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.”[[624]] 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.[[625]] 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 Coddington's commission was withdrawn; Williams obtained a safe conduct through Massachusetts, and brought a letter from Vane urging the colonists to unite peaceably and to avoid tumult and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.[[626]] In 1654, the towns reunited by formal action, and two years later, Coddington submitted to the authorities.[[627]] In 1658, Massachusetts at last resigned her pretensions,[[628]] 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.[[629]]
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.[[630]] 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,[[631]] the Atherton Company was formed, mainly by Massachusetts land-speculators, to secure title to the Narragansett lands.[[632]] 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.[[633]]
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.[[634]] 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.[[635]] 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.[[636]]
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.
[558]. Cf. Parkman, The old Régime in Canada (Boston, 1911), pp. 1 ff.
[559]. J. Winthrop, History, vol. II, pp. 128, 130.
[560]. 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.