The latter question may well have piqued the curiosity of the elders. The others were evidently framed to secure conviction. His replies were as wise and conciliatory as perfect sincerity would admit, but it was foreordained that they should be unsatisfactory to his judges. All but three of the elders voted for the penalty of death. The representatives of the people, however, to the honor of Massachusetts, refused to assent to this verdict[[38]]. Gorton suffered imprisonment in Charlestown, with a ball and chain attached to his ankle; the other accused persons were incarcerated in irons in other towns of the Colony. The next General Court, some months later, set them at liberty,[[39]] but banished them from all places within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts—the intention being to include the disputed territory at Shawomet, which Massachusetts claimed under the deed of Pomham.

As they went forth from their prison houses, the Gortonists recited their wrongs in the public streets in Boston and elsewhere to crowds of willing listeners and ready sympathizers. Palfrey admits that a majority of the people in Massachusetts were to be counted in this category.[[40]] The sufferings of these martyrs were the seeds of a new Commonwealth, from which the persecuting spirit was at last eliminated. The Indians, also, even in the vicinity of Boston, received them gladly. Cutshamekin, the chief sachem of the neighborhood, to whose wigwam the liberated men accidentally strayed, when asked by Gorton whether Capt. Cook, the commander of their captors, was a good captain, replied, “I can not tell; but the Indians regard those as good captains when a few stand out against many.”

Their chief grievance during imprisonment seems to have been that they were compelled to attend the Sunday services in the churches, and be “preached at” by the Puritan ministers. “They brought us forth unto their congregations to hear their ministers,” says Gorton, with a grim humor, illuminated by some knowledge of natural history, “which was meat to be digested, but only by the hearte or stomacke of an ostrich.”[[41]] Pastor Ward, of Ipswich, who visited one of them—Richard Carder, an old neighbor of his in England—while in prison, and urged him to recant his heresies, said by way of encouragement, “it shall be no disparagement to you, for here is our revered elder, Mr. Cotton, who ordinarily preacheth that publickely one yeare, that the next yeare hee publickely repents of, and shows him selfe to bee very sorrowful to the congregation.”[[42]] As his sly dig at Mr. Cotton would indicate, Pastor Ward was entirely sound in his own theology. This appears also in his “Simple Cobbler of Agawam,” where, with a spicy use of capitals, and vigorous if not elegant English, he denounces the brains of those who advocate “Libertie of Conscience in matters of Religion,” as “parboiled in impious ignorance.”

V
SHAWOMET BECOMES WARWICK

After his release, in the spring of 1643-44, Gorton returned through Shawomet, where he was forbidden to linger, to Portsmouth, where he and his friends were received with open arms, and where he was shortly elected to a magistracy on the very scene of his former persecutions.

Thus far the Atherton Company appeared to have made substantial progress in its efforts to obtain possession of the Shawomet lands, and Massachusetts seemed likely to succeed in throwing a girdle of unfriendly possessions around the Providence Plantations, thereby separating them from the Aquidneck settlements, and securing a permanent control over Narragansett Bay. By the submission of Arnold and the malcontents of Providence, they had obtained a show of authority over the Pawtuxet or Popaquinepaug territory. Winthrop had secured possession of Prudence Island in Narragansett Bay by purchasing the half originally owned by Roger Williams,[[43]] and now with a marvellous inconsistency, held the whole by a title derived solely from Miantonomi, the chief sachem of the Narragansetts. If he could maintain his denial of the rights of Gorton to the Shawomet lands claimed by even a stronger title, he would succeed in his efforts to divide the Narragansett settlements and establish the claims of Massachusetts. With this end in view, the Massachusetts authorities built a block-house for Pomham on Warwick Neck, and temporarily succeeded in excluding the Gortonists from their Shawomet possessions.

Gorton, however, was not idle. He had no thought of permanently relinquishing the claim for which he had contended so bravely, and to which he was justly entitled. Within forty days of his release from prison, by a masterly piece of strategy and statesmanship, he inaugurated measures which completely check-mated his opponents, and gave him a permanent advantage in the contest for supremacy. On the 19th of April, 1644, by the earnest advice and solicitation of Gorton, the Narragansett Indians, in solemn conclave, constituted their “trusty and well-beloved friends,” Samuell Gorton, John Wickes, Randall Holden and John Warner, commissioners to convey their submission to the British Government. The deed of submission, signed by the sachems Pessicus, Conanicus, Mixan, Awoshosse and Tomanick, is preserved in the Historical Cabinet at Providence. The tragical death of the head sachem, Miantonomi, in the previous September, at the hands of his bitter enemies, the Mohegans, with the consent of the Boston elders—a story so well told by Dr. Fiske in his “Beginnings of New England” that I need not repeat it here,—as well as the revolt of Pomham and Soccononocco, were powerful arguments with the Narragansetts in favor of seeking the protection of the British Government; while the return of Gorton and his companions, unscathed, from the prisons of Massachusetts, convinced the Narragansetts that the power of the Mother Country was on their side, and had stood between them and their oppressors.

In August, 1645, the Commissioners of the United Colonies, in session in Boston, declared war against the Narragansetts, and dispatched a military force to Rhode Island; at the same time warning the General Assembly of Providence Plantations, then in session at Newport, that if they adhered to their declared determination of maintaining a position of neutrality they would be regarded as enemies. They also forbade them to exercise the powers of government under the charter obtained by Roger Williams.

In response to this threatening action of “the Massachusetts,” Gorton, Greene and Holden set sail, after vexatious delays, under authority of Providence Plantations, from the Dutch settlement at Manhattan for Holland, whence, after more delay, they obtained transportation to England. The exact time of their arrival at London is unknown, but they had been preceded by the agents of Massachusetts, and were compelled to meet the charges already formulated by their enemies. Their answer, prepared by Gorton in “Simplicities Defence,” was published in London on the 3d of August, 1646. Soon after,[[44]] a patent was issued to Gorton and his colleagues which granted the Shawomet lands to them and their successors forever, and guaranteed them protection against all other claimants. In the troublous times between the King and Parliament the formal submission of the Narragansetts which Gorton had conveyed to England, could not be delivered to King Charles in person, and Gorton accordingly caused it to be published in London. By this admirable piece of strategy and statesmanship he forever blocked the movements of Massachusetts Bay for the control of the Narragansett country. Gorton received safe-conduct from the Earl of Warwick, on his return, through the domains of the enemy.[[45]]

Roger Williams, who had finally accepted Gorton’s theory of the true foundations of the new government, had preceded him to England, and on the 14th of March, 1643-44, had obtained a charter for the Colony which united the northern and southern towns in one Commonwealth. Owing to the opposition of the Coddington faction, government was not completely organized under this charter until May, 1647.[[46]] In the same year, town government was organized at Shawomet, the Town, in honor of its patron, receiving the name of Warwick. Some further futile attempts were made by Massachusetts to enforce her claims, but the Gortonists thereafter retained possession, which gave them “nine points of the law,” and finally complete victory. Pomham, for whom Massachusetts had erected a block-house on Warwick Neck, lingered in the neighborhood a few years, but at last saw that the “Gortonoges” had triumphed in their long contest with the “Wattaconoges,”[[47]] and in 1665 sold out his dishonored claim for £30 in peage,[[48]] paid him by Gorton and his associates. The new Commonwealth was fairly launched upon the sea of History; the town of Warwick and its founder were to play an honorable part in the story of its beginnings.