inthrop, _New England_, I., 261-288.]

[Footnote 15: Ibid., 291-296.]

[Footnote 16: Hutchinson, _Massachusetts Bay_, II., 423-447.]

[Footnote 17: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 296-312.]

[Footnote 18: Adams, _Massachusetts: Its Historians and its History_,
57.]

CHAPTER XIV

NARRAGANSETT AND CONNECTICUT SETTLEMENTS

(1635-1637)

The island of Aquidneck, to which Mrs. Hutchinson retired, was secured
from Canonicus and Miantonomoh, the sachems of the Narragansetts,
through the good offices of Roger Williams, by John Clarke, William
Coddington, and other leaders of her faction, a short time preceding
her banishment, after a winter spent in Maine, where the climate
proved too cold for them.[1] The place of settlement was at the
northeastern corner of the island, and was known first by its Indian
name of Pocasset and afterwards as Portsmouth. The first settlers,
nineteen in number, constituted themselves a body politic and elected
William Coddington as executive magistrate, with the title of chief
judge, and William Aspinwall as secretary.[2] Other emigrants swelled
the number, till in 1639 a new settlement at the southern part of the
island, called Newport, resulted through the secession of a part of
the settlers headed by Coddington. For more than a year the two
settlements remained separate, but in March, 1640, they were formally
united.[3] Settlers flocked to these parts, and in 1644 the Indian
name of Aquidneck was changed to Rhode Island.[4]

Not less flourishing was Roger Williams's settlement of Providence on
the main-land. In the summer of 1640 Patuxet was marked off as a
separate township;[5] and in 1643 Samuel Gorton and others, fleeing
from the wrath of Massachusetts, made a settlement called Shawomet, or
Warwick, about twelve miles distant from Providence.

The tendency of these various towns was to combine in a commonwealth,
but on account of their separate origin the process of union was slow.
The source of most of their trouble in their infancy was the grasping
policy of Massachusetts. Next to heretics in the bosom of the
commonwealth heretic neighbors were especially abhorrent. When in 1640
the magistrates of Connecticut and New Haven addressed a joint letter
to the general court of Massachusetts, and the citizens of Aquidneck
ventured to join in it, Massachusetts arrogantly excluded the
representation of Aquidneck from their reply as "men not fit to be
capitulated withal by us either f