# The Founding of New England/X

CHAPTER X
CROSS-CURRENTS IN THE CONFEDERACY
From the formation of the Confederacy in 1643, until the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the colonies were practically free to make what use they could of an entire liberty of action, unhampered by any serious attempt on the part of the British government to interfere with them. The whole situation was favorable. The settlements had passed the experimental stage, and were well rooted. If the decline in immigration entailed certain disadvantages, on the other hand it relieved the existing order from the necessity of absorbing new elements. The more powerful colonies had signed articles of union, and no Indian war of any magnitude was to interrupt their peaceful development. The economic position slowly improved, and reached a sounder basis than before. Yet the pages which record the story of those seventeen years are among the least attractive in New England history. There is hardly an incident to stir the imagination or to fire a noble pride. Freed from all restraint, the best use that the colonies could make of their liberty was to quarrel among themselves over boundaries, annexations, and taxes; to contend, without honor, with the Dutch and French; to carry on inglorious controversies with the savages; and to indulge in the only example of bloody religious persecution that the United States has known. Looking at the history of those years, however, from the standpoint of the development of personal liberty, there were two movements that redeem its otherwise disheartening aspects. One was the bringing of order out of chaos in Rhode Island, where the settlers proved that democracy and a broad toleration could, after all, be combined with political stability. The other was the success of the people of Massachusetts in securing the fundamental body of laws already noted, and the unmistakable rejection of their theocratical leaders, lay and clerical.
On the return of Acadia to France by the treaty of St. Germain, one Claude de Razilly had been commissioned to rule the territory; and after his death, three years later, d’Aulnay and de la Tour, both of whom had possessed grants and trading posts within his jurisdiction, aspired to replace him in the supreme command. After various encounters, in one of which d’Aulnay captured de la Tour, the latter, in 1643, arrived at Boston with one hundred and forty men, and asked for help against his rival. Winthrop, who was then governor, called together a few of the magistrates and deputies, who assured de la Tour that, although they could not grant him aid officially, he might have permission to hire ships and engage volunteers for his expedition.
“The rumour of these things soon spreading,” however, they encountered so much adverse criticism that Winthrop consulted with additional members of the Court, and, of course, the clergy. The question was long debated, whether it was lawful for Christians to aid idolaters, and, somewhat more pertinently, whether it was expedient in this particular case, The debate is given at length by Winthrop, and affords an instructive example of Puritan casuistry. A matter of so much importance should, of course, have been referred to the General Court, and, also, under the terms of the new Confederacy, to the Commissioners of that body. The Boston merchants, however, seem to have brought powerful influences to bear, and the little job in dollar-diplomacy was rushed through, regardless of obligations or consequences. The question was not referred to the Court, Winthrop wrote, because if it “had been assembled, we knew they would not have given him aid without consent of the commissioners of the other colonies, and for a bare permission, we might do it without the court.” Saltonstall and others afterwards wrote, strongly condemning the action, urging that the real rights of the case had not been known, that wars involving the subjects of another nation ought not to be undertaken without the knowledge of the home government; and brushed away the sophistical distinctions made by the Boston clique between private permission by the colony’s rulers and their official sanction. “D’Aulnay, nor France,” they wrote, “are not so feeble in their intellectuals as to deeme it no act of state.”
The expedition, however, had been allowed to sail, carrying a somewhat fatuous letter from Winthrop to d’Aulnay, stating that the Massachusetts volunteers were, if possible, to effect a reconciliation, that they possessed no commission, and that, if they did anything “against the rules of justice and good-neighborhood,” they should be held accountable. In spite of this, some of the men attacked d’Aulnay’s plantation, burned his mill, killed his cattle, and plundered one of his vessels of beaver skins. The latter were brought back to Boston and sold at auction, and the proceeds were divided among the soldiers. The enterprise had been neither successful, glorious, nor profitable; and when de la Tour again applied for help, in July of the following year, Endicott, who had opposed the original participation of the colony, had succeeded Winthrop as governor. The only result of de la Tour’s suit, therefore, was a proclamation of neutrality “till the next general court,” and the dispatch of a letter to d’Aulnay offering satisfaction, and likewise requesting it for his own earlier depredations on the Penobscot. In September, the Commissioners of the United Colonies met and passed a resolution forbidding, in future, such acts of volunteers as Massachusetts had connived at.
The struggle between the two rivals had not been limited to fighting in America, but had been carried on at the French Court, where each had striven for recognition. In this d’Aulnay had been successful, and the ignominious end of the whole matter for the English was that Massachusetts finally had to abandon her claims against him, and to make him a gift as an acknowledgment of her own wrong in joining de la Tour’s expedition. The affair, however, helped to strengthen the deputies against the body of ministers and magistrates, whose unwarranted action, as well as lack of statesmanship and even of common prudence, had been mainly instrumental in bringing unnecessary humiliation upon the colony without the consent of its representatives.
Nor did the Bay and other colonies derive much greater honor from their diplomacy with the Dutch, one of the main results of which, indeed, was to develop such a conflict of interests among themselves as threatened to break up the Confederation. As we have already seen, it was an open question whether England or Holland had the better title to the central portion at least, of the territory claimed by the latter. As to the title of the individual settlers, English and Dutch, on the Connecticut and the Delaware, it would appear that the Dutch, who were there by the authority of their home government, were in a much better legal position than the English, who were mere squatters in the wilderness, without any patent or charter rights. The New Englanders, however, outnumbered their neighbors twenty to one, and the land in dispute was good. The advice of the British Ambassador in the States General was, therefore, acted upon with the consciousness of overwhelming force. “Crowd on,” he wrote, “crowding the Dutch out of those places they have, but without hostility or any act of violence.”
Steadily the advancing flood of the English overwhelmed Dutch claims. It poured westward on Long Island and along the Sound, up the Connecticut,—encircling the little fort of Good Hope,—up the Housatonic, and stopped only a few miles from New Amsterdam itself. A trading company formed in New Haven, but including capitalists from Massachusetts, tried also to plant on the Delaware in despite of both Dutch and Swedes. The situation was bound to result in constant causes for disputes, grave or trifling. At the bottom of all was the desire of the English for the land, and the sense of injury and inferior numbers on the part of the Dutch. Governor Kieft touched the point, when, in reply to a letter of complaint from the United Colonies, concerning some alleged misdemeanors by the garrison of the little Dutch post at Good Hope, he wrote that “when we heare the inhabitants of Hartford complayninge of us, we seem to heare Esops wolfe complayninge of the lambe.”
The several attempts to plant forcibly on the Delaware were successfully repulsed by the two nations already in possession there; and in 1646, Kieft sent a protest to the New Haven magistrates against their settling on the Housatonic. To this they replied that they could not imagine what river the Dutch could mean, and unfairly offered to leave any dispute to the English Parliament as arbitrators; while at the New Haven court, “it was fully and satisfyeingly voted” that they would make good their titles “at the trading house, and leave the issue of things to God.”
Contentions, new and old, dragged along, embittering relations, and filling a very large portion of the United Colonies’ time and records. Finally, after Stuyvesant had been governor for three years, he went to Hartford to try to arrange an amicable settlement of all outstanding grievances between the colonies of the two nations. The negotiations were carried on in writing; and both then and in subsequent correspondence, it must be confessed that, in dignity and courtesy, the Dutch Governor shone by comparison with the English Commissioners. His tone throughout was statesmanlike and dignified, while that of the Puritans was frequently low, and, at times, insulting.
It was finally decided that each side should appoint two deputies to negotiate a treaty, and Stuyvesant nominated, as his, two Englishmen, then resident in the Dutch colony. As a result of their deliberations, a treaty was signed, in September, 1650, which should have set the disputed matters finally at rest. Most of the smaller questions were passed over, while that of the Delaware was referred to Europe. The explanation of the Dutch Governor as to a ship seized at New Haven, some years earlier, was accepted as final,
and a definite boundary line agreed upon, which gave to the English all territory, except Fort Good Hope, lying eastward of Oyster Bay on Long Island and of a line beginning four miles west of Greenwich on the mainland, and running north, provided it came nowhere within ten miles of the Hudson. Greenwich, also, was to remain to the Dutch, who were otherwise not to build within six miles of the new boundary, which was to be referred to England and Holland for ratification. Holland subsequently accepted it, but England never acted, as to have done so would have been to recognize Dutch claims as valid, which she persistently refused to do.
Nor, from their later correspondence, can we conclude that all the English colonies themselves intended to accept the settlement as final, or that they really desired a friendly end to the controversies. Within a year after the signing of the treaty, New Haven attempted further encroachments upon the Delaware, and, when stopped by Stuyvesant, complained to the United Colonies, whose Commissioners wrote a bullying letter to the Dutch Governor. The following year, in Europe, Cromwell forced war upon Holland, and New Haven and Connecticut felt that their chance had come to make an end of their neighbor, whose chief offense seems to have been the prior possession of lands the English coveted. They claimed, indeed, to have information that Stuyvesant was stirring up the Indians to attack them, and were, or pretended to be, in mortal terror; but there is no substantial evidence that any such plot existed, and when questioned about it, the sachems Mixim, Pesacus, and Ninigret denied it in the most positive terms.
Three commissioners, whom the United Colonies sent to New Amsterdam to investigate the rumor, were met with fairness by Stuyvesant, who placed no obstacle in their way for taking any testimony they wished, asking only, which was reasonable enough, that the inquiries should be conducted jointly. This the English refused, but set down all the gossip they could gather, treated the Governor with great rudeness, and then left, refusing at the last moment to wait even a few hours to receive an answer Stuyvesant had prepared. The fact may well have been that, in view of the overwhelming odds against them, the Dutch were counting upon using the Indians as auxiliaries in case they should have been attacked; but there was nothing to indicate, what would have been exceedingly unlikely, that they had been planning to assume the offensive, even by savage proxy.
War, however, was ardently desired by both Connecticut and New Haven, and Rhode Island, somewhat liberally interpreting orders from England, started privateering on her own account against Dutch ships. Connecticut, on the strength of similar orders, hastily sequestrated the Dutch fort at Good Hope, which she never again relinquished.
Massachusetts, however, had no interest in the quarrel. The lands she coveted did not lie in that direction, and she professed to be unable to go to war save in a just cause. Her moral stand might be considered more sincere, were it not for the quite contrary position she consistently assumed when her own interests were at stake. Her refusal, however, undoubtedly prevented an act of great injustice, although her action permanently weakened the Confederacy; for she claimed, in spite of the obvious intention of the Articles, that the Commissioners had no power to declare an offensive, but only a defensive, war. This unwarranted construction was bitterly opposed by the other three members, who properly claimed that, if any of the colonies had the right, on occasion, to alter the Articles to suit herself, then the league must necessarily “breake and bee dissolved.” “Whether this violation proceed from some unwarrantable Scruple of Conscience or from some other engagement of sperit,” they wrote, “the Massachusetts neither expresse, nor will the Commissioners determine.” In the wilderness, men come to know one another well; and her neighbors’ faith in the Bay Colony’s purity of motive had been too often sorely tried to permit them, perhaps, to do her entire justice. War was declared in September, seven of the eight Commissioners voting in favor of it, although Massachusetts refused to be bound. Her interpretation of the Articles having been vehemently denied by the western colonies, she turned to Plymouth, but failed to overawe her little neighbor, who bluntly answered that the Articles “are so full and plaine that they occation not any such queries.”
Peace having been declared in Europe, however, the war was not prosecuted, and in the following year Massachusetts completely reversed her position, and agreed to be bound by the Articles of Union in their “literall sence and true meaning.” The real motive for her refusal to attack the Dutch may, perhaps, be found in that fear, on the part of the East, of any rapid extension of the western frontier, which we have already noted. Had the western colonies acquired the Hudson River and the sources of the rich fur-trade possessed by the Dutch, the supremacy of Massachusetts might readily have been lost to the younger colonies, which, on the other hand, could be counted upon to remain subordinate to herself in power and numbers if westward expansion were denied them. So long as the balance remained undisturbed, or was altered only in her favor, she could count upon the Confederacy to aid her own plans, nullifying any decision adverse to her interests by her greater strength, as she had just done. Having gained her point, it was, therefore, to her advantage to restore the fullest authority to the league; and the suggestion by her three colleagues, quoted above, that her action might have been dictated by “some other engagement of sperit” than conscientious scruples, would indicate that they perfectly recognized the situation.
During the decade and a half that we are now considering, there was continual uneasiness among the savages, but no serious outbreak. Their relations with the whites, however, were the subject of constant negotiations, which, with the entries concerning the Dutch, absorb almost the whole of the records of the Confederacy. The most striking incident was one which, unfortunately, redounded but little to the credit of the colonists.
In 1643, a quarrel broke out between Uncas and a sachem named Sequasson, and after the English had ineffectually attempted to preserve peace between them, Uncas attacked Sequasson, killing seven or eight of his men, and securing considerable booty. The defeated sachem was an ally of the Narragansett chief Miantanomo, who requested permission from the English for liberty to revenge himself upon the Mohegan. This was granted, and Miantanomo, followed by a thousand warriors, fell upon Uncas, who was supported by less than one half that number. The Mohegans, nevertheless were successful, and Miantanomo was taken prisoner, through treachery. It will be recalled that Samuel Gorton had bought his lands through the Narragansett chief from two of his sachems, who had subsequently repudiated the transaction, and placed themselves under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. It will be remembered also that Miantanomo, in spite of recent suspicions, had consistently been a friend of the English, that he had sheltered Williams, when banished from Massachusetts, and that, through the influence of the latter, the Narragansetts had sided with the colonists in the Pequot war. Gorton now unwisely tried to save the savage’s life by writing a letter to Uncas, threatening him should he harm his prisoner. Uncas, upon its receipt, hurried the captive to Hartford, to advise with the authorities as to what course he should take. At Miantanomo’s own request, he was placed in custody of the English.
There had been rumors of a general rising of the natives in the preceding year, and the Commissioners of the United Colonies, meeting at Boston, after serious consideration decided that it would not be safe to set the unexpected captive free; but they had no grounds upon which to kill him. As usual, they turned to the church for advice, and, as usual, that advice was for blood, “the most judicious elders,” who had been consulted, unanimously agreeing “that he ought to be put to death.” Of the four reasons for their decision as given by Winthrop, not one justified the sentence. One of them, that he was “of a turbulent and proud spirit,” was hardly a capital offense even in Massachusetts, nor could the beating of one of his own subjects be thus construed. His alleged heading of an Indian conspiracy had not been proved, and if the authorities had really believed it, it is not likely that they would have granted him formal permission to take the warpath with a thousand warriors against another of their own allies. Opposed to the charges were to be set the facts that, in the past, he had performed inestimable service as a friend of the English, and that he was now in their hands at his own suggestion, trusting in the white man’s justice. He had not, however, reckoned on the church, and it is impossible not to agree with the often expressed surmise that the leaders of that institution condemned him, not as the enemy of the English, but as the friend of the heretic Gorton and the tolerant Williams.
There had been no pretense of trial, and neither the accused nor any witnesses had been summoned. Nor did the English execute the sentence, which duty they entrusted to Uncas, who was promised protection against the Narragansetts if he would perform it. Uncas readily undertook the work, and Miantanomo, probably cursing his folly for having ever trusted a white man, was put to death. “That the Indians might know that the English did approve of it, they sent 12 or 14 musketeers home with Uncas to abide a time with him for his defence, if need should be”; which shows how little real credence was placed in the story of a general rising. The savages could have made no complaint, had the English from the beginning preserved a strict neutrality; but they had not done so. They had given Miantanomo leave to take the war-path, and, when he was captured, they had assumed the responsibility of seeing that justice should be done. They had, nevertheless, observed none of its forms, and had merely handed the prisoner back to his savage captor with what amounted to orders for his death, without trial and without a hearing. Aside from the injustice of the course pursued, it is difficult to think of one more certain to turn the “proud and turbulent” spirits of the slain man’s thousand followers permanently against the English settlers.
Nevertheless, for the present, in spite of a threatened outbreak upon their part two years after the slaying of their chief, the Indian relations of the colonists for long consisted mainly in efforts to preserve the peace among rival native tribes and to collect tribute.
The disputes of the colonies, however, were by no means limited to those with foreigners and savages. The union, which had been so seriously threatened by the Dutch war, had earlier suffered another severe strain in a controversy between Connecticut and Massachusetts over questions of taxation. When the fort at Saybrook was bought from Fenwick by the former colony, for the purpose of protecting and controlling the mouth of the river, the contract provided that he should receive, in part payment, certain tolls to be levied upon merchandise exported by all the River Towns. A few months later, the General Court passed a law regulating the amounts of these duties and providing for their collection. The boundary line between Connecticut and Massachusetts was still undetermined; but as the latter colony claimed Springfield, which was under its jurisdiction, that town objected to being taxed by Connecticut, and refused to pay the duties demanded. The question was referred to the Commissioners of the United Colonies by Connecticut in 1647, though the fort had then been destroyed by fire. The objections of Massachusetts, presented in writing, were not well taken, and one was an absolutely false statement, Connecticut having no difficulty in showing that the Bay Colony’s contention that the question of a river-toll had delayed the formation of the Confederacy by ten years was palpably absurd and impossible. Another contention, that the toll was not levied upon the Dutch at Good Hope, was also of no import, for the commerce of that tiny post was slight, and by taxing it, international questions would have been raised, to no advantage. Moreover, as the main value of the fort at Saybrook was to protect the river from the Dutch, its upkeep could hardly be considered as a charge of which that nation shared the advantages. The duties required were not discriminatory, and Connecticut was merely asking that the other permanent settlers up the river should share the same burden which she imposed upon herself.
Although the justice of her claim was upheld by the Commissioners of New Haven and Plymouth, Massachusetts refused to accept the decision as binding, and threatened retaliation, which, in 1649, took the form of an import duty on all goods from the three colonies entering at Boston Harbor, which was then the main channel through which all business was conducted with Europe. The wording of the act made it obvious that it was to punish the three smaller colonies for not having agreed with herself; and the Confederacy’s delegates resolved that “how fare the premisses agree with the lawe of love and with the tenure and import of the articles of Confederation, the Commissioners tender and recomend to the serius Concideration of the Generall Court of the Massachusits.” Wearied with her continuous rejection of their valid rulings for five years, they also added that they “desire to bee spared in all further agitations Concerning sprinkfield.” Apparently, however, the pertinacity of Massachusetts won the struggle, to which bitterness was added by her persistent refusal, for seventy years, to acknowledge the real location of her southern boundary line, which she had extended slightly into Connecticut territory. That “line” she had had surveyed, in 1642, by the somewhat odd method of having two “skillful artists,” as she called them, locate a point three miles south of the Charles River, and then, in order to avoid the long walk across country, sail around by the Sound, and ascend the Connecticut River to a point which they agreed was in the same latitude as that from which they had started. A map, a pen, and a ruler completed this arduous bit of surveying work in the wilderness. Unfortunately, it did not satisfy Connecticut.
There was always a certain latitude, not astronomical, in the Bay Colony’s treatment of boundaries, however; and, in spite of the reasonably strict definition of her own by her charter, the colony slowly expanded, like a balloon filling with gas. We have already seen how she had annexed New Hampshire, and, by her new interpretation of the charter, laid claim to Maine. The state of affairs in England, during the Civil War and Commonwealth, offered her the opportunity to make that claim a reality; and by 1658, the entire province had been annexed, bit by bit. In the midst of the civil commotions in the home country, the royalist Gorges had died, and his heirs had had no chance to answer their colonists’ letters or to look after their affairs in America. Godfrey was elected governor of the settlements about York, the inhabitants there, “with one free and universanimous consent,” binding themselves into a body politic, while farther east, the feud between Cleeve and Winter, the latter representing Trelawney’s interests, had been continued. Trelawney, a royalist like Gorges, was imprisoned in England by the Parliament, and soon after died. Cleeve went to England, procured the assistance of Alexander Rigby, who had bought the questionable Lygonia patent, and secured from him a confirmation and extension of his own holdings. This was three years before the election of Godfrey at York in 1649, and Josselyn, who was then representing the Gorges interests, disputed Cleeve’s claims, and both parties agreed to arbitration by Massachusetts. The jury failed to find a verdict, and the dispute continued. The following year, the Commissioners of Plantations confirmed Rigby’s patent, even enlarging its interpretation, and so confined the Gorges territory to that south of Saco. Cleeve established a government within the now legal, if not equitable, Lygonia grant, and the quarrel between him and Godfrey seems to have been settled. Affairs promised to assume a more ordered aspect, and in 1651 Godfrey sent a petition to Parliament, asking that the inhabitants of Maine be declared “Members of the Common Wealth of England,” and confirmed in their rights.
Massachusetts saw her opportunity slipping, and decided to act. In May of the following year, the General Court voted that the northern boundary of the colony was a line running from sea to sea and passing through a point three miles north of the most northerly section of the Merrimack, sending out more “skilfull artists” to find the exact latitude. Godfrey vigorously objected, recalling to Massachusetts the services he had rendered her in England when her charter had been questioned, and denying the validity of her new claim. His protest, of course, was of no avail, and in May, 1653, Massachusetts sent a commission, headed by Bradstreet, forcibly to require the submission of the inhabitants at Kittery. After much debate among the settlers, they agreed to submit, provided their conditions were accepted. This, however, was “wholy denied by the comissioners, who told them they must first submitt to the government, and then they should be ready to affoord such liberties and imunities as they should think meete to graunt.” To this demand, as illegal as it was arrogant, the settlers were forced to yield an unconditional assent; and Godfrey returned to England, to add another, in the day of reckoning, to the enemies of Massachusetts. The country was organized as the County of York, and the towns incorporated with the same privileges as Dover. Later in the same year, the commission continued its journey, and Wells, Cape Porpus, and Saco were likewise forced to submit.
Five years later, in spite of repeated protests from Cleeve, the whole of Maine and Lygonia were absorbed as far as Casco Bay, and the process of annexation was complete. Of the principalities that Mason and Gorges had spent their fortunes to acquire, not a foot was left to their heirs.
By her policy of annexation, Massachusetts had added over forty thousand square miles to her territory; while by that of nullification, she had patently shown that the bonds uniting the New England Confederacy were but ropes of sand. Confederation was a failure and imperial control as yet impossible. The unification of New England was progressing rapidly, but it was a mere process of absorption by Massachusetts. Had there been no hindrance offered by England to the movement, the fate of the other colonies was amply foreshadowed. A single state, with its capital at Boston, guided by the reactionary ideas of its leaders, would probably have arisen, and much of the work already accomplished for the enfranchisement of the individual by Connecticut and Rhode Island, as well as the progress so far made by Massachusetts herself, might have been lost.
Although her policy had met with so little real resistance in the north, it received an unexpected check in the south, from the despised Rhode Islanders, while the restoration of the monarchy in England was permanently to save the independence of that colony and of Connecticut. In view of the circumstances, that event, and the assertion of imperial control which followed it, cannot be considered as so inimical to the interests of liberty and the colonies as writers whose attention and sympathy have been wholly devoted to Massachusetts have usually pictured it. In spite of the many fine qualities of the Bay Colony, and the services which she rendered in the settlement of New England, it was fortunate that her career of aggrandizement was halted, for the United States could ill afford to have lost the independent contributions made to her intellectual and political life by the smaller colonies. Indeed, it may even be questioned, if a single powerful, unscrupulous, and aggressive state had come to occupy the whole of New England, and possibly the Hudson Valley, whether the United States, as a federal nation in its present form, would have come into existence at all. When one considers the possibilities involved in a wholly different balance of power among the colonies in the following century, the early career of Massachusetts and the checks it encountered take on a larger interest.
The four settlements about Narragansett Bay, whose extreme individualism and disinclination to submit to any superior government have already been noted, would probably have been exceedingly slow to form a combination, had it not been for the danger to their existence, threatened by their neighbors. Massachusetts had already set up claims to a portion of the territory, and assumed jurisdiction over some of the natives at the time of the Gorton affair in 1643; and contemplated more aggressive action by attempting to secure a charter from the Commissioners of Plantations, in the same year. While never legally granted, this pretended patent was at first used by the colony to bolster its claims. At the same time at which Massachusetts was trying to obtain that document, Williams, then in England for the purpose, was also endeavoring to secure a patent which would enable the settlements legally to resist encroachment. In this he was successful, and, after that, “the country about us was more friendly,” he wrote, “and treated us as an authorized colony, only the difference of our consciences much obstructed.” The charter named the towns of Providence, Newport, and Portsmouth, and incorporated a vague territory bounded in part by Plymouth, Massachusetts, and the Pequot River, as the Providence Plantations in the Narragansett Bay in New England.” The settlers were given the right to erect any form of government which they might choose.
The Narragansett Indians, after the death of Miantanomo, had agreed to place themselves directly under the protection of the English crown; and Gorton, who, after his release from Massachusetts, had gone back to Warwick, was chosen by them to go to England and carry their submission to the King. In 1644, Plymouth had renewed her claim to Warwick; but in the following year, twenty families from Braintree having petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for permission to settle on Gorton’s lands, the Court had granted them ten thousand acres there, and arranged for the organization of a towns. Plymouth settler objected, however, when the party arrived, and the new planters dispersed to other places. At the same meeting of the court at which the Braintree men were granted their land, a letter was ordered sent to Williams, stating that Massachusetts had received a charter for Narragansett Bay, and ordering him to desist from exercising any authority.
Nothing had been done by the Narragansett towns to combine under their patent, until May, 1647, when a meeting attended by freemen from all four, was held at Portsmouth, at which it was voted to give Warwick the same privileges as Providence. The new government derived directly from the people, and not from the towns, those present also agreeing that it should be “democraticall, that is to say, a Government held by the free and voluntarie consent of all, or the greater parte of the free Inhabitants.” Legislation was, in the main, to be initiated by the people in town meeting, and not by the Assembly, which latter was to be a representative body, consisting of six delegates from each township. Such bills as might be initiated in the Assembly, or General Court, were required to be submitted to the four towns at their meetings, the whole legislative system thus being
“a crude combination of initiative and referendum.”
Meanwhile, Gorton had obtained a letter from the Commissioners for Plantations, granting him safe conduct through Massachusetts, and allowing him to resettle upon his lands without molestation, until the disputed title should be decided. To this, Massachusetts returned an answer defending her actions in the case and her refusal to allow of appeals to England; but Gorton was permitted to pass through her territory on his way to Warwick. The settlers there, however, were much troubled by the Indians, whom Massachusetts claimed as under her jurisdiction; and after receiving two complaints from the Warwick people, the Commissioners of the United Colonies finally returned answer that they were ready to undertake the settlement of the question as to “under what Colonie youer Plantation doth fall.” The following year, 1650, Massachusetts, by agreement with Plymouth, acquired all rights which that colony might possess about Warwick, but the Commissioners of the United Colonies refused to sanction the transfer.
As before, however, there was a party at Patuxet working in the interests of the Bay Colony, and in 1651, certain settlers there appealed to her for protection against taxes levied upon them. Massachusetts, still claiming jurisdiction, wrote to Williams, requiring that the government refrain from taxing the residents of Warwick, and stating that in case it refused to comply, Massachusetts would seek satisfaction “in such manner as God shall put into theire hands.” There was no doubt what this meant.
There was, moreover, additional trouble in store for the distracted settlements. William Coddington, one of the original settlers at Aquidneck, had treacherously gone to England, and there procured a commission appointing him Governor of Rhode Island, his territory thus including the two towns of Portsmouth and Newport. This would have disrupted the union, and have left the mainland towns a prey to Massachusetts. The four towns, being now at last closely united in aim by the common danger, sent Williams and Clarke to England, to protest against Coddington’s action; and, largely through the influence of Williams’s friendship with Vane, they were entirely successful. Coddington’s commission was withdrawn; Williams obtained a safe conduct through Massachusetts, and brought a letter from Vane urging the colonists to unite peaceably and to avoid tumult and disorder. In 1654, the towns reunited by formal action, and two years later, Coddington submitted to the authorities. In 1658, Massachusetts at last resigned her pretensions, while, to guard against any such troubles in future as had been brought about by that colony’s faction in Patuxet, Rhode Island passed a law, somewhat later, that, if any citizen should attempt to place his lands under the jurisdiction of another colony, they should be forfeited.
The government, however, was by no means through with Massachusetts, nor with its other neighbor, Connecticut, both of whom were soon to lay claim to the soil in another direction. The Pawcatuck River, which is the present western boundary of the state, had also been the dividing line between the Narragansetts on the east and the Pequots on the west; and after the destruction of the latter, both Connecticut and Massachusetts had claimed the Pequot country by right of conquest. In spite of attempts to divide the spoil between them, the dispute dragged along, with clashings of interests and of jurisdiction.
Massachusetts, however, not content with claiming a large part of the country west of the Pawcatuck as a reward for her share in the war, was also constantly endeavoring to establish her claims to the rich tract lying between the east bank of that river and Narragansett Bay, known as the Narragansett country. In spite of her defeat in the Gorton episode, she continued her efforts, and in 1659, a year after Southertown, the present Stonington, had been declared by the Massachusetts Court to be a part of Suffolk County in that colony, the Atherton Company was formed, mainly by Massachusetts land-speculators, to secure title to the Narragansett lands. A grant was obtained by the company from one of the sachems, and, in the following year, four others, in order to meet a fine which had been imposed upon them by the United Colonies, executed a mortgage deed of the entire Narragansett country to the Atherton Company, except such parts as might have already been granted, the Indians having six months in which to redeem the pledged lands, which, of course, they failed to do.
Massachusetts herself had no valid claim to any of the territory, to which, on the other hand, Rhode Island was justly entitled under her charter, which had named the “Pequot River and Country” as the western boundary. In October, 1661, a clash occurred between Rhode Island citizens claiming lands at Stonington and the Massachusetts authorities, three Rhode Islanders being carried off to Boston, and imprisoned. The Rhode Island government protested, and denied the pretensions of Massachusetts to the disputed territories, and herself claimed jurisdiction over the lands owned by the Atherton Company. Massachusetts, some months later, renewed the old fiction of her Narragansett patent, and asserted, what she must have known to be false, that under it she had a valid title to “all that tract of land, from Pequot River to Plymouth line,” and ordered the Rhode Island authorities to desist from exercising any government within their limits.
The troubles between Rhode Island and Massachusetts, between Massachusetts and Connecticut, and between Connecticut and Rhode Island, were thus rapidly approaching the point at which a general intercolonial war might easily have resulted in the annihilation of the smallest colony, and a possible quarrel over the spoils by the two victors, already bitterly quarreling over the spoils of a war of twenty years earlier. The disgraceful spectacle of two colonies, planted in the wilderness ostensibly for the glory of God, and still pretending to be guided by his laws, annihilating a weaker neighbor in order to annex her harbors and rich lands, was fortunately prevented by the reassertion of imperial control by England.
Meanwhile, the little Rhode Island commonwealth had established its internal affairs upon a firm and orderly basis, and in spite of the dire forebodings, and every possible impediment thrown in his way by Massachusetts, Williams had finally succeeded in his effort to prove that civil and religious liberty was not incompatible with a well-ordered state. Against all her enemies, without and within, the colony had won her way to intellectual freedom, and had advanced along the path in which it has been the glory of the nation to follow, while the restoration of the monarchy in England intervened to save her from further molestation from her powerful Puritan neighbors, and enabled her to pursue her chosen ways in peace.

## Notes

* ↑ Cf. Parkman, The old Régime in Canada (Boston, 1911), pp. 1 ff.
* ↑ J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, pp. 128, 130.
* ↑ Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 135, 138. The agreement is in Hazard, Historical Collections, vol. i, pp. 499 ff. Robert Keaynes, of the “sow case,” was apparently interested in the venture.
* ↑ Hutchinson, Papers, vol. i, p, 131.
* ↑ J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, p. 151.
* ↑ Paper signed by Saltonstall and Hathorne. Ibid., vol. ii, Appendix O, pp. 464 ff.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 220.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, p. 22.
* ↑ J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, pp. 318, 334 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vol. iii, pp. 44, 74 ff.; Acts United Colonies, vol. i, pp. 56 ff.
* ↑ Letter from Sir William Boswell to Dr. Wright, 1642; Conn. Col. Records, vol. i, pp. 565 f.
* ↑ For relations with the latter, cf. A. Johnson, The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware (Univ. of Pa., 1911), vols. i, pp. 380 ff., and ii, p. 755; New Haven Records, vol i, pp. 56 f., 106 f.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, p. 77.
* ↑ New Haven Records, vol. i, pp. 265 f. The Dutch spoke of the river as the Mauritius. In their reply, the New Haven people stated that they had built on the Paugusset “within our owne lymitts.”
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, pp. 186 f.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 188 ff.
* ↑ New Haven Records, vol. i, pp. 333, 508; Acts United Colonies, vol. i, pp. 112, 146.
* ↑ N. Y. Col. Docts., vol. ii, pp. 258 f.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, pp. 214 f.; New Haven[’]s complaint is on pp. 210 ff.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. ii, pp. 6 ff.
* ↑ Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 59, 65.
* ↑ Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 54, 90, 92; R. I. Records, vol. i, pp. 261, 266, 271. During the course of the war, Cromwell sent Major Sedgwick and Captain Leverett to the “United Collonyes” to see what aid he could count upon in an attack upon New Amsterdam. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series IV, vol. ii, pp. 230 ff.; New Haven Records, vol. ii, pp. 100, 107, 112; Conn. Col. Records, vol. i, p. 259; Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 390.
* ↑ Conn. Col. Records, vol. i, pp. 254, 275.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. ii, pp. 56, 75, 80, 86.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. ii, p. 82.
* ↑ Ibid., pp, 102, 108 f.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 111 f.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 114.
* ↑ J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, p. 155.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, p. 11.
* ↑ J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, p. 158.
* ↑ Cf., e.g., editor’s note in J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, pp. 158 f.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, p. 11; J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, p. 158.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 162.
* ↑ Cf. letter from the sachems to Massachusetts, 1644, in R. I. Records, vol. i, pp. 136 ff.
* ↑ For the causes of the Narragansett “war” of 1645, cf. Acts United Colonies, vol. i, pp. 50 ff. For the war with Ninigret, Ibid., vol. ii, pp. 101 ff.
* ↑ Conn. Col. Records, vol. i, pp. 119 ff., 266 ff.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 169.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, p. 80; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., Series IV, vol. vi, p. 380.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. x, pp. 89 ff.
* ↑ Massachusetts Records, vol. ii, p. 269. This had been anticipated by Connecticut; Mass. Hist. Sec. Coll., Series iiv, vol. VI, p. 383.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, p. 158.
* ↑ Ibid., vol. x, pp. 15 ff.
* ↑ C. W. Bowen, The Boundary Disputes of Connecticut (Boston, 1882), pp. 19, 53 ff.
* ↑ Farnham Papers, vol. i, p. 266.
* ↑ J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 314 f.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 391.
* ↑ Farnham Papers, vol. i, pp. 267 f. Williamson says it was carried to England by Cleeve; History of Maine, vol. i, p. 336.
* ↑ Massachusetts Records, vol. ii, pp. 274, 288.
* ↑ The answer of Massachusetts and Godfrey’s second letter are in Hazard, Historical Collections, vol. i, pp. 564 ff. Godfrey’s protest, stating that £35,000 had been spent in settling, and that Massachusetts had recognized the lawful jurisdiction of the settlers for the past 20 years, is in Baxter MSS., Doct. Hist. Maine, vol. iiv, pp. 15 f.
* ↑ Massachusetts Records, vol. iiv, pt. I, p. 123.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 123-26.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 158 ff.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 175, 250, 312, 357, 360.
* ↑ Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Series I, vol. v, pp. 398 ff.; Arnold, History of Rhode Island, vol. i, pp. 118 f.; Osgood, American Colonies, vol. i, p. 354.
* ↑ R. I. Records, vol. i, p. 458.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 143 ff.
* ↑ Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 326; R. I. Records, vol. i, pp. 134 ff.
* ↑ Cited by Arnold, Rhode Island, vol. i, p. 159; Massachusetts Records, vol. iii, p. 49; J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, p. 308.
* ↑ Massachusetts Records, vol. iii, p. 49; R. I. Records, vol. i, p. 133.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 147 ff.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 156.
* ↑ Osgood, American Colonies, vol. i, p. 358.
* ↑ R. I. Records, vol. i, pp. 367 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, p. 333.
* ↑ Massachusetts Records, vol. iii, pp. 95 ff.; J. Winthrop, History, vol. ii, pp. 360 ff.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. i, p. 150. The previous complaint, and the Commissioners’ mild rebuke to the Indians, are on p. 111.
* ↑ Massachusetts Records, vol. iii, pp. 198 f.; Acts United Colonies, vol. i, pp. 170 f.; Massachusetts Records, vol. iii, p. 216.
* ↑ Ibid., p. 228, and vol. iiv, pt. i, p. 47.
* ↑ Cal. State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 354.
* ↑ I. Backus, History of New England with particular Reference to the Denomination of Christians called Baptists (1871), vol. i, pp. 223, 232; Hazard, Historical Collection, vol. i, p. 495.
* ↑ R. I. Records, vol. i, pp. 278 ff., 327.
* ↑ Massachusetts Records, vol. iiv, pt. i, p. 333.
* ↑ R. I. Records, vol. i, p. 401.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vols. i, pp. 19, 79, 97, and ii, pp. 209, 228; R. I. Records, vol. i, pp. 451 ff., 457; Conn. Col. Records, vol. i, pp. 570 ff.; Bowen, Boundary Disputes of Connecticut, pp. 31 ff.; Massachusetts Records, vols. ii, p. 160, and iiv, pt. i, p. 315.
* ↑ Ibid., vol. iiv, pt. i, p. 353.
* ↑ The members included Gov. Winthrop of Connecticut, and Richard Smith; R. I. Records, vol. I., p. 464.
* ↑ Acts United Colonies, vol. ii, p. 248; R. I. Records, vol. i, pp. 465 f.
* ↑ As we have already noted, the bounds were vaguely stated, but this western one was clear enough; Ibid., p. 144.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 455 f.
* ↑ Ibid., pp. 469 ff., 461.