liberals).' Now, therefore, that the magnate had returned, his ancient foes were at his heels. Meetings were held at Newport, Portsmouth, and Providence, and decisive action was planned. By the Providence meeting Roger Williams was earnestly entreated to betake himself again to Westminster, and on the assumption that the Patent of 1644 had been vacated by the grant to Coddington 2 to procure if possible a separate charter for Providence and Warwick.8

"Much Honored," wrote William Arnold to Massachusetts from his Pawtuxet outpost, on September 1, 1651, "Whereas Mr. Coddington has gotten a charter of Rhode Island and Canonicut Island to himself he has thereby broken the force of their charter that went under the name of Providence, because he has gotten away the greater part of that colony. Now these company of the Gortonists that live at Shawomet and that company of Providence are gathering of £200 to send Mr. Roger Williams unto the Parliament to get them a charter of these parts; they of Shawomet have given £100 already and there be some men of Providence that hath given £10 and £20 a man to help it forward with speed. . . . It is a great pity and very unfit that such a company as these are, they all stand professed enemies against all the united colonies, that they should get a charter for so small a quantity of land as lieth in and about Providence, Shawomet, Pawtuxet and Coweset, all which now Rhode Island is taken out from it, is but a strip of land lying between the Colonies of Massachusetts Plymouth and Connecticut, by which means if they should get them a charter, of it there may come some mischief 1 Mass. Hist. Coll., 4th ser., vol. vi., p. 321; Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., P. 166.

R. I. Hist. Coll., vol. v., p. 89.

'As early as October 9, 1650, Williams writes: "Just now a letter from R. I. comes for my voyage to Eng: but as yet I resolve not." On October 6, 1651, he writes: “Being now bound, resolvedly, (if the Lord please) for our native country," etc.-Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., pp. 202, 228.

for under the pre

and trouble upon the country tence of liberty of conscience about these parts there comes to live all the scum, the runaways of the country." And in a postscript Arnold repeats: "They are making haste to send Mr. Williams away. . . . I humbly desire my name may beconcealed lest they hearing of what I have herein written, they will be enraged against me, and so will revenge themselves upon me.'

Meanwhile upon the Island there was equal haste. The object here was to have Coddington's commission annulled, and forty-one of the freemen of Portsmouth joined with sixty-five of the freemen of Newport in soliciting John Clarke to go to England for that end. Moreover, William Dyer, seeing in this his opportunity to square accounts with his traducer regarding the "ten head of cattle," and having "maid over his estaite" in security for ready funds, placed himself at Clarke's disposal as coadjutor and private secretary. As for Roger Williams in this connection, failing of the £100 which, according to the distempered imagination of Arnold, Providence was "gathering," and likewise of the £100 which, according to the same imagination, the Gortonists had gathered already, he was forced to raise money for the trip by selling out his trading business, which he did to Richard Smith, his neighbor at Cawcamsqussick.

By special permission of the Bay, Williams sailed from Boston in November, Clarke, it is said, going in the same ship.2

1 Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 229.

'Dr. Palfrey doubts this, suggesting that Clarke would hardly venture to sail from Boston so soon after the imposition upon him of the fine in the

Some interesting events had occurred in the Old Home since the visit of Williams in 1643-44, and with these as, for instance, the execution of the King, the overthrow of Prince Rupert by Blake at sea, and the campaigns of Cromwell in Ireland and Scotland - our traveller had, as we know from his Winthrop letters, made himself familiar. It probably, however, was only after landing that he learned of the battle of Worcester, fought on September 3d. This victory by Cromwell had again raised the question which had been raised after Naseby, namely, the settlement of the nation; and with this question Williams must have found both Vane and Cromwell intensely occupied. But despite occupation Sir Henry received his friend with the old-time cordiality, making him welcome at Whitehall. He entered heartily into the work of undoing the grant to Coddington; lending aid in preparing a petition to the Council of State, to which Clarke subscribed, and in securing action upon it afterwards.

Still, various obstacles were encountered. Coddington had apprised his English agent of the effort to be made against him, and the latter had appealed to the council; a proceeding in which he

Witter affair - - an incident to be related in these pages farther along.— Hist. New Eng., vol. ii., p. 355, note.

'It was to Sir Thomas Urquhart, the translator of Rabelais, captured at the battle of Worcester, that Roger Williams rendered the service which is so handsomely acknowledged by the recipient in his Introduction to the Universal Language, published in 1653. 'He [Williams] did approve himself a man of such discretion," says Urquhart, "and inimitably-sanctified parts, that an Arcangel from heaven could not have shewn more goodness with less ostentation." -R. I. Hist. Soc. Pub., n. s., vol. viii., p. 135.

had the countenance and backing not only of the Plymouth and Connecticut agents, Edward Winslow, Edward Hopkins ("both in great place "), and George Fenwick, but also of Arthur Haslerig, a leader in Parliament and Fenwick's father-in-law.1 But at length, on October 2, 1652, an order was obtained vacating Coddington's commission, and, for the present, authorizing the colony of Providence Plantations to proceed with the administration of government under the Patent of 1644.2 Armed with letters embodying this order, Dyer no doubt to his great personal satisfactionsailed for New England, arriving in Rhode Island in February, 1653. "I hope it may have pleased the Most High Lord of Sea and land," Williams wrote to Providence and Warwick, on April 1, 1653, "to bring Captain Christen's ship and dear Mr. Dyre unto you, and with him. the Councill's letters for the confirmation of the charter until the determination of the controversy." The controversy, however, hung on, and for the purpose of watching it, as well as for other purposes private in their nature,

1 Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., pp. 236, 255.

"We have thought it necessary for the present, and until further direction and order be given by the Parliament or this Council for settling that Colony, to authorize you and do hereby authorize you to take care for the peace and quiet thereof," etc.- Palfrey's New Eng., vol. ii., p. 557, note.

Warwick (July 29, 1652) had been in favor of sending to England a joint commission from the Mainland and the Island to aid Williams in securing a renewal of the "former charter"; as matters stood, he was authorized to act only for the Mainland. It was likewise to be the duty of the commission "to bring in the Narragansett Bay which Coweset men strive for." Providence, however, had preferred to let their agent do his work in his own way.

VOL. II.-2

both Williams and Clarke continued their stay abroad.1

The former found much in which to take interest. The question of Freedom of Conscience, although not having the novelty, nor quite the bearing upon his mission, that it had had eight years before, was still to him a question of the highest moment for both Old England and New. He therefore busied himself in bringing out, in rejoinder to Cotton's Bloody Tenet Made White (published in 1647 in reply to his own Bloody Tenet), his book The Bloody Tenet yet more Bloody, his Hireling Ministry None of Christ's,2 and his Experiments of Spiritual Life and Health

the latter dedicated to Lady Vane. He also made a further direct appeal to Parliament — companion-piece to his Queries of Highest Consideration-in behalf of Toleration, in a preface to A Fourth Paper Presented by Major Butler. Indeed, his zeal for religious and political freedom, re-enforced by affection for the memory of Sir Ed

'Clarke's object, in part at least, was to arrange for the collection of an annuity of £20 left to his wife by her father out of the manorial estate of Wreslingworth in Bedfordshire. The object of Williams, apparently, was also pecuniary in its nature, for, writing to Gregory Dexter, on September 8, 1652, from Mr. Davis's house at the Checkers in St. Martin's, he says: "When my public business is over, I am resolved to begin my old law-suit."-Backus, vol. i., p. 439; Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi. p. 236.

2 This pamphlet was provoked by the question of tithes or a State-paid clergy which raged furiously during the time of Williams's stay in England.-Masson's Milton, vol. iv., pp. 514, 517, 567, 615.

Professor Masson says with regard to Butler's "Paper":"Evidently here was a protest in favor of absolute Voluntaryism and complete Toleration. We have it on the authority of the persons who tendered the protest ..that they regarded Cromwell as essentially with them in the Toleration part of it."-Ibid., p. 393.