1654, Roger Williams was chosen President of the rehabilitated colony.

After the election of Williams, one of the first acts of the Assembly of September 12th, was to order that letters of thanks be prepared by the President and Gregory Dexter and sent to "his Highness ye Lord Protector," to Sir Henry Vane, and to Mr. John Clarke.

The letter to Vane bears only the signature of Dexter, but the purity and harmony of the style bespeak the dictation of Williams.1

. .

"Your sun," says the writer in allusion to Vane's retirement upon the expulsion of Parliament by Cromwell, "when he retires his brightness from ye world yet from ye very cloud we perceive his presence and enjoy some light and heat and sweete refreshinge. Sir," the writer continues, "we were in compleate order until Mr. Coddington (wanting ye publike selfedenyeing spirit which you commend) . . . procured by most untrue information a monopolie of part of ye Colonie . . . to himselfe. . . . Secondly, Mr. Dyre (with no less want of publike spirit) being by private contentions with Mr. Coddington; and being betrusted to bring from England ye letter of ye Council of State for our re-unitinge, he hopes for a recruit to himselfe by other mens goods and plungeth . in most unnecessary and unrighteous plunderings both of Dutch and French and English." Sir, our further answer is (that we may not lay all ye load upon other mens backs) that possibly a sweete cup hath rendered many of us wanton and too active. . . . But blessed be your love, and your loving heart and hand awakening any of our sleepie spirits by your sweete alarms. . . . We hope you shall noe more complaine of ye saddinge of your loving heart by men of Providence Towne or Providence Colonie; but that

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'Backus states that the letter, which he evidently had seen, was in the hand of Williams.

Sir when we are gone and rotten our posteritie and children after us shall reade in our Towne records ye pious and favourable letters and loving kindness to us."

1

Roger Williams was continuously President of Providence Plantations from September 12, 1654, to May 19, 1657. This period, while marked by a fair degree of harmony between the Mainland and the Island, was none the less one of constant jars and bickerings in the several towns. For dealing with these disturbances the new President was by temperament not very well adapted. He was too much of a peacemaker and temporizer, was too confident of the virtues of arbitration, and withal was too much of a talker, to be a thoroughly good executive. Men of the type of William Harris and Benedict Arnold — prompt, decisive, and businesslike - were unmistakably Williams's superiors in the art of handling common affairs.

In illustration of the forbearance, not to say hesitancy, of the latter in pushing matters to an issue,

1R. I. Col. Rec., vol. i., p. 287. This letter also contains the following familiar passages : We have not only been long free (together with all English) from ye iron yoaks of wolfish Bishops, etc. We have not felt ye new chains of ye Presbyterian tyrants; nor (in this colonie) have we been consumed with ye over-zealous fire of ye (so-called) Godly and Christian magistrates. Sir we have not known what an excise means. We have almost forgotten what tythes are; yea or taxes either to Church or Commonweale."

* On May 25, 1655, the fact is recited that Mr. Thomas Olney had been guilty of "takinge up of armes to ye oposeing of authoritie" (R. I. Col. Rec., vol. i., p. 307); on June 30th, it was ordered that, " in case any man strike another person in ye Court," he should be fined ten pounds or be whipped (Ibid., p. 321); also about this time a certain Henry Fowler was pardoned a failure to post a notice of his intention to be married, on his pleading that "the divisions of the town were the cause" of his remissness.

In 1655

there may be mentioned certain prosecutions instituted by him before the Court of Trials. an order was passed that "any person or persons, found upon examination to be a ringleader of factions or divisions amongst us," must be sent to England to be tried by the Lord Protector and the Council of State. Under this order the President, with evident resolve to put a stop to agitations, began an action in March, 1657, against "Robert West, Catharine the wife of Richard Scott, Ann Williams, and Rebecca Throckmorton, as common opposers of all authority"; also a further action against "Thomas Harris, William Wigendon, and Thomas Aingall, for Ringleaders in new divisions in the Colony." And with what result? The record of the court states: "The said persons appearing to traverse and none appeared to make good the charge against them, therefore the Court could not proceed further, and soe doth acquit them."

But while in many things too easy, even by his own confession, the new President in things of diplomacy and negotiation was a master hand. To begin with, in the autumn of 1654 Williams successfully interposed between the Narragansett Indians and Massachusetts in a quarrel growing out of an attack made by Ninigret upon the Indians of Long Island. Again, in 1655 he adroitly urged upon Massachusetts the abandonment of all claim of jurisdiction over the Arnold coterie and Pumham.

The "coterie" was now reduced to four families, one of which (Stephen Arnold's) was ready

to accept the authority of Providence, and another of which (that of Zachariah Rhodes) was, through constructive banishment for "dipping," "out of Massachusetts already." As for the remaining two families those of William Arnold and William Carpenter - they were by no means Puritan, and had professed themselves willing to arbitrate their case with Providence, provided the Bay would not interpose objection. These facts were now clearly made manifest, and Massachusetts (May, 1658) graciously granted the Arnolds their dismission. It was a harder task to induce the Bay to take steps with regard to Pumham, and the relations between the latter and Warwick continued to be marked by fruitless conferences and hostile demonstrations down to the year 1666, when the King's commissioners compelled the Indians to remove.

Of miscellaneous incidents, the administration of Roger Williams was not without its share. As a result of trouble with the Narragansetts about the grass on Conanicut Island, Portsmouth and Newport sought, early in 1655, to purchase the island outright, along with Dutch Island, its historic neighbor. But it was not until April 17, 1657, that, through a joint purchase by William Coddington and Benedict Arnold, the Indian title to the former was extinguished; and not until May 22, 1658, that the title to Dutch Island and Coaster's Island Harbor was secured by Benedict Arnold in connection with other persons. It also was in 1655 that acts were passed against notorious and customary cursing and swearing and notorious

sexual immorality,' and that the first extant courtroll of the freemen of the colony was made.

44

Ac

1Adultery and fornication were forbidden by the code of 1647, but these offences proved highly troublesome nevertheless. In consequence, on May 25, 1655, it was enacted that a person convicted of adultery by two punctuall witnesses upon ye Island," should be whipped; receiving fifteen stripes at Portsmouth, and, after a week's respite, "ye like punishment at Newport." Upon the Mainland the punishment was to be fifteen stripes, first at Providence and afterwards at Warwick. A second offence was to be punished "in all ye foure Townes." Furthermore, a first offence was to entail a fine of ten, and a second offence of twenty, pounds, and a second offence was not to be bailable (R. I. Col. Rec., vol. i., p. 311, 312). Meanwhile it seems that representations regarding immorality in the colony had reached the ears of Cromwell. An act was therefore passed (the act alluded to in the text) instructing the magistrates to inflict "some moderate corporall punishment" upon delinquents, or to bind them over. In case, however, of false accusation, the informer was made liable to a like punishment (Ibid., p. 318). On March 17, 1656, an act was passed against incestuous marriages, and on May 19, 1657, the act against adultery was made applicable in cases of fornication (Ibid., pp. 334. 355).

Commenting upon the above legislation, Judge Thomas Durfee remarks (Rider's Hist. Tract No. 18, p. 140): "In New England Rhode Island was the favorite and indeed the only refuge from the moral as well as the religious rigor of puritanism; and hence it is not surprising that many who immigrated here fell into excesses." It, however, is to be doubted whether Rhode Island was any more given to excesses of the sort indicated than were Massachusetts, Plymouth, or Connecticut. The same uncleanness characterized them all. Thus Roger Williams, in a letter to John Winthrop, Jr., dated February 16, 1649–50, grieves with the latter over the fact that Connecticut is so troubled with that filthy devil of [immoral] practices" (Narr. Club Pub., vol. vi., p. 191); and Governor Bradford in his History of staid old Plymouth is moved to exclaim (pp. 384-386): "Marvilous it may be to see and consider how some kind of wickedness did grow & break forth here as in no place more or so much that I have knowne or heard of espetially drunkennes and unclainnes. . . . One reason may be that ye Divell may carrie a greater spite against the churches of Christ and ye gospell hear, by how much ye more they indeavour to preserve holynes and puritie . . I would rather thinke thus than that Satane hath more power in these heathen lands, as som have thought, than in more Christian nations, espetially over God's servants in them."

.

The philosophy of the whole subject of sexual immorality in Puritan New England is brought out in Mr. C. F. Adams's paper in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc., 1891, vol. vi., pp. 477-516.