USA > Rhode Island > Providence County > Providence > State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations at the end of the century : a history, Volume 1 > Part 5
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
agreements with their Providence neighbors in submitting to a foreign control without forfeiting their lands to the town. The conflicting jurisdiction thus set up in the infant colony was greatly injurious to the community and proved to be a source of continual aggravation for several years.1
In thus tracing the land purchases and the early government of the Providence Colony, we have omitted all reference to many matters of great importance to the little settlement. Land controversies and ineffective political organization were not the only sources of trou- ble. Religious dissensions, scarcity of provisions,2 and constant fear of an Indian uprising, all combined to threaten the very existence of the town. Perhaps the last of these causes, from its actual impor- tance and possible magnitude, was the most productive of danger, not only to Providence but to all New England as well. In July, 1636, a band of Pequot Indians had attacked a party of traders at Block Island and murdered one John Oldham, of Watertown. The Massa- chusetts authorities sent John Endicott with a body of ninety men to avenge this murder. After touching at Block Island, he successfully carried the expedition into the very heart of the Pequot country. This exasperated the Indians so much that they determined to form a league against the English and drive them from the country. To this end they began negotiations with the powerful Narragansetts, who, had they joined in the attack, would have brought about terrible massa- cres, if not the total annihilation of the whites. At this critical junc- ture, Roger Williams, earnestly requested by the Boston magistrates, stepped forward. The result of his labors-what Bancroft calls "the most intrepid and most successful achievement of the whole war"- can best be told in his own words :
"The Lord helped me immediately to put my life into my hand, and scarce acquainting my wife, to ship myself all alone in a poor canoe, and to cut through a stormy wind, with great seas, every minute in hazard of life, to the Sachem's house. Three days and nights my business forced me to lodge and mix with the bloody Pequod ambas- sadors, whose hands and arms, methought, wreaked with the blood of
1It was not until 1658 that the Arnold party, upon their own petition, were granted discharge from subjection to Massachusetts. It is a significant fact that Benedict Arnold had in the year before been elected president of the Rhode Island Colony, having renounced his allegiance to the Bay government.
2This fact is noted by James Brown, in an early MS. account of the settle- ment of Providence (in the possession of the R. I. Hist. Soc.) ; also that a cow then sold for £22, and that a feast consisted of a "boiled bass without any butter".
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THE FOUNDING OF PROVIDENCE.
my countrymen, murdered and massacred by them on the Connecticut River, and from whom I could not but nightly look for their bloody knives at my own throat also. When God wondrously preserved me, and helped me to break to pieces the Pequod's negotiation and design, and to make and promote and finish, by many travels and charges, the English league with the Narragansetts and Mohegans against the Pequods. "1
In October, 1636, Miantonomi went to Boston and concluded with the Bay government a formal alliance against the Pequots, both parties reposing the utmost confidence in Williams as mediator and interpreter. The Pequots, foiled in their attempt to win over the Narragansetts, determined to prosecute the war unaided. The details of this struggle, no part of which, thanks to the interposition of Williams, took place on Rhode Island soil, are recounted in every history and need not be alluded to here. The labors of Williams did not end with his procuring an Indian league. He entertained the Massachusetts companies in Providence, established a friendship be- tween the soldiers and the Narragansetts, while the scores of letters that passed between him and Winthrop show that a large part of his time for two years was spent acting as interpreter and also as the medium of intercourse between the Bay and the army. The aid of Williams in this struggle cannot be too lightly passed over, and the vain attempt of the Plymouth Colony in later years to recognize these services only serves to accentuate to what an extent religious antipathy could go.2
As has already been said, religious discord was another source of trouble in the struggling colony. Religious enthusiasts and exiles who, from varying reasons, had departed from a stern, theocratic rule could scarcely hold harmonizing opinions in theology. The first recorded case of conflict arose from the action of one Joshua Verin, who tried to restrain his wife from listening to Roger Williams's ser- mons. Winthrop narrates the particulars of the incident,3 but either
1Letter to Major Mason, 1670, in Narr. Club. Publ. vi, 338. For Williams's part in this war we have to depend upon his own letters, chiefly to Winthrop. Arnold notes ( Hist. of R. I., i, 91) that no early annalist except Winthrop acknowledges his aid. For the early histories of the war see Winsor, Narr. and Crit. Hist. iii, 348.
2In his letter to Mason, Williams relates that Governor Winthrop "and some other of the Council motioned and it was debated, whether or no I had not merited, not only to be recalled from banishment, but also to be honored with some remark of favor". The silence of the Court records upon the ques- tion amply testifies how it was received.
3History of N. E. i, 283.
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
from his own enmity toward religious toleration or from the untrust- worthiness of his informer, attempts to justify Verin in the matter. The Town of Providence, however, thinking that duty to God tran- scended all mortal obligations, on May 21, 1638, ordered "that Joshua Verin, upon the breach of a covenant for restraining of the liberty of conscience, shall be withheld from the liberty of voting till he shall declare the contrary".1 If we may trust Williams's testimony in the matter, Verin might well have been punished for the civil crime of wifebeating. However this may be, his action was surely in violation of the principles upon which Providence was founded, and would no more be countenanced by us than it was by these early legislators.
Although several of the early companions of Roger Williams fled to escape religious persecution, it did not necessarily follow that they intended the erection of a church of their own. There was dissension and often apathy in religious as well as political matters. As Henry C. Dorr justly remarks, "the majority manifested little sympathy with Williams, except in his negative opinion as to what the state should not do".2 Toward the close of 1638 several of the more rigid separatists who favored anabaptism removed from the Bay Colony to Providence. They seem to have been the deciding influence in the formation of a church there, for Winthrop, under date of March 16, 1639, records the following: "A sister of Mrs. Hutchinson, the wife of one Scott, being affected with anabaptistry, and going last year to live at Providence, Mr. Williams was taken (or rather emboldened) by her to make open profession thereof, and accordingly was baptized by one Holyman, a poor man, late of Salem. Then Mr. Williams re- baptized him and some ten more".3 This baptism had been generally
1Prov. Rec. i, 4. Williams, in a letter to Winthrop of May 22, 1638 (Narr. Club, vi, 95), writes: "We have been long afflicted with a young man, boister- ous and desperate, Philip Verin's son of Salem, who as he hath refused to hear the word with us (which we molested him not for) this twelvemonth, so because he could not draw his wife, a gracious and modest woman, to the same ungodliness with him, he hath trodden her under foot tyrannically and brutishly; which she and we long bearing, though with his furious blows she went in danger of life, at the last the major vote of us discard him from our civil freedom, or disfranchise."
2R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll. ix, 10.
3Winthrop, 1, 293. S. S. Rider in Book Notes (xiii, 121) asserts, with considerable degree of probability that "Winthrop's story lacks a sufficiently sound basis for a fact; and possesses too much inherent improbability for the truth." For the names of the original members, see 250th anniversary of the First Baptist Church, p. 37. Other references to a history of the church are John Stanford's account in Rippon's Baptist Register, 1801-02, p. 793; Edwards' Hist. of Baptists in R. I. (R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll. v, 6) ; H. Jackson, Churches in R. I .; Hist. of the First Baptist Church, 1877; H. M. King, The
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THE FOUNDING OF PROVIDENCE.
regarded as the establishment of the first Baptist church in the New World. Williams remained as their leader but three or four months, and then, on account of his dissent in regard to baptism, left it and became a "Seeker". But the church survived, chose another leader, and slowly increased with the community. The subsequent history of this church cannot be traced at present; suffice it to say that it endured later schisms, exercising no voice in the civil conduct of the commu- nity, and entirely repudiating the Puritan prophecy that no Christian society could flourish amidst religious liberty.
The Providence colony was now sufficiently well grown to give promise of lasting political durability. The great principle estab- lished by its founder was continually bringing newcomers to its soil, who, even if they did not agree with Williams's idea of government, could there worship God as their consciences persuaded them. Their coming was a source of constantly added strength to the little settle- ment, and that which was Rhode Island's gain was Massachusett's loss. As Charles Francis Adams has well remarked, "In reality, Massachu- setts missed a great destiny ; it 'like the base Judean, threw a pearl away, richer than all his tribe'; for both Roger Williams and young Sir Harry Vane were once part of the Commonwealth-they had lain, as it were, in its hand. The stones which the builders refused became the headstones of the corner".1 But, although the settlement was a political community within itself, on account of its lack of chartered powers, it could not obtain recognition from its neighbors. It was opportune, if not necessary, that the "squatter's sovereignty" should be replaced by the sanction of royal authority.
Mother Church, and the historical discourses of W. Hague, S. L. Caldwell, S. G. Arnold, and H. M. King. Arnold, Hist. of R. I., i, 108, summarizes the dispute with the Baptist Church at Newport as to priority. Henry M. King, in the Baptism of Roger Williams, successfully contradicts the theory that Williams was baptized by sprinkling instead of immersion.
1Massachusetts; its historians and its history, pp. 25, 27.
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CHAPTER IV.
THE ANTINOMIANS AND AQUEDNECK.
Not quite a year had passed after the banishment of Williams when another movement dared to oppose the soul-crushing theocracy of Massachusetts, and like its predecessor, by persecution and banish- ment, was speedily suppressed. And again Rhode Island was to be the gainer. Only the briefest account of this controversy-commonly called the Antinomian movement-can here be given.1 It was in September, 1634, that there arrived at Boston a woman endowed with unusual intellectual power and emboldened with an energy that amounted almost to fanaticism. At her home in England she had listened to the sermons of Cotton and her brother-in-law, John Wheel- wright, and had now come to enjoy again the preaching of the former. She soon began to hold at her house religious meetings for women, which, from her nimble wit and courageous attitude on religious ques- tions, became very popular. By the spring of 1636 her influence, especially in Boston, seemed to be at its height. In May of that year she had been joined by her brother-in-law, Wheelwright, and during the same month there had been elected to the office of governor a man whose political prestige was eventually to give great aid to her cause. This was Henry Vane, a young Englishman, whose high birth, brilliant intellectual powers, and ability in diplomacy make him a dazzling figure against the dull Puritan background. Winthrop tells us that he "forsook the honors and preferments of the court, to enjoy the ordinances of Christ in their purity here". If so, his life in New England, as a recent English commentator has remarked, must have been a "continuous disenchantment".
It was just about at this time that the popularity of Mistress
'This movement has been treated in a most satisfactory manner by C. F. Adams in his Three Episodes of Mass. History. Reference should also be made to G. E. Ellis, Puritan Age in Mass .; B. Adams, Emancipation of Mass .; and Publications of the Prince Society, vol. 22. There is an enumeration of authorities in Mem. Hist. of Boston, i, 176.
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THE ANTINOMIANS AND AQUEDNECK.
Hutchinson began to assume a dangerous attitude. Actuated by relig- ious enthusiasmn, she occasionally drew invidious comparisons between certain ministers, saying that "none of them did preach the covenant of free grace, but Master Cotton, and that they have not the seal of the Spirit, and so were not ministers of the New Testament".1 This "covenant of grace", which was to form the war-cry of the Antino- mians in their struggle, and which was destined to lead them into much unintelligible and profitless discussion over doctrine, related to the evidencing of justification. How was a man to justify himself before his God? By his "faith", or by his "works"? The Hutchinson party denied the intrinsic efficacy of good works as means of salvation, and claimed to be living under a "covenant of grace", all the time denouncing their opponents as being made under a "covenant of works". The contention over these two doctrines-of which Win- throp keenly remarked, "no man could tell, except some few who knew the bottom of the matter, where any difference was"2-divided the whole community into two religious parties. Governor Vane, Cotton, and all but half a dozen of the Boston Church espoused the cause of Mrs. Hutchinson and Wheelwright. Arrayed against them were Winthrop, Wilson-the pastor of the Boston Church-and vir- tually all the clergy in the colony outside of Boston. The excitement was intense; disputations were frequent, each side accusing the other of holding heresies and disturbing the peace of Church and State.
At this juncture, in December, 1636, an incident occurred which gave more of a political bearing to the controversy and placed the character of Vane in a light not entirely to his credit. One day he called the court together and announced that he must immediately return to England to attend to certain private affairs. A sorrowful remonstrance greeting this communication, he asserted that he would have hazarded all private business, had he not foreseen the danger liable to arise from the prevalent religious dissensions, of which it had been scandalously imputed that he was the cause. The court silently acquiesced to his departure and made arrangements for the election of his successor. But again he changed his mind. After a day's reflection, in which he listened to the persuading influence of some of the Boston congregation, he declared that he was an obedient child of the church and did not dare to go away. So the whole affair held over
1Welde, Short Story, p. 36.
2Winthrop, i, 213. Antinomianism, literally interpreted, meant a denial of the obligations of moral law. The opponents of Antinomianism were called legalists.
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
until the next May election. Vane's vacillating conduct on this occa- sion has greatly prejudiced his reputation. Whether he had grown weary of religious dissension, or really feared danger to the colony, or was merely testing the strength of his position is all a matter of sur- mise. Surely no one of these reasons is becoming to the conduct of a true statesman.
The eontroversy now began to assume the attitude of bitter partisan- ship. The court, the majority of whom were legalists, interfered and convoked the ministers to give their advice. Debates, disputations, and exhortations followed in quick suecession, all of which only served to spread the doctrines more widely. In March, 1637, the court found Wheelwright guilty of sedition and contempt in a fast day sermon preached a few weeks before. The sermon-which is fortunately pre- served-does not show the least evidence of either sedition or contempt. That a verdict could be brought from such unwarrantable charges only shows how far these ecclesiastical dictators could pervert justice in order to suppress opposition to their ideas. As soon as the judgment was announced, the Boston church signed a respectful petition in Wheelwright's behalf, which noble remonstrance was later to subject them to unreasonable severity.
The election of May, 1637, resulted in the ehoiee of Winthrop as governor and the implacable Dudley as deputy-governor. Vane was entirely displaced, as were also his followers, Coddington1 and Dum- mer; but Boston retaliated by electing both Vane and Coddington as deputies. The legalists, however, were now strongly in power, and henceforth took the initiative. By their first act the court ordered that no person should entertain any emigrant for more than three weeks without sanction of the magistrates. This flagrant law was aimed directly at the Antinomians, who were expeeting fresh adher- ents to their party from England, and occasioned so much outcry that Winthrop thought it necessary to publish an apology. In this he claimed the abstraet right of the state to exclude those who disturbed its peace, but in admitting that religious differences were the cause of the legislation, rather invalidated his argument. Vane, after a somewhat weak reply to Winthrop, sailed for England.
1William Coddington, who was later to figure so prominently in Rhode Island affairs, was also one of the most prominent men in the Boston Colony. For his early life see Adams, Three Episodes, p. 546; Austin's Geneal. Dict. of R. I., p. 276; N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. xxviii, 13, xxxvi, 138; and Mag. of N. E. History, i, 228. The oft-quoted statement that he owned the first brick house in Boston originated in his Demonstration of True Love, p. 4 (quoted in Palfrey i, 328); although the fact that it was brick is traceable only to Callender, Hist. Discourse, p. 3 of preface.
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THE ANTINOMIANS AND AQUEDNECK.
With this powerful friend of Antinomianism out of the way, the legalists set about to crush out their opponents. In August, 1637, a synod of all the divines, held at Cambridge to settle the existing differ- ences, passed condemnation on eighty-two "erroneous opinions" and nine "unwholesome expressions". Cotton, one of the strongest allies of the Hutchinson party, now saw how the stream was flowing and, desirous to recover "his former splendour throughout New England", deserted to the stronger party. The rest of the leaders, however, remained unconquered, and the question now was chiefly as to the mode of applying the punishment.
The court, at its November session, summoned Wheelwright, and upon the strength of his conviction in March, sentenced him to banish- ment. So, on a bitter winter's day, with deep snows upon the ground, he journeyed forth to the Piscataqua, the first of his party to undergo bodily suffering for voicing his religious opinions. A pretext for punishing the other leaders was found in the petition which several of Wheelwright's friends had presented in his behalf eight months before. The petitioners were given their choice of disavowing their act or bearing the consequences. Aspinwall was banished; Coggeshall, who had merely approved the petition, was disfranchised ; Coddington and nine others were given leave to depart within three months or abide the action of the court; others were disfranchised and fined; and somewhat later seventy-one more persons were disarmed.
The trial and subsequent fate of Anne Hutchinson, the author of the whole controversy, forms a fitting sequel to these deeds of harshness and oppression. It was before this same November court that the poor woman, feeble in health, but undaunted in courage, was brought to answer to the various charges of calumny and contempt and heresy. The doings of this assembly read more like the proceedings of a Spanish inquisitorial court than the action of a body of law-loving Englishmen. The presiding justice, attorney-general, and foreman of the jury were one and the same person; the witnesses for the prosecution were allowed to testify without oath; and the few who dared to speak in the defendant's favor were speedily intimidated. But through it all she remained firm and unshaken. Not a loophole did she leave, whereby her opponents could trump up a charge against her, until on the second day of her trial she broached the doctrine of inward revelation, claiming herself to be inspired. Eagerly did the prosecution seize upon this slender thread, and cried out against the perniciousness of her words. It was then that Coddington arose and exclaimed, "I do not for my own part see any equity in the court in all your proceed-
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STATE OF RHODE ISLAND AND PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.
ings. Here is no law of God that she hath broken, nor any law of the country that she hath broke, and therefore deserves no censure".1 But this was a case where appeals to justice could be of no avail. The trial was a merc formality, the verdict of guilty being a precluded result. The sentence of banishment was passed, but execution was postponed until spring. In the mean while it was hoped that she would recant. Her courage, however, stood her in good stead, and in spite of the persecution of several ministers, in spite of excommunica- tion from her church, she remained unshaken and gloried in her suffer- ings. In March, 1638, the execution of the sentence was issued, and the arch-heretic departed into exile, never again to return to the scene of her former triumphs.
Thus ended the Antinomian movement. Giving as an excuse "politi- cal necessity", the legalists had frightened the timid into submission, and persecuted and banished those who dared to offer opposition. And what had the Antinomians accomplished ? They had brought only harm upon themselves and left the clergy in a more unassailable position than before. Charles Francis Adams well summarizes their movement when he says, "There was need enough for reform; but, to be useful and healthy, reform had to come more slowly and from another direction. Neither did Anne Hutchinson or her following hold forth any promise of better things. Theirs was no protest against existing abuses. On the contrary, in their religious excesses, they out- did even the clergy-they out-heroded Herod. Their overthrow, ac- cordingly, so far as it was peculiar to themselves and did not involve the overthrow of great principles of religious toleration and political reform, was no matter for regret".2 As for the Puritan prosecutors, their proceedings are less defensible than in the case of Williams, whose arguments more closely touched the civil power. Persecution was one of the precepts of their faith, and if presumed political necessities compelled them to choose between justice and oppression, they invariably chose the latter. Thus they established a religious absolutism which was to remain all-powerful for forty years. But this so-called period of tranquillity was really a period of torpor, in which superstition and bigotry repressed every form of a social and intellectual activity. As a keen English writer has justly remarked,3 "The spiritual growth of Massachusetts withered under the shadow of dominant orthodoxy; the colony was only saved from mental atrophy by its vigorous political life."
1Prince Soc. Publ. xxii, 280.
2Three Episodes, p. 574.
"Doyle, Puritan Colonies, i, 140.
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THE ANTINOMIANS AND AQUEDNECK.
To the evidenced desire of the Massachusetts government to be rid of a body of its most intelligent and prosperous colonists, Rhode Island owes the origin of what for a century and a half was her leading town. In the late autumn of 1637 several of the Antinomians, realiz- ing that if they thought as their consciences dictated they could never live at peace with the Puritan clergy, decided to begin a settlement elsewhere. Accordingly, they deputed John Clarke and a few others to seek out a place. The cold of the ensuing winter inducing them to go toward the south, they embarked one day in the early spring, with but little idea as to their eventual destination. But the narrative of their journey is best told in Clarke's own words.1 "So, having sought the Lord for direction, we all agreed that while our vessel was passing about a large and dangerous Cape, we would cross over by land, having Long Island and Delaware Bay in our eye for the place of our resi- dence; so to a town called Providence we came, which was begun by one M. Roger Williams by whom we were courteously and lovingly received, and with whom we advised about our design; he readily presented two places before us in the same Narragansett Bay, the one upon the main called Sowwames, the other called then Acqued- neck, now Rode-Island". The narrative goes on to relate how Will- iams, Clarke and two others journeyed to Plymouth to find out whether the lands in question were claimed by that government. The answer was "that Sowwames was the garden of their Patent, and the flour in the garden", but if Aquedneck was decided upon, "they should look upon us as free, and as loving neighbors and friends should be assistant unto us upon the main".
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