USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the end of the century : a history, Volume 1 > Part 18
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The new administration, at their first meeting in May, 1698, took steps to repress piracy. They passed a law requiring the officers to arrest any persons with suspicious amounts of foreign coin or mer- chandise in their possession, and issued a proclamation warning the people not to harbor pirates or receive their goods. Governor Cranston also wrote a letter to the Board of Trade, in answer to the long letter of complaint received over a year before. He did the best thing that could be done in the matter, expressing ignorance of the pirates specifically named, and asserting that Rhode Island never countenanced any such illegal proceedings. But within a few weeks another letter was sent to England, slightly embarrassing these attempts at justification. Randolph, the old enemy of Rhode Island, and New England as well, stopped at Newport on his return from New York and wrote a most bitter and vindictive account of proceedings as they appeared to his eyes. After alluding to the contest between Brenton and Clarke, he began an assault upon the highest office-holders. "The Governor and his two uncles", he said, "have been very great gainers
1R. I. C. R., iii, 329-331. Although the Quaker government may be said to have come to an end, an informer of the Board of Trade asserted, in 1699, that "Mr. Cranston was one of the demi-Quakers only put in to serve the Quakers" (Palfrey, iv, 236), and Randolph wrote, in 1700, that "Cranston is the present Governor, but the Quakers have the sole administration of the Government". (Prince Soc. Publ., xxix, 253.)
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by the pirates which have frequented Rhode Island. Three or four vessels have been fitted out from thenee to the Red Sea. Walter Clarke, the late Governor, and his brother, now the Recorder of the place, have countenaneed pirates and enriched themselves thereby". The letter ended with a tirade upon Rhode Island lawlessness.
In December, 1698, the Board of Trade submitted a formidable representation to the king about the irregularities in Rhode Island. It was a general attack upon their refusal to take oaths, their unlawful assumption of admiralty power and obstruction to the court erected by the king, and their encouragement of piracy. "Their favoring of pirates and carrying on illegal trade has been so often complained of, and the instanees hereof are so manifest, that we cannot doubt the truth of it". Upon a reading of this document, it was ordered that the Earl of Bellomont be commissioned to procure legal evidenee in relation to the charges, with a view toward "a Quo Warranto, or such other proceedings for a remedy for those evils". The commission instrueted Bellomont to inquire into the provisions of their charter and laws, as well as into their so-called "irregularities", and was accompanied by a specific list of questions to be propounded to Clarke, Greene, Easton, Sanford, and Cranston.1
In September, 1699, Lord Bellomont started out for Newport to inquire into the mal-administration of Rhode Island. He was met at Portsmouth by the Governor and the assistants of the colony, aceom- panied by a small troop of horse, and was escorted to Newport. He earefully records in his journal the details and results of his week's visit, and narrates how he examined the various offieers of the govern- ment, interrogated as to the charter and laws, heard testimony eoneerning the Narragansett Country, and made a thorough investiga- tion in regard to piracy. Two months after his return to Boston he sent in to the Board of Trade a report on the state of affairs in Rhode Island. This document specified under twenty-five distinct heads wherein he judged that the colony had praetised irregularities of
1The instructions are in R. I. C. R., iii, 363. Bellomont, who had remained in New York during the first year of his administration, arrived in Boston, May 26, 1699. The following day Cranston wrote a long letter to the Board of Trade, enclosing a few copies of documents and asserting the falsity of Ran- dolph's reports. This diplomatic attempt at justification was answered by the Board of Trade with a letter of reprimand, rebuking the Rhode Islanders for not sending authentic copies of their laws, accusing them of "shuffling in their correspondence", and assuring them that "unless such a reformation be sin- cerely set about, you will inevitably fall into such inconveniencies as will make you sensible of your miscarriages, when perhaps it may be too late". (Idem, p. 376.) Lord Bellomont wrote that this reproof was a "mortification to them."
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government and had trangressed their chartered powers. Of course the subject of piracy occupies a prominent place, his finding being that "the government is notoriously faulty in countenancing and liarboring of pirates, who have openly brought in and disposed of their effects there, whereby the place has been greatly enriched. And not only plain breaches of the Acts of Trade and Navigation have been connived at, but also manifest and known piracies; and all that has been done by them on pretence of seizing and taking up of known pirates has been so slender, weak and not pursued to effect, as plainly demonstrates it was more in show, than out of any hearty zeal or desire to suppress and bring such notorous criminals to justice."
The frequent spiteful remarks he makes about the social condition of the Rhode Islanders show that they had little to expect from his friendship, and also that some of the so-called royalist faction in the colony had made good use of their opportunity to pay back old scores.1 Such statements as "The generality of the people are shame- fully ignorant, and all manner of licentiousness and profaneness does greatly abound", the attorney-general is "a poor illiterate mechanic, very ignorant", and "the assistants are generally Quakers, illiterate and of little or no capacity, several of them not able to write their names, or at least so as to be read", remind us of the denunciatory epithets of the early Massachusetts clergy, and show that, even if they were partially true, this courtly English lord could have little understood the primitive conditions in the New World. A matter of much more moment to the Rhode Island people, however, and one which promised seriously to threaten the existence of their charter, was the charge Bellomont brought against them of acting beyond their granted rights. He assumed that their electing of officers by proxy, the exercise of judicial power by the general assembly, the assumption of admiralty jurisdiction, and even the levying of taxes were all irregular and illegal because there was no express authority in the charter for so doing. The question as to whether they had transcended their power or not is surely debatable, since the charter permitted them to make laws for their own "good and welfare". But, right or wrong, the query raised operated much to Rhode Island's disfavor in the eyes of the Board of Trade. They had commissioned a competent person to make an investigation and had received from him a report
1Bellomont leaves little room for doubt as to who are meant when he refers to the "several gentlemen most sufficient for estate" who are neglected in office and maligned for their affection to his Majesty's service; and he even men- tions Brinley as one of those who make particular complaint against irregular- ities of government.
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the substance of which was expressed in its concluding sentenee: "I apprehend his Majesty is neither honored nor served by that govern- ment as at present it is managed". A few more blows like this, and Rhode Island's struggle would be ended.
During the next few months, while the matter was undergoing consideration in England, the different parties in Rhode Island were each endeavoring to obtain the favor of Lord Bellomont. Governor Cranston wrote, apologizing for not sending the required transeripts of the laws, and eoneluding that his "Lordship had taken some dis- pleasure against us"; while former Governor Clarke sent along a letter that would to-day be considered a rather strange combination of religion and flattery. The letters of the Brinley faction contained much more substanee than those of their opponents, since to bring charges was evidently easier than to make exeuses. Peleg Sanford wrote a skillfully worded letter, chiefly about the pirates and the infringement of charter privileges. Resentfully did he assert: "Let a man's intentions be never so resolved faithfully to discharge his Majesty's commands, it's not to be effeeted so long as the government remains as now constituted". Brinley himself, who had been re- quested by Bellomont to aid in obtaining a transcript of the Rhode Island laws, sent frequent letters of complaint. When he found that Cranston had forwarded a copy without giving him notice, he drew up a severe arraignment of Rhode Island legislation in general, and of several arbitrary acts in particular. "We are well satisfied", he says, "that the laws are not transeribed as they stand on record. There are more acts, perhaps one-third or more, that they sent not unto your Lordship, having thrown them aside, and passed an aet that those sent are our body of laws, to the deeeption of his Majesty and the grievance of the subjeets, who have suffered and have been kept in bondage under laws they are ashamed should be seen.
We dare not presume to give your Lordship a further aeeount of our miscarriages, for fear our report should not gain eredit with your Lordship; our enormities being so great and numerous, may surpass belief. As we are, we are not fit nor eapable to be a govern- ment".
With all this amount of evidenee against Rhode Island in his possession, Bellomont made occasional mention of the eolony in his reports to the home government. In one of his letters he says: "I reecived not the laws of Rhode Island til the 23rd of last month, which I now transmit to your Lordships ; it seems that government has taken all this time to prune and polish 'em. And yet after all, I believe the
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ANDROS AND THE ROYAL GOVERNORS, 1686-1701.
world never saw such a parcel of fustian". Brinley's frequent allusions to the oppressions of himself and his friends in Narragansett Country also attracted Bellomont's attention. He refers to the "great violence done the people there by the government of Rhode Island, in levying taxes on them out of all measure and proportion. That people is much to be pitied, for I look upon them to live in a state of war, while the rest of the King's subjects live in peace and quietness".1
On April 8, 1700, the Board of Trade took action upon Bellomont's report. They sent an abstract of the document to the king and recommended that it be referred to the law officers of the crown, "to consider what method may be most proper for bringing the colony under a better form of government". In fact, the arbitrary acts of all the chartered colonies, and of Rhode Island in particular, led the English officials to believe that they were "thirsting for independ- ence". The Lords of Trade, in a report to the king, asserted that those colonies which had charters "had not only assumed the power of making by-laws repugnant to the laws of England and destructive to trade, but they refused to transmit their Acts, or to allow appeals, and continued to be the retreat of pirates and illegal traders, and the receptacle of contraband merchandise"; that "these irregularities, arising from the ill use they made of their charters, and in the inde- pendency they pretended to, evinced how necessary it became, more and more every day, to introduce such a regulation of trade, and such an administration of government, as should make them duly sub- servient to England"; and that, "since the royal commands had not met with due obedience, it might be expedient to resume their charters, and to reduce them to the same dependence as other colonies, which would be best effected by the legislative power of the kingdom."2
Governor Cranston, foreseeing the storm that was impending, wrote a letter to the king, imploring pardon for failures and weaknesses and begging a continuance of charter privileges. He also informed the Board of Trade that the late deputy-governor had been deprived of office on account of his illegally granting privateer commissions, and that a more perfect copy of the laws was to be made and sent under seal. But all his excuses and supplications could have scarcely stood ground against the complaints of Rhode Island's enemies, had not a sudden event deprived the colony of her most formidable opponent. The death of Lord Bellomont in New York, on March 5, 1701, removed
'Bellomont's Journal, Report, and all the above correspondence are in R. I. C. R., iii, 385-400.
2Palfrey, iv, 200.
.
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a powerful adversary, one who, in his charges, aimed at the most vital defects of her government, and who would never allow his persistenee to be weakened by entreaty or adulation. The influence of the aeeusations which he had already made might even yet have . worked harm to Rhode Island, had not another death oeeurred before the end of the following year. Seareely had the board recommended that the colonies be reduced to a state of dependeney, when the king's death, in Mareh, 1702, changed the whole course of events and post- poned all consideration of the subjeet.
Rhode Island had passed through the most dangerous erisis in her history. As Arnold remarks, "That she was not utterly erushed beneath the eumulative evidence of every kind of irregularity that was hurled upon her by the indefatigable zeal and the consummate ability of Bellomont, ean seareely be accounted for by any human ageney. It is the greatest marvel in the history of Rhode Island in the seventeenth century".1 How far she ean be held responsible for the several charges made against her is a question of considerable doubt. As regards piraey, it was certainly never proved that the colony as a whole favored this illieit trade. That persons elaiming residenee in Rhode Island were engaged in the traffie, and that eertain ones high in authority may have used their offiee to obtain money from those so engaged, may perhaps have been true; but that there was any actual complieity between the colony as a government, and the pirates, as was so often charged, was never shown by any letter or report submitted to the English authorities. The commodious harbors of Narragansett Bay naturally served as a shelter for the privateers and later for the freebooters, while the ease with which commissions eould be obtained, both during and after the war, brought many adventurers to Rhode Island who reaped rieh rewards at the expense of the colony's reputation.2
The charges which Rhode Island found it more difficult to answer were those which Bellomont made regarding her general infringement of charter privileges. Only unless we aeeept his interpretation of these privileges as eorreet, ean we agree with him that Rhode Island was at fault. Though ignoring the diseretionary power which the colony legally possessed, he would have construed the eharter as virtually depriving the people of all rights of self-government. The
'Arnold, i, 552.
2Randolph, writing in 1700, reported that "7 or 800 buccaneers in the West Indies were resolved to get possession of Rhode Island, being a place abound- ing in provisions". (Prince Soc. Publ., xxix, 253.)
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THE ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR CRANSTON.
English authorities, when they had granted certain privileges to a straggling settlement, could not seem to understand how that settle- ment could exercise those very same rights after it had attained to a full-grown colony.
Although Rhode Island had emerged from all these dangers unimpaired, she can scarcely be said to have become invul- nerable to her enemies. Her independence, her unusual privi- leges accorded by charter, and her persistence in maintaining what she believed to be her rights, led her into further controversies with the royal governors, and rendered her future still a matter of con- siderable uncertainty. She had entered upon the beginning of a new century, but she had by no means finished her struggle for existence.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR CRANSTON.
The death of Bellomont, although warding off for the time being the almost sure revocation of Rhode Island's charter, did not entirely free the colony from possible danger. The person chosen to succeed that aggressive official was the able and energetic Joseph Dudley, who, now that he had the royal authority behind him, could make atonement for some of the indignities that he had suffered under the Andros revolution ten years before. There was one point in his commission that was of vital interest to Rhode Island-that clause which made hin Captain-General of her forces and Vice-Admiral of her whole territory. One of his first duties, in September, 1702, was to visit Newport, accompanied by several members of his council, to assume his command. Governor Cranston referred him to the charter of 1663, which made the power over the militia one of the privileges of the colony, and further said that nothing would be done about yield- ing those privileges until the advice of the assembly had been asked. Angered at this refusal to obey his commands, he went over to the Narragansett Country, where the inhabitants cordially welcomed him and accepted his commission. A few days afterward, the assembly wrote Dudley that since there were no express orders from the Queen demanding the surrender of the militia, they considered it their duty
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to continue the same as formerly. Dudley, like the other royal gov- ernors before him, could not conceive how so small a colony could offer such bold resistance, and quickly wrote home his opinion of that government, thus again imitating his predecessors. His assertion that the Quakers "raved indecently" at the publication of his commission, and his pleasant allusion to the Narragansett weleome, show that the anti-Quaker element was not backward in volunteering information. The peroration of his report reminds us strongly of some of Lord Bellomont's documents. "My Lords", he says, "I am humbly of opinion that I do my duty to aequaint your Lordships that the government of Rhode Island in the present hands is a scandal to her Majesty's government. It is a very good settlement with about two thousand armed men in it. And no man in the government of any estate or education, though in the province there be men of very good estates, ability and loyalty; but the Quakers will by no means admit them to any trust, nor would they now aeeept it, in hopes of a dissolution of that misrule, and that they may be brought under Her Majesty's immediate government in all things which the major part by mueh of the whole people would pray for, but dare not for fear of the oppression and affront of the Quakers' party making a noise of their charter".1
Thus did Rhode Island obtain the enmity of Dudley at the very beginning of his administration. It was not long before another test was to be made of their respective powers. In September, 1702, the Massachusetts Governor, by virtue of his position as Viee-Admiral, attempted to interfere with the proceedings of the admiralty court at Newport, which had been established by a colony law of 1695. Rhode Island's resistance brought forth the usual condemnatory letter to the Board of Trade. A year later Dudley's efforts indueed the Board of Trade to ask the attorney-general's official opinion as to whether Rhode Island's exereise of admiralty jurisdiction did not furnish sufficient cause for the repeal of the charter. That officer replied that since the act was limited in its terms "until His Majesty's pleasure be further known", it did not warrant a forfeiture of the eliarter, but advised that the colony should be ordered to repcal the aet. This was accordingly done and all admiralty affairs were placed in the lands of Dudley. Since the reasons for the annulling of the act included several serious charges against Rhode Island, the Governor took occasion to write a letter of explanation to the Board of Trade,
1R. I. C. R., iii, 463.
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THE ADMINISTRATION OF GOVERNOR CRANSTON.
showing that the absence of any English constituted court made the creation of a local court for the judging of prizes a necessity.1 But even valid excuses could not make much headway against Dudley's charges, and when the New York Governor reported that Rhode Island had refused to help him in his war against the French and Indians, the colony's name was regarded with added disfavor. Little could she do when such powerful enemies at home and abroad were striving to bring all the chartered colonies into a general colonial government. She, at least, was not the only colony under a cloud, as Connecticut was visited with much similar denunciation with the same end in view.
By February 12, 1705, the Board of Trade had prepared charges against both colonies and caused copies to be sent to the Royal Governor to collect evidence and to the colonial governors to make ready their defence. The indictment against Rhode Island was drawn up under thirteen heads, some of which were repetitions and only a few important. Dudley spent much time in obtaining proof to sustain each charge, and finally submitted a mass of forty-two documents, which must have looked formidable to any one unacquainted with the subject, but which were chiefly accusations against irresponsible in- dividuals and not against the colony.2 The charge that Rhode Island neglected the acts of navigation and countenanced piracy the colony denied, asserting that they not only detested such practices but had endeavored to suppress all such crimes. To the charge that Rhode Island harbored malefactors and also young men from other colonies who were induced to go there because the colony raised no taxes for the "support of her Majesty's Government and maintaining the war against the French", the colony replied, "this her Majesty's colony is free for any of her Majesty's subjects to come and inliabit there, nor is it in the respondants' power to hinder or prevent them there- from, and further say that where one person or family hatlı removed out of other provinces or colonies into this, there hath five times the number gone out of this colony and settled in other provinces. The which we deem to be the privilege of every English subject; and we do deny that any considerable number of young men hath fled out of other provinces into this colony or have been anyways harbored or sheltered in the same; or that no rates or taxes are raised in this
1R. I. C. R., iii, 508. The admiralty act is in Arnold, ii, 48.
2Dudley's "proofs" can be consulted in the copies of English records in the John Carter Brown Library. The charges and Rhode Island's answers are in R. I. C. R., iii, 543-549.
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colony for the support of her Majesty's interest and government, but on the contrary say that they have been at more than six thousand pounds charge within this seven years in fortifying and other charges occasioned in maintaining and defending her Majesty's interest against the common enemy and support of the government.
"As to the fourth article that this eolony will not furnish their quota, for answer we say that they are advised by counsel learned in the law that they are not obliged by law to furnish the other provinces or eolonies with any quota, nor do they apprehend there is any necessity for the same. Notwithstanding which, obedient to her Majesty's commands, they have furnished the province of Massachu- setts with a considerable quota of men to the considerable charge of the colony.
"As to the ninth artiele, that the government have refused to submit to her Majesty's commissions for commanding their militia of said colony, the respondents say that they are advised by counsel learned in the law that the militia of said eolony, or the power of commanding thereof, is fully granted them by their charter, and that they have been in possession of the same above forty years: And as to the viee-admiralty these respondents further say, they have fully complied with Her Majesty's commands in that behalf, saving to themselves their right granted by eharter for granting commissions to private men-of-war for the defense of Her Majesty's interest."
The remainder of the charges, which concerned denial of justice to strangers, rejection of the laws of England from their eourts, refusal to allow appeals to the king, speaking disrespectfully of her Majesty, etc., they considered as frivolous. The replies have been given with some detail, since they show how clear was Rhode Island's defence, and how far her aeeusers had to go to trump up charges against her. Dudley had furtive hopes of becoming a second Andros, of ruling over a united New England, and when he found that the Lords of Trade did not look with disfavor upon his project, he redoubled his efforts. The great obstacles in his path were the colonial charters, and some pretext had to be found for their annulment.
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