The incorporation of Providence plantations under the charter of 1643/44 was delayed for several years, and took place in 1647, when a code of laws was adopted. This code was first printed in 1847, edited by Judge William R. Staples, in a volume entitled The Proceedings of the First General Assembly of “the Incorporation of Providence Plantations,” and the Code of Laws adopted by that Assembly in 1647, with Notes, Historical and Explanatory (64 pages). The original manuscript of these laws is in a volume of the early records in the Secretary of State’s office.
The earliest printed digest of laws, entitled Acts and Laws, was in 1719,—printed at Boston “for John Allen and Nicholas Boone.”[692] In this, the following clause appears as part of a law purporting to have been enacted in March, 1663-64: “And that all men professing Christianity, and of competent estates and of civil conversation, who acknowledge and are obedient to the civil magistrate, though of different judgments in religious affairs (Roman Catholics only excepted), shall be admitted freemen, and shall have liberty to choose and be chosen officers in the colony, both military and civil.” This same clause appears in the four following printed digests named above, and it remained a law of the colony till February, 1783, when the General Assembly formally repealed so much of it as related to Roman Catholics. Rhode Island writers consider it a serious reflection upon the character of the founders of the colony to assert that this clause was enacted at the time indicated; and one writer (Judge Eddy, in Walsh’s Appeal, 2d ed., p. 433) thinks it possible that the clause was inserted in a manuscript copy of the laws sent over to England in 1699, without, of course, being enacted into a law. The clause, it is said, does not exist in manuscript in the archives of the colony, and is not in the manuscript digest of 1708, though Mr. Arnold, History, ii. 492, inadvertently says it is there. If the clause was originally smuggled in among the statutes of Rhode Island at a later period than the date assigned to it (see R. I. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1872-73, p. 64), it was five times formally re-enacted when the several digests named above were submitted by their revising committees, and passed the General Assembly; and it remained a law till 1783.
In 1762, two persons professing the Jewish religion petitioned the Superior Court of the colony to be made citizens. Their prayer was rejected. The concluding part of the opinion of the court is as follows: “Further, by the charter granted to this colony it appears that the free and quiet enjoyment of the Christian religion and a desire of propagating the same were the principal views with which this colony was settled, and by a law made and passed in the year 1663, no person who does not profess the Christian religion can be admitted free of this colony. This Court, therefore, unanimously dismiss this petition, as wholly inconsistent with the first principles upon which the colony was founded and a law of the same now in force” (Arnold, History, ii. 492-495). Arnold says that previous to this decision several Jews and Roman Catholics had been naturalized as citizens by special acts of the General Assembly.
Has there not been a misapprehension as to the bearing of this law or clause disfranchising or refusing to admit to the franchise Roman Catholics and persons not Christians, and as to Roger Williams’s doctrine of religious liberty? The charter of Rhode Island declared that no one should be “molested ... or called in question for any differences of opinion in matters of religion.” The law in question does not relate to religious liberty, but to the franchise. Rhode Island has always granted liberty to persons of every religious opinion, but has placed a hedge about the franchise; and this clause does it. Was it not natural for the founders of Rhode Island to keep the government in the hands of its friends while working out their experiment, rather than to put it into the hands of the enemies of religious liberty? How many shiploads of Roman Catholics would it have taken to swamp the little colony in the days of its weakness? Chalmers (Annals, p. 276) copied his extract of the law in question from the digest of 1730, as per minutes formerly belonging to him in my possession. As an historian where could he seek for higher authority? Indeed, the clause had already been cited by Douglass in his Summary, ii. 83, Boston, 1751; and by the authors of the History of the British Dominions in North America, part i. p. 232, London, 1773. The latter as well as Chalmers omitted the phrase “professing Christianity.” But Chalmers was entirely wrong in his comments upon the clause where he says that “a persecution was immediately commenced against the Roman Catholics.”[693]
THE WINTHROP MAP (Circa 1633).
AMONG the Sloane manuscripts in the British Museum is one numbered “Add: 5,415, G. 3,” whose peculiar interest to the American antiquary escaped notice till Mr. Henry F. Waters sent photographs of it to the Public Library in Boston in 1884, when one of them was laid before the Massachusetts Historical Society by Judge Chamberlain, of that Library (Proceedings, 1884, p. 211). It was of the size of the original, somewhat obscure, and a little deficient on the line where its two parts joined. At the Editor’s request, Mr. Richard Garnett, of the British Museum, procured a negative on a single glass; and though somewhat reduced, the result, as shown in the accompanying fac-simile, is more distinct, and no part is lost.
The map is without date. The topography corresponds in the main with that of the map which William Wood added to his New England’s Prospect (London, 1634), so far as its smaller field corresponds, and suggests the common use of an earlier survey by the two map-makers,—if, indeed, Wood did not depend in part on this present survey. That its observations were the best then made would seem clear from the fact that Governor Winthrop explained it by a marginal key, and added in some places a further description to that given by the draughtsman (as a change in the handwriting would seem to show,—for instance, in the legend on the Merrimac River), if indeed all is not Winthrop’s. Who the draughtsman was is not known. There had been in the colony a man experienced in surveying,—Thomas Graves,—who laid out Charlestown, before Winthrop’s arrival; but he is not known to have remained till the period of the present survey, which, if there has been nothing added to the original draught, was seemingly made as early as that given by Wood. This last traveller left New England, Aug. 15, 1633; and his description of the plantations about Boston at that time, which he professes to make complete, is almost identical with the enumeration on this map, though he gives a few more local names. Wood’s map is dated 1634; but it seems certain that he carried it with him in August, 1633,—a date as late apparently as can be attached to the present draught.
The key added by Winthrop to the north corner of the map reads as follows:—