since dismantled, for the protection of the settlements around Coweset Bay from the attacks of the English.
It is the Warwick of the seventeenth century, not that of the eighteenth or nineteenth, that I would fain call to the minds of my readers—the Warwick whose inland acres were covered with the primitive wilderness, where wolves and Indians were at home,[2] and the white man was a stranger; the Warwick which Samuell Gorton sought after being frozen out of Boston, banished from Plymouth and Pocasset, and driven by contentions from Providence and Pawtuxet.
Yonder, on Conimicut Point, he built his block-house,[3] and therein defied for a day and a night the force of Puritans and savages in equal numbers, aggregating more than four times his own, which Massachusetts sent against him; finally surrendering to superior battalions to prevent blood-shed. Farther south, at the head of Warwick Cove, a quiet arm of the Narragansett, stood his humble homestead, where he passed his declining years in the honorable service of the Town and Commonwealth which he helped to found; the land surrounding which has remained in unbroken succession in the hands of his descendants to the present day. Near by, John Greene, John Wickes, Randall Holden and the other men, good and true, who were his colleagues and supporters, cleared and tilled their allotted acres, making the wilderness to blossom as the rose.
Yes, there are after all some reminders of these primitive times besides the sub-soil and the ancient cedar by the Potowomut River; for yonder, at Rocky Point, the perennial clambake celebrates in aboriginal fashion and in their native haunts, the shore-feasts of the Indians. And down on Potowomut Neck which Warwick won for her own after long and litigious struggles, once the favorite camping ground of the aborigines, you may still pick up the flint arrow-heads which they fashioned and left behind them three centuries ago. You may paddle up the Pawtuxet, under the over-arching branches of noble trees, into quiet reaches of the river, where the hum of cities and the bustle of civilization seem remote indeed. And in the new Town Hall at Apponaug you may shut out the noises of the day, and curiously con the ancient records of the Town;—you may see the very pages on which these pioneers of a new civilization bore testimony to their humble beginnings, and told, in part, the story of the building of a State. I have searched these records faithfully—here, and in the library of the Historical Society at Providence, where other precious manuscripts are preserved. Some of these men I have come to know. I have thought their thoughts after them in deciphering their writings. I have felt their throbbing human hearts, laboring to lay the foundations of a Commonwealth wherein liberty should be secure under the protection of law; wherein the civil power should have no control over the consciences of men. Something of this would I lay before the impartial reader; in justice to these men who so labored that we might enter into their labors and reap the ripe fruits thereof; in justice also to ourselves, that we as American citizens may not remain ignorant of this forgotten chapter in the noble story of the beginnings of our National life.
II SOURCES OF INFORMATION
The story of Samuell Gorton is in a large part the narrative of the beginnings of the Commonwealth of Rhode Island. If I mistake not, it also constitutes an important and hitherto unrecognized chapter in the history of the beginnings of our National life. It is a story but little known to the average American citizen. It has been briefly told by John M. Mackie, in Sparks’ American Biography, and by Gov. Arnold in his noble volumes of Rhode Island History. Certain phases of it have been discussed and amplified in the interesting monographs of Judge Staples and Judge Brayton.[4] William D. Ely has thrown important light upon some salient points in Gorton’s history, in reports published in the Proceedings of the R. I. Historical Society.[5] Palfrey has touched it lightly and with scant justice in his History of New England, and Fiske, in his Beginnings of New England, has given it inadequate treatment.[6] Other historians have alluded to Samuell Gorton but to distort and misrepresent his actions and opinions.
A mere rehash of the narratives of Mackie, Arnold, and Brayton would be unworthy of the attention of this learned Society. To ignore their conscientious efforts to do justice to the founder of Warwick and co-worker with Roger Williams in the building of a Commonwealth dedicated to the principle of Soul Liberty, would, on the other hand, be unjust and impossible to one who would rightly sketch the history and estimate the work of Samuell Gorton. In the light of all that these just-minded sons of Rhode Island have written upon this subject, I have studied it anew and independently, making use of all available printed material, and also of valuable unpublished manuscripts and town records. I have arrived at certain conclusions, quite unexpected when I commenced my investigations, concerning Gorton’s political and religious philosophy, which, if correct, will modify previously received opinions of the man and his work, and which seem to me sufficiently vital and important to merit the attention of all students of American history. It is the main object of this paper to set forth the substance of these conclusions, with some reference to the documentary evidence on which they are based. For the instruction of those who have not made this somewhat obscure episode in Rhode Island history a special subject of investigation, some account of the leading facts of Samuell Gorton’s career becomes a preliminary necessity.
III THE MAN AND HIS WORK
Who was Samuell Gorton? What part did he play in our Colonial history? These questions let us briefly answer before we attempt a somewhat careful study of his religious and political opinions, about which there has been so much misunderstanding. Samuell Gorton was born in the parish of Gorton, England, a few miles from the present bustling city of Manchester, about the year 1592.[7] He came of a good family, “not entirely unknown,” says Judge Brayton, “to the heraldry of England.”[8] Here, as Gorton himself declares, “the fathers of his body had dwelt for generations.”
We know but little about his early life. Though he did not attend any of the celebrated schools or universities of England, his education seems to have been carefully conducted by private tutors.[9] As with many other students of his day, the Bible was his principal text-book. He could read it in the original: he was a master of both Greek and Hebrew. And he brought to the reading a vigorous intellect and a more original and independent judgment than is commonly applied to theological studies.
Samuell Gorton probably dwelt in the vicinity of his birthplace until he was about twenty-five years of age.[10] Here he made the acquaintance of a Separatist Elder, afterwards connected with the church in Holland, whence came the Mayflower Pilgrims. His mind readily assimilated the spirit of the Puritan revolt against the degenerate formalism of the times; yet his Puritanism was without taint of dogmatic narrowness. He always retained an affection for the church of his fathers. “I drew my tenets,” he says, “from the breasts of my mother, the Church of England.”[11]
In his early manhood he left Gorton and went to seek his fortune in the great English metropolis. In London he engaged in business, and built for himself a home. In a certain conveyance signed during his residence there, he is described as “Samuell Gorton, clothier,” and also as “Professor of the misteries of Christ.” Religion and daily occupation were never divorced in his consciousness. He would not make a trade of the former, nor could he conduct the latter on a plane inconsistent with those moral and religious principles which dominated his life. His business as a “clothier,” in the phraseology of the day, was that of a branch of manufacturing—the finishing of cloths after weaving. It is doubtful whether he met with great pecuniary rewards in his chosen industry. His enemies afterwards said that he left London in debt, to avoid imprisonment threatened by his creditors. Of this there is no valid evidence; we may dismiss it on the authority of his explicit denial.[12] “I left my native country,” he said, “to enjoy libertie
