testament prece- dents among the Hebrews. The records of public meetings in 1638 and 1639 indicate an orderly, business-like procedure, including, besides provisions for laying out and assigning lots of land: (1) exclusion from freemanship and residence of persons not received "by the consent of the body" and submitting themselves to the government; (2) a requirement that every inhabitant, for the common defense, should have a musket, powder, shot, a sword, etc., at all times ; (3) provision for a meetinghouse; (4) provision for a licensed inn for the entertainment of strangers with privilege granted to the innkeeper "to brew beer and to sell wines or strong waters and such necessary provisions as may be beneficial in any kind"; (5) organization of the freemen as a militia subject to call, and the appointment of sergeants and corporals; (6) the election of two treasurers; (7) the repair of roads; (8) the setting up of stocks and a whipping post; (9) the building of a jail; (10) the establishment of a plan- tation bakery and an assize of bread. Eight inhabitants were punished for a "riot of drunk- enness" at a general meeting on September 15, 1638. Military training day was observed on November 12, 1638. On January 2, 1638-1639, three Elders were elected to "assist the Judge in the execution of justice and judgment for the regulation and ordering of all offences and offenders, and for the drawing up and determining of all such rules and laws as shall be according to God, which may conduce to the good and welfare of the commonwealth. .... The Judge together with the Elders shall rule and govern according to the general rule of the word of God when they shall have no particular rule from God's word by the body pre- scribed as a direction unto them in the case." The Judge and Elders were accountable to the body quarterly, their actions "to be scanned and weighed by the word of Christ; and if to the body or any of them the Lord shall be pleased to dispense light to the contrary of what by the Judge and Elders hath been determined formerly, that then and there shall be repealed as the act of the body." Nicholas Easton, John Coggeshall and William Brenton were elected as Elders. A substantial change in the form of government had been achieved ; authority thereafter vested in the hands of the Judge and Elders, subject to repeal or ratifi- cation in the quarterly meeting of the body politic.

Scarcely had the new order been achieved at Pocasset, however, when the withdrawal of Judge and Elders and other freemen under an agreement to establish a new plantation at Newport, dated April 28, 1639, left Pocasset for the time being without a government. Even the Pocasset records were carried away in the exodus from the settlement. Two days later twenty-nine inhabitants, still remaining at Pocasset, signed a new compact, as follows: "We

*Chapter V.

FOOT FORVIVE

ROCHAMBEAU MEMORIAL AT WELLINGTON PARK, NEWPORT

ORGANIZING A DEMOCRACY

whose names are underwritten do acknowledge ourselves the legal subjects of his majesty King Charles, and in his name do hereby bind ourselves into a civic body politic unto his laws according to matters of justice." The compact was followed by an agreement for govern- ment : "According to the true content of the foregoing, we whose names are above particu- larly recorded, do agree jointly or by the major voice to govern ourselves by the ruler or judge amongst us in all transactions for the space and term of one year, he behaving himself according to the terms of the same." William Hutchinson was elected as Judge, and with him eight Assistants. Provision was made for a quarterly sessions court with jury trials, judgment in cases involving less than forty shillings to be given by the Judge and Assistants. The Newport settlers made overtures for reunion with their Pocasset brethren late in 1639, and in 1640 the reunion was accomplished, Pocasset becoming the town of Portsmouth under the new government. The Pocasset and Portsmouth records, so far as they are extant and decipherable, deal with disposition of land and administration matters principally. On August 29, 1644, after Roger Williams had obtained his patent, the Deputy Governor and two Assistants who represented Portsmouth in the colony government at Newport, were given power to call town meetings at discretion, and on November 28, 1646, a quorum for town meetings was established at not less than nine. The town of Portsmouth continued, and is a prosperous, flourishing, and progressive town in the twentieth century, but the settle- ment at Pocasset declined. The buildings disappeared years ago, and there was in 1930 scarcely a trace of the foundations.

THE EXODUS TO NEWPORT-The reason for the departure from Pocasset of William Coddington, Judge, the three Elders, the Clerk, and other freemen, including John Clarke, is not given in any public record. Overcrowding at Pocasset, the reason sometimes given, is scarcely tenable. There is nothing to indicate that religious discord was the cause. Politi- cal differences, indicated in the change from the religious tone of the early Pocasset compact to the legal tone of the second compact, is contradicted by the fact that the Newport compact resembled the second Pocasset compact in being political. The most plausible explanation is economic; a careful survey of the Island of Aquidneck had revealed disadvantages in the location at Pocasset, borne out by the subsequent abandonment of the settlement, and the wonderful commercial possibilities in the splendid closed harbor at Newport. Influential men at Pocasset, leaders, as indicated by their choice for public office, resolved to withdraw and remove to the better location without delay. On April 28, 1639, they drew up and signed at Pocasset a compact, as follows: "It is agreed by us whose hands are underwritten to propagate a plantation in the midst of the island or elsewhere; and we do engage ourselves to bear equal charges, answerable to our strength and estates, in common; and that our determinations shall be by the major voice of judge and elders, the judge to have a double voice." On May 16 the new settlement, begun on April 30 with the building of a house by Nicholas Easton and his two sons, was named Newport, and the northern boundary was described as a line across the island five miles from Newport. The Judge and Elders elected at Pocasset continued to hold office. The settlement grew rapidly as other seceders from Pocasset and newcomers sought it; the records include the names of more than 100 men admitted as inhabitants within the brief period of one year. At Newport, as at Pocasset while the same men were freemen and officers, the records of meetings indicate effective organization and decisive action on the public business. Perhaps Coddington's was the firm hand that held the reins firmly over his fellow-citizens; he had been an Assistant in Massa- chusetts when Roger Williams was on trial, and later was to attempt to set up and maintain on the Island of Rhode Island almost monarchy with himself as king, except in name, under a life commission as a proprietary governor. For the time being in Newport he was Judge with two votes in a body of four, thus needing to convince only one of the Elders to make an effective majority. As presiding officer he had power also to put questions to vote, and to

RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY

gather up and count the votes. Coddington had among his associates as Elders, Nicholas Easton, John Coggeshall and William Brenton, all of whom had held office of some kind in Massachusetts, and John Clarke, physician and preacher, and later able representative of Rhode Island in England, and writer of the King Charles Charter of 1663. All of these were outstanding, able men, and except John Clarke, already experienced in public affairs.

That the reunion of Pocasset and Newport in 1640 was not accomplished merely by continued secession from one and accession to the other appears from an order entered at Newport on November 25, 1639, "that those commissioners formerly appointed to nego- tiate the business with our brethren of Pocasset shall give them our propositions under their hands, and shall require their propositions under their hands, with their answers and shall give reply unto it; and so shall return to the body a brief of what they therein have done." The report of the meeting of November 25 opens thus: "By the body politic in the Island of Aquidneck inhabiting this present twenty-fifth of the ninth month, 1639, in the fourteenth year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord King Charles," and this recog- nition of sovereignty was followed by an order to Nicholas Easton and John Clarke to treat with Sir Harry Vane about the obtaining of a patent from his majesty. By the same meeting it was agreed "that as natural subjects to our prince, and subject to his laws, all mat- ters that concern the peace shall be by those that are officers of the peace transacted; and all actions of the case or debt shall be in such courts as by order are here appointed and by such judges as are deputed heard and loyally determined." Before this order was carried into effect by the setting up of judicial courts for the trial of private causes of action, as distin- guished from the general court, which tended to become a parliamentary body, the achieve- ment of reunion with Pocasset brought about another change in the general form of govern- ment. On March 12, 1640, representatives from Pocasset presented themselves at the general court, "desiring reunion," and were "readily embraced."

REUNION OF NEWPORT AND PORTSMOUTH-The "general court of election" on that day, pursuant to agreement reached with the Portsmouth settlers earlier, made provision for the election of a Governor, Deputy Governor, and four Assistants, the Governor and two Assist- ants for one town, and the Deputy Governor and two Assistants for the other town, and that the settlement to the north should be called Portsmouth. Officers to serve one year, or until their successors were chosen, were elected as follows: William Coddington of Newport as Governor; William Brenton of Portsmouth as Deputy Governor; Nicholas Easton and John Coggeshall of Newport, and William Hutchinson and John Porter of Portsmouth as the four Assistants. Robert Jeoffreys and William Balston as Treasurers, William Dyer as Secretary, Henry Bull as Sergeant, Jeremy Clarke as Constable for Newport and John Sanford as Con- stable for Portsmouth, completed the list of officers. Thus was the colony of Rhode Island, distinct from though including the towns of Portsmouth and Newport, organized. The name Aquidneck was changed to Rhode Island March 13, 1644 .*

*Tradition ascribes the name Rhode Island variously to Verrazzano, a Florentine sailor in the employ- ment of France, who visited Narragansett Bay In 1542; and to Dutch traders. Verrazzano is sald to have likened Block Island to the Isle of Rhodes, thus furnishing Hezekiah Butterworth a theme for his beau- tiful poem, "Verrazzano."

The Dutch traders are said to have called an island near the entrance of Narragansett Bay "Rhode Eylandt," because of its rosy appearance. Whether the color was ascribed to the soll, or to the growth of wild roses and other flowering plants is less certaln than the traditional use of the name Rhode Eylandt by the Dutch, though It appears that Conanicut was the Island so named. Roger Willlams as early as 1637 referred to what is now the Island of Rhode Island by the Indian name "Aquidneck," adding, however, "called by us Rhode Island, at the Narragansett's mouth." That this usage of the name Rhode Island applied to the Island exclusively appears from subsequent events. Roger Williams obtained a charter for the Narragansett territory on March 14, 1644, under the name "Free Charter of Civil Incorporation and Government for the Providence Plantations, in the Narragansett Bay, in New England."

The island settlers, at Portsmouth and Newport, first used for the island a name variously spelled with simplified phonetic, almost poetic, license as "Aquidneck," "Aqueedneck," "Aquethnec," "Aquethneck," with- out exhausting altogether the possibilities of actual usage or orthographic ingenulty. October 1, 1639, what was probably the first "directory" published in Rhode Island was entitled "Catalogue of such who, by the general consent of the company, were admitted to be inhabitants of the island now called Aqueedneck." New- port and Portsmouth united in 1640 for government and undertook to obtain a royal charter for "the Body

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I, Part 13

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716