1631]

ROGER WILLIAMS.

IBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF

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colony offered its protection, and at the same time claimed. the territory as being really theirs under the Great Charter. Godfrey, the governor of Maine, an Episcopalian-as were also most of the settlers-strongly remonstrated against the annexation; but it was accomplished in 1653, the towns very reluctantly giving in their adhesion.

There was another important patent granted by the Council of Plymouth, at the request of that persistent colonizer Sir Ferdinando Gorges. It was obtained the same year (1621) that he became possessor of the "Maine" grant, but was made out in the name of Sir William Alexander, afterward known as the Earl of Stirling. It comprised all the region east of the St. Croix and south of the St. Lawrence, including Acadie and part of Canada,—all of it, as we have seen, claimed by the French, but now given away by the name of Nova SCOTIA, or New Scotland. By this procedure, it was designed to induce the Scotch to settle therein, and thus, while acting as opponents of French Catholic colonization, to serve as a protecting bulwark to the regular English settlements in the rear.

This was an unjust and unfortunate gift of property, which belonged neither to the Council nor to King James to dispose of, and it proved, as might have been expected, a fertile subject of contention. Mention has been made in the ninth chapter, how, in 1628, the settlements in Acadie and Canada came into possession of the English in a time of war, and how they were shortly given back again into the hands of the French. Had the line of separation between Maine and Acadie been clearly defined upon that occasion, a great deal of the subsequent hostility would have been avoided.

ROGER WILLIAMS-THE FOUNDER OF RHODE ISLAND.

In 1631 there arrived at Boston a fugitive from English persecution, named ROGER WILLIAMS. He was a separatist

from the established Episcopal church, and yet his conscientious convictions were esteemed heresy in Puritan New England. For, while he believed that the civil magistrate should restrain and punish outward crime, so he held that, as the conscience must never be coerced, the magistrate grievously erred when he attempted to set bounds to the soul's inward freedom. In accordance with this earnest belief in the sanctity of the conscience, he was opposed to the exaction of tithes for the support of a special religion, as well as to any fine or punishment by men for non-conformity or non-attendance on public worship. Now, the Puritans were strenuous on these points, and their observance was especially provided for in the colonial law; hence the separatist soon found that his life in the colony was not likely to be one of outward tranquillity.

For over two years, Roger Williams was a minister of the congregations in Plymouth and Salem-principally in the latter place where he became greatly endeared to the people. But his views of the inherent right of intellectual liberty, and of the separation of church and state in every particular, finally resulted in a sentence of banishment by the general court. Rather than renounce opinions which had taken such hold of his mind that he doubted not their agreement with the Truth, he declared himself "ready to be bound and banished and even to die in New England."

In midwinter, the early part of 1636, Williams departed from Salem, and turning his steps southward toward the wilderness, wandered for fourteen weeks alone, in storms and the bitter cold, often sorely pressed for food and for a shelter at night. But the Indians, by whom he was known and gratefully remembered as their former friend, received him gladly; and in the cabins of Massasoit, chief of the Wampanoags, and of the Narragansett, CANONICUS, he found that brotherly treatment which had been denied him by his own countrymen. Massasoit granted him some land, at Seekonk, for a

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RHODE ISLAND.

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settlement, but finding that it was within the jurisdiction of Plymouth, and hence might involve him in future trouble, he crossed the Pawtucket river, and at the head of Narragansett bay, founded PROVIDENCE, which he thus named in commemoration of "God's merciful providence to him in his distress." From Canonicus and his nephew MIANTONOMAH, of the Narragansetts, he obtained a clear title to the land.

The great trust which Williams felt had been confided to him by the Ruler of all things, was wisely administered. The liberality with which he granted the land to the needy, with no thought of personal aggrandizement, or emolument for himself, was singularly unselfish. With respect to the government of the little state, he conferred the authority more completely upon the people themselves than had yet been realized in any other colony. Harshly as he had been treated by some of the Puritans, and severe as had been the winter's experience which resulted from the sentence of exile, yet he bore no resentment to his persecutors, to whom, as we shall presently see, he was enabled to render efficient service.

Two years after the arrival of Williams (1638), a number of the Antinomian friends of Anne Hutchinson, having departed from Massachusetts with the design of forming a separate colony of their own, were welcomed to the new settlement on Narragansett bay. The little flock of emigrants was led by JOHN CLARKE and WILLIAM CODDINGTON; the latter a merchant from Boston, in Lincolnshire, and an associate of the Plymouth Company. Upon the recommendation of Williams, they purchased from the Narragansetts the island of Aquidneck, afterward called Isle of Rhodes, but shortly altered to RHODE ISLAND. The price paid for the land was forty fathoms of white wampum; and as an additional consideration for the Indians to remove and leave the whites the sole occupants, they were presented with twenty hoes and ten coats. The colonists bound themselves that in civil affairs only, was

the majority to rule: in matters of doctrine, while they professed obedience to the "perfect laws of our Lord Jesus Christ," yet their consciences must be left untrammelled by the State. They set love and benevolence before them as their rule.

THE CONNECTICUT AND NEW HAVEN SETTLEMENTS.

In the account of the province of New Netherland, we have learnt how the Dutch, who claimed the country north of Long Island Sound, had established a fortified trading-post on the Connecticut, which they called the House of Good Hope. But this territory was likewise claimed by the great council for New England, who made a grant of it, first to the Earl of Warwick, and from that proprietary it had passed into various other hands. Without any permit from these new proprietaries, the colony of Plymouth had, in 1633, established the trading-post of Windsor on the river just above the Dutch post, and in point of time only a few months later.

In 1635 came JOHN WINTHROP, eldest son of the governor of the Massachusetts Bay colony, with a commission from the proprietaries to build a fort at the mouth of the Connecticut. This was done, and the place called Saybrook. In the autumn a second company of sixty pilgrims, among whom were a number of women and children, set out from the Massachusetts settlements on their forest journey to the Connecticut, driving their cattle before them. They had scarcely arrived at the banks of the river, when the winter set in, early and severe. Many of the cattle perished; supplies of provisions which were to have been sent around by water, could not reach them because of the closing of the river by ice; and there being but poor shelter as yet provided, all except a few either returned through the bleak woods, or else made their way down to Saybrook.

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In the summer of the ensuing year (1636) a more auspicious emigration followed, led by HOOKER and STONE, ministers of the gospel, and by John Haynes, reputed a "gentleman of great estate." Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor were now regularly established as settlements, while a fourth party located farther up the river, at Springfield. But the dawning prosperity of the infant colony of Connecticut was very soon interrupted by an Indian war. Before treating of this, mention should be made here of the founding of the adjoining colony of New Haven.

There arrived in Boston at this time, when the Hutchinson controversy was at its height, a company of merchants from England, led by THEOPHILUS EATON, and with them a nonconformist minister named JOHN DAVENPORT. The agitation which prevailed in the province about religious matters, made these well-to-do emigrants quite unwilling to fix their habitations in those parts; hence Eaton, having been sent in advance to select a suitable place for a settlement, chose the locality at the head of Quinnipiack bay on Long Island Sound. A tract of ten miles by thirteen was purchased of the Indians, at the price of ten coats; and here the plan of a city on a liberal scale was laid out (1638), and called NEW HAVEN.

The first assembly for organization was held in a barn; and, from a committee of twelve persons, there were selected "Seven Pillars," as they were called, for the "House of Wisdom." The right of suffrage was restricted to church members, as in Massachusetts, although in the colony of Connecticut, that privilege had been conferred on all residents of respectable character. The Scriptures were ordered to be the law of the land, as they were held to contain every needful regulation for good government: and inasmuch as no warrant for trial by jury was to be found in its pages, that process was not established. Eaton was chosen first governor, and was annually, for twenty years, re-elected to the post.