[4]. Notes to “Simplicities Defence against Seven-Headed Policie,” by Judge W. R. Staples, [R. I. Hist. Soc. Coll.]
Also “A Defence of Samuel Gorton,” By George A. Brayton, late Justice of the Supreme Court of Rhode Island. [Providence: Sidney S. Rider.]
[5]. Report on the Settlement of Warwick, 1642, and the Seal of the R. I. Historical Society, by William D. Ely and John P. Howland, (Proceedings, 1887-88,) and Report of the Committee on the Library, (Proceedings, 1890.)
[6]. Fuller’s “History of Warwick” also contains some sympathetic allusions to Gorton’s story. The Hon. William P. Sheffield, in an address before the R. I. Historical Society (1893), does him less than justice.
[7]. Mackie, et al. A letter of Gorton’s seems to fix this date with reasonable certainty as the year of his birth.
[8]. A Defence of Samuel Gorton and the Settlers of Shawomet, p. 5.
[9]. In a letter to Nathaniel Morton, Gorton says: “I was not bred up in the Schoole of humane learninge, and I bless God that I never was.”
[10]. Vide Mackie, and others. Gorton himself refers to his father as “a merchant of London,” which would possibly imply an earlier removal.
[11]. Calendar’s Historical Discourse, p. 9. I have not yet found this letter of Gorton’s in the original.
[12]. The fact that he subsequently returned and spent some time in London, unmolested, also militates against this charge.