USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 17
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REVIVAL OF CONFEDERACY-Early in 1653, following the receipt from England of news that Coddington's commission had been revoked, action was taken by the northern towns and the southern towns, separately, looking toward a readjustment. The northern towns pro-
*Chapter IV.
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ceeded on the assumption of legitimate succession by continuance; from this point of view Newport and Portsmouth might be readmitted. On the other hand, Newport and Ports- mouth, as the major fraction of the severed colony, invited Providence and Warwick to join with them. About February 16, 1653,* William Dyer delivered in Providence and Warwick a letter signed by John Sanford, William Balston, John Porter and William Jeffries, inviting the northern towns to send representatives to a meeting to hear read letters and orders of direction alleged to have been dispatched by the English Council of State by Dyer as mes- senger. On February 25, 1653, the General Assembly, meeting at Pawtuxet, drew up an answer, and designated Gregory Dexter, Hugh Bewitt, Stukely Westcott, and John Townsend as messengers to deliver it on the island, and to conduct further negotiations for a joint meet- ing of six commissioners from each town to consider reuniting if that were approved by the letter from the Council of State. On March 1, 1653, "the colony," this time the southern towns, assembled at Portsmouth, and ordered all officers "that were in place when Mr. Cod- dington's commission obstructed should stand in theses places to act according to their former commissions upon the island; and the rest in the colony according as they have been annually chosen, until a new election," which was ordered for May 17. The papers received from the Council of State were ordered delivered to Nicholas Easton, who had been elected President in 1650. The messengers appointed at Pawtuxet in February reported in March that they had been unable to obtain a reply from Newport or a copy of the letter or order of the Council of State. This was carefully guarded at Newport. Negotiations failed to achieve a joint meeting of commissioners with power to act, and in May, 1653, two general courts of election were held in Rhode Island, and the colony for the ensuing year had two Presidents and two each of other officers, one set acting in the northern towns and the other set in the south- ern towns.
The General Court at Providence elected Gregory Dexter as President. The General Assembly at Newport resolved "that this present assembly do conclude that they are a lawful assembly and have power to act in election and the affairs of the colony." John Sanford was elected President. A vote that "if Providence and Warwick be pleased to act with us they may have liberty to choose the general officers for their towns" (Assistants) was repealed, when certain Providence and Warwick men appeared at the meeting on the second day ; then Thomas Olney was chosen as Assistant for Providence and Randall Holden as Assistant for Warwick. Aside from the possibilities of further differences foreshadowed by the organiza- tion of two distinct governments, it happened that the colony policy with reference to the war with Holland, already underway in Europe, was radically different and bound to arouse conflict. The northern policy was defence and a stoppage of commercial intercourse, intended to operate as an embargo on supplies for the Dutch. The southern policy was aggressive. It contemplated aid for English residents of Long Island against the Dutch to the extent of sending cannon and other arms, and permitting volunteering on the island of Rhode Island ; the setting up of prize courts, and the commissioning of privateers. The northern General Court protested against this action of the southern General Assembly, and gave warning of a complaint to be made to England. There is reason for believing that the danger of losing the colony to the Dutch because of divergent policies within was not without effect in pro- ducing the emphatic action taken by the home government in England to bring about a reunion. Sir Harry Vane wrote a letter under date of February 8, 1654, pleading for com- position of differences for the sake of the liberty granted by England.
There was no General Assembly of the northern towns in 1654. At a General Assembly on the island a President and other officers were elected, and a committee of eight, two from each of the four towns was chosen "for the preparing a way of some course concerning our dissenting friends." The Assistant for Providence was directed to visit Roger Williams,
*The dates as given in the printed Colonial Records are misleading and at least two entries are not in chronological order.
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should the latter return from England, to receive "what orders are by him sent to the colony." On August 31, 1654, an agreement for reunion was concluded and signed by six commission- ers on behalf of each of the four towns. It provided that the proceedings of towns separately and jointly in the interval from Coddington's commission to the reunion should remain each "on their own account," and that the General Court or General Assembly, except for elec- tions, should thereafter consist of six commissioners chosen by each of the four towns. A committee to revise the general laws of the colony was appointed and a special court of elec- tion was ordered for September 12, 1654, the officers to serve until the annual election in the following May. Roger Williams, who had returned from England, was elected President of the reunited colony, almost exactly ten years from the date of his landing in Boston with the Charter for Providence Plantations granted on March 14, 1644. At a meeting of the court of commissioners at Portsmouth in 1655, a letter from Oliver Cromwell under date of March 29, 1655, was read, directing the colony to proceed under its charter. Government under the charter continued without interruption for nine years, from 1654 to 1663, when King Charles II granted Rhode Island the Charter under which the colony and state were to govern them- selves until 1842. As might be expected the turbulent democracy of Rhode Island, which, in the words of Gregory Dexter, had "long drunk of the cup of as great liberties as any people that we can hear of under the whole heaven," and had "not known what an excise means," and had "almost forgotten what tithes are; yea, or taxes, either to church or commonwealth," was not reduced to complete harmony in 1654; it never has been. There was internal dis- cord enough after 1654 to uphold Rhode Island's reputation for maintaining "a lively expe- riment." And, besides, there were perplexing problems arising from relations with Indians and with neighboring colonies* to intrigue the interest of the freemen and other inhabitants.
The meeting of August 31, 1654, ordered an enrollment of the names of freemen, that is, inhabitants who had been admitted to political privileges. The lists returned by the towns in 1655 showed ninety-six in Newport, seventy in Portsmouth, forty-two in Providence, and thirty-eight in Warwick. For several years thereafter the records of meetings of the general court of election included the names of freemen admitted to the colony, indicating that a pro- cedure had been established whereby persons who were made "free of the towns" did not attain colony freemanship until accepted by the General Court. There was no census or enumera- tion for the period, which would show what proportion of the population had been admitted to freemanship. It may not be assumed that the lists of freemen included all heads of fami- lies. There were, besides the freemen, large numbers of young men in the communities not admitted to freemanship; many who were "inhabitants" without political privileges; and also many who were bound out to service according to the practice of the period, whereby a debtor might become a bondservant to repay his debt. No doubt also many who reached the colony had become bondservants to repay their passage money across the Atlantic Ocean. There were also large numbers of servants, both men and women, the former not admitted to freemanship. The numbers of freemen by towns indicate that Newport was the largest town, and that Portsmouth was larger than Providence and Warwick. In view, however, of the fact that there appears to have been no rule for admission to freemanship, and no standard qualification, there may well have been so much difference in attitudes as to make the figures somewhat misleading; the greater wealth in the island towns may have produced a tendency toward aristocracy there which would effect a reduction in the proportion of freemen in total population. Besides that, the greater individual wealth probably would increase the number of servants. That Newport was the wealthiest town is shown by the apportionment of gen- eral levies when the colony undertook to raise taxes. A new engagement for officers was prescribed in 1654 in this form: "You ... . do . . . engage yourself faithfully and truly to the utmost of your power to execute the commission committed unto you, and do hereby
*Chapters IV and V.
.
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promise to do neither more nor less in that respect than that which the colony have or shall authorize you to do." Amendments in 1655 and 1661 did not change the form in essential particulars. The general court of election met annually on the Tuesday following the fif- teenth day of May in successive years by turn in Providence, Portsmouth, Newport and War- wick. Town election meetings for choosing the six commissioners from each town who made up the parliamentary General Court, were held annually on the first Tuesday in May. Laws passed by the General Court were still subject to veto by referendum of the freemen. While the records contain nothing that would indicate the annulment of any law by the referendum process, the freemen clung tenaciously to this procedure for curbing their parliamentary rep- resentatives. Perhaps the referendum had a more salutary effect as a preventive rather than a corrective. The referendum law of 1650 was revised in 1658 and again in 1660. The amended law of 1658 required the sending of copies of laws to the towns within ten days after the adjournment of the court, and allowed ten days for the publishing of the laws in the towns and the discussion of them. "And in case the free inhabitants of each town, or the major part of them do in a lawful assembly vote down any law, and seal up the votes and send them to the General Recorder within the said ten days, and that by the votes it doth appear that the major part of the people in each town have so disallowed it, then such a law to be in no force." The amendment literally required a majority in each of the four towns against an act to nullify it. In 1660 a further amendment was made, which extended the time for the referendum to three months, and permitted the majority of the free inhabitants of the colony to veto the law, thus: "As also we further enact that it appearing by the return of the votes that the major part of the free inhabitants of this colony have disapproved or disannulled any such law or laws, then the said law or laws to be of no force; although any one town or other should be wholly silent therein."
Political changes taking place in relatively rapid succession in England were reflected in the style of issuing writs and other court orders. Up to 1654 writs were issued "under the title of the liberties of England," etc. From 1654 to 1659 writs and other process were issued "in the name of his highness the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, and dominions thereto." In 1659 the form was again changed to read in the name "of the supreme authority of the Commonwealth of England," and in 1660, following the Restoration "in his royal majesty's name." In 1776 the act declaring Rhode Island's independence substituted for the name of the King on writs "the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." In 1655 an oath of allegiance to the government of England was ordered administered to all inhabitants. Four courts of trial were held annually, one in each of the towns. Portsmouth and Newport were permitted to conduct local courts jointly or separately as suited their convenience; similar permission was given to Providence and Warwick. The laws were revised in 1654, and "the general bulk of laws that were in force for this colony at the time of Mr. Coddington's commission was brought to Rhode Island" were declared to be in force until repealed by a court of commissioners. Towns were ordered to provide prisons in 1654; the order was repeated two years later, and in 1658, as in the matter of courts, reciprocity between Newport and Portsmouth, and between Providence and Warwick in maintaining prisons was permitted. For the first time taxes were mentioned in the colonial record for 1655, when the General Court of commissioners was authorized to order general taxes from time to time and apportion them to the towns; the towns to make the rates and collect the taxes. For the purpose of suppressing factions, it was ordered in 1655 that the "ringleader or ringleaders of factions or divisions amongst us" be sent to England for trial and punishment there. No one ever was sent.
Roger Williams in 1655 undertook negotiations with Massachusetts for the release of the Pawtuxet men from subjection to that colony. There were then only four families involved, those of Stephen Arnold, who wished release; Zachariah Rhodes, who was techni-
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cally "banished" from Massachusetts as a Baptist; and William Arnold and William Car- penter. Stephen Arnold and Zachariah Rhodes were among the freemen admitted from Providence in 1658. The court of commissioners offered to arbitrate differences with the Pawtuxet men, without prejudice, in 1656. William Arnold and William Carpenter, on their request, were released by Massachusetts in 1658. It is questionable whether it was the elec- tion of Benedict Arnold, son of William Arnold, as Governor in that year which shamed his father into return to Rhode Island citizenship, so much as the depredations committed upon his property by his late associate and ally, Pomham, the Indian sachem, who felt safe at last in robbing Arnold, far away from the protection of Massachusetts, and not entitled to that of Rhode Island because of his denial of the jurisdiction of the colony. The release of Pawtuxet by Massachusetts cleared the way for effective dealing with the Indians there. Pomham was ordered to remove from Warwick by the King's commissioners April 7, 1665. In 1657 Roger Williams preferred charges of treason against William Harris because of statements in a book written by Harris that Williams interpreted as anarchistic. The parties were heard on July 4, and on the report of a committee it was voted to send the book to England, with the charges, the committee finding passages in the book that were "both con- temptuous and seditious." The ship carrying the papers was lost at sea. Roger Williams has been critcised for inconsistency in bringing the charge of treason against Harris, who was his lifelong "loving friend" and also his most persistent opponent in the internal affairs of the town of Providence. But it is clear from the writings of Roger Williams that his unlimited belief in soul liberty and liberty of conscience did not extend to palliation of opinions that were destructive of orderly society. Harris was a pronounced individualist ; after a career in the town of Providence that marked him as perhaps the most litigious inhabi- tant in a period when all Providence men were as litigious almost as those good old Romans who felt that they were never good citizens when not engaged in law suits, he became an outstanding leader in the attempt to deprive Rhode Island of the Narragansett Indian country .*
RESTORATION IN ENGLAND AND EFFECT IN RHODE ISLAND-Charles II was proclaimed in Rhode Island as King on October 19, 1660, and October 21 was declared a holiday, "that all children and servants shall have their liberty for that day." The court of commissioners on October 18 ordered a commission sent to John Clarke as agent and attorney for the colony to attend "unto the preservation of all and singular the privileges, liberties, boundaries and immunities of this colony." In the following year Benedict Arnold, John Greene, William Dyer, Randall Holden, Samuel Gorton, and Roger Williams were named as a sub-committee, one or two to go to England as agents of the colony. It was voted to raise £200 to pay the expense of agents in England ; to demand the charter of Providence Plantations from Roger Williams, and to send it and other documents to England. With the return of Charles II to the throne, the Parliamentary Patent, unless ratified by the King, was a nullity, and Rhode Island was back once more in the position of a colony without a government resting upon the sanction of the home government. The Parliament that had granted the Warwick Patent had been in rebellion against King Charles I. From the point of view of the sovereign, all that had been done by or through the Parliamentary governments were acts of rebels. Exactly the same situation had arisen in England as was suggested with reference to the Southern Confederacy in revolt against the United States. Following the Civil War an amendment to the Constitution of the United States repudiated the debts incurred by the South, and for- bade repayment by Congress or any of the states. The reason was illegitimacy. So Charles II, following the Restoration, dated the year of his own reign from the beheading of his father. Rhode Island saluted him in 1660 as in the twelfth year of his reign. With reference to the years intervening, while Parliament and Cromwell were in control in England, all was blank. Rhode Island needed a new charter; there was no likelihood that the new imperialist
*Chapter V.
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in the person of Charles II would underwrite a document issued by the Parliament that had driven his father from his capital, and eventually had condemned him to death. Rhode Island's course in offering to surrender the Parliamentary Patent was proper; the petition for a new charter presented by John Clarke as Rhode Island's agent was also in order.
John Clarke, who had gone to England as agent for inhabitants of the Island towns to present their protest against the Coddington commission and to procure its revocation, remained in England. Besides practicing his profession as physician, he continued to repre- sent the colony of Providence Plantations as occasion demanded; correspondence passed regularly between him and the officers of the colony. In 1656 he procured and sent to the colony four barrels of powder and eight barrels of shot and bullets, for which he was thanked; the assembly undertook to raise £ 100 to repay him. The colony also placed £200 at his disposal while he was conducting negotiations for the Charter of 1663, and ordered repayment of all his expenses and a further grant of £ 100. He may or may not have received the money; in 1676, just before his death, John Clarke claimed £400 as still due and unpaid. The colony experienced difficulty in collecting the levies laid on the towns for general colony purposes. The colony courts were sustained principally from the fees paid by litigants.
John Clarke presented two letters to his majesty's council on behalf "of the purchasers and free inhabitants of Rhode Island and of the colony of Providence Plantations on the Narragansett Bay in New England." In the first letter he recited that the petitioners "were necessitated long since for cause of conscience, with respect to the worship and service of God, to take up a resolution to quit their dear and native country," and had emigrated to America and established a state on the basis of compact in the midst of the aboriginal inhabi- tants. He continued to relate the obtaining of a charter, and the setting up of government under it, and the colony's prompt proclamation of the return of the King to his throne, as evidence of their loyalty. He prayed that "under the wing of royal protection" they might "not only be sheltered, but caused to flourish in civil and religious concernments in these remote parts of the world." The letter was in the language of the period, with so much flattery for his majesty as to indicate the able diplomacy of John Clarke, though he was much more democrat than royalist. The second letter, while repeating much of the recital of fact and episode in the first letter, concluded with a prayer incorporating language that subsequently was repeated in the Charter: "And have it much in their hearts (if they may be permitted) to hold forth a lively experiment that a flourishing civil state may stand, yea, and best be maintained, and that among English spirits, with a full liberty in religious con- cernments, and that true piety rightly grounded upon gospel principles will give the best and greatest security to true sovereignty, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obliga- tions to truer loyalty." John Clarke asked for "a more absolute, ample and free charter of civil incorporation, whereby under the wing of your royal protection, we may not only be sheltered, but (having the blessing of the Most High superadded as from former experience we have good grounds to expect) may be caused to flourish in our civil and religious con- cernments in these remote parts of the world, so shall your servants take themselves greatly obliged, while they are quietly permitted with freedom of conscience to worship the Lord their God, as they are persuaded, to pray for the life of the King, even that he may live for ever and ever." Both letters are remarkable for the emphasis placed upon religious lib- erty and liberty of conscience. The idea was not novel to King Charles II; he had been restored to the throne of England and Scotland following the proclamation of Breda, in which he had promised his British subjects complete religious toleration. Under date of July 8, 1663, John Clarke received from the King for Rhode Island the most liberal charter, civil and religious, ever granted by a monarch to his subjects. It established a republic in the Narragansett Bay country, with forms of government so democratic that no change of them was needed following the Rhode Island Declaration of Independence on May 4, 1776, to com-
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plete a sovereign, independent republican nation, and none was needed to make Rhode Island, through ratification of the Constitution of the United States, a state in the Federal Union meeting in every detail the requirement of "a republican form of government."
THE CHARTER OF 1663-The Charter of 1663 recited that the petitioners for it, "pur- chasers and free inhabitants of our island, called Rhode Island, and the rest of the colony of Providence Plantations, .... pursuing, with peaceable and loyal minds, their sober, serious and religious intentions of godly edifying themselves, and one another, in the holy Christian faith and worship, as they were persuaded; together with the gaining over and conversion of the poor, ignorant Indian natives .... to the sincere profession and obedi- ence of the same faith and worship did . . .. transport themselves out of this kingdom of England into America, but also, since their arrival there, after their first settlement amongst other our subjects in those parts, for the avoiding of discord, and those many evils which were likely to ensue upon some of those our subjects not being able to bear, in these remote parts, their different apprehensions in religious concernments, and in pursuance of the afore- said ends, did once again leave their desirable stations and habitations, and . ... did trans- plant themselves into the midst of the Indian natives, . ... where, by the good Providence of God, from whom the Plantations have taken their name, upon their labor and industry, they have not only been preserved . . but have increased and prospered, .... ; they having by near neighborhood to and friendly society with the great body of the Narragansett Indians, given them encouragement of their own accord, to subject themselves, their people and lands, unto us; whereby, as is hoped, there may, in time, by the blessing of God upon their endeavors be laid a sure foundation of happiness to all America." The charter con- tinued: "And, whereas, in their humble address, they have freely declared, that it is much on their hearts (if they may be permitted) to hold forth a lively experiment, that a most flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained, and that among our English subjects, with a full liberty in religious concernments; and that true piety rightly grounded upon gospel principles, will give the best and greatest security to sovereignty, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to true loyalty. .... and because some of the people and inhabitants of the same colony cannot, in their private opinions, conform to the public exercise of religion, according to the liturgy, forms and ceremonies of the Church of England, or take or subscribe the oaths and articles made and established in that behalf," we "have therefore thought fit, and do hereby publish, grant, ordain and declare, that our royal will and pleasure is, that no person within the said colony, at any time hereafter shall be any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinion in matters of religion, and do not actually disturb the civil peace of our said colony; but that all and every person and persons may, from time to time, and at all times hereafter, freely and fully have and enjoy his and their own judgments and consciences, in matters of religious concern- ments, throughout the tract of land hereafter mentioned, they behaving themselves peaceably and quietly, and not using this liberty to licentiousness and profaneness, nor to the civil injury or outward disturbance of others, any law, statute, or clause therein contained, or to be contained, usage or custom of this realm, to the contrary hereof, in any wise notwithstand- ing; .... and to create and make them a body politic or corporate, with the powers and privileges hereinafter mentioned."
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