“Sir,
“I am the more easily persuaded by this barbarian prince, Ninigret, to trouble you so often, that I may the oftener hear of your welfare, and at present how it pleased God to bring you home to yours again. Upon your word, Ninigret prays you to send him word, whether within ten days of this 5th of the week present, you will please to meet him at Wequatucket, so it be when Mr. Stanton is present. He would confer about Mr. Eliot’s letter and coat, about Wequashcook’s usurping at Pawcatuck, about his present hunting, about the present disposal of the Pequod fields, about his letters to the Bay, which, in your name, I have almost persuaded to suspend until the meeting of the commissioners at Boston. Here is now a great hurry made by Anquontis, one of those petty sachems, of whom Mr. Eliot wrote to you and me. He hath offered great abuse to one of the chief, and Ninigret is now going to Conanicut about him. I persuade not to engage themselves, but to send him to the Bay with my letter. Sir, loving respects to Mrs. Winthrop, Mrs. Lake, whom God graciously, with your loving self and yours, bind up in the bundle of that life, which is eternal in Christ Jesus, in whom I desire to be,
“Yours ever,
“ROGER WILLIAMS.”
The following letter alludes to a narrow escape from death, which Mr. Williams met with, in his passage in a canoe, from Providence to Narraganset. His habitual piety is here exhibited in a manner the more satisfactory, because it is evidently the unstudied emanation of his feelings:
“For the worshipful Mr. John Winthrop, at Pequod.
“Narraganset, 9, 3, 49, (so called.)
“Sir,
“Best salutations and wishes presented to your dearest, with yourself, &c. These enclosed came to my hand in two several letters from the Bay enclosed, your brother in a letter from him, requesting my help, &c. I have, therefore, speeded them by the sachems, who will, therefore, expect some word of tidings from the Bay, which you may please to signify, in one line to me. Whatever you hear, or can well collect, will be any word of tidings, &c., by which occasion (if you have occasion) you may well rescribe. Benedict was desired by the magistrates in the Bay to take special care to charge Wequashcook, concerning[[267]] ——. He hath requested this task from me, which this morning I purpose to do (with God’s help) carefully. Sir, two days since, my boat not being fitted, coming from Providence, I was (in articulo temporis) snatched by a merciful, and, some say, a miraculous hand, from the jaws of death. The canoe being overset, some goods, to some value, were sunk, some whereof I hope, if God please, to recover. However, blessed be God, and blessed are such whom he correcteth and teacheth in him. Yours he graciously make me, though unworthy.
“ROGER WILLIAMS.”