[262]. Journal, vol. ii. 220. Mr. Savage says, in a note, “I rejoice in the defeat of this futile claim by Plymouth, and equally rejoice in the ill success of the attempt by our own people.”
We may appropriately introduce here a remarkable document, found in the Massachusetts Records, vol. 3, p. 47:
“Sir, we received lately out of England a charter from the authority of the High Court of Parliament, bearing date 10 December, 1643, whereby the Narraganset Bay, and a certain tract of land wherein Providence and the Island of Aquetneck are included, which we thought fit to give you and other of our countrymen in those parts notice of, that you may forbear to exercise any jurisdiction therein, otherwise to appear at our next General Court, to be holden the first fourth day of the eighth month, to show by what right you claim any such jurisdiction, for which purpose yourself and others, your neighbors, shall have free liberty to come, stay and sojourn, as the occasion of the said business may require.
“Dated at Boston, in the Massachusetts, 27th 6mo. 1645.
“To Mr. Roger Williams, of Providence. By order of the Council.
INCREASE NOWELL, Secretary.”
No notice of this charter has been found in Winthrop, Hutchinson, or Holmes’ Annals. Mr. Williams, in his letter to Major Mason, says:
“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 requiring me to exercise no more authority, &c. for they wrote, their charter was granted some 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.”
This whole transaction is somewhat mysterious. The rulers in Massachusetts were too upright to assert the existence of such a document, if they had it not in their possession. They were too honest and too politic to forge one, the spuriousness of which could easily be detected. There was, undoubtedly, some mistake, and the silence of the historians corroborates the representation given above by Mr. Williams.
[263]. Backus, vol. i. p. 194–5.