to Shawomet, but Governor Winthrop forbade them to stay
there; and in April, 1644, Gorton and his friends once more sought
refuge at Aquidneck.[17] Gorton, having contrived to reach England,
returned in May, 1648, with an order from the Parliamentary
commissioners for plantations, directed to the authorities of
Massachusetts, Plymouth, and Connecticut, to permit him and his
friends to reside in peace at Warwick, which they were then permitted
to do.[18] In 1652 Gorton became president of Providence and
Warwick.[19]

In December, 1643, the agents of Massachusetts in England obtained
from the Parliamentary commissioners for plantations a grant of all
the main-land in Massachusetts Bay; and it appeared for the moment as
if it were all over with the independence of the Rhode Island towns.
Fortunately, Williams was in England at the time, and with indomitable
energy he set to work to counteract the danger.

In less than three months he persuaded the same commissioners to
issue, March 14, 1644, a second instrument[20] incorporating the towns
of "Providence Plantations, in the Narragansett Bay in New England,"
and (in flat contradiction of the earlier grant to Massachusetts)
giving them "the Tract of Land in the Continent of America called by
the name of Narragansett Bay, bordering Northward and Northeast on the
patent of the Massachusetts, East and Southeast on Plymouth Patent,
South on the Ocean, and on the West and Northwest by the Indians
called Nahigganeucks, alias Narregansets--the whole Tract extending
about twenty-five English miles unto the Pequot River and Country."
The charter contained no mention of religion or citizenship, though it
gave the inhabitants full power "to rule themselves and such others as
shall hereafter inhabit within any Part of the said Tract, by such a
Form of Civil Government, as by voluntary consent of all, or the
greater Parte of them, they shall find most suitable to their Estate
and Condition."

Williams returned to America in September, 1644. On account of the
unfriendly disposition of Massachusetts he was compelled, when leaving
for England, to take his departure from the Dutch port of New
Amsterdam. Now, like one vindicated in name and character, he landed
in Boston, and, protected by a letter[21] from "divers Lords and
others of the Parliament," passed unmolested through Massachusetts,
and reached Providence by the same route which, as a homeless
wanderer, he had pursued eight years