We have recorded the deaths of Williams and Clarke. In April, 1727, Governor Samuel Cranston followed them to the grave, leaving no public man so universally loved behind.
It is a proof of the progress of the Colony that vagrants and “mad persons” began to be provided for by law. Among the laws adopted from England at this period was the act of limitations for personal actions.
CHAPTER XVIII.
CHANGE OF THE EXECUTIVE.—ACTS OF THE ASSEMBLY.—JOHN BERKELY’S RESIDENCE IN NEWPORT.—FRIENDLY FEELING BETWEEN THE COLONISTS AND THE MOTHER COUNTRY.
Nearly a generation had passed since a new governor had been chosen, but the place made vacant by death was now to be filled. The choice fell upon Joseph Jenckes, (May, 1727.) He was a resident of Pawtucket, and in those days of irregular communication Pawtucket was too far from the seat of government for the prompt transaction of public business. It was voted, therefore, that it was “highly necessary for the Governor of this Colony to live at Newport, the metropolis of the government,” and a hundred pounds was appropriated for the expense of his removal. While the Colony was passing into the hands of a new executive a similar change was taking place in the mother country. George I. died suddenly, and George II. succeeded to the throne.
But the change of sovereign brought no change with it in the policy of the mother country. The act of navigation was still the rule by which she measured her relations to the colonies. They were still to supply the raw material and she the profitable manufacture.
The first eight years of George II.’s reign were years of peace. Party spirit in England ran high under the names of court and country, the first as supporters of the ministry, the second of parliamentary opposition. But Sir Robert Walpole did not love war, and in the cabinet his voice was supreme.
In the Colony we find the same indications of growth and development. The records of the Assembly are still our principal guide. The criminal code, the surest indication of the moral condition of the community, was revised. Intemperance, in spite of repeated attempts to suppress it by legislation still seems to prevail, and in 1728 a new license law was passed. Unforeseen crimes, also, sometimes call for special action. An Indian lad attempted to kill his master, a crime unforeseen in the code, and was branded on the forehead with the letter R., whipped at the cart tail at every street corner in Newport, and ordered to be sold out of the Colony for his unexpired term. A slanderous pamphlet was publicly burned by the town sergeant in front of the Colony House and the author compelled to make a written confession of his fault.