USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. I > Part 5
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101
18
RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
razzano ninety years before, and gave it his own name-Block Island. He visited Narra- gansett Bay, and sailed beyond along the coast of southeastern Massachusetts so far as Cape Cod. Block returned to Holland on another Dutch vessel, which had been part of the squadron including the "Tiger." His discoveries, and the accurate maps later published in Holland, led directly to the Dutch colonization of Manhattan Island, and the location of Dutch trading posts by the Dutch West India Company at favorable places along the Con- necticut and Rhode Island shores and at Dutch Island in Narragansett Bay. By that time the efforts of the English to colonize the coast of North America were approaching success ; the Dutch were soon to cease to be effective factors in the determination of American history, leaving France and England to face each other eventually in the battle for an empire.
CHAPTER III. EARLY RHODE ISLAND SETTLERS.
OR the failure of Christopher Columbus to find China or India, Spain quickly found ample compensation in the wealth of tropical and semi-tropical lands scarcely realized by primitive native races and awaiting exploitation by Euro- peans. Colonization of the new lands followed discovery so closely as almost to be simultaneous ; thus, Columbus founded a colony at Navidad, Hayti, on his first voyage. On his second voyage he commanded a fleet of seventeen vessels, carrying 1500 persons, and founded two colonies. Romantic tales of conquistadors like Hernando Cortez and Francisco Pizarro yield in human interest to the story of the building of a New Spain in America, the rise of commercial cities, the spreading of European culture in a more luxuriant setting in the new world than on the bleak plains and rugged hills of Spain, the establishment of missions and churches, schools and universities, and the setting up of printing presses, books, pamphlets and maps from which are counted among the most precious possessions of Brown University in the John Carter Brown Library of Americana. Within the present United States, St. Augustine in Florida, 1565, and Santa Fe in New Mexico, 1605, were founded by Spaniards. The second half of the sixteenth century witnessed three failures by the French Admiral de Caligny to establish Huguenot colonies in America, and likewise the failure of Raleigh's colony at Roanoke Island. The French were successful at Port Royal, 1604, as were the English at Jamestown, 1607, and at Plymouth, 1620, and the Dutch at New Amsterdam, 1626. With the Puritan settlement at Massachusetts Bay in 1630 a great migration from England westward was in full swing. Dr. James Truslow Adams, in "The Founding of New England," estimated the total of English emigration in ten years preceding 1640 as having exceeded 65,000, of whom perhaps 18,000 were in New England as follows : Massachusetts, 14,000; Connecticut, 2000; Maine and New Hampshire, 1500; Rhode Island, 300. The fishery at Newfoundland, active since 1500, attracted 10,000 fishermen six months of the year. The presence of fishermen along the coast of New England explains the "wrought copper" ornaments worn by the Indians and described by Verrazzano, the bronze- tipped arrows found by the Pilgrims among those in use by Wampanoags in 1620, the "wel- come" in English extended to the Pilgrims by Samoset as he marched down the village street at Plymouth in the spring of 1621, and the fluency in English of Squanto, the Indian inter- preter and guide of the Pilgrims. That there were economic causes for the great English migration paramount to the religious causes alleged as the reason for some part of the move- ment is disclosed by careful study. The failure of Massachusetts to permit liberty of con- science, in a colony alleged to have been founded to secure liberty of conscience, is somewhat less inexplicable if the migration of the Puritans is studied from the point of view of eco- nomics. In this field there is no more informing work than the "Founding of New England."
The type of fishing village that was not uncommon along the coast of what is now Maine even before the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth in 1620, and that induced Henry Sweetser Bur- rage to maintain that Maine rather than Massachusetts was scene of the earliest English per- manent colonization in New England, appears not to have been established in Rhode Island, although it is not unlikely that Narragansett Bay was visited occasionally by the hardy fisher- men who sought on this side of the Atlantic sea food for European markets 3000 miles away. The Dutch West India Company established a trading post at Dutch Island so early as 1625, having purchased from the Indians the island which they called "Quotenis," near the "Rhode Island," and two other trading posts in what is now Charlestown. Abraham Pietersen was
20
RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
the factor at Dutch Island. The Indians, in April, 1632, attacked a house at Sowamset, now Warren, which was occupied by three men as a temporary trading post. Yet there was no permanent white settlement in Rhode Island until 1634, when William Blackstone sold his land in Shawmut, Boston, purchased cattle, and removed to Study Hill, in Cumberland, near the river which still bears his name above the falls at Pawtucket and from its source in Mas- sachusetts. Blackstone had lived some ten years in Shawmut, anticipating by five or six years the Puritan settlement. He was a clergyman of the Church of England, who had left England, and like so many others subsequently, left Massachusetts for conscience's sake. He is reported as having said, "I left England to get from under the lord bishops, but in America I am fallen under the power of the lord brethren." He maintained friendly relations with the Puritan settlers, nevertheless, and visited Boston, as well as Providence occasionally. He is said to have planted the first orchard in Massachusetts, and also the first apple orchard in Rhode Island. A seventeenth century forerunner of Luther Burbank, "he had the first (apple) of that sort called yellow sweetings that were ever in the world perhaps, the richest and most delicious apple of the whole kind." To "encourage his younger hearers" when he preached in Providence he "gave them the first apples they ever saw." William Blackstone continued living at Study Hill until his death, May 26, 1675. The Blackstone house and library were burned by Indians during King Philip's War. Study Hill was leveled in the nineteenth century to make way for the railroad yard near Valley Falls.
William Blackstone had led the life of a recluse; he was a man of scholarly disposition and habits, who found a solace for his discontent with human society in the seventeenth century in the brooding solitude of the wilderness-at Shawmut, first, where with his family he lived alone until the coming of the Puritans brought him neighbors and a kind of meddle- some neighborliness that soon aroused anew his discontent, this time with the "lord brethren," and, later, at Study Hill, where he was sufficiently and satisfactorily so far removed from intruding companionship as to live contentedly for the forty years that preceded his death. Neither he nor William Arnold, of whom it is alleged that he and his family removed from Massachusetts to that place which is now called Providence on April 30, 1636, two months earlier than Roger Williams, was the dominating influence in the establishment of Provi- dence Plantations or Rhode Island. In the instance of neither Blackstone nor Arnold was there fact or episode so transcendental as to give to either more than an incidental mention in history. Nor was it the success of Roger Williams in the organization of a commonwealth, for of this there remains a question to which attaches a reasonable doubt, so much as his defence and maintenance against tremendous opposition of principles of human liberty and justice, that have given him enduring renown that grows with the ages, and that have made the history of Rhode Island significant for America and for all mankind.
ROGER WILLIAMS SETTLES-In June, 1636, Roger Williams, with one, or perhaps sev- eral, companions paddled a canoe down the Seekonk River, around India Point and Fox Point into the Providence River, and thence into the Moshassuck River, and on the easterly bank of the last, near and convenient to a spring of fresh water that still flows and has since then borne the name of Roger Williams, began a settlement to which he gave the name Provi- dence in recognition of and thankfulness for the Providence of God, which had guided him This was the actual beginning of Providence Plantations and of Rhode Island; it had ante- cedents that require retrospect into the causes that had induced Roger Williams to venture thus into the Indian country, as well as consequences that made history.
Roger Williams was born, probably in London, in 1603, son of James Williams, a mer- chant tailor, and of Alice Williams, born Alice Pemberton. The date of his birth is given otherwise variously as 1599, 1601, 1604 and 1607; and the place of his birth as Gwinear in Cornwall, and as Maestroiddyn in Wales. The confusion as to identification arises from the facts (I) that there were two other persons of distinction who were born at the same period
21
EARLY RHODE ISLAND SETTLERS
and named Roger Williams; (2) that Roger Williams had a brother, named Robert Wil- liams, who was a resident of and teacher at Newport, for whom he has been mistaken prob- ably because of the somewhat similar sound of the names, and (3) that there was also at the period a man named Roderick Williams living in England. Rejecting a probably erroneous identification with a man named Williams, who was graduated from Oxford University, it appears that Roger Williams, founder of Providence Plantations and Rhode Island, was in his youth a shorthand reporter of the proceedings before the Court of Star Chamber, and there drew to himself the attention and patronage of Sir Edward Coke, who was afterward Chief Justice of England. Sir Edward Coke sent Roger Williams to Charter House to be prepared for college, and Roger Williams was graduated from Pembroke College in Cam- bridge University in January, 1626-1627,* with the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In recogni- tion thereof the first building constructed exclusively for the Women's College in Brown University was named Pembroke Hall, and when, in 1928, the Women's College became a distinct unit in the University, it was named Pembroke College.
Sir Edward Coke intended to prepare Roger Williams for jurisprudence; the latter for- sook law for theology, and was ordained in the Church of England. Later he rejected prefer- ment and promotion in the Church of England, and became a non-conformist of pronounced type. Not an adherent of the Puritan party in England, he found himself not in harmony with the Puritan party that controlled the identical civil and ecclesiastical organization of the theocracy in Boston; he appears to have been closer in doctrine to the Pilgrims of Plymouth than to the Puritans of Massachusetts. It has been suggested that Roger Williams did not know when he sailed from Bristol, England, December 1, 1630, on the ship "Lyon," that the Puritans had not separated from the Church of England, as the Pilgrims had before going to Holland. He found the Puritans not only not separated, but actually maintaining in America an established church supported by the civil state. Arrived at Nantasket on Febru- ary 5, 1631, and at Boston a few days later, Roger Williams was welcomed as a "godly min- ister." Still, he declined an invitation to join the congregation of the church at Boston as teacher, alleging two reasons, first, that "they would not make a public declaration of their repentance for having communion with the churches in England while they lived there," which would be tantamount to a declaration of separation, and, secondly, that the civil "mag- istrate might not punish the breach of the Sabbath. . as it was a breach of the first
table." The latter refers to the classification of the Ten Commandments into two groups, one dealing with man's relations to God, and the other with man's relations to his fellowmen, to wit, the last six commandments. Roger Williams, in his denunciation of the prerogative assumed by the civil magistrate to punish for offences against religion not amounting to a breach of the peace, had already attained to understanding of fundamental principles of reli- gious liberty and of separation of state and church that have become American; and at the same time had marked himself for that persecution by the Puritan theocracy that reached a climax in Massachusetts in the edict of banishment pronounced against him in 1635, and that followed him thereafter so long as he lived. The edict of banishment has never been repealed ;; nor has Massachusetts ratified the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which embodies the doctrine of Roger Williams. The persecution was begun almost immediately; its persistent pursuit was far too relentless and too vindictive to make tenable claims by apologists for Massachusetts that the offence of Roger Williams was not principally so much religious as political and economic. As a matter of fact, the conflict between Roger Williams and Massachusetts was religious, so far as it involved fundamental questions of doctrine; was political, so far as he challenged the theocratic union of civil and religious agencies, civil support of religion, and misuse of the power of the state to enforce
*January, 1626, Julian calendar, old style; January, 1627, Gregorian calendar, new style. The Gregor- ian calendar made January, instead of March, the first month.
¡Massachusetts rejected bills to repeal it, 1774, 1776, 1900, 1929.
22
RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
religious discipline; and economic, so far as he became an obstacle to the plans of the theocracy to bring all of New England under its control, with the magistrates-ministers in Boston as rulers.
Invited by the church at Salem to become an assistant to the minister, Roger Williams accepted, in spite of a protest to the Salem church from the Puritan magistrates at Boston, but continued for only a few months because of the persistent objection of the lord brethren. With his wife, Mary Barnard, who had emigrated with him on the ship "Lyon," he removed to Plymouth, and there for two years was an assistant to the minister of the church. During that period he established a firm and enduring friendship with Massasoit, Chief Sachem of the Wampanoag Indians, and with the warriors of the tribe and of the Narragansetts, who later, during King Philip's war, refused to molest Roger Williams when he ventured among them, although they burned the town of Providence. Equally firm and lasting were friend- ships with Canonicus and Miantonomah, Chief Sachems of the Narragansett Indians. Roger Williams was the intermediary passing between Massasoit and Canonicus and ending an old enmity that had estranged the sachems. Visiting the Indians frequently, Roger Williams laid the foundation for that knowledge of the Indian language which enabled him later to write and publish his "Key to the Language of America." Roger Williams was a gifted linguist; besides being a proficient stenographer, he knew Latin, Greek and Hebrew, of ancient languages, and English, Dutch and French; of vernacular languages. While in England, 1651- 1654, he exchanged the reading (or translation) of languages with John Milton, and gave lessons in languages to sons of a member of Parliament, to earn money to defray his expenses. He employed "the objective method, by words and phrases used colloquially, as distinguished from the analytic method of the ordinary grammars." While at Plymouth he continued to exercise the propensity for argument and discussion that was characteristic throughout his life, and wrote a treatise on the royal patent, in which he maintained the thesis that the title to land in America could not be acquired through grant from the King of England, but only through purchase from the Indian owners settled on the land. This distinction between sovereignty and ownership became a settled conviction with Roger Williams, and explains the infinite care with which later in Rhode Island he conducted transactions with the Indians involving titles to land. It is also the accepted doctrine of modern international law, to wit, that a change of sovereignty does not affect the title to land, which continues in the original owners, and may be taken from them only by purchase by individuals, or by due process of law and with just compensation in the exercise of eminent domain.
Recalled to the Salem church as assistant minister in 1633, and chosen its pastor in 1634, Roger Williams found himself almost continually subjected to inquisition by the Boston authorities, civil and religious. He was called frequently to answer charges against him ; that he gave ample cause therefor is true if it be admitted that Roger Williams was wrong, and that the Puritans were right; and there is no doubt that Roger Williams was obstinately opinionated and loved argument. Others who incurred the displeasure of the magistrates were silenced or banished; Roger Williams continued to be an outspoken advocate of truth as he saw the truth. So early as 1631 the General Court had limited freemanship (or citizen- ship) to members of churches, which involved the rejection of all not of the Puritan com- munion, and effectually reduced the number of freemen to a small fraction of the population. In 1634 a more drastic oath of fidelity to the government was prescribed. Perhaps it was this oath that precipitated William Blackstone's decision to remove from Boston. Roger Williams raised the question as to the right to administer an oath to a sinful man, on the ground that he and the officer administering the oath were thus induced to take the name of God in vain. It was his general opposition to oaths in any form, quite as much as the Quaker attitude, that induced the form of civil engagement, originating in Rhode Island, by affirma- tion instead of oath if preferred. The persecution of Roger Williams continued. Along with
23
EARLY RHODE ISLAND SETTLERS
other things of a trivial nature, yet magnified by those who sought his ruin, he was accused successively (1) of denying the validity of land titles based upon the royal patent, (2) of denying the right to engage a sinful man by oath, since the oath became a violation of the commandment as a taking of the name of God in vain, (3) of denying the right of the civil authority to punish offences against religion not amounting to disturbances of the peace, and (4) of appealing to the people of other churches than those at Boston and Salem to join with him in protest against the action of the General Court, then controlled absolutely by the Puritan zealots. When the town of Salem petitioned the General Court for land at Marble- head belonging to the town, the petition was denied solely because of the alleged contempt of the church at Salem in engaging Roger Williams as minister and in retaining him in opposi- tion to the known wishes of the Boston Puritans! Thus the civil authority in the General Court maintained (I) a right to identify the civil agency of town with the ecclesiastical agency of church, and (2) undertook to coerce the ecclesiastical agency by refusing justice to the civil agency. There could be no clearer definition of the issue of Theocracy vs. Democracy, and the case is stated with Theocracy as plaintiff and Democracy as defendant because the former was aggressive in its purpose to overawe and crush opposition and to establish itself firmly. On October 1, 1635, Roger Williams was formally exiled, the edict of banishment reading thus :
WHEREAS, Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the church at Salem, hath broached and divulged diverse new and dangerous opinions against the authority of the magistrates : has also writ letters of defama- tion, both of the magistrates and churches here, and that before any conviction, and yet maintained the same without any retracting; it is, therefore, ordered that the said Mr. Williams shall depart out of this jurisdiction within six weeks next ensuing, which, if he neglect to perform, it shall be lawful for the Governor and two of the magistrates to send him to some place out of this jurisdiction, not to return any more without license from the court.
The edict of banishment subsequently was modified to permit Roger Williams to remain at Salem until spring, but the fear that he was still actively engaged in converting adherents to his cause, and the rumor that he planned to establish another colony as a refuge for the oppressed and persecuted induced the magistrates to summon him to Boston, in January, and on his failure to appear before them to send a posse to Salem with directions to seize Roger Williams and place him on board a ship for return to England. Roger Williams antici- pated the arrival of the posse by three days, leaving his family which consisted then of his wife, a child born at Plymouth and a newborn infant, and departing whither no one at Salem would tell Captain Underhill, who commanded the posse and who had been entrusted with the execution of the sentence. Whether Roger Williams journeyed by boat or overland from Salem is not known; the location of Salem north of Boston, and the open water of Massa- chusetts Bay, through which a boat might make its way south to Plymouth or to some harbor close to the winter quarters of Massasoit, suggested that the flight had been by water. Roger Williams did not go to Plymouth, however; it appears to be doubtful that Plymouth would offer him a refuge under the circumstances. He made his way to the winter villages of friendly Indians, and passed fourteen weeks "storm tossed," as he described the journey, in the wilderness. He visited Massasoit, and received a friendly welcome from the Chief Sachem. He purchased from Massasoit, either at this time or in 1635, land for a home and farm, and early in the spring had reached the easterly bank of the Seekonk River within what is now the town of East Providence, and began to erect a house and to plant. The news of his activity reached Plymouth, and he was requested by Governor Winslow of the Plymouth Colony, the westerly line of which extended to the Seekonk, to remove therefrom, lest a location within the Plymouth Colony affront Massachusetts. Roger Williams there- upon abandoned his farm, and made the trip down the Seekonk River which brought him to Providence. From the Slate Rock on the westerly shore of the river he was hailed by Indians
24
RHODE ISLAND-THREE CENTURIES OF DEMOCRACY
with the greeting "What cheer, netop?" Concerning this phase of the journey of Roger Williams there is doubt and disagreement, particularly with reference to the party with him. Five persons, William Harris, John Smith, Francis Wickes, Thomas Angell, and Joshua Verein, joined Roger Williams either at the plantation begun east of the Seekonk or very soon after the arrival at Providence, and with Roger Williams constituted the six original settlers. Joshua Verein was the latest arrival. Of the others Roger Williams said subse- quently "Yet out of pity I gave leave to William Harris, then poor and destitute, to come along in my company. I consented to John Smith, miller at Dorchester (banished also), to go with me, and at John Smith's desire, to a poor young fellow, Francis Wickes, as also to a lad of Richard Waterman's. These are all I remember." The "lad of Richard Water- man's" was Thomas Angell, who was believed by some writers to be the only companion actually with Roger Williams on the first trip to Providence. Roger Williams purchased land from Canonicus and Miantonomah, Chief Sachems of the Narragansett Indians. Other white men from Massachusetts and Plymouth joined the new settlement. In a deed of the land purchased from the Indians Roger Williams named twelve others as with him the thir- teen original proprietors of Providence Plantations: Stukely Westcott, William Arnold, Thomas James, Robert Cole, John Greene, John Throckmorton, William Harris, William Carpenter, Thomas Olney, Francis Weston, Richard Waterman, and Ezekiel Holyman. John Smith had died; Joshua Verein had returned to Boston; Francis Wickes and Thomas Angell were still minors when this deed was written in 1638. This was the beginning of a migration from Massachusetts ; not all of those who became discontented with the arbitrary tyranny of the Puritans came to Rhode Island. Thomas Hooker led some 800 to the Valley of the Con- necticut River in 1636, who settled at Hartford, Windsor, Wethersfield and Springfield. Out of the union of the first three towns, which were not within the territory covered by the Massachusetts patent, as Springfield was, came the state of Connecticut, first organized as a commonwealth under Fundamental Orders, still displayed to visitors to Hartford as the first constitution adopted in the United States. Hooker in a sermon preceding the adoption of the Fundamental Orders had uttered the principle of government with powers restricted by fundamental law.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.