Conceived in Liberty (38 page)

The code also provided no mitigation of legal penalties for “gentlemen” criminals, and there was no primogeniture in the law of inheritance. In contrast to the brutal edicts of Massachusetts, punishments for crime were restricted, and were far more proportional to the gravity of the crime. Only once did Rhode Island under the code whip or brand anyone, and branding was abolished by 1656. And in contrast to the scores of capital crimes in England and Massachusetts, Rhode Island listed only nine crimes as capital. More important, only two criminals were executed in Rhode Island during Roger Williams’ long lifetime—and both of these were murderers.

Religious liberty was guaranteed in the Rhode Island code, and the laws against personal immorality, though not completely absent, were relatively mild. There was neither sumptuary legislation against “unseemly”
adornment nor any attempt to regulate a person’s church life, though laws restricting drinking and gambling were imposed. And while witchcraft was technically illegal, the law against supposed witches was never enforced in Rhode Island.

After several years of this system, the General Assembly in 1650 dissolved itself, thereby ending the democratic veto of the body of freemen. A newly strengthened unicameral General Court of six from each town now constituted the legislature of the colony. Provision for veto of any law by a majority of towns was, however, retained.

In the new government, it might be added, Samuell Gorton was especially selected to serve on committees of defense against Massachusetts’ encroachments, a task which Gorton was certainly happy—and well fitted—to pursue.

Let it not be thought, however, that Rhode Island was in any sense out of the woods. For one thing, it still faced the Coddington threat. Thwarted in his claim to unfettered rule in Aquidneck, Coddington spurned Williams’ offers to arbitrate their differences, and turned again to an outside colony to practice subversion—this time to Plymouth. Aquidneck would not agree to the scheme, however, and Coddington left for England in late 1648 to plead his case there.

In the meanwhile, Massachusetts Bay continued its pressure on Rhode Island, and especially on Warwick and the Gortonites. Massachusetts and Plymouth stirred up the Indians to plunder Warwick. And then Massachusetts returned to its imperialist course by meddling in behalf of William Arnold and the Pawtuxet oligarchy. Arnold embarked on an aggressive campaign of land-grabbing, and forcibly seized the land of William Field of Pawtuxet. When Field sued in the Providence courts, Arnold refused to appear, and produced obviously mutilated documents of title to try to prove that Providence had no jurisdiction. These documents would, in effect, have ejected many Pawtuxians from their homes and lands, which would then become the property of Arnold and his friends. At this point, spring 1650, Massachusetts suddenly intervened and ordered Rhode Island to end its prosecution of this case, thus throwing its cloak of protection over the land theft by William Arnold and his friends, and moving to extend its suzerainty over Rhode Island.

To add to Rhode Island’s and Gorton’s troubles, Massachusetts quickly followed this intervention by granting to Arnold and his Pawtuxet friends the right to encroach on Gortonite land in Warwick. It did this by decreeing the forced merger of Pawtuxet and Warwick into one county of Suffolk. Shortly afterward, in the fall of 1650, Massachusetts troops arrived in Rhode Island and prevented the Warwick citizens from prosecuting Arnold. Finally, to make the little colony’s cup overflow, Coddington returned from England in the spring of 1651 with an astounding new charter, granting Coddington the right to rule Aquidneck Island as its sole feudal lord and ruler for life, to be aided only by six appointed assistants.

The hammer blows against Rhode Island were now falling thick and fast. Massachusetts sent an official warning to Roger Williams that any attempt to collect taxes from William Arnold and his Pawtuxet oligarchs would lead the Bay magistrates to intervene “in such manner as God shall put into their hands.” And, what is more, the United Colonies of the New England Confederation authorized Plymouth to assume complete jurisdiction over Warwick.

Little Rhode Island was clearly in desperate straits. Its plight was reinforced by Massachusetts’ persecution of the growing sect of Rhode Island Baptists. As early as 1646, the United Colonies had ordered the vigorous suppression of Baptists for rejecting infant baptism. The Baptists proceeded to aggravate the Puritan theocracy all the more by adopting the practice of baptism by immersion. Dr. John Clarke, the Baptist leader in Rhode Island, infuriated the Massachusetts authorities by converting some citizens of Seekonk, on the Plymouth side of the border, and Massachusetts went so far as to threaten armed action against Plymouth if it did not suppress the invading Baptists. By the fall of 1651, Massachusetts was negotiating with William Coddington for forcible extradition of all those refugees from Massachusetts who had found shelter at Aquidneck, and it began to contemplate the invasion of Rhode Island for the armed suppression of the Rhode Island Baptists.

During this time, John Clarke and Obadiah Holmes, the successful Baptist missionaries to Seekonk, had fallen into the hands of the Massachusetts oligarchy. Visiting a sick old communicant at Lynn, Clarke and Holmes were arrested and sentenced to a heavy fine. The eminent Clarke protested that Massachusetts proceedings violated traditional rights under English law; the report of Governor Endecott held—characteristically—that Clarke “deserved death” and “was worthy to be hanged.” Obadiah Holmes refused to sanction the legitimacy of his sentence by not paying the fine, at which point the enraged Rev. John Wilson, minister of the Boston church, struck Holmes in a fury and called down “the curse of God” upon him. Holmes received an extremely severe whipping of thirty lashes, scarring him for life. After this additional fines were levied on the two men, with promise of another severe whipping in case of default.

Roger Williams protested fervently against this brutal treatment, but to no avail. Deeply moved, Williams asked Massachusetts how it was that “he that speaks so tenderly for his own, hath yet so little respect, mercy or pity to the like conscientious persuasions of other men.” And Williams cried out:

It is a dreadful voice from the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords: “Endicot, Endicot why huntest thou me? Why imprisonest thou me? Why finest, why so bloodily whippest, why wouldest thou... hang and burn me?”

There was rising disgust in England as well. The English Puritans had come increasingly under the influence of libertarian views, emanating
from the revolutionary ferment. As Massachusetts tightened its theocratic rule, the English Puritans became more and more horrified. Sir Richard Saltonstall, himself a former Massachusetts oligarch who had long since returned to England, wrote to Massachusetts in eloquent and aggrieved reaction to the prolonged whipping of Holmes: “It doth not a little grieve my spirit to hear what sad things are reported daily of your tyranny and persecutions in New England, as that you fine, whip and imprison men for their consciences.” English Puritans, Saltonstall reminded them, had hoped that “you might have been eyes to God’s people here, and not practice those courses in a wilderness, which you went so far to prevent.”

Rhode Island was clearly hemmed in on every side, with Plymouth seizing Warwick, Coddington seceding to become sole overlord of Aquidneck and allying himself with the colony’s enemies in Plymouth and Massachusetts, and Massachusetts assuming jurisdiction to protect the Pawtuxet land-grab and threatening suppression of Rhode Island Baptists—indeed the crushing of the colony altogether. It was more than high time for a final desperate attempt to save the little colony. Obviously, the only thing to do was to send respected agents immediately to England, to try to obtain firm parliamentary protection for Rhode Island’s charter. Samuell Gorton, now president of Providence Plantations (a truncated colony including only Warwick and Providence), was the active force in raising 200 pounds to send Roger Williams to England. The majority of citizens of Aquidneck, bitterly opposed to Coddington’s usurpation, raised the money to send Dr. John Clarke of Newport along with Williams, to represent the island. The Gortonites quickly informed the United Colonies that Williams was going to England on their behalf, among other things to detail the numerous wrongs they had been suffering at the hands of Plymouth and Massachusetts.

Alarmed by this decision, the determined William Arnold pleaded with Massachusetts to send troops immediately and take over Rhode Island before the opportunity was lost. Asking Massachusetts to keep his letter secret, Arnold—not noted for his own personal piety—warned that should Rhode Island be allowed to continue in existence “under the pretense of liberty of conscience... thee comes to live all the scum the runaways of the country.” Arnold pointed to a horrible example: a man imprisoned in Connecticut (New Haven) for adultery had escaped prison and fled to Rhode Island, where he was
not
executed, although the guilty woman, having failed to escape, was properly put to death. Arnold also charged indignantly that some of the Gortonites “cryeth out much against them that putteth people to death for witches; for they say there be no other witches upon earth... but your own pastors and ministers.”

Massachusetts, however, growing a bit cautious, did not take Arnold’s tempting advice. Instead, it went so far as to permit Williams and Clarke free passage to Boston, where they set sail for England in November 1651.

With Williams gone, Samuell Gorton was the dominant force in the
Providence-Warwick government. As president, and then as moderator of the Assembly the following year, Gorton was able to enact the outlawing of slavery in the colony, and also to limit the term of any indentured service to ten years. Unfortunately, the former law remained a dead letter, but it was the first act of abolition of slavery in American history. Gorton also secured the elimination of imprisonment for debt. Samuell Gorton had successfully completed his odyssey of persecution to become one of the foremost leaders of the colony.

With Williams gone to England, William Coddington discovered that it was not easy to impose absolute feudal rule upon a free people. The citizens of Aquidneck, led by Capt. Richard Morris and Nicholas Easton, launched an armed revolt against Coddington in early 1652, threatening him and ordering his feudal court to disperse. Coddington, searching for yet another imperial armed force that he could rule and hide behind, turned in desperation to the Dutch, asking vainly for a troop of New Netherland soldiers to suppress the revolt. When Coddington’s chief aide, Captain Partridge, seized the home of one of the citizens to enforce a Coddingtonian court order, the enraged populace rose up, occupied the house, and hung the captain then and there. The voice of the people had been heard, and Coddington, speedily taking the lesson to heart, reversed New England custom by fleeing
to
Massachusetts. He dared return only when he had signed an agreement relinquishing all claims to any greater ownership of Aquidneck than had any other freeman.

In the meantime, Williams and Clarke easily convinced the English government of the spuriousness of Coddington’s claim, and obtained an order vacating the Coddington charter. Soon William Dyer returned to Aquidneck from England with the good news. The Coddington threat was finally over.

Williams arrived in England at the moment of Puritan victory and at the peak of the revolutionary intellectual ferment. The great libertarian Leveller movement was at the peak of its influence, and religious freedom had given rise to many diverse and enthusiastic sects. Williams plunged again into intimate association with such liberal Puritan leaders as Sir Henry Vane and John Milton. The upsurge of libertarian views had led to a polarization
of ideas among the Puritans, a polarization accelerated by the disruption that always follows the victory of a revolutionary coalition. The orthodox Puritans, or Independents, headed by the Rev. John Owen, began to move toward a new state church of their own and toward the suppression of other religious views. The liberal wing of the Puritans, including Vane and Milton, moved in to battle this essentially counterrevolutionary trend, and Williams enthusiastically joined in this struggle.

Eight years before, Williams’
Bloody Tenent
had been ordered burnt by the Presbyterians then in control of Parliament. Now his writings in behalf of religious liberty received great acclaim in Parliament and in the victorious New Model Army. This was especially true of his published reply to the Rev. John Cotton’s attack on the
Bloody Tenent.
Williams’ rebuttal was
The Bloody Tenent Yet More Bloody,
in which he denounced Massachusetts’ persecution of men for their consciences. Williams also proceeded to a keen attack on the Massachusetts oligarchy: a forced payment of tithes created a church leadership “rich and lordly, pompous and princely,” and gave it a monopoly on public office. Wasn’t the insistence on compulsory church attendance a reflection of the fear of the rulers that, given a free choice, people’s attendance in their churches would fall off? Williams pointed also to Holland’s commercial greatness continuing side by side with its practice of religious toleration. And he warned prophetically that the Irish question would never be settled so long as the laws persecuting Roman Catholics remained. Only full religious freedom, “free Conferrings, Disputings and Preachings,” could reduce civil strife and bloodshed.

Williams even pressed on from his insight into religious liberty to a much wider politico-economic libertarian view: the kings of the earth, he declared, used power “over the bodies and goods of their subjects, but for the filling of their paunches like wolves.” These rulers, employing “civil arms and forces to the utmost,” pressed for “universal conquest” to establish “rule and dominion over all the nations of the Earth.” But, on the contrary, government’s proper function is to secure to each individual his “natural and civil rights and liberties... due to him as a man, a subject, a citizen.”