“3. When God wondrously preserved me, and helped me to break to pieces the Pequods’ negotiation and design, and to make, and promote and finish, by many travels and charges, the English league with the Narragansets and Mohegans against the Pequods, and that the English forces marched up to the Narraganset country against the Pequods, I gladly entertained, at my house in Providence, the General Stoughton and his officers, and used my utmost care that all his officers and soldiers should be well accommodated with us.
“4. I marched up with them to the Narraganset sachems, and brought my countrymen and the barbarians, sachems and captains, to a mutual confidence and complacence, each in other.
“5. Though I was ready to have marched further, yet, upon agreement that I should keep at Providence, as an agent between the Bay and the army, I returned, and was interpreter and intelligencer, constantly receiving and sending letters to the Governor and Council at Boston, &c., in which work I judge it no impertinent digression to recite (out of the many scores of letters, at times, from Mr. Winthrop,) this one pious and heavenly prophecy, touching all New-England, of that gallant man, viz: “If the Lord turn away his face from our sins, and bless our endeavors and yours, at this time, against our bloody enemy, we and our children shall long enjoy peace, in this, our wilderness condition.” And himself and some other of the Council motioned, and it was debated, whether or no I had not merited, not only to be recalled from banishment, but also to be honored with some remark of favor. It is known who hindered, who never promoted the liberty of other men’s consciences. These things, and ten times more, I could relate, to show that I am not a stranger to the Pequod wars and lands, and possibly not far from the merit of a foot of land in either country, which I have not.
“5. Considering (upon frequent exceptions against Providence men) that we had no authority for civil government, I went purposely to England, and upon my report and petition, the Parliament granted us a charter of government for these parts, so judged vacant on all hands. And upon this, the country about us was more friendly, and wrote to us, and treated us as an authorized colony; only the difference of our consciences much obstructed. The bounds of this, our first charter, I (having occular knowledge of persons, places and transactions) did honestly and conscientiously, as in the holy presence of God, draw up from Pawcatuck river, which I then believed, and still do, is free from all English claims and conquests; for although there were some Pequods on this side the river, who, by reason of some sachems’ marriages with some on this side, lived in a kind of neutrality with both sides, yet, upon the breaking out of the war, they relinquished their land to the possession of their enemies, the Narragansets and Nianticks, and their land never came into the condition of the lands on the other side, which the English, by conquest, challenged; so that I must still affirm, as in God’s holy presence, I tenderly waved to touch a foot of land in which I knew the Pequod wars were maintained and were properly Pequod, being a gallant country; and from Pawcatuck river hitherward, being but a patch of ground, full of troublesome inhabitants, I did, as I judged, inoffensively, draw our poor and inconsiderable line.
“It is true, when at Portsmouth, on Rhode-Island, some of ours, in a General Assembly, motioned their planting on this side Pawcatuck. I, hearing that some of the Massachusetts reckoned this land theirs, by conquest, dissuaded from the motion, until the matter should be amicably debated and composed; for though I questioned not our right, &c., yet I feared it would be inexpedient and offensive, and procreative of these heats and fires, to the dishonoring of the King’s Majesty, and the dishonoring and blaspheming of God and of religion in the eyes of the English and barbarians about us.
“6. Some time after the Pequod war and our charter from the Parliament, the government of Massachusetts wrote to myself (then chief officer in this colony) of their receiving of a patent from the Parliament for these vacant lands, as an addition to the Massachusetts, &c., and thereupon requesting me to exercise no more authority, &c., for, they wrote, their charter was granted some few weeks before ours. I returned, what I believed righteous and weighty, to the hands of my true friend, Mr. Winthrop, the first mover of my coming into these parts, and to that answer of mine I never received the least reply; only it is certain, that, at Mr. Gorton’s complaint against the Massachusetts, the Lord High Admiral, President, said, openly, in a full meeting of the commissioners, that he knew no other charter for these parts than what Mr. Williams had obtained, and he was sure that charter, which the Massachusetts Englishmen pretended, had never passed the table.
“7. Upon our humble address, by our agent, Mr. Clarke, to his Majesty, and his gracious promise of renewing our former charter, Mr. Winthrop, upon some mistake, had entrenched upon our line, and not only so, but, as it is said, upon the lines of other charters also. Upon Mr. Clarke’s complaint, your grant was called in again, and it had never been returned, but upon a report that the agents, Mr. Winthrop and Mr. Clarke, were agreed, by mediation of friends, (and it is true, they came to a solemn agreement, under hands and seals,) which agreement was never violated on our part.
“8. But the King’s Majesty sending his commissioners (among other of his royal purposes) to reconcile the differences of, and to settle the bounds between the colonies, yourselves know how the King himself therefore hath given a decision to this controversy. Accordingly, the King’s Majesty’s aforesaid commissioners at Rhode Island, (where, as a commissioner for this colony, I transacted with them, as did also commissioners from Plymouth,) they composed a controversy between Plymouth and us, and settled the bounds between us, in which we rest.
“9. However you satisfy yourselves with the Pequod conquest; with the sealing of your charter some few weeks before ours; with the complaints of particular men to your colony; yet, upon a due and serious examination of the matter, in the sight of God, you will find the business at bottom to be,
“First, a depraved appetite after the great vanities, dreams and shadows of this vanishing life, great portions of land, land in this wilderness, as if men were in as great necessity and danger for want of great portions of land, as poor, hungry, thirsty seamen have, after a sick and stormy, a long and starving passage. This is one of the gods of New-England, which the living and most high Eternal will destroy and famish.