USA > Rhode Island > The "Old Stone Bank" history of Rhode Island, Vol. III > Part 7
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In a short while Roger Williams suc- ceeded in inducing Anne Hutchinson and her company to abandon her original idea
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of journeying on to Long Island or Dela- ware and there to found a permanent settlement. Through the efforts and encouragement of Roger Williams the group decided to form a settlement on the Island of Aquidneck, or the Island of Rhode Island (the present area compris- ing Portsmouth, Middletown and New- port). Subsequently, the island was purchased from the Indians and the settlement grew rapidly as other persons were forced to leave Boston by the arbitrary measures of the authorities. At Aquidneck, as at Providence, was estab- lished a government which recognized the great principle of soul liberty; and the little colony continued to increase and prosper under this benign influence of spiritual freedom, and at length became so populous as to send out settlers to the adjacent shores.
After the death of her husband, which occurred in 1642, Mrs. Hutchinson moved
to New York where her life was suddenly ended by a tragedy. In August, 1643, Anne Hutchinson and the fifteen members of her household at the time, with one exception, perished at the hands of the Indians. There is much more to tell about that settlement on the Island of Aquid- neck; many of those who accompanied this outstanding woman leader of her times played important parts in the his- tory of the area that is today known as Rhode Island; but you have heard the surprising story of the one who led the way. Her career in this vicinity was not so exciting and full of human interest as was her period of residence in Massa- chusetts. However, she takes her place among the immortals of these pleasant shores that harbored both leaders and followers who had the courage of their convictions and who risked all to enjoy religious freedom which they believed was the basic principle of a free state.
MARY DYER
A MARTYR is commonly described as one who testifies by his death to his faith or principles, and the martyrdom of countless individuals seems to have been one of the most important phases of man's history when one goes right back to the beginnings of things and follows the course of human progress through the centuries to the present time, and including the present time. It is sometimes difficult to understand the whys and wherefores of a single case of martyrdom because few of us have experienced such convictions as will urge us to join with any group, religious or political, for the purpose of compelling by force others to accept some given set of tenets or principles; neither have many of us felt such convictions as will lead us to violent death simply be- cause we fail to accede to some group or established authorities in matters politic or religious. However, even though martyrdom seems like something that belongs to the Middle Ages or before, it is not far removed from us in this day and age, and it certainly was common to
our ancestors here in New England, not so many years ago, comparatively speak- ing. And, there's one case of martyrdom that comes very close to home, and it concerns one who left Massachusetts and came to Rhode Island actuated by the same motives, and forced into exile for the same reasons, that guided the foot- steps of Roger Williams to these shores just three centuries ago. The story of this particular martyr is virtually a sequel to the tale told of Anne Hutchinson, the leader of the party of religious exiles who first settled the Island of Aquidneck, and although this story does not reach its conclusion until a date that is a little in advance of the period that is being stressed at present in this series of chron- ologically arranged episodes, nevertheless, it started shortly after the founding of Providence in 1686.
William and Mary Dyer came to this country in 1635 and arrived in Boston at the time when Roger Williams was having his greatest difficulties with the authorities of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This
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couple had previously lived in London where Mr. Dyer was engaged in the millinery business. Mary, his wife, was a person of unique character, courageous, inclined to be fanatical, of sweet disposi- tion, attractive in person and highly intelligent. Upon the arrival of the Dyers in Boston, they were immediately admit- ted to membership in the Boston Church of which John Wilson was the pastor and John Cotton was the teacher. Their lives were lived without incident until Anne Hutchinson instituted her famous meet- ings for women. Mary Dyer attended these meetings and became very friendly with Anne Hutchinson. And then, when the latter heard her sentence of excom- munication pronounced by the Elders of the Puritan Church in Massachusetts and rose to depart from the church from which she had been banished, she did not go un- accompanied. Another woman as fearless as Anne also rose from the congregation and passed down the aisle and out the door at her side. This other woman with the courage of her convictions was Mary Dyer.
Furthermore, shortly before the excom- munication of Mrs. Hutchinson, Mr. Dyer had been one of those who signed a protest to the Elders who had condemned the Rev. Mr. Wheelright for unorthodox preachings, and, as a result, Mr. Dyer was disfranchised and lost his civil rights. Thus it is apparent why the Dyers joined the Hutchinson party in 1638 and came to Providence and later went to Aquidneck where they were among the founders, eighteen in number, of the Town of Portsmouth, and later among the founders of Newport. At this point it might be well to refer to a matter that may appear ridiculous to us in this enlightened day and age, but which had profound sig- nificance in the destiny of Mary Dyer. It was shortly before she left Boston with the Hutchinson party of exiles that Mary Dyer was forced to deny an ugly rumor spread in the community by her enemies. These viper-tongued busy-bodies cir- culated the story that she had given birth to a monstrosity which, they declared, was a sign of Divine retribution for her faith in, and adherence to, Anne Hutchin- son. That stories of this sort could have been started or repeated in those days
indicates that ignorance, stupidity and downright viciousness must have ac- counted for much of the tragedy and trouble in the first days of Colonies.
As inhabitants of Aquidneck, or the Island of Rhode Island, the Dyers were well received. William was made Clerk of Rhode Island in 1638, and two years later Secretary of Portsmouth and Newport, and he held the latter office for seven years. In the course of his life he held many prominent offices of public trust, including that of Attorney-General. With his family he lived the normal life of a well-respected townsman with executive abilities above the average. Several years later he accompanied Roger Williams to England, together with John Clarke, where the group sought to obtain a change in the charter previously granted to William Coddington. Mary Dyer ac- companied her husband to England and remained there for five years, becoming a Quaker before she returned.
In the meantime, the Boston Colony had been invaded by Quakers and the place was fairly seething with fury against them. And yet, according to facts per- taining to that tempestuous period, the people of Boston were not so opposed to the Quakers as were the magistrates and the clergymen who saw in these new- comers a threat to the existing civil and religious dictatorship. Here again crops up that paradox of men leaving one country to seek religious freedom else- where, but in the land of their adoption the freedom seekers become even more despotic than those from which escape had been effected. Note also in such cases that political power, gained and main- tained through religious domination, is in- variably behind the measures taken by men to persecute others in the name of religion. In Boston the Quakers were persecuted simply because the individuals then in power did not want to lose that power; what the Quakers believed about the wor- ship of God was a secondary matter.
So great was the hatred for the simple, truth-seeking Quakers that a law was passed which imposed a fine upon any sea captain who brought them into Boston. Under this law Quakers who did come into the Colony were to be thrown into prison,
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whipped, and placed at hard labor. As fate would have it, among the first Quakers to arrive after the passage of such brutal laws were Ann Burden and Mary Dyer. Both were immediately thrown into prison and Mary Dyer was not released until her husband arrived from Rhode Island to demand her release. The next arrivals experienced a much more painful fate. They were whipped, imprisoned, fined and finally banished. One woman, Margaret Brewster, was stripped to the waist and dragged through the streets of Boston tied to a cart, with a flogging later for good measure. Stories of such inhuman practices in ancient times cause the reader of history to wince, but think that the foregoing evidence of man's inhumanity to man took place in staid old Boston less than three hundred years ago. Besides, laws were enacted by which Quakers could be punished by cutting off their ears or boring a hole through their tongues with a red-hot iron. A final decree, however, stated that any Quaker who returned to the Boston Colony after once having been banished would suffer the death penalty.
This would seem to be sufficient to keep all Quakers away from the "Forbidden City." Yet, in 1659, in protest against the authorities who had conceived such cruel laws, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson went to Boston and were thrown into prison at once. Mary Dyer, hearing of their plight, came to Boston to visit them and she was also imprisoned. For three months these three remained in jail and then were tried and ordered to leave the Colony in two days. Mary Dyer returned to Rhode Island, but the two men decided to stay within the Colony and test the bloody laws, risking death. Other Quakers began to swarm into the Colony and with them returned Mary Dyer from Rhode Island. Robinson and Stevenson were seized again along with Mary Dyer and shortly the three were sentenced to death on the gallows. In October, 1659, the trio were taken to Boston Common where the hangman had already adjusted his rope to the branches of a great elm. So great had been the force of public opinion against the entire procedure that the authorities called out
the militia to quell any disturbance or an attempt at rescue. Arm and arm with her two friends Mary Dyer approached the executioner with no fear in her eyes, but with the calm, superhuman smile of a martyr lighting her countenance. The men were executed before her eyes, and she, with the noose about her neck, had ascended the ladder when the magistrates announced her reprieve. Her persecutors had suffered Mary Dyer to undergo all the terrors of death merely as a warning, but such heartless treatment had only prepared this martyr for ultimate death at the same hands. She was again sent away from the Colony.
And now comes an angle of true martyr- dom that is hard to comprehend. Once Mary Dyer was out of the confines of the Colony the Boston authorities used her case to soften the public opinion which had risen against them for the two hang- ings. And then it was that Mary Dyer realized that because of her the deaths of her fellow martyrs would have no lasting influence in the Quaker cause. What did she do? She returned to Boston without delay, and appeared before Governor Endicott and the church officials. Once again she received the sentence of death, and this time there would be no reprieve. The pleadings of her husband, also a Quaker, accomplished nothing. She was led to the gallows on Boston Common, hanged by the neck until dead before an audience of terrified friends and sym- pathizers, and she was buried nearby on the Common in a grave that has never been located.
Even though we question the motives of martyrs, and wonder at the fervor that sometimes leads them to untimely deaths, we know that Mary Dyer did not give her life in vain. The report of her execution was related to the King of England, and although one other Quaker was hanged before official action could be taken, the English monarch put an immediate end to such cruel proceedings in Massachu- setts. And thus ends the tragic tale of Mary Dyer, the Quaker martyr of Rhode Island who departed from the home of a friend living in Providence in the year 1660 and resolutely journeyed to Boston and to death in the name of religious liberty.
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PORTSMOUTH AND NEWPORT
YINCE Newport was originally an out- growth of Portsmouth, we must go back a bit in the history of the latter place and review a few pertinent facts. Without resorting to repetition of details, it was religious persecution in Massachusetts, resulting in banishment, that led to the coming to Providence of about twenty intelligent and prosperous persons who sought a likely place for a settlement either on Long Island or farther south. Roger Williams received these exiles and urged them to select a spot for their settlement in the vicinity of Narragansett Bay. The Island of Aquidneck was finally selected by these people and it was purchased from the Indians at a price of forty fathoms of wampum and a few gratuities. The entire island and the grass on several other islands down the Bay became the property of William Coddington and his friends, and prepara- tions were made immediately to take possession. William Coddington was born in Boston, England, in 1601. When the Massachusetts Bay Corporation was formed he was made one of the assistants ยท or council, and later became the treasurer. He was one of those who sympathized with Anne Hutchinson in her trial for sedition, and that is why he was found among the exiles residing temporarily in Providence as guests of the hospitable and kindly Roger Williams.
Before leaving Providence for their new home at Aquidneck, William Coddington was chosen chief magistrate under the title of Judge, and he was authorized to "do justice and judgement impartially according to the laws of God." The prospective settlers also appointed a secretary and clerk. The land at the cove around the northeasterly end of the island was chosen as the most desirable location for the settlement. "The first house-lots, mostly of six acres, were laid out on the westerly border of the cove. The Indian name for the place of settlement was Pocasset. The name, Portsmouth, was agreed upon in July 1639 although it seems to have been used earlier."
The Pocasset or Portsmouth settlers immediately started in to plant, and the first law enacted was to the effect that none could become inhabitants except those who should be "received in by the consent of the Bodie and do submit to the government." During the first year of the settlement many local acts were passed making provision for the maintenance of peace and order, for military organization, for the location of a meeting house, for validating land titles and for many other community needs. But, it was not many months before there came a slight change in this apparently harmonious and sat- isfactory governmental system. The original compact agreed upon by the Anti- nomians of Portsmouth set up a sort of mutual benefit or cooperative government by which all laws were passed by the members while the chief magistrate or judge was simply the presiding officer. But, on January 2, 1639, it was enacted that the judge assisted by three elders (John Coggeshall, Nicholas Easton and William Brenton) should govern accord- ing to the general rule of the word of God. Once every quarter they were to report to the assembled freemen, who were given the power of veto. Thus, if the executive officers interpreted the will of God con- trary to the determination of the freemen, any act in question could be repealed. This mode of government lasted about four months, during which period William Coddington vainly attempted to have greater powers delegated to the office which he held. Failing in this attempt, Coddington and his political supporters made up their minds to resign from the Portsmouth experiment and set up another community elsewhere. On April 28, these revolters met and drew the following instrument: "It is agreed by us whose hands are under written, to propa- gate a Plantation in the midst of the Island or elsewhere; and doe engage ourselves to bear equal charges, answer- able to our strength and estates in com- mon; and that our determinations shall be by major voice of judge and elders; the
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Judge to have double voice." The latter stipulation smacks somewhat of the tone of present-day forms of dictatorships.
The five officers of the little settlement and others signed the foregoing and the complete list of names is as follows: William Coddington, Judge, Nicholas Easton, John Coggeshall, William Brenton, John Clarke, Jeremy Clarke, Thomas Hazard, Henry Bull and William Dyer, Clerk. Moving to the southern end of the Island they established a settlement or plantation and called it Newport. Those who remained loyal to the original tenets and who preferred to stay in Ports- mouth reorganized their government and affirmed their allegiance to King Charles, and in his name bound themselves into a civil body; they elected William Hutchin- son judge and elected eight assistants. Provision was made for a quarterly court of trials, with a jury of twelve men, although small cases could be tried before the assistant judges. This was a govern- ment constructed according to English law - Portsmouth was therefore the first in Rhode Island to acknowledge allegiance to the king or to provide for an English jury trial. The seceders not far away in the new settlement of Newport depended more upon the will of God than they did upon any accepted code of laws, rules and regulations. However, the strongest and the wisest men had gone down to New- port, and even though it lacked strength in numbers, the group at the lower end of Aquidneck speedily acquired control of the Island and from this point on the his- tory of the Island is traced chiefly in the records of what happened in Newport.
The next important move was to bring about a consolidation of Portsmouth and Newport, and this was finally accom- plished after a long period of negotia- tions. On March 12, 1640, decreed previously as Election Day, the union of the two towns was brought about and William Hutchinson and his associates presented themselves in Newport, and willingly assented to reunion with their former brethren. It was then agreed that the chief magistrate of the island should be called governor, and the next deputy- governor, and the rest of the magistrates assistants. The governor and two assist-
ants were to be chosen in one town and the deputy and two other assistants in the other town. The election resulted in the choice of Coddington as governor and William Brenton as deputy-governor. A democratic form of government pre- vailed on the island until the union of both towns into the new colony in 1647. In May, 1644, it was ordered by the Court "that the Island commonly called (Aquidneck) shall be henceforth called the Isle of Rhodes, or Rhode Island."
This brings us to the point where the stage is set for wider horizons in the field of Rhode Island politics and for greater opportunities on the part of Rhode Island's leaders to display their powers in the world of local and international diplomacy. Roger Williams will again enter the scene in a new and most impor- tant role, and other leaders will appear among the several communities that came to be the component parts of a new colony, then in the process of formation.
The entire experiment on the island down the Bay is worthy of careful ob- servation when one considers the social development of Rhode Island on a broad scale. The motive of the original settlers was simply to form a political and religious community entirely separated from Massachusetts, and even though these persons were compelled by force to depart hurriedly from Massachusetts they carefully laid their plans and selected a suitable location for their future home. The social development of Newport through the centuries bears out the wis- dom of Roger Williams in recommending Aquidneck and confirms the good judg- ment of those who selected the place. It is true, according to the foregoing account, that a division in their number followed not long after the first planting, but a reconciliation soon took place and from that point on harmony prevailed. Petty strifes were quickly settled in orderly constituted courts. Enough power was invested in their form of government to enforce decrees, and obnoxious persons were dealt with directly and conclusively.
The first settlers on the Island of Aquidneck were, on the whole, men of high standing, intellectual and endowed with ability in matters of government
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administration, and many of them were men of wealth. Roger Williams lacked the advantages of having educated and well trained associates, although this observation cannot be considered as a reflection upon their characters. It just happened that Newport and Portsmouth attracted men of breeding and culture and
subsequent events described in future accounts will bear out these statements. Many provisions pertaining to education, religion and other social and political privileges were made at an early date in the Rhode Island career because of the foresight, intuition and influence of these first families of Newport and Portsmouth.
SAMUEL GORTON
A NOTHER individual left England for a country where one could be free to worship God according to his own interpretation of the Scriptures; another of those noble spirits who esteemed liberty more than life itself, and counting no sacrifice too great for maintenance of principle, refused to dwell in a land where the inherent rights of man were not acknowledged or respected. This indi- vidual was Samuel Gorton, who proved to be the most ardent defender of the principles fearlessly propounded by his contemporary, Roger Williams. Both
Gorton and Williams, although of entirely different temperaments, were motivated by the same influences to leave England, to depart later from the Massachusetts Colony, and to fight for the rights first offered to all men here in Rhode Island. His life story is as interesting as the record of his political experiences after destiny finally directed his footsteps to these shores. Samuel Gorton was born in the year 1592 in the town of Gorton, at that time adjoining, but now included within, the city limits of Manchester, England. His ancestors had lived in this locality for generations, and it has been said that the Gortons were members of a gentry that descended from noble ancestors. Samuel spent the years of his youth in the town of his own surname, and there he received his early education. As he approached his majority, King James was the ruler, and, as was described in a previous chapter, this monarch was very successful in draw- ing tighter and tighter the bonds that united church and state. Then, all subjects were forced to obey the word of the king alone, power was inherited
through the accepted divine right of kings; all liberal views were soundly denounced; and church laws were pressed upon a long suffering nation through the artful coop- eration of the clergy who zealously lent themselves to the support of the king's prerogative and to the shaping of every- thing to his views, right or wrong. Prominent lower schools and many of the higher universities were hotbeds of revolt, and the educators were kept busy oppos- ing the students who held liberal view- points, and who refused to subject their independence to arbitrary direction of their private opinions of how, when and where God should be worshiped.
Young Gorton of Gorton, England, turned out to be one of the many youth- ful English independents who were probably termed "radicals" in those days. However, his views on the burning topics of the day did not divert his attention from his education. He took full advan- tage of his opportunities to acquire a thorough cultural training and became an accomplished scholar, and more than ordinarily skilled in the languages and in the intricacies of English law. He assembled an excellent library and from the choice volumes which it contained he extended his mastery of various subjects, especially politics. Later events proved that he had a better mastery of law and politics than had the elders and magis- trates of Massachusetts, and that he always understood his individual rights better than did those who sought to deprive him of his personal privileges.
Apparently, Samuel Gorton did not leave his home until he was about twenty- five years old, and there is documentary
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