Conceived in Liberty (36 page)

The power-hungry Coddington now mounted an armed attempt to rule over Portsmouth, but was forcibly ejected by the Hutchinsonians. Soon, however, Coddington was able to arrest William Hutchinson and order his disfranchisement. Anne and her husband were again victims of harassment and persecution.

A year later, on March 12, 1640, the two groups came to an agreement and the settlements of Portsmouth and Newport (the latter by now being the larger of the two) united, primarily on the libertarian principles of Portsmouth. Coddington was chosen governor, however, and William Hutchinson one of his assistants. The separate towns were allowed to retain their autonomy, and the laws were to be made by the citizens rather than by an oligarchy. And a year later, in May 1641, the Aquidneck government declared: “It is ordered that none shall be accounted as delinquent for doctrine.” Religious liberty had been officially decreed in Aquidneck. The settlements of Providence and Aquidneck had raised the banner of freedom for all religious creeds. In this free air, diversity of religion came to proliferate in the colony.

Soon, however, Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, ruminating in the free air of Rhode Island on the meaning of her experience, came to an astounding and startling conclusion—and one that pushed the logic of Roger Williams’ libertarianism far beyond the master. For, as Williams reported in bewilderment, Anne now persuaded her husband to give up his leading post as assistant in the Aquidneck government, “because of the opinion, which she had newly taken up, of the unlawfulness of magistry.” In short, the logic of liberty and a deeper meditation on Scripture had both led Anne to the ultimate bounds of libertarian thought: to individualist anarchism. No magistracy whatever was lawful. As Anne’s biographer Winifred Rugg put it: “She was supremely convinced that the Christian held within his own breast the assurance of salvation.... For such persons magistrates were obviously superfluous. As for the other, they were to be converted, not coerced.”
*

To the Puritans of Massachusetts, Aquidneck was an abominable “Isle of Errours” and the Rhode Island settlements were “Rogue’s Land.” Massachusetts began to plot to assert its jurisdiction over these pestiferous settlements and to crush the havens of liberty. Indians were egged on to
raid the Providence and Aquidneck territories. Massachusetts then shut off all trade with the Rhode Islanders, who were thus forced to turn to the neighboring Dutch settlements of New Netherland for supplies. A son and son-in-law of Anne’s, visiting Boston, were seized and very heavily fined by the authorities, and then banished from Massachusetts on pain of death.

In 1642, soon after his resignation from public office, William Hutchinson died. Deprived of her husband and mainstay, disgusted with all government, and deeply worried about Massachusetts’ threatened encroachments on Rhode Island (and knowing also that the Bay Colony was now regarding her as a witch and therefore deserving of death), Anne decided to leave once more. Taking a few members of her family and a few dozen disciples, Anne Hutchinson left Rhode Island to go to Long Island, in New Netherland, and finally to settle in the wilderness of Pelham Bay. There, in late summer of 1643, Anne and her family were murdered by a band of Indians, engaged in armed struggle with the Dutch. William’s and Anne’s deaths were hailed and gloated over by the Puritan oligarchy of Massachusetts Bay. To the unconcealed delight of the divines of Massachusetts, Anne Hutchinson had, finally, been physically destroyed; but the spirit of liberty that she embodied and kindled was to outlast the despotic theocracy of Massachusetts Bay. Perhaps, in the light of history, the victory in the unequal contest was Anne Hutchinson’s

Even in the short run, Massachusetts Bay was soon to meet again the spirit of Anne Hutchinson—the emphasis on the inner light, on individual conscience, on liberty—in the new sect of Quakers, a sect joined by many Hutchinsonians, including William Coddington and Mary Dyer, and in the Baptists, headed by Anne Hutchinson’s sister, Catherine Scott, and by the Hutchinsonian Dr. John Clarke.

*
Winifred K. Rugg,
Unafraid, A life of Anne Hutchinson
(Boston, 1930).

In the meanwhile, religious liberty, and hence diversity, was flourishing in nearby Providence. An Anglican minister who had been living in the vicinity before the Williams settlement continued to preach there. Baptists came also to the colony and exerted great influence. The first Baptist minister was Dr. John Clarke, a physician, who had arrived in Massachusetts from England just in time to join with Anne Hutchinson and leave for Aquidneck. William Harris also was a leading Rhode Island Baptist from the earliest days. The brilliant Baptist leader and sister of Anne Hutchinson, Mrs. Catherine Scott, even succeeded in temporarily converting Roger Williams (along with many other leaders) to the Baptist faith in early 1639. The inveterate Baptist insistence on individual conscience and the right of religious liberty was very close to Williams’ views. In addition, each Baptist church was separate and completely autonomous; the officers were democratically elected by the entire congregation. In a few months, however, Williams shifted again to become a Seeker, which he continued to be for the rest of his life. Williams had arrived at the point of questioning the claims of all churches to apostolic authority or to correctness of ritual.

In addition to religious liberty, and apart from land allocation, the powers of government in Providence were limited. Disputes were to be settled by arbitration, but the arbitration was compulsory, enforced by the ruling “disposers.” And, in contrast to Massachusetts, there was no establishment of government schools.

One of the most repeatedly and consistently persecuted Americans of the seventeenth century was Samuell Gorton, an individualist and a free
spirit who had been a clothier in London. Gorton, a “Professor of the Mysteries of Christ,” challenged not only the right of theocracy, but the wisdom of all priests and formal religious organizations. Politically, this individualist argued that any transgressions of government beyond the rights guaranteed by the English common law were impermissible. Gorton also opposed theocratic laws against immorality, and questioned the existence of heaven and hell, the truth of the Scriptures, baptism, and the taking of oaths.

Chafing at the restrictions of Anglican England, Gorton left London for Boston in 1636 “to enjoy liberty of conscience, in respect to faith towards God.” It did not take Gorton long to see that he had only moved from the frying pan into the fire; he arrived just in time to see the expulsion of the Reverend Wheelwright to Exeter, and he realized that if Massachusetts would not tolerate the presence of the relatively orthodox Wheelwright, it could surely have little place for the likes of him.

Gorton therefore left quickly for Plymouth, where he began to attract considerable following for his views. Adopting Anne Hutchinson’s device of prayer meetings in his parlor, Gorton began to arouse the ire of the colony’s oligarchs by making a convert of the wife of the Rev. Ralph Smith, the respected retired minister of Plymouth. Another inconvenient convert was a sewing maid of the current minister of the colony, the Reverend Mr. Rayner. Reverend Mr. Smith began a campaign to expel Gorton from the colony, and a suitable excuse came shortly to hand. Employed as Mrs. Gorton’s serving maid was a widow newly arrived from England, Ellen Aldridge. Charges began to be whispered about Plymouth Colony that Ellen had committed the grievous offense of “smiling in church.” Complaints were duly lodged against her, and the Plymouth fathers summarily ordered Ellen to be promptly expelled from the colony as a “vagabond.” Gorton spoke up heatedly in protest over these high-handed proceedings, for which high crime Gorton himself was hauled into court in late 1638. In a pretrial hearing, Gorton accused one of the magistrates of lying, a charge which only added to his crimes. At this trial Gorton denounced the grave violation of English common law in uniting the offices of prosecutor and magistrate in the same man. Protesting against the injustice of the trial, Gorton addressed the crowd: “Ye see good people how you are abused! Stand for your liberty; and let them not be parties and judges.” The frightened church elders, on hearing this plea, urged the court to inflict summary punishment to remove this libertarian troublemaker from the colony. Gorton was duly prohibited from speaking in his own defense, and the court swiftly fined Gorton and gave him fourteen days to leave Plymouth. Gorton was thereby forced to walk through the wilderness in the snow, and was barely able to finish the journey southwestward to Portsmouth, where he settled.

In Portsmouth, Gorton found political rule centered in William Coddington, the sole magistrate. Joined there by his main Plymouth disciple, John Wickes, Gorton promptly amassed a large following, and formed an
alliance with Anne Hutchinson to overthrow Coddington’s dictatorial rule and to repulse Coddington’s armed attempt to impose his rule in Portsmouth.

A year later, however, with Newport joined to Portsmouth, Coddington was back in command, even though opposed by the majority of Portsmouth residents. Again Samuell Gorton, who had steadfastly refused to enter into the agreement to join Newport, felt the lash of persecution, and again Gorton’s defense of someone in his employ was the catalyst used.

At the end of 1640 an old woman’s cow invaded Gorton’s land. Coming after the cow, the trespassing old lady got into a fight with a serving girl of Gorton’s, after which the woman hauled the servant into court. Gorton defended his servant, and strongly protested the unfair trial, attacking the justices as “just asses.” He also denied the authority of the constituted court and government. Since no royal charter covered Rhode Island, it was free territory, and therefore no authority to set up a government could exist. Coddington, the chief justice at the trial, ordered Gorton arrested forthwith, crying out, “You that are for the King, lay hold on Gorton”; to which the defiant Gorton instantly riposted: “All you that are for the King, lay hold on Coddington.” A hand-to-hand fight ensued, with Coddington’s armed guard gaining the victory. Gorton was arrested and John Wickes, who had also defended the servant, was put into the stocks, Gorton himself was soon whipped and banished from Aquidneck; Wickes and several Gortonites were banished as well.

What next? The only place left for Gorton to go was Providence, and so he and a dozen families of disciples arrived there in the winter of 1640–41. In Providence, Gorton found two major factions: the owners of Pawtuxet, headed by William Arnold and William Harris, and Providence proper, led by Roger Williams. The oligarchical Pawtuxet clique was particularly fearful that Gorton might convert a majority of townsmen and overturn its rule, and so the Pawtuxet rulers refused to allow the Gortonites to use the town commons. The Arnold faction urged that the “turbulent” Gorton and his followers be expelled immediately from the settlement. But Gorton expanded his following, and they soon became a third force in the little colony,

And what of Roger Williams? Enjoying increasing political power, Williams was beginning to lose the edge of his libertarian principles. He became alarmed that Gorton, far more individualist and libertarian than himself, was “bewitching and bemadding poor Providence... with his unclear and foul censures of all the ministers of this country....” Williams tried to violate,
sub rosa,
his own principles of religious liberty by simply excluding Gorton from Providence, an exclusion which was in the power of the landed oligarchy of the town. Or rather, Williams, more moderate than Arnold, wanted to grant Gorton admission
only
if he pledged to respect the authority of the government, and if he abandoned such “uncivil” protests as had gotten Gorton expelled from Portsmouth.

Finally, in November 1641 some of the Pawtuxet faction seized some cattle owned by a Gortonite, to satisfy a debt judgment the Gortonites believed to be arbitrarily decreed by the disposers. This led to a full-fledged riot between the two factions (the Gortonites being led by Randall Holden and John Greene) and the Gortonites managed to save their friend’s property from the “cattle stealers.”

Because of the riot, thirteen of the Pawtuxet oligarchs made a desperate and treacherous call for the Massachusetts government to intervene with force to expel the “anarchist” Gortonites. The oligarchs pulled out all the stops against their enemies, accusing the Gortonites of being anarchists, and leaning toward communism and free love, or “familism.” Their appeal to Massachusetts was a direct threat to all the precious liberties that the men of Providence had fled Massachusetts to preserve. And thus began an active threat to Rhode Island liberty from Massachusetts that was to last and be of great significance for the little settlements for years to come.

Massachusetts replied haughtily to the Pawtuxians that it would intervene only if Providence would first submit to its authority, which Providence would not do. Indeed, less than a third of the Providence citizens supported the Arnold-Harris petition.

Williams, however, now joined the Pawtuxians in obtaining the expulsion of Gorton from Providence. Gorton was now banished even from this relative haven of religious liberty. His only consolation was that
this
time he wasn’t whipped out of town. Gorton and his followers now moved to West Pawtuxet, an unused tract of land which Gorton had purchased the year before. But once again, the alarmed Arnold-Harris forces in September 1642, requested coercive intervention by Massachusetts and in return offered the submission of Pawtuxet to Massachusetts authority. Delighted, Massachusetts accepted with alacrity, and their declamations thoroughly alarmed the Gortonites. Governor Winthrop, for example, exulted that Samuell Gorton “was a man not fit to live upon the face of the earth,” and Massachusetts troops made ready, it appeared, to put that harsh value judgment into effect.

There was, it seemed, no place in America that would tolerate the existence of Samuell Gorton—not even the relatively free Providence and Aquidneck settlements. There was but one course left: Gorton determined to found an entirely new settlement of his own. Gorton, a friend of the Indians and of Indian rights, moved with his flock south of Providence to purchase Indian land and found the settlement of Shawomet in November 1642.