THE SHAWOMET CONTROVERSY TAKEN TO ENGLAND. DECIDED IN FAVOR OF GORTON AND HIS ASSOCIATES.-CHARTER GRANTED TO PROVIDENCE PLANTATIONS.-CIVIL LIBERTY AND RELIGIOUS TOLERATION PROVIDED FOR. - VISIT OF CLARK, HOLMES, AND CRANDALL TO BOSTON. PUNISHED FOR HOLDING AND PREACHING HETERODOX OPINIONS. - DISSENSIONS IN RHODE ISLAND. CODDINGTON APPOINTED GOVERNOR FOR LIFE THE CHARTER GRANTED BY CHARLES II.-ITS CHARACTER AND HISTORICAL INTEREST. DEEPLY moved with grief and indignation as the Narragansetts were when they heard of the treacherous assassination of their young and beloved sachem, it shows how little real fear there was of any retaliation on their part, that a small guard was thought sufficient for the protection of Uncas. "That the Indians might know," says Winthrop, "that the English did approve of it, they sent 12 or 14 musketeers home with Onkus, to abide a time with him for his defence, if need should be." There was no need; the Narragansetts understood. They understood, they thought, so well that when a few months. later Gorton and his men came back rejoicing and confident Gorton's rewith not a hair the less upon their heads, it was, the Narra- turn to gansetts believed, because the others were afraid. Gorton looked, he told them, to the king for justice; it was no hard thing to persuade them to offer their allegiance to a power which, though so far away, was feared by their enemies. If such subjects were of no Shawomet. use to Charles, and such a king no protection to such subjects, the deed of submission was, at least, a good document for Gorton to have in his hand when he appealed to the government at home. This he did, and so successfully that within about two years, Randall Holden and John Greene - two of the Shawomet people-arrived in Boston, with an order from the Commissioners of Foreign Plantations in London, that they and Gorton should be permitted to pass unmolested through any part of New England, from which they commission had been banished; and ten days later these Commissioners in his favor. issued an order that all those evicted from Shawomet should be permitted to reënter upon and enjoy their possessions in that place. The Earl of Warwick was the president of that Board of Commissioners, and in gratitude to him the place was thereafter called Warwick. The English ers' decision This happy result to their troubles was not, of course, brought about without a struggle. Edward Winslow was sent by the government of Massachusetts, to controvert in England the statements of Gorton, and a lively controversy ensued between them before the Com Edward Winslow. missioners and a committee of Parliament, and in published letters and pamphlets, which found listeners, absorbing as the interest of the English people was, at that time, in their own affairs. Winslow was faithful to his trust, and withstood with all his might a controversialist, who thanking God that he was bred in no "schools of human learning," must have been the harder to grapple with; but even Gorton himself testified to his manly fairness.1 But Winslow only so far prevailed that a year later the order restoring their lands to the Shawomet people was so modified and explained by a committee of both houses of Parliament, and by the Board of Commissioners of Foreign Plantations that the question of jurisdiction should be left for future decision. Winslow claimed that 1 Edward Winslow, often governor of Plymouth, was deservedly one of the most honored and respected of the early New Englanders. No one went so often as he as the agent of the Colonies to England, and on one of these visits he was sent by Cromwell as commissioner on the expedition to the West Indies, in 1654. He died, after the disgraceful repulse at Hispaniola the next year, of fever; A Diary in the Memorials of Admiral Sir William Penn says: "Taking conceit (as his man affirms) at the disgrace of the army on Hispaniola, to whom he told, it had broken his heart." 1644.] THE QUESTION OF JURISDICTION. 99 the lands were within the Plymouth patent; but however the colonists may have persuaded themselves on this point, the Commissioners still insisted that Gorton, Holden, and their friends should be permitted to rest on the lands they had purchased from the natives. ton ques tion. For years the question continued to vex the colonies, and was a frequent subject of discussion, and even of altercation, between Later phases Plymouth and Massachusetts, between the Commissioners of of the Gorthe United Colonies, and between them all and the people of Warwick. As a reason for insisting upon the exercise of the right of jurisdiction over them the latter were accused of wrongs committed against their neighbors both English and Indian, the ready rejoinder to which accusation was that the injuries were from the other side and were only withstood in self-defence. There seems to have been little peace for them till 1658, when William Arnold and William Carpenter, two of the four original instigators of the troubles of the Shawomet people, petitioned - with others of Pawtuxet that Massachusetts would discharge them from the jurisdiction of that colony. This petition, however, is to be understood as one of the evidences that Massachusetts had relinquished her claim and is not to be mistaken as the cause of that change of policy. Years before this Warwick had become a part of the colony of "Providence Plantations," under a charter procured by Roger Williams in March, 1644.1 This was granted to Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport, Warwick not being named in it; but when in May, 1647, the colony was organized, that plantation was admitted Williams's to equal privileges with the rest. Thereafter any attempted charter. exercise of power over her was an intrusion upon territory protected by patent given under the authority of the English Parlia ment. 1644. Williams arrived in Boston with this charter in September, 1644, and was allowed to land there on his way to Providence by virtue of a letter from divers lords and others of the parliament" to the governor and assistants of Massachusetts. Not that there was any growing disposition to tolerate him or his doctrines.2 The letter alone secured him a safe passage through Massachusetts and at the same time informed its magistrates that he was the bearer of this charter granted to him and his friends by both houses of Parliament. 1 There has been some controversy as to the date of this charter, the question being whether it was March 14th or 17th. In Hazard's State Papers it is the 14th; Savage in Winthrop's Journal maintained that this was correct, while Elton and Staples in R. I. Hist Coll., insist that it should be the 17th. But Sainsbury's Calendar of State Papers in the State Paper Office, London, gives the 14th [O. S.], and this, therefore, must be the correct date. 2 Hubbard's General History of New England, chap. xliii. His return. The warmth of his welcome at home was as marked as the coldness with which he was received in Boston. It was a little less than eight years since he had evaded the sentence of the law of Massachusetts and fled into the forest through which he now again found his way. The people had heard of his coming; at Seekonk the river was covered with canoes; all Providence had come out to hail the return of a benefactor and a friend. Surrounded by a grateful people he made an almost triumphal entry into the colony he had planted. It is an interesting and important fact that there was, unknown Existence of Williams's Welcome. patent of that colony over the whole of the present State of Rhode Island. It is probable that the instrument had not then been received, for some reason, in Boston, for the first allusion to it is found in the records of the 7th of October, 1645. Mr. Williams is then notified by an official letter to refrain from exercising any jurisdiction over the lands about Narragansett Bay and the tract "wherein Providence and the Island of Quidny are included," the charter of which was "receaved lately out of England," giving that country to Massachusetts. 1 Records of Massachusetts, vol. iii., p. 49. |